In this episode of the Structure Talk podcast, hosts Reuben Saltzman and Tessa Murry welcome back Mike Casey to discuss the unique challenges and building practices in hot and dry climates, particularly in Southern California. The conversation covers various topics including housing stock, building science issues, post-tension slabs, plumbing materials, cooling systems, and the impact of fire safety regulations on home inspections. Mike shares his extensive experience in home inspection and offers insights into the importance of proper ventilation, insulation, and the evolving requirements for energy efficiency in new construction. The episode concludes with a discussion of the challenges insurance companies pose in the wake of increasing natural disasters.
Takeaways
Mike Casey has extensive experience in home inspection.
Post-tension slabs are used to prevent cracking in expansive soils.
PEX plumbing is becoming more common in new constructions.
Cooling performance is a top priority in hot climates.
California has strict energy efficiency requirements under Title 24.
Ventilation systems are designed to pull in outside air.
Fire safety measures are increasingly important in California.
Insurance rates have tripled in recent years due to fire risks.
Duct leakage testing is required for new constructions.
Proper insulation is crucial to prevent heat gain in attics.
Chapters
00:00 Winter Weather in Minnesota
02:14 Introduction to Hot and Dry Climates
05:19 Mike Casey’s Background and Expertise
07:16 Post-Tension Slabs Explained
11:20 Plumbing Systems in Hot Climates
17:19 Building Materials and Construction Practices
20:46 Vapor Barriers and Moisture Management
23:09 Inspecting Cooling Systems: Best Practices
32:07 The Shift Towards Electrification in California
36:02 Ventilation Systems and Air Quality Concerns
42:10 California’s Energy Efficiency Standards and Compliance
43:55 Navigating Title 24 Compliance
45:01 Attic Insulation and Ductwork Challenges
48:20 Condensation Issues in Ductwork
49:20 Common Inspection Problems in California Homes
52:41 Impact of Insurance on Home Inspections
TRANSCRIPTION
The following is an AI-generated transcription from an audio recording. Although the transcription is mostly accurate, it will contain some errors due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
Reuben Saltzman: Welcome to my house. Welcome to the Structure Talk podcast, a production of Structure Tech Home Inspections. My name is Reuben Saltzman. I’m your host alongside building science geek, Tessa Murry. We help home inspectors up their game through education, and we help homeowners to be better stewards of their houses. We’ve been keeping it real on this podcast since 2019, and we are also the number one home inspection podcast in the world, according to my mom.
Reuben Saltzman (00:01.107)
Welcome back to the show. Welcome to the Structure Talk podcast. Tessa, always great to see you. It’s it is a beautiful day here in Minnesota. We just got what feels like our first real snow of the season. We got we got we got, you know, some little flurries here and there, a little dusting. But today we got we got some plowable snow. Minnesota or Minneapolis declared a snow emergency. That’s always my barometer. If it’s a good snow.
Tessa Murry (00:07.765)
Good to see you.
Reuben Saltzman (00:30.641)
if they declare a snow emergency. Some schools canceled it the day before. In my district from April Grove, they’re letting out school just a little early for buses. So it’s always fun, isn’t it? Yeah.
Tessa Murry (00:30.849)
Did school get canceled in the Twin Cities?
Tessa Murry (00:44.005)
my gosh. Wow. Wow. Very exciting. Yeah, we have about six inches down here in Red Wing too and the local schools are open but the roads were not good. So a little treacherous out there.
Reuben Saltzman (00:56.915)
Yeah, yeah, Mike Casey is our guest today. Mike doesn’t know anything about this. It’s this white stuff that falls from the sky,
Mike Casey (01:04.398)
Well, I grew up in Connecticut. We had plenty of snow back in the 60s and so on when I was there. We used to get stuck not being able to go to school or anywhere for three and four days at a time. But they don’t get stalled like that anymore. And of course, now I’m in Southern California. So, yeah, snow is not anything I have to deal with. So actually, I got tired of building houses in the snow, which is why I moved from Connecticut and one of the reasons to SoCal.
Reuben Saltzman (01:18.181)
my goodness. No.
Tessa Murry (01:18.262)
Cool.
Reuben Saltzman (01:32.113)
Yeah, yeah, that’s that’s no fun. Nobody does their best work when it’s cold and snowy.
Tessa Murry (01:33.515)
Smart,
Mike Casey (01:38.508)
No, we’d spend the first hour two trying to get the place warmed up when we were doing additions. We’d drop a salamander and go get some coffee and egg on a hard roll while we were waiting for it to warm up.
Reuben Saltzman (01:49.395)
Yes.
Tessa Murry (01:49.985)
Well, this is the perfect segue. This is the reason we have Mike Casey on with us again today. Mike, we’ve had you on before. I believe it was for a discussion about grounding and bonding. If anybody is listening to this and they want to learn more about electricity, that’s a great podcast to go back to. But we’ve got you on again because you’re in a, quote, hot, dry climate these days.
Reuben Saltzman (01:52.021)
Yeah.
Mike Casey (01:53.87)
Thank
Reuben Saltzman (01:56.488)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (02:14.805)
This is the first episode of a multi-part series that Rue and I are doing again this year, talking to experts from different regions around the country to dive into, you know, what’s their housing stock like? What are some building science problems they have? What are some other challenges they run into as home inspectors? And we just want to get a different perspective because…
We’re in our little bubble up here in the tundra right now with the snow flying around. We know our area really well, but we’ve got listeners all over the country and curious people, and we want to dive into some of these things that you see on a regular basis that we can’t speak to. So we’re honored to have you on today and really excited to dive in. Yeah, for anybody that doesn’t know…
Reuben Saltzman (02:56.745)
Yeah. And, and, and before we go too far,
Mike Casey (02:56.888)
Thank you, Ruben and Tess.
Tessa Murry (03:01.777)
sorry, for anybody that doesn’t know Mike Casey, do you want to do just a brief introduction, Mike, of who you are?
Mike Casey (03:08.95)
Sure, well, it’s Mike Casey. I do live in Southern California in San Diego area. back a long, long time ago, my first trade was a plumbing and mechanical contractor in Connecticut. mid-80s or so, I decided, like I said before, I’m a little bit tired of building houses in the snow. It moved to Southern California where I got into home inspection almost.
Tessa Murry (03:32.331)
you
Mike Casey (03:38.71)
almost 40 years ago. And I’ve had a home inspection company. We do homes and commercial inspection, a lot of insurance consulting and legal work. And that’s what I’ve been doing for almost the past 40 years. And it’s been a fabulous profession. I’ve enjoyed it and seen a lot of different things, especially here in our, in this climate that we have in San Diego. We’ve got coastal, which can be wet and a lot of fog at times. We’ve got
You know, in the middle, kind of the hot or warm and dry. And then in the desert, we’ve got certainly hot and dry. And then we also have the mountainous areas where we’re going to get some snow pretty soon. And that’s about 20 minutes from my house. So I can get to the beach in an hour. Yes, we do here. So there’s lots of different things that we’re seeing. And that’s a little bit about me. I’ve done a lot of things with inspector associations. And currently I’m on
Tessa Murry (04:23.326)
my gosh, you’ve got it all.
Mike Casey (04:36.13)
the board of the examination board of professional home inspectors. And that’s what’s keeping me busy. I’ve traveled around the country speaking to inspectors at different conferences. It’s been a lot of fun.
Tessa Murry (04:47.733)
Hmm.
Well, you’re extremely humble, Mike, but I think you obviously have made a career out of, you know, learning through other people’s mistakes and helping us all be better. And you are one of the best teachers I think I’ve ever run across. whenever I get an opportunity, yeah, whenever I get an opportunity to listen to you or to listen to a class of yours, I always try to. But we’re excited to dip into some of your knowledge and experience today. And if we have
Reuben Saltzman (05:05.159)
I second that.
