To watch a video version of this podcast, click here: https://youtu.be/cYcD91eX5rQ
In this episode, Reuben Saltzman and Tessa Murry engage with Paul Barraza, a seasoned home inspector from Northern California. They discuss the nuances of home inspections, including energy efficiency, wildfire preparedness, and earthquake safety. Paul shares his journey into the home inspection industry, the importance of community forums, and the challenges faced in California’s unique climate. The conversation also delves into the significance of crawl space inspections, HVAC systems, and the evolving regulations surrounding home energy scores and safety measures.
Takeaways
Paul Barraza started his inspection career in 2007 after being inspired by a friend.
Community forums play a crucial role in sharing knowledge among home inspectors.
Home Energy Scores provide a standardized assessment of a home’s energy efficiency.
California mandates home energy scores at the time of sale to improve energy efficiency.
Wildfire preparedness includes creating defensible space and home hardening measures.
Earthquake safety inspections focus on bolting and retrofitting older homes.
Crawl spaces in California often lack proper encapsulation, leading to moisture issues.
HVAC systems need to be properly designed and installed for optimal performance.
The importance of using high-efficiency filters in HVAC systems to improve air quality.
Pest inspections are vital for homes with stucco exteriors to prevent hidden damage.
Chapters
00:00 Welcome and Introductions
03:01 Paul Barraza’s Journey in Home Inspections
05:47 The Importance of Forums and Community in Home Inspection
09:06 Understanding Home Energy Scores
12:06 California’s Energy Efficiency Regulations
15:03 Wildfire Preparedness and Home Hardening
17:54 Earthquake Safety and Inspections
20:52 Crawl Space Inspections and Challenges
23:56 HVAC Systems and Air Quality
26:57 Final Thoughts on Home Inspection Practices
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 (00:00.885)
Welcome back to the show. Tessa, I want to ask you how is sunny Florida, but I know I’ve figured out the answer to that. It’s hot and it’s humid and it’s Noted. Got it. Okay. We’re good. Yeah. Yeah. I can’t complain. Can’t complain. It got cool here in Minnesota. Like woke up and it was 45 degrees this morning. I had all the bedroom windows open and I was just like, I’m cold.
Tessa Murry (00:13.213)
We got that cleared up. Okay, great. How you doing, Ruben?
Tessa Murry (00:26.281)
You know what? I am a little bit jealous, I have to say. Fall is one of my favorite seasons and I miss that crisp, clear feeling of a cool fall morning. I miss it so bad.
Reuben Saltzman (00:38.549)
Yeah. Yeah. You don’t, you don’t get that anymore. All right. And I got to ask our guest if he gets any of those. We’ve got a guest on today. We got Paul Barraza. He’s a home inspector out of Northern California meant to have him on when we were doing our series on regional inspection differences, but we just could not coordinate our schedules. And we already had, you know, kind of California cover, but Northern California, it’s different from Southern California. So.
Tessa Murry (00:43.049)
Uh-uh.
Reuben Saltzman (01:08.055)
We’ve got Paul on, he’s been at this a long time. Paul, how you doing today?
Paul Barraza (01:12.366)
Great, thanks for having me on. I appreciate you including me in the chat.
Reuben Saltzman (01:16.531)
absolutely. So Paul, how cold does it get where you live and where exactly are you?
Paul Barraza (01:23.834)
Berkeley, California, or San Francisco Bay Area. You know, it sometimes gets in the 30s, you know, and…
Reuben Saltzman (01:26.422)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (01:32.393)
Okay, all right. You can see almost freezing temperatures.
Paul Barraza (01:36.864)
Yeah, you know, it’s, you know, we, remember as a kid having snow like once every five years or something. but yeah, if it, if it freezes, it’s unusual and people don’t know what to do.
Tessa Murry (01:44.467)
So.
Reuben Saltzman (01:49.047)
Yeah, yeah, I bet. All right. So Paul, tell me a little bit about your inspection career. What got you to where you are today? How did you get into home inspections? How long you’ve been doing it? What does your company look like? All that jazz.