Mike Casey (05:05.582)
Yeah. thank you.
Tessa Murry (05:19.465)
happen to meander to some of these other climate zones with things that you see or have experienced, we can do that too. But today’s focus is on hot and dry climates, and we’ll have other guests on to represent different climate regions too later on. So stay tuned listeners. Shout out though to Paul Sterrin, who we had on last year for our hot dry representative, and he was wonderful. And some of the things that
He was talking about, that was very interesting to hear about, the challenges they have. They don’t have all the moisture and the rain and the snow that we have here, but they do have some other challenges. And some of that he was talking about kind of the slabs and just the structure of that and making sure that they’re not having shifting, cracking, structural concerns with that. He talked to us about post-tension slabs, which was something new.
that I didn’t know much about, which is a kind of a method, I guess, of keeping that slab more stable. And he also talked about, too, some of the challenges with having to inspect pools, because a lot of houses have pools, and that’s something we don’t really see a lot here in Minnesota, obviously. For the one month a year, you could use it. And he also talked about cooling is obviously the main…
Mike Casey (06:36.779)
Eh.
Reuben Saltzman (06:40.361)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (06:47.315)
you know, kind of system in the house that they’re testing and looking for issues with and, and that, you know, a lot of cooling systems are either located, in the attic or on the roof or outside or something like that. And just making sure that the cooling system is working properly. Now we’ve talked about some other details, but those are kind of the highlights that I remember. so I’d love to kind of dive into some of these things a little bit more and maybe kind of talk to us a little bit about.
Mike Casey (07:07.469)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (07:16.545)
he also mentioned too, the housing stock is typically newer, at least where he was in Phoenix, Arizona. It was like 1950s is kind of the oldest that he sees. I don’t know. Do you have older housing stock where you are in California that’s prior to 1950s that has its own, you know, old house issues?
Mike Casey (07:21.87)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mike Casey (07:36.696)
Well, we do. An old house here in Southern California is probably going to be from the 20s. So that was what we would call older housing stock. And most of those are crawl space, old, certainly not tight construction. And then our newer homes are typically slabs on grade, kind like you were just talking about with Paul. But most of ours here are also post-tension slabs.
Tessa Murry (07:44.033)
Okay.
Mike Casey (08:05.366)
And the main reason is we’ve got expansive soils, know, sometimes critically, sometimes just moderate or minimally. But when you have a cracked slab, even though the slab doesn’t really hold anything up, it’s just a place to lay your rug and walk on. You know, the stigma of a cracked slab is horrible. So people think that the house has fallen apart if there’s a crack in the slab, which really might not have any structural effect. So
Reuben Saltzman (08:27.391)
Yeah.
Mike Casey (08:34.828)
Builders here tend to use post-tension slabs because we know concrete’s going to crack. That’s inevitable. But we want to hold it together so you don’t get anything more than maybe an eighth of an inch crack in it so that people don’t get all excited about it and think their house has fallen into a sinkhole. So that’s primarily the reason we use them. It does get you some credits as far as size of footings and that kind of thing. But post-tension is mainly to hold the slab together.
Tessa Murry (08:41.695)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (08:54.315)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (09:02.849)
Yeah.
Mike Casey (09:04.566)
and allow it to act as kind of a mat and move around a little bit and keep it together so that you don’t get large cracks that just frankly, people think that the house is falling down when really it is.
Tessa Murry (09:17.761)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (09:18.175)
So, so remind me, how do you build a post tension slab?
Mike Casey (09:23.266)
Well, you first have to set your perimeter forms and your footing forms. And then a crew comes in and they install these greased plastic tubes. inside of those tubes, and they run typically crossways, about 18 inches on center, the full length of the house. And inside of them is a stranded metal cable. And these pipes are greased because after the concrete is placed and got
to its 28 day hardness, what’ll happen is a crew comes back and they tension up these cables with a tool and then put in a cable lock in this little cuff at the perimeter of the slab and then with a torch cut off the excess cable and then plug it with a patch mortar. And what that does is they tension those cables up to about 2500 or 2000 to 2500 PSI.
Reuben Saltzman (10:14.451)
Okay.
Mike Casey (10:21.814)
and that holds the slab together. So it’s a pretty cool process. And every once in a while, I’ll run across one where a cable has failed. And basically, what you’ll see is a steel cable projecting out from the edge of the concrete slab a couple of feet. Because when that thing breaks, it shoots out a little bit. Well, yeah. And you want to be careful if you’re going to remodel your house and do some slab cutting or a core or whatever it is for your slab.
Reuben Saltzman (10:24.959)
Got it.
Reuben Saltzman (10:40.679)
I bet. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (10:47.797)
in there.
Mike Casey (10:50.318)
You got to have an x-rayed first so you don’t cut these things. Or if you have to cut them, you need to be prepared. a house that’s got a post-tension slab typically has an identifier stamped into the concrete in the garage that says post-tension slab do not cut because it’s a hazard. Somebody could get hurt if they’re saw cutting the concrete and cut one of those cables. Because 2,500 PSI is a lot of tension.
Tessa Murry (11:10.593)
Yes.
Reuben Saltzman (11:20.329)
Yeah, I bet it’s loud.
Tessa Murry (11:20.587)
So Mike, do you, what do you, yeah, yeah. So what do you do if someone’s like remodeling and they want to change the location of like their kitchen sink or, you know, they want to move some plumbing around? Are a lot of the water pipes in the slab or are they running through the attic or what?
Mike Casey (11:22.946)
Yo, yeah.
Mike Casey (11:31.768)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Casey (11:37.779)
You know, we used to put the water piping embedded in or under the concrete slab and maybe up until about the late 90s or so we would run usually copper pipe under the slab. But modern technology now, if we put them above the slab, usually it’s going to be PEX or maybe CPVC, not a whole lot of copper anymore. But the reason we put it above the slab is because
when it eventually needs repair. And if you look at a house, typical life cycle should be at least 100 years. Some systems are going to need replacing. And if you have your water piping above the slab, it’s a lot easier to get to it, of course, because you don’t have to cut. Because if you have to cut a post-tension slab, you need to x-ray it first so you know where the cables are. And you may have to release tension on them. There’s special ways to do that.
Tessa Murry (12:11.435)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (12:18.91)
Yeah.
Mike Casey (12:33.046)
if they have to cut where the cables are located. So just something else to consider. So we go from old housing stock that’s crawl space where you can see everything to these post-tension slabs where you don’t know what’s under.
Tessa Murry (12:43.873)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (12:48.373)
I’m sorry to go down a rabbit hole, but that’s what this podcast is all about. We ask the questions that we find interesting. So you got you also got pretension slabs and I’ve seen how those are done where it’s like they take a big cable like you’re describing. They stretch the heck out of it and then they pour the concrete around it. I think usually they just yeah, they let it go after the concrete has set and then
Tessa Murry (12:52.513)
We specialize in that.
Mike Casey (12:52.888)
Sure. Yeah, well that’s why I’m here. You got me for an hour.
Mike Casey (13:08.376)
Right.
and then let it go.
Mike Casey (13:16.916)
Hopefully 28 day cure. Yeah, and then you can let it go
Reuben Saltzman (13:19.059)
Yeah, yeah, and then you let it go and but why why And it is the the reason why you’d use one over the other Isn’t it that like a pre tension slab is where you would just have maybe I don’t know a four foot eight foot wide section That’s really long and then you’d have it shipped on site versus post tension is where you do the whole thing on site
Mike Casey (13:22.348)
Hopefully it doesn’t break anything.
Tessa Murry (13:25.312)
Okay.
Mike Casey (13:40.29)
Right, has to be.
Right, well, pretension has to be truckable.
Reuben Saltzman (13:48.745)
Got it. Got it. It’s truckable. That’s a good way to put it.
Mike Casey (13:49.614)
So there’s a limit as far as size when it comes to putting something on a truck. You could do maybe 60 feet long, but your width is limited to about 10, 12 feet.
Reuben Saltzman (14:01.481)
Yeah. Okay. All right. Got it. Thank you.
Mike Casey (14:03.758)
the ways you have trouble getting down the road or under bridges and things like that.
Reuben Saltzman (14:07.421)
Yeah, yeah, okay.
Tessa Murry (14:09.739)
Going back to something you said, Mike, can I ask you really quick? When you said the water pipes are above the slab, can you clarify that? Does that mean they’re running in the attic then?
Mike Casey (14:18.734)
yeah, yeah, in our climate here, we don’t have to worry too much about pipes freezing unless you live in the mountains, which is pretty close to me, where it does snow and you get cold. Actually, it gets cold where I live. It was 33 degrees this morning, but it’s about, it’s almost 80 now. Yeah. So we typically put them up in the attic, which, you know, when I was building in Connecticut, we would never think of doing that because it would freeze. So lots of piping.
Tessa Murry (14:23.147)
Okay.
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (14:33.078)
Whoo!
Reuben Saltzman (14:34.505)
That is cold. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (14:44.533)
No.
Right.
Mike Casey (14:47.756)
Lots of pecs we’re seeing now in new construction in the attic.
Reuben Saltzman (14:52.999)
Okay, so lots of packs. Now I was I remember another conversation we had, I think it was with John Bolton, and we were talking about Florida. And he was talking about how they’re having all kinds of problems with packs, it’s failing left and right, and they get in all these leaks. Are you seeing any problems problem with packs in your area, Mike?
Mike Casey (14:58.904)
Thanks.
Tessa Murry (15:01.921)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (15:06.977)
You know what?
Mike Casey (15:13.326)
Now there are certainly problems with anything. I don’t think it’s as wholesale as what I’ve heard is happening in Florida. And some of it has to do with the type of sanitizer that’s used with the municipal water supply. There’s some issues with chloramine, which is a new type, not new, but a different type of sanitizer, similar to chlorine, but it’s more stable. So it’s something that’s desired by municipalities, but it is causing some issues with
Tessa Murry (15:26.721)
Hmm.
Mike Casey (15:41.774)
with PEX and also with neoprenes. It tends to not be too friendly to neoprene, which is in a lot of things that are plumbing. So, I’m just not seeing wholesale failures with PEX here. I’m seeing some isolated issues where there could be bronze fittings are failing because there’s too much zinc. Not enough copper could be the issue. Of course, every once in a while we get blowoffs where they just weren’t installed properly.
Reuben Saltzman (15:51.934)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (15:52.897)
Hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (16:05.193)
Okay.
Mike Casey (16:11.852)
So overall, I think PEX is a pretty good system and I’ve used it in a couple of editions that I’ve built for my own use. And it’s still there, it’s still working.
Tessa Murry (16:21.505)
So is that pretty much what you see in terms of plumbing materials being used is plastic, PVC, pecs, or do you have some other materials that you’ll run into too?
Reuben Saltzman (16:21.661)
Okay. All right.
Mike Casey (16:33.71)
Well, typically we still are seeing some copper. We’re seeing occasionally CPVC, because regular PVC is only approved for outdoor use for cold water. So that’s irrigation. And then we’re seeing pecs. So that’s about it here. Not too much. That’s really about all that. People use it pretty much everywhere.
Tessa Murry (16:36.954)
and 10.
Tessa Murry (16:50.529)
Okay. Okay.
Tessa Murry (16:57.025)
Yeah. Now I’m curious kind of about some building envelope questions for you. I’m just curious about like the basic kind of materials that you’ll typically see they use to build a standard home down there. Is it wood frame construction? Is it a block? Is it a combination? What types of materials are used in the wall? All of it. Are there vapor barriers?
Mike Casey (17:00.44)
BOOM
Mike Casey (17:19.694)
Sure, happy to go through that. Typically, the typical house here in Southern California is full thickness stucco, three coat stucco, traditional stucco on the outside over basically paperback glass, which is building paper. And then we have wood frame walls, not much block here because we don’t, well, we haven’t had a major hurricane that I can remember and I’ve lived here a long time. Although,
Tessa Murry (17:31.146)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (17:38.539)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (17:46.326)
Yeah.
Mike Casey (17:49.87)
We do get decent rain every once in a while. So, you know, it’s not a lot, but every once in a while we get a heavy rain. So typically wood frame construction, truss style, know, manufactured trusses for the roof framing. And the roofs are typically going to be concrete or clay tile or asphalt shingles. So mostly tile, you’ll see the red tile roofs and the cream or Navajo white colored stucco.
Tessa Murry (17:53.447)
Okay, yeah.
Tessa Murry (18:04.542)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (18:09.056)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (18:14.336)
Yeah.
Mike Casey (18:19.182)
That’s our typical with a concrete slab on grade. Every once in a while we’ll see crawl spaces. That’s usually because it’s a house that’s built on a slope and it’s just more economical to build it with a perimeter foundation and intermediate foundations and a crawl space rather than filling that area, that slope with concrete. So that’s our typical house. The climate here is pretty forgiving. So…
Tessa Murry (18:29.899)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (18:41.941)
Okay.
Mike Casey (18:47.852)
You know, a lot of people here don’t, they don’t care that much about the HRS rating, the Home Energy Efficiency Rating System, which is part of the requirements of building new construction. Now we have what’s called Title 24, which is the energy efficiency requirements here. And when you have a house plan check, you have to comply. And there are companies that just do the calculations for Title 24 compliance, because there’s many different ways to
Tessa Murry (18:47.988)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (19:01.995)
Thanks
Mike Casey (19:16.92)
to get that. You have to hit a certain number. And then of course we have lots of new ventilation requirements and so on. The issues that we see are often when it’s not really from rainfall, but a lot of times what happens is people here use a lot of irrigation water. And many times they start watering their house and they don’t realize it. So that introduces a lot of moisture and that’s what can cause problems.
Tessa Murry (19:38.561)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (19:38.737)
yeah.
Mike Casey (19:46.606)
You know, new construction, the main thing we’re concerned about here is cooling. So cooling performance and limiting the solar gain in the house is probably the top priority in new construction, that along with ventilation.
I know that was a long answer, so you can pick whatever from it you want.
Tessa Murry (20:07.935)
No, Ruben, Ruben and I both have questions for you. Ruben, you go first.
Reuben Saltzman (20:13.319)
Okay, well mine is just specific to the cooling system. So maybe before we jump to another topic, Tess, do you have one still on the envelope?
Tessa Murry (20:23.291)
Well, many, many, Ruben, I guess one of one. OK. So do you have vapor barriers in the exterior part? mean, with your climate being primarily a hot climate with cooling, even though it’s dry, you do get rain and stuff like that. Do your assemblies require any vapor barriers at all?
Reuben Saltzman (20:25.818)
All right, all right. Let’s come back to me.
Mike Casey (20:26.178)
Good. Good.
Mike Casey (20:46.808)
Well, typically you’re not going to see the conventional plastic sheeting vapor barrier that you might be thinking of. We don’t use that here. Now, underneath the stucco, we’re going to have, typically it’s a type 15, what some people used to call 15 pound, which it isn’t anymore. But type 15 paper is behind the stucco. And if it’s over wood framing, which it pretty much always is here, we’re required to use two legs.
Tessa Murry (21:01.98)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Casey (21:14.008)
So it provides like a bond break of the stucco from the wood so things can expand and contract at different rates. But we don’t really use vapor barriers. We use a, you know, it’s a water, liquid water barrier from outside. And then some newer construction is gonna be like the air barrier material with the ridging in it that provides a drainage plane for moisture that gets behind the stucco, usually in through cracks.