Tessa Murry (01:49.94)
Hahaha!
Paul Barraza (02:05.826)
Yeah, well, I started around 2007. I had a friend who was doing it and this is like kind of at the tail end of a big boom period here. He’s like, yeah, you should do it. It’s great. It’s fun. Blah, blah. and so I was like, maybe I’ll check out this, ITA course. So they had, back in the day with ITA training. and actually Douglas Hansen was my instructor for two weeks, which at the time I was like, it’s some random person’s my instructor, but it turns out I was pretty lucky to have that.
Reuben Saltzman (02:33.236)
Wow. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (02:34.863)
A Douglas Hansen. Yeah. Cool.
Paul Barraza (02:35.694)
One of the instructors, another one of the instructors was a well-established inspector in the area. after the school, they say, everything you need to know in two weeks. you take the class, you realize, yeah, it’s not a two week thing to learn everything. So then you took the class and I met the instructor after. They allow you to audit the inspections that they would do in the class. so.
Reuben Saltzman (02:50.176)
right?
Tessa Murry (02:54.569)
Bye.
Paul Barraza (03:01.42)
I basically was like, hey, you’re to bring someone on. And he was someone that had been doing it for 30 years. basically apprenticed with him and kind of went full time in 2010, which is kind of the tail end of the last of the housing recession. So it’s kind of a good time, I think, to cut your teeth. You know, 2008, nine, 10 was kind of slow and difficult. And then, yeah, I just got into it and joined the local Ashley chapter and, you know, met a lot of great guys who were willing to share all their knowledge and
Tessa Murry (03:07.656)
Wow.
Tessa Murry (03:19.923)
Okay.
Paul Barraza (03:31.0)
you know, all their mistakes and we can all, you know, be better inspectors together.
Reuben Saltzman (03:35.359)
Yes. Yes. Awesome. And I know at the time you spent a lot of time on the Ashy forum. That’s where you and I actually met was just chatting online with each other. And this is back when Ashy used to have a forum. I heard a rumor it’s coming back. Yeah. I don’t get me started. No, you know what? You already got I got myself started. This is my fault, but I’ve been
Tessa Murry (03:36.307)
Wow. Wow.
Paul Barraza (03:43.309)
Mm-hmm.
Paul Barraza (03:46.84)
Yeah? Yeah.
Tessa Murry (03:48.755)
So.
Paul Barraza (03:50.742)
Right. Supposedly it’s coming back. That’s what they say.
Reuben Saltzman (04:03.796)
I’ve been frustrated with a lot of things I asked you lately. Why, how does a forum just disappear? Part of the, part of the attraction to having a forum is the deep knowledge. You’ve got posts and you chat about this stuff and it’s like, I ask a question here. And then three years down the road, one of my inspectors asked me the same question and I can go, yeah, we talked about it. I had Douglas Hansen weigh in on this one.
And he gave me a fantastic answer. Let me look it up and I’ll share it with him. When you take a forum and you just wipe it out, all of this institutional knowledge. I don’t have words. It’s very frustrating. And that’s what happened.
Tessa Murry (04:30.675)
Thank
Tessa Murry (04:41.17)
you
Paul Barraza (04:44.204)
Hopefully they’ll bring it. They can maybe have the ability to bring that part back and who knows.
Tessa Murry (04:50.569)
Great, that’s perfect.
Reuben Saltzman (04:52.064)
Yeah, I’m not, I’m not holding my breath. That’d be really cool if it did. But, that that’s, that’s where you and I met. We’d spent a lot of time on there. And I remember, I, I, you, you may not remember this, but I do. I was on this committee back when Ashy would have their annual conferences. Well, they’re, doing them again now. but we would have a ton of speakers submit.
Applications to teach at these conferences, you know, they’d say hey, do you want to speak here submit your application and be this huge packet they’d send all the slides or qualifications and all that and I was on a committee it was called the education committee and and we would have a team of like eight of us get together in person and we would pour over all these Applications and we’d spend like a full day on it
and we’d choose who was going to be presenting at inspection world. I think it’d end up being about 45 different classes at every conference and you’d have different educational tracks like beginner, advanced, business building, that kind of stuff. they, I mean, they were fantastic sessions. And it’s like, we put a lot into figuring out who the speakers are going to be for these conferences. What are they doing today? I don’t know. I think you got.