Tessa Murry (21:17.803)
Yep.
Tessa Murry (21:29.205)
Right.
Tessa Murry (21:35.818)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (21:40.372)
Yes.
Mike Casey (21:44.34)
and lets it go out the bottom of the wall. So that’s typically what we think. It’s a unique climate.
Tessa Murry (21:44.704)
Okay.
So you have a, yeah, that’s helpful. Yeah, yeah, no, that’s helpful. is, like you said, more forgiving and your well systems don’t need that vapor barrier, but you’ve got vapor retarders and just materials that help protect the wood wall sheathing from potential moisture.
Mike Casey (22:03.31)
Right. Yeah. Water intrusion from the rain when we get it every once in a while, usually it comes with wind. And then the main thing though with the envelope is to stop solar gain or limit solar gain. you can build, there’s a lot of different ways of doing it. So there’s so many different calculations you can do, but typically your windows have to have a minimum U rating so that you’re preventing that.
Tessa Murry (22:09.822)
Yep.
Tessa Murry (22:28.969)
huh.
Mike Casey (22:31.614)
UV rays from getting in, but you could also do, I know the house I live in is a Palm Spring style house with a low slope roof, but the roof perimeter, it has a three foot overhang. So when the sun’s high, what it does is prevents the sun from hitting the windows and coming in and heating up the air in the house. Excuse me. So that’s another way to do it, where you just limit, you don’t let the sun actually hit your window. lots of different things you can do.
Tessa Murry (22:38.795)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (22:45.291)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (22:56.277)
Smart design. Right. Yep. Design that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Very cool. Ruben, do you want to ask your question? sorry. Looks like you’re about to sneeze.
Reuben Saltzman (22:58.953)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (23:09.607)
I was, but if I got a question, I can hold on. I wanted to ask about the cooling system, because that’s so big for you guys. And we were just, we just had a review of how we do inspections at my company and we were reviewing the cooling system. And I’m just wondering, what do you guys do to make sure that the air conditioner is working properly? Because kind of the standard thing that most home inspectors do,
As you measure the temperature of the air going into the system, the measure of the temperature of the air going out. And then you go, OK, yeah, it meets criteria. But it just seems like it’s such a crappy test. And there’s so many variables that you’re not taking into account. What do you guys do in California where this is so big? You got to be doing something much better than us.
Mike Casey (23:59.084)
Well, I don’t know, I think you made a presumption that might not be true because the bulk of California, San Diego, is coastal. And when I lived in Oceanside, which is coastal, I didn’t have cooling. You know what our cooling was? Open the window. Which a lot of people don’t do anymore. I can’t tell you how often I go to Instagram. People just don’t open windows anymore. So a lot of the coast doesn’t have cooling because you don’t need it.
Reuben Saltzman (24:15.342)
gosh, yeah
Tessa Murry (24:18.689)
Hahaha.
Tessa Murry (24:22.494)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (24:26.251)
Yeah.
Mike Casey (24:29.762)
But certainly midway, once you start coming inland, especially where I am, which is about 30 miles inland, you definitely need cooling. So as far as inspecting it, most inspectors are still doing the temperature differential test. So that’s the standard test here as well. Now, I like to run the cooling for almost the entire inspection.
Tessa Murry (24:31.083)
Peace.
Mike Casey (24:57.652)
and make sure it’s operating properly. I like to feel the temperatures of the gas and the liquid line. That’s another measurement that you can do. Although I don’t use instruments, I just use my hand. So it’s not all that scientific. And I do take a temperature differential test, but I do it as close to the air handler as possible. Because the further away you get, the more heat gain you’re going to get, which is going to throw off that measurement. And remember also, if it’s humid,
Tessa Murry (24:57.793)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (25:03.989)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (25:25.311)
for sure.
Mike Casey (25:27.426)
You have to wait at least an hour before you do that because the system has to remove the latent heat that’s in the air. You got to get rid of the moisture before it could start dropping temperature. you know, there’s lots of good… Here’s the other real simple test is to put your hand over the top of the condensing unit. If the air coming out isn’t hotter than the ambient air, it’s not working. So, you know, there’s some pretty simple, pretty simple tests we can do.
Tessa Murry (25:51.809)
Yes. Yeah.
Mike Casey (25:56.93)
But that’s pretty much the standard here, is to do the temperature differential. But when I’m teaching, I tell inspectors, you got to get as close to the air handler as possible to get a proper test. And that’s not always indicative that the system’s going to operate properly. We have to warn people about refrigerants that are outdated, that are no longer going to be available, and your system is going to be obsolete. We have airflow is another issue.
If I’m inspecting a house and I open the attic hatch and that nice cool air comes down on me, fabulous for inspection, but I know I got a lot more duct leakage than there should be. So things like that is what we’re looking for. Now, new construction homes today, at least here, have to pass a building envelope test.
where the duct leakage can’t be more than 5 % of the air handler cubic feet per minute flow. So there’s outside what’s called third party testing required in new construction here in San Diego County, where duct leakage is limited to a certain amount because that’s the biggest factor. People were leaking the conditioned air in the attic or in the crawl space and it’s not going in the house where it belongs. So that’s a big problem with cooling and wasting
Tessa Murry (27:19.136)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mike Casey (27:24.6)
We’re wasting a lot of energy because of that. So we find a lot of duct leakage, even in new constructions.
Reuben Saltzman (27:31.669)
Sure, you know, one other question about checking the temperature differential, what is an acceptable difference for you?
Mike Casey (27:39.534)
Well, for me, and it’s going to sound a little low, I’m good with about 14 to 22 degrees differential because it, well, older homes are probably going to be a higher differential because a lot of systems are oversized. But there’s, now actually the requirements are you got to calc that system and use manual J and manual D from Smackdown.
Tessa Murry (27:41.674)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (27:48.36)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (27:49.44)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (27:59.423)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (28:00.641)
Mm.
Mike Casey (28:09.068)
and get proper sizing. And the best air conditioning or cooling system is going to run longer and less often. So many times, and we used to actually reduce the size of the coil in the house. This is years ago when I was plumbing mechanical contractor, to make the thing run long so that it was more effective at removing humidity.
Because in Connecticut, that’s what the big thing was, was humidity in the air. Maybe you feel hot. So you want your system to be properly sized and it should run long periods less often. You get an oversized system, it’s going to come on, satisfy the thermostat, shut off. But it won’t remove the latent heat that it needs to remove. If that makes any sense. Okay. So, yeah, so lower
Reuben Saltzman (28:57.269)
yeah, absolutely. We’ve talked about that quite a bit on this show, definitely.
Tessa Murry (28:58.753)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mike Casey (29:03.35)
Temperature differentials are going to be expected because the system should be more accurately sized to run longer and less often. So it’s not going to create this huge differential. It’s going to be better at removing latent heat, which makes you feel more comfortable as it occupies.
Reuben Saltzman (29:22.441)
Sure, and if you do a test and you get a really high temperature differential, say 30 degrees, what are you gonna tell your client to do about it? Okay.
Mike Casey (29:26.222)
Thank
Airflow. That’s airflow. Almost always. Or it’s, you know, improperly, well, it could be too much refrigerant, it could be a lot of different things, but almost always that’s improper airflow. So not enough air is getting over the coil, so you’re getting a high temperature differential. And that could eventually result in a freeze-up of the coil because it’s too cold.
Reuben Saltzman (29:55.133)
Yeah, yeah. And that could be caused by improperly sized ductwork. know, you don’t have enough supplies. Maybe somebody shut off a bunch of supply registers. Maybe you got a filthy filter. Maybe you got a clogged evaporator coil. It could be a lot of stuff, right?
Tessa Murry (29:56.385)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Casey (30:01.104)
yeah.