Paul Barraza (06:15.246)
You
Reuben Saltzman (06:15.484)
one person who has never been a home inspector sitting in a room going, this looks good. That looks good. And they don’t pay squat. I don’t teach anymore for them because the last time they asked me to teach it was, what’s the compensation? Well, we’ll give you free admittance to the conference. Well, how do I get there? How do I pay for lodging? I all that. that’s on you. And it’s like, you want me to, you want me to pay for everything? Like, okay.
Paul Barraza (06:21.378)
Mm.
Paul Barraza (06:36.408)
Right.
Tessa Murry (06:45.029)
Uh-uh.
Reuben Saltzman (06:45.238)
All right. I’m I’m going down the wrong path. I’m just complaining here. But things have changed. But the one thing I’ll tie it back to you, Paul. I had never presented at any conference. I after I went to the very first conference, I thought I would love to present. I would love to be one of the speakers here. I think I’d be good at this and I’m going to present someday. And then I think the next year you had sent an email to the education coordinator.
Paul Barraza (06:47.822)
This is the thing.
Reuben Saltzman (07:14.74)
saying, hey, for the business section, if you ever get Ruben Saltzman to come in and teach about running a multi inspector company, I will be at the conference or something to that effect. And yeah, I don’t remember exactly what you said, but it was I remember how it made me feel. That’s the old thing. People don’t remember what you said. They remember how you made them feel. And I was like, wow, what a nice guy. And I ended up speaking that year. It was the first year I spoke.
Paul Barraza (07:24.898)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (07:33.971)
Just kidding.
Paul Barraza (07:37.997)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (07:42.943)
And it was just based on one email you sent. And I spoke there every year since, and I’ve taught dozens and dozens upon classes. And it’s all because you sent one nice little email. I all because of you, Paul, all because of you. I’ll always remember that whenever I see your name. So I wanted to thank you for that.
Tessa Murry (07:43.763)
Hmm.
Paul Barraza (07:55.464)
All can make nothing.
Tessa Murry (07:55.794)
I’m
Tessa Murry (08:01.833)
huh.
Paul Barraza (08:02.83)
I met Michelle. Yeah, no, you’re welcome. I met Michelle at there’s a California conference. I don’t know if it was a realtor conference or something. And she was there representing Ashley. And so we just, I was there at the table. We were just chatting it up. And so it wasn’t just some random person emailing. It did help that I met her and she knew who I was. And so I knew I could put a good word in it. I’m glad it worked. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (08:25.462)
Yeah, yeah, I sure appreciate it. All right. So that was a total sidetrack, but we’re here to talk about home inspections and practices and what we do. Paul, just to start off, what does your business look like? Are you a solo inspector? Do you have people working underneath you? Where are you at these days?
Paul Barraza (08:46.222)
So it’s me and two other inspectors and we have someone answering the phone. So we’re relatively small, but you know, we do have three inspectors. I think there’s a few big firms in the area, but most companies are pretty small in one, you know, one inspector firms. So we’re kind of in the middle ground. I probably wanted you to do that presentation because I was curious about hiring people. I’m sure that’s probably self-serving in that regard. But yeah, so relatively small. We work in the,
Tessa Murry (09:06.985)
Thanks.
Reuben Saltzman (09:08.182)
Hey.
Paul Barraza (09:13.718)
Mainly in the East Bay, that’s Oakland, Berkeley kind of side of things, just San Francisco is across the Bay. You have to cross the body of water to get there, so we don’t go there very often, even though it’s only 10 miles away. But there’s a lot of housing in our area, so it’s very dense. We basically work in the East Bay. We do home inspections, commercial inspections, home energy score, because that’s required by a few of the cities, as well as consulting work.
Tessa Murry (09:36.274)
Hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (09:38.1)
Okay, all right, excellent.
Tessa Murry (09:39.657)
What is a home energy score? We have programs like that in the Twin Cities. It’s through the utility companies. They come in and they send someone through the house with an infrared camera. They’re checking for insulation levels and ways to make a house more energy efficient. They talk about light bulbs and low flow water fixtures and air sealing and stuff like that. Is that what you do? What you’re talking about?
Paul Barraza (10:08.238)
The Home Energy Score is similar. It’s the Department of Energy program, so it’s nationwide and it’s an assessment. So there’s no infrared cameras, but installation levels, window types, you know, we’re recording windows by aspect. So south-facing windows are different than north-facing windows. Installation levels, like I said, you know, heating system, cooling, water heating. So it’s more of an assessment. We’re cataloging all these things. We put it into the HDS program. It spits out a number, one to 10.
So the idea is that it gives you kind of a MPG sticker like you’d find on a car. So if you’re comparing two houses, similar size, similar price, one’s a three, which is on the lower end, one’s a nine, you’re like, well, I’m gonna get the nine because it’s more efficient. That’s the idea.
Tessa Murry (10:52.819)
So, sorry, Ruben, I saw that you’ve got a question too, but this is very interesting because I remember learning about this and getting trained to do this years and years ago. there’s so many different programs out there and metrics to kind of measure the energy efficiency of the house. But I know the DOE was trying to create kind of just like one program that everybody could use. And so I’m just curious, like, are there…
Does California pretty much do that on all their houses? Is this like at the time of sale type thing that people go through or how does that work?
Paul Barraza (11:24.002)
Yeah, I live in Berkeley and the city of Berkeley requires what they call a BISO assessment that Berkeley are they building energy savings ordinance, which is just requiring a home energy score at time of sale. And for many years has been more on the buyer’s side, but now they’re trying to push it that they really want it at listing time of listing. Another local city Piedmont is just has required it as well. That’s how I got into it because you know, how the city is requiring it. Like, you know, let’s check that out. Maybe it’s something we get into.
Tessa Murry (11:52.243)
Yeah, very interesting. Yeah, I think it’s something that every home buyer should have access to is like, okay, how energy efficient is this house going to be and give them an idea of the cost of utilities, the cost of operation, you know, that makes a big difference.
Paul Barraza (12:06.222)
And the city is also using it to track every sale they know what the score is for each home. They can kind of get a feel for what the efficiency of each home in their city is. so I think for a while they thought, we’ve been doing all these things for many years, these previous ordinances. And then they’re realizing now, look at all these scores, they’re like, actually, these homes aren’t as good as we thought. And they have goals. As a city, they say we want to be polluting less. So they realize they need to put some money into these things to help not just give a score.
to help put money into actually making improvements.
Tessa Murry (12:36.382)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (12:39.017)
Okay, I have several questions about this. And this is for both of you guys. But first for you, Paul, what do you think about this program?
Tessa Murry (12:39.709)
Yeah.
Paul Barraza (12:50.06)
I think it’s helpful, but it’s limited, right? So people will get an idea. Okay, you got one to three. The report will also say, okay, here’s your house, but here’s the one, two, maybe three things that are kind of the low hanging fruit that you can go from a three to a six by spending X amount of dollars. So it does give people a of a headstart, but if you were, you wouldn’t give that to a contractor and say, I want to do this. You know, they still need to, you know, get someone else in there to kind of guide them through the process.
Tessa Murry (13:13.417)
No.
Paul Barraza (13:18.476)
And I think like the city’s found out that it’s the number itself is not prompting people to do the work, even though they could be saving money by doing some of the work. I think they need more incentive. So it’s not useless, but again, I think the city is partially doing it to kind of know what their building stock is like to get a true assessment of it. And then my understanding is that in the next, in 2026, they’re going to start mandating some improvements at time of sale.
Tessa Murry (13:38.12)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (13:45.802)
Okay.
Paul Barraza (13:45.976)
So you can choose from a checklist of insulation and air sealing and all these different things, or you can put a heat pump appliance in. There’s going to be transfer tax rebate money that’s going to be available. they’re basically giving you free money to help you.