Tessa Murry (30:07.987)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Casey (30:10.104)
Yep, yeah, dirty coil. And here’s the number one cause is a lot of times in older homes, 60s, 70s, maybe even 80s homes that had heating only and they add air conditioning to it, but don’t change the duct work. So you’re dealing, you’ve got the old duct work that was sized for heating only. And you need to upsize for cooling because it’s more dense and harder to move than warm air.
Tessa Murry (30:14.678)
Hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (30:27.999)
Hmm.
Mike Casey (30:39.8)
So if your ducts aren’t big enough, obviously you’re going to have an airflow issue, which is going to cause that high temperature split. We see that a lot where there’s older homes where it was heating only and they put in air conditioning and the ducts just aren’t big enough so you don’t get proper airflow.
Reuben Saltzman (30:58.687)
Sure. OK.
Tessa Murry (31:01.685)
We have that issue too in the Twin Cities. A lot of older houses that just had heating and then they add AC and there’s not enough supplies or even a return in the upstairs to help with that as well.
Mike Casey (31:08.974)
Good
Mike Casey (31:14.52)
Well, if you’ll notice, when you change a furnace or an air handler to a newer one, you typically have, at least, even on the less expensive models, a two-speed fan motor. And the reason is because the cooling requires a higher fan speed. You’ve got to move more air, and it’s denser air, so it’s harder to move. So that fan speed kicks up higher than if you were using that furnace for heat only.
So you got to have bigger ductwork. Otherwise it’s, I mean it’ll work, kinda, but not as well as it could or as efficient as it
Tessa Murry (31:43.425)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (31:49.234)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (31:54.077)
In terms of cooling systems, what do you primarily run into out there? Just like a standard electric AC system, are you running into lot of heat pumps or what do you have?
Mike Casey (32:07.352)
Gosh, probably 90 % of what we see is going to be natural gas or propane gas furnace with air conditioning. Now, with the electrification requirements that California is going through now, heat pumps for both heating, space heating and also water heating are becoming much more common. In fact, in brand new construction during plan check now, you have to show that even if you put in a gas furnace,
Tessa Murry (32:15.091)
Okay. Okay.
Tessa Murry (32:23.38)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Casey (32:37.186)
you have to be electric ready. So there has to be a circuit there for the eventual replacement with an electric appliance. So all of California is getting ready for electrification. And then of course there’s issues where apparently gas cook stoves are bad for us to have them in your house. We even have to have bigger hoods over gas ranges now, rather than, you know, as compared to electric. I don’t know if that’s where you are.
Tessa Murry (32:40.257)
Okay. Yep.
Reuben Saltzman (32:47.475)
Mmm.
Mike Casey (33:06.828)
but just some things that you would never think of all of a sudden are coming up. So, but typically gas furnace with air conditioning is what we see here.
Reuben Saltzman (33:08.276)
No.
Reuben Saltzman (33:17.342)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (33:17.505)
Well, that’s interesting because we have talked about kind of the potential health impact of having a gas cooktop that’s venting back in your house without having adequate exhaust ventilation or kitchen exhaust for it. But here in Minnesota, it’s not a requirement to have kitchen exhaust ventilation. And a lot of houses don’t, and they cook with gas. personally, I’ve lived in houses like that, and I’ve
Mike Casey (33:24.91)
you
Tessa Murry (33:45.299)
I’ve had a little personal CO monitor that I’ve kept on me or in the kitchen to monitor that. It’s amazing how much carbon monoxide you will get in your house from just cooking something in the oven or using the burners. Adequate ventilation is… California is obviously, there’s a lot of regulations more so than in other states, but that’s one I can get behind, honestly. We’re not even talking about fine particulates too. Yeah.
Mike Casey (34:10.68)
Yeah, well, kitchen.
Right, well kitchen exhaust, know, kitchen ventilation is a requirement in California, regardless of what fuel is for your cooktop and your oven. Now, and speaking of the carbon monoxide, the personal detector, I wear one on every home inspection. I wear a personal CO detector that clips onto my belt, and I wear that during the inspection. And over the years, I think twice. Does yours vibrate? It will start to vibrate and then make noise.
Reuben Saltzman (34:15.359)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (34:23.112)
Smart.
Tessa Murry (34:29.963)
Yeah. Yep.
Tessa Murry (34:41.665)
Yes, and it flashes. Yep. Yep. Yeah.
Mike Casey (34:43.83)
Right. So it’s gone off on me a couple of times. most of the time it’s been where I’m standing in a mechanical room and I’m checking, I’ve got all the appliances running and something’s wrong. There’s not enough air getting in and it’ll go off or the vent was clogged or something like that. But yeah, that’s it. I would recommend all inspectors and technicians. If you’re working
Tessa Murry (34:49.377)
Thank
Tessa Murry (34:54.774)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (34:58.091)
Yep.
Tessa Murry (35:02.056)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Casey (35:10.826)
in somebody’s house, especially in a confined space, you want to wear a CO monitor. And as soon as it starts to vibrate, you get the heck out.
Tessa Murry (35:19.635)
Yes. Good tip, Mike. Good tip. Yeah.
Mike Casey (35:21.23)
And the cooktop, as you were saying, the cooktop, when there’s nothing, or gas cooktop, when there’s nothing on the flame, you tend to get no CO ratings. But once you put a pot on, that impinges the flame. So it’s in the flame. So that’s when you start producing a little bit of CO typically. And sometimes you’ll even see soot on the side of the pot.
means you’re creating carbon monoxide. That’s what soot is always a factor when you’re creating carbon monoxide because of flame impingement or improper combustion air.
Reuben Saltzman (35:51.827)
Yes, yes.
Tessa Murry (35:52.543)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (36:00.203)
Yeah.
So where you’re at, is the building code requiring balanced whole house ventilation then as well? So you’re seeing HRVs or ERVs and all the new construction?
Mike Casey (36:08.567)
Thank
We don’t see ERVs or HRVs. I know that our requirement is the ASHRAE requirement, which I think is 15 cubic feet per 100 square feet of floor area, or like 0.35 air changes per hour is pretty much what it’s supposed to be in the entire house. So what we’re doing is the ERVs, HRVs are kind of expensive and we don’t have the extremes in temperature here to really warrant that.
What we do is pull in outside air. So we’ll have the system designed so that when the HVAC is running, it’s pulling in outside air. Now, sometimes there’s an intake fan, sometimes not. Usually it’s just connected to the return side of the furnace. So whenever the furnace is running, you’re going to be pulling in outside air. And then most of our ventilation, the air out,
Tessa Murry (37:04.129)
Hmm.
Mike Casey (37:08.658)
is through fans that are connected to humidistats. Some are on timers, but most of them are going to be like in bathrooms and they’re automatic fans. They don’t give you the choice to turn the switch on and off because people aren’t going to turn it on. Well, people won’t use them and they don’t open the window either because it’s cold. it operates on a humidistat, some of them on timers and those are required now too.
Tessa Murry (37:17.024)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (37:22.003)
Really? Yeah. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (37:25.438)
Yeah, yeah.
Tessa Murry (37:28.765)
Right.
Tessa Murry (37:36.371)
Okay, that’s very interesting. So just that the fresh air being pulled in through some sort of passive duct that ties into the ductwork of the furnace. Return air. Okay. Okay. Okay.
Mike Casey (37:45.112)
Well, return air. So when the return, when the, it’s sucking the air in mechanically. And it should be through a filter.
Reuben Saltzman (37:50.568)
So it’s not, then you got a filter for that. So it’s not really entirely passive. mean, we’ve got that on a lot of our old houses, Tessa, and that’s that we’d always call it the combustion air duct connected to the return plenum is kind of how we describe it. And what ends up happening for…
Tessa Murry (37:55.627)
Hmph.
Tessa Murry (37:59.762)
Yeah.
Mike Casey (38:07.32)
it’s an outside, not makeup air, but outside air intake. Yeah, we also require makeup air in like a laundry room for the clothes dry because that’s a big, that’s sucking a whole bunch of air and competing with everything else in the house for air, including the occupant.
Tessa Murry (38:09.547)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (38:13.033)
Yeah, and and
Tessa Murry (38:13.683)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (38:18.529)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (38:25.013)
sure. And so what what happens in Minnesota homes is you connect that return duct to your your duct that goes to the outside. And every time your furnace blower fan kicks on, you’re bringing air into the home, you’re pressurizing the house. But for every cubic foot of air that comes in a cubic foot of air is going to leave, it’s it’s gonna get out somewhere. And what we end up happening with a lot of Minnesota homes is that it forces that air up into the attic space.
Tessa Murry (38:25.291)
Yeah.
Mike Casey (38:40.13)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Casey (38:52.963)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (38:53.413)
And because that’s traditionally the most leaky leaky area. And then we end up with frost issues and all that. And it all gets exacerbated exacerbated when you’ve got that return duct connected to the outside. Do you you have ill effects on your houses when you guys do this? Or is your climate just so neutral that it just kind of works?
Mike Casey (38:57.982)
yeah.
Mike Casey (39:07.128)
Right, right.
Mike Casey (39:16.142)
I think so, Ruben, I think because it’s so forgiving here. Now, you the big thing too is the requirement for air sealing, because we never did that before. And the requirement for air sealing, in particular, penetrations up into the attic, know, penetrations of the top plate, recessed light fixtures all have to be airtight models. Now, you want to limit that airflow because you are going to pressurize the house a little bit when you’re pulling in this outside air.
Reuben Saltzman (39:21.331)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (39:28.255)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (39:34.859)
Yeah.
Mike Casey (39:46.178)
but you want to try to prevent it as much as possible of it getting through stud cavities and out through recessed lights and that kind of thing up into the attic. So that’s never good. Colder climates, it’s even worse because it brings humidity from the house up into the attic, which causes frost and condensation on sheathing and all kinds of other stuff. So that’s pretty much what we’re doing here.
Reuben Saltzman (40:08.863)
yeah.
Tessa Murry (40:11.553)
what about… You know, I’m curious, Mike. So that air that’s coming in for the fresh air and mixing with the household air then through the air handler and being distributed through the duct work, you said it runs through a filter, but I’m just curious, you know, with the forest fires that California has and, you know, the outdoor air quality concerns, is that an issue with this type of ventilation system?
Mike Casey (40:19.918)
Thank
Mike Casey (40:25.55)
It’s supposed to.
Mike Casey (40:39.266)
Well, know, just like opening the window, certainly it could be. Some of them operate with dampers, but they’re not available for readily to the occupants to change it. So we do have some requirements. If you’re in a certain fire zone, there are some other requirements like fire dampers, like we have to have automatically closing attic ventilation. So your soffit vents, when heat hits them, they close up.
Tessa Murry (40:43.701)
Yeah. Okay.
Tessa Murry (40:52.277)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (40:59.326)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (41:03.53)
Wow.
Mike Casey (41:07.768)
so that we’re not allowing the hot embers. I know, you think that adds a little cost?
Tessa Murry (41:08.383)
They’re louvered. Wow. Wow. Yeah, no kidding. Wow. Batten down the hatches. Hit a button on all your soffits clothes. Wow.
Reuben Saltzman (41:13.737)
goodness. Yeah.
Mike Casey (41:15.758)
Yeah, so it depends.
Well, no, it takes heat. So, but that’s just some other requirements here, but it depends upon where your house is being built. There’s different requirements in different areas. And that would be the more, you the areas where there’s lots of vegetation and so on where it would be prone to fire damage. We also require fire sprinklers in new construction. inside the house, which actually we really need the fire sprinklers outside, inside the house is protected by
Tessa Murry (41:30.015)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (41:36.894)
Interesting.
Okay.
Tessa Murry (41:45.537)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (41:46.901)
You
Mike Casey (41:48.588)
by a fire sprinkler system too, that’s a requirement.
Tessa Murry (41:51.745)
Okay. And you mentioned something. go ahead.
Reuben Saltzman (41:52.147)
When did that, go ahead, Tess. Well, I’m just wondering when did the fire sprinklers come into effect?
Mike Casey (41:55.576)
Go ahead, Ruben.
Mike Casey (41:59.146)
gosh, depends. Diego County, I remember doing an addition in 1990 or so, and it was required to be experienced. been a long time.
Reuben Saltzman (42:06.936)
that’s a long time. Okay. Okay, got it. Thank you.
Tessa Murry (42:09.729)
Interesting. You mentioned, you know, scores before and just some of this new air leakage requirements. What is required for a new house today? Does it have to have a HERS rating and does it have to have a blower test? And if so, what’s the air change per hour rate that’s required? Okay.
Mike Casey (42:15.406)
Yeah.
Mike Casey (42:26.848)
Okay, it depends. So when you get a house plan check, you have to comply with what’s called Title 24, which is our California energy requirements. Now, you have to meet a certain score and you get credit for certain things that you do with the house. you don’t have to do, know, to comply with all the requirements, you just have to meet a certain score. So, you know, maybe you don’t want to use
Tessa Murry (42:53.44)
Yeah.
Mike Casey (42:55.81)
you certain U rating on Windows where you can get around that by installing insulated draperies. So, you know, there’s just there’s things that you can do to offset. And there’s a whole separate industry here of Title 24 calculation firms. So when you get your plans done, you send it to them and they make sure you comply by going through all this, you know, Title 24 calcs is what we call them. It’s some energy code.
Tessa Murry (43:02.983)
Right, okay.
Tessa Murry (43:15.424)
now.
Tessa Murry (43:23.051)
Yeah.
Mike Casey (43:26.022)
California. But one of the requirements for indoor ventilation is that I think 15 cubic feet per hour in the habitable space. So 0.35 air changes per hour is what we’re looking for for fresh air in the house. That’s pretty standard here in Southern California. Now the ways that you do it are variable. So there’s not just one way to do it.
Tessa Murry (43:39.585)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (43:43.796)
Yeah. Okay.
Yeah.
Mike Casey (43:55.756)
got many different ways of complying with Title 24. And that’s a separate company because it’s so freaking complicated. That’s a separate profession. And yes, the duct work has to be, you have to do a blower door test and meet a certain score. And part of that score is duct leakage. Of course, there’s leakage around windows, leakage around doors and all that kind of thing too.
Tessa Murry (43:56.018)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (44:03.547)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (44:14.836)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (44:18.591)
Yes, okay. That’s kind of what Minnesota, yep.
Mike Casey (44:24.386)
They use smoke and calculations to find these air links.
Tessa Murry (44:24.597)
Yep.
Tessa Murry (44:28.679)
make sure. Yeah, the same thing for Minnesota. We, you know, have required blower door testing and a certain air changes per hour for building envelope air leakage for a while and duct leakage testing and mainly just in houses that used to be houses that had duct work located outside the building, you know, the thermal boundary. Yep.
Mike Casey (44:44.942)
Right, if it’s within the building envelope, it’s not required, which that’s what we’re seeing now is we’re making the attic, and in some instances, the crawl space, part of the building envelope. And then you don’t have to worry about duct leakage because it’s leaking into the conditioned area, so what?
Tessa Murry (44:57.14)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (45:01.107)
Right. Yeah. Well, actually, so that’s a perfect segue into I had a question about attics. Can you talk to what you’re seeing in terms of attic insulation where you are, especially with a lot of the duct work being located probably up in the attic because you don’t have basements or you may not have a crawl space? Do you see a lot of hot roofs out there?
Mike Casey (45:24.21)
you know, it’s, we have a certain requirement for reflectivity of the roof material. We have to have cool roof rather than hot roof. So it’s, that’s what they call it.
Tessa Murry (45:34.227)
Okay, okay, maybe the better question would be, where do you see the insulation installed? Is it across the attic floor or is it up against the roof deck?
Mike Casey (45:42.892)
Well, and that’s an interesting, we could put it across the floor. However, there is a requirement now for a minimum layer of insulation on the underside of the roof deck. And you’re also required to have a radiant barrier. I know. So I know.
Tessa Murry (45:52.704)
Really?
Reuben Saltzman (45:57.417)
Wow. Wow.
Tessa Murry (45:57.901)
Okay, I’m shocked by this. There’s a requirement to put insulation up on the roof deck. So why would any builder put it up on the roof deck and on the floor of the attic? That’s confusing the condition living space, in my opinion.
Mike Casey (46:10.03)
Well, yeah, I haven’t, you have to have a certain R value. Now the reason for the insulation under the roof deck is to prevent or help prevent the radiant heat from that roof getting be radiated into the attic, which makes it warmer. Right, but you also can have, you also are required to have a radiant barrier, which most of the time is going to be roof sheathing with the aluminum like the foil already on.
Reuben Saltzman (46:11.924)
Yes.
Tessa Murry (46:24.641)
solar heat gain.
Tessa Murry (46:38.165)
Yep. Okay.
Mike Casey (46:38.402)
That’s typical way it gets done. So I’m not seeing a total conversion to foam. Like you’re seeing it a lot like Florida, Carolinas and so on. A lot of their attics, there’s foam sprayed all over the underside of the roof. I’m just not seeing that here yet. They’re still using, you know, like an R30 something on the ceiling joists, between, know, above the ceiling. And then we’ve got to have that insulation under the roof.
Reuben Saltzman (46:38.751)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (46:47.828)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (47:02.657)
Okay.
Mike Casey (47:08.248)
sheathing and that’s mainly for helping to prevent the thermal gain from the roof that makes the attic hot and increases the load on the cooling.
Reuben Saltzman (47:15.775)
Sure.
Tessa Murry (47:15.827)
Okay, so it’s a minimal amount. Yeah, okay. So usually the duct work done is kind of sitting up above the insulation, typically, is what you see.
Mike Casey (47:24.748)
Yeah, yeah, but we require a certain amount of insulation around the ductwork. Plus, we’ve got to have that maximum, that minimum, or excuse me, that maximum, I think it’s 5 % of duct leakage. So that’s pretty tight ductwork. It used to be, I think, 3%, but that’s like almost impossible. So now it’s 5%.
Tessa Murry (47:39.393)
Okay, yep.
Tessa Murry (47:44.789)
Wow.
Well, because of the requirements, I guess, with your building code, I’m sure the installers, the HVAC people who are putting the duct work in these attics that are outside the thermal boundary are getting pretty good at what they do and making these systems pretty tight, it sounds like.
Mike Casey (48:02.626)
Right. Well, it’s a requirement and it’s going to be tested. So you kind of have no choice. And if it doesn’t test, you got to fix it. And you have to retest, which costs you money. So if you’re an HVAC contractor, you want to get that thumbs up first time around.
Tessa Murry (48:05.429)
Yeah, you have to do it.
Tessa Murry (48:13.941)
Right.
Tessa Murry (48:19.297)
Interesting. do you have any problems with condensation or moisture in addicts or in ductwork or anything like that where you are?
Mike Casey (48:20.238)
because it’ll just cost you more. So why do that?
Mike Casey (48:31.682)
Well, we can with ductwork, mainly if it’s in the crawl space. I’ve seen that, where there’s condensation in a cold, humid crawl space. And most of that moisture is coming from the soil. And we’ve had issues with condensation. And a lot of it has to do with damage to the insulation of the ductwork itself, because it gets chewed by vermin, or people crawling around, knock it off, and create a cool surface.
Tessa Murry (48:37.131)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (48:43.093)
Hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (48:47.413)
Sure.
Tessa Murry (48:56.146)
Yeah.
Mike Casey (49:00.942)
for the humidity to condense. But it’s not a big, huge problem here. Most crawl spaces we go in are dry. Unless there’s a plumbing leak or drain. Yeah, it is. It is. It’s pretty rare to find a crawl space with water in it here.
Tessa Murry (49:11.617)
Bye!
Reuben Saltzman (49:11.785)
That’s nice.
Reuben Saltzman (49:20.233)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (49:20.779)
That’s amazing. So what are some typical problems that you might be looking for when you’re inspecting a house where you are?
Mike Casey (49:30.016)
everything. Top three. Well, pretty much while I’m in the car before I even see the house, the filters are dirty. There’s soil too high on the outside wall and it’s covering the weep screedle to stucco. So that’s where the bottom of the wall is where the water gets out. And it needs to be unimpeded. And a lot of times what happens is people will install
Tessa Murry (49:30.485)
Like top three problems you see.
No.
Tessa Murry (49:41.897)
I remember it.
Tessa Murry (49:47.617)
I’m home.
Okay.
Mike Casey (49:59.414)
masonry pavers, or even concrete, and they terminate it up above that weep screed at the bottom of the wall. Now we don’t have a whole lot of EAPS systems here, but we have a lot of traditional stucco. And in either case, where does the water come out? The bottom of the wall. So if you cover it up or encapsulate it in concrete, it doesn’t work too well. And we see that a lot here. So filters, and then roofing issues. We have
Tessa Murry (50:11.296)
Thank
Tessa Murry (50:24.801)
Hmm.
Mike Casey (50:29.452)
A lot of fragile roofs here, concrete and clay tile, and almost every one is going to have broken tiles or tiles slipping off, some kind of issue with the roof. So those are probably the big items. I find air conditioning not cooling properly quite a bit, mainly because of lack of maintenance, older systems, I think. And then people don’t want to spend the money. These are older, like R22 systems where it’s expensive.
Tessa Murry (50:29.557)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (50:41.845)
Hmm.
Okay.
Tessa Murry (50:47.957)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (50:53.192)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (50:57.211)
Mm.
Mike Casey (50:58.614)
And it’s eventually, we’re not going to be able to use it. So those are probably the big things. Drainage, Drainage around the house. is always a big one.
Reuben Saltzman (51:03.007)
You know, Mike, look.
Tessa Murry (51:03.51)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (51:08.245)
Yeah, always.
Reuben Saltzman (51:08.861)
yeah. For these roof systems like like for, say, clay, clay tile roofs, do you walk those?
Mike Casey (51:17.558)
heck no, I’m too big. I wouldn’t recommend anybody walk a clay tile roof in particular because the roofers that work on these, have special equipment to walk on. They use sandbags or they use these wood walkers. they like a piece of plywood that spans three or so rows of tile. So you distribute the weight. And I’ve seen them used, like I said before, sandbags.
Tessa Murry (51:19.691)
Thank you.
Reuben Saltzman (51:20.021)
you
Reuben Saltzman (51:26.975)
Okay.
Mike Casey (51:47.32)
to walk out. But as a homeless person,
Reuben Saltzman (51:47.655)
Okay, what does a sandbag look like? I’ve never seen that.
Mike Casey (51:51.798)
a sandbag. It looks like what you would imagine it. Yeah. Yeah, to walk on. So and there’s other methods as well. But clay tile roofs, would not, I don’t walk it myself. What I do is put up a ladder, I go different areas around the eaves. And that’s how I inspect the roof or with a pole camera. Some inspectors use drones, you know, and that’s fine. You know, I’m an advocate of, you know, being safe. So you don’t want to want now some concrete.
Reuben Saltzman (51:53.341)
Like a literal sandbag. Okay, okay. All right. Got it. Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (52:15.689)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (52:19.625)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (52:20.928)
Amen.
Mike Casey (52:21.334)
tile roofs I will walk on. they’re flat, what we call shake tiles, I’ll walk on those. So depending upon the slope and whether it’s got lichen growing on it or something that might be slippery.
Reuben Saltzman (52:27.057)
Okay. Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (52:33.681)
Yeah. All right. That makes sense.
Tessa Murry (52:34.177)
Yeah. Okay. Well, I know we’re running short on time, but I have one more question I want to ask you, before we wrap it up. quick when you’re having fun, hopefully. Us house nerds, could talk about this stuff all day, right? So okay, my last question is, I’m wondering, are the insurance companies out where you are impacting?
Mike Casey (52:41.11)
wow, that was quick.
Reuben Saltzman (52:43.732)
Yeah.
Mike Casey (52:51.256)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (52:59.937)
how you’re doing inspections and what type of inspections you offer and issues that you’re seeing with buying and selling houses. We’ve kind of touched on that with several other guests on our show. I’m just wondering what you’re seeing out in California.
Mike Casey (53:14.83)
Well, guess it depends upon whether you’re talking about hazard insurance companies or home inspector insurance. So I’m going to presume we’re talking about hazard insurance for your house. Well, yeah, the big issue here is fire. And, you know, a lot of people were a bit dropped by their insurance company and had had to go to the state exchange, which is pretty expensive. Now, as far as our inspections,
Reuben Saltzman (53:24.766)
Yes.
Tessa Murry (53:25.142)
Yeah, for a homeowner. Yes. Yep.
Tessa Murry (53:41.055)
you
Mike Casey (53:44.492)
It doesn’t really affect us all that much other than we’re seeing new systems and components in newer homes or maybe even being retrofitted such as the the closable vents for the attics.
You guys still there?
Mike Casey (54:10.464)
Hello?
Tessa Murry (54:11.041)
Come back to us, Mike.
He just froze.
Reuben Saltzman (54:14.577)
Is that the about 52 minute mark? We almost got through a whole episode where I didn’t have to edit it.
Tessa Murry (54:18.111)
Okay.
Mike Casey (54:19.502)
I guess I lost you. I’ll have to sign out and come back.
Tessa Murry (54:21.665)
Shoot. Hopefully you can slice it. You can just cut it, slice it, and if he comes back to us.
Reuben Saltzman (54:29.694)
Yeah.
He ended on such as…
Tessa Murry (54:35.201)
no, he’s gone. Okay. Welcome back! Glad you’re back.
Mike Casey (54:38.691)
I don’t know what happened. Yeah, I don’t know what happened.
Reuben Saltzman (54:42.473)
You were there and then you weren’t. Well, Mike, the last thing we heard you say, I got a nice splice point you ended on such as.
Mike Casey (54:51.793)
such as, closable attic vents, which help prevent the hot gases from getting into the attic. Some people are installing roof sprinklers, irrigation systems basically, but it’s a sprinkler system. We’re seeing some new products out there where they can flood like around your house with a fire retardant foam or something. So there’s lots of, yeah, there’s lots of cool things coming up.
Tessa Murry (55:05.729)
you
Tessa Murry (55:14.282)
What?
Mike Casey (55:17.903)
You know, really the only thing I’ve been seeing is the attic vents that automatically close and what’s called house hardening to help prevent those hot gases from getting in. You know, if you’ve got crawl space vents, they’ll close automatically. If there’s heat, you want to have that defensible area around your house where there’s no vegetation or dead vegetation mostly. So, you know, things like that we’re seeing, but…
Tessa Murry (55:25.803)
What’s that?
Okay.
Tessa Murry (55:34.081)
Wow.
Tessa Murry (55:39.741)
Okay. Yeah.
Mike Casey (55:44.763)
It’s not really affecting us, not like it does in Florida where they have to look for hurricane clips and impact and just so many different things. We’re not seeing that.
Tessa Murry (55:51.934)
Yeah.
Yeah. Huh. Interesting. Did you say there was a sprinkler system that houses have on the outside that sprays like a fire retardant foam? Did I hear you right?
Reuben Saltzman (55:55.283)
Yeah. Okay.
Mike Casey (56:03.929)
Yeah, yeah, that’s another system. Some people, have seen water sprinkler systems installed on the roof where they’ll water the whole house down in the event of a fire, but you might not have water. So, you know, it just depends.
Tessa Murry (56:12.587)
Right.
Tessa Murry (56:16.797)
Right. Wow, that’s fascinating. so most so homeowners are still able to, in general, find insurance providers who will cover them with the standard housing stock that’s out there, usually.
Reuben Saltzman (56:19.58)
Interesting.
Mike Casey (56:29.083)
It’s a little more difficult. It’s definitely much more expensive. I’ve seen my rates. Let’s see this house we bought in 2017 rates have tripled since we bought it Yeah, I know that’s what I said. I more said ow But it’s it’s nowhere’s like Florida is definitely more expensive for homeowners insurance We’re getting there because of the fight you you’ve probably seen in the news where there’s certain carriers have just left the state They’re like that we’re fruit. We’re done with these Californians
Tessa Murry (56:34.675)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (56:39.854)
What? Wow.
Reuben Saltzman (56:40.094)
Woo!
Yikes. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (56:45.514)
Ouch.
Tessa Murry (56:49.065)
Okay, yeah, yeah, very interesting.
Tessa Murry (56:59.553)
Well, and that’s what’s happening, I think, in a lot of places around the country that have a lot of natural disasters and, you know, claims is that, yeah, that’s the challenge, you know, challenges that we’re facing right now, and it’s affecting everybody’s insurance costs.
Mike Casey (57:13.809)
yeah, yep, that and fraud, but that’s not much we can do about that.
Tessa Murry (57:15.254)
Yeah.
that too. Yeah. Wow. Well, we touch on a lot of topics today, Mike. Thank you so much for being here and just for the wealth of knowledge that you are willing to share with us. I could ask you million more questions, but this podcast has gone on for almost an hour, so we should probably wrap it up. Was there anything that we missed talking about, either Ruben or Mike, that you want to touch on before we-
Reuben Saltzman (57:19.647)
Sure. Yeah.
Mike Casey (57:36.251)
Thanks.
Reuben Saltzman (57:47.093)
We got everything I wanted to, yeah.
Tessa Murry (57:47.466)
Sign off.
Mike Casey (57:48.229)
No, I had a blast. It was great. It’s like one of the fastest hours I’ve ever been through.
Tessa Murry (57:53.083)
That’s great. Well, thank you.
Reuben Saltzman (57:53.807)
Awesome. Well done, Tess. Good question. Yeah, and Mike, you’re always a delight to listen to. I appreciate it. Yeah.
Mike Casey (57:56.293)
Thank you. Good job.
Mike Casey (58:02.213)
Well, thank you. It was fun. And you’ll get to listen to me again soon. Yeah, I’ll see you. Ruben and I are on a committee together. So we get to talk there.
Tessa Murry (58:02.899)
Always. Yep. Yep. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (58:08.127)
Can’t wait.
Tessa Murry (58:09.663)
Where is this going to be at? Where will people hear you again, Mike?
Tessa Murry (58:16.704)
- I thought you had some upcoming classes. Got it. OK. Wonderful. Now, if listeners have questions, Ruben, how do they get a hold of us?
Reuben Saltzman (58:17.129)
We, we spend a lot of time chatting. Yes.
Mike Casey (58:19.759)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (58:26.943)
please email us podcast at structuretech.com.
Tessa Murry (58:32.491)
Thank you. Thank you for that. Alright. Sounds good.
Mike Casey (58:33.413)
See
Reuben Saltzman (58:35.861)
I’m glad I could help and we’ll catch you next time. And we’re gonna be having another professional come on with another area of the country. We’ll catch you next time. Take care.
Mike Casey (58:43.867)
Perfect. Have fun. All right. We’ll see you. Take care.
Tessa Murry (58:44.607)
So stay tuned. Yep. All right. Thanks.