Reuben Saltzman (13:56.513)
Wow.
Tessa Murry (13:58.446)
Mandatory, mandatory upgrades. Really.
Paul Barraza (14:02.22)
Yeah, I guess it is a bit of an oxymoron.
Tessa Murry (14:05.481)
That’s interesting. Well, yeah, you know, I feel the same way. It’s been a long time since I actually looked at that program and what the reports look like and how, you know, what data they’re actually collecting and, you know, how accurate that data collection actually is. Every program has its challenges. But like you said, you’ve got to start somewhere. Like if we want to gauge like where the houses are at and what they need.
Reuben Saltzman (14:08.777)
OK, all right.
Tessa Murry (14:34.653)
to get better, you got to start somewhere.
Reuben Saltzman (14:37.673)
Now, let me ask you, do you ever look at the bills, like the electric bill and the gas bill? Okay. We’ve got a similar program here in Minneapolis for our truth and housing program. When you list house for sale, you got to get the city inspection done. And they added on this energy component to it probably five years ago or not. I’m pretty sure it’s about five years ago now. And.
One thing people talked about, but it never happened, was adding on energy usage, like actual usage history for the home. Now know it’s not perfect. I mean, if you got somebody who leaves lights on all the time, sure, it’s going to skew it. But for the most part, I mean, I think by far the biggest use of electricity is going to be air conditioning, unless you have an electric vehicle and a ton of electric appliances.
And the biggest one for gas usage is going to be heating your house. Yeah, you don’t have to mess with that. Why don’t, why don’t we incorporate this stuff and Tessa? mean, I’m asking you too. Why don’t we, why don’t we look at this? It seems like this would be the best possible indicator.
Paul Barraza (15:37.07)
Wait, what’s air conditioning? I never heard of that. I’m in California.
Tessa Murry (15:39.369)
Yeah, they’re in the Bay Area. They don’t need heating or cooling.
Paul Barraza (15:55.318)
I think it’s the human element that they’re trying to remove, right? They’re trying to assess the building and not how you live in it. So, I mean, you could, I mean, it wouldn’t hurt to look at that as far as if you were a buyer and say, Hey, what are the bills? But again, someone removed a hot tub, had loved to be at 80 degrees every night. And some people want to be at 50 degrees when they’re sleeping. So I think just trying to remove as many variables and then the occupants though, the number of bedrooms affects the score.
Tessa Murry (15:58.824)
and
Reuben Saltzman (16:00.641)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (16:18.081)
Sure. Okay.
Paul Barraza (16:24.366)
and partially is because they’re anticipating how many people actually live in the building. So you could basically have the same construction house for a two bedroom, for a five bedroom. It’d be a worse score for a five bedroom because they’re saying basically two people are gonna live there anyway and now you have all this more house to heat and cool. So you’re using more energy than you need to per person.
Reuben Saltzman (16:44.375)
sure. Okay, that makes sense. Alright.
Tessa Murry (16:46.365)
Thank you.
Paul Barraza (16:48.014)
Especially the bigger, some of the bigger, larger houses I see, even if they’re not in bad shape, they have a lower score just because they’re so big.
Reuben Saltzman (16:54.303)
Okay, got it. And I got a similar question to this and mandated inspections, but I’m going to change the topic test. we have, do you have more you wanted to ask about this before I move on?
Tessa Murry (16:57.469)
and
Tessa Murry (17:05.257)
.
I don’t think so. One quick question. I don’t think they require blower door tests for the home energy score, do they? OK. Just curious.
Paul Barraza (17:13.804)
No. No.
Reuben Saltzman (17:18.143)
Okay, all right. I know that wildfires have been a big thing in California too. Are there any mandated inspections you got to do there?
Paul Barraza (17:30.549)
There is defensible space. So there’s the state law that says you have to have defensible space. It’s been that way for many years. Although the fire departments haven’t been great about doing the inspections and making people do the work. Here in the Bay Area, we have a lot of area in the flats, but then there’s a whole area in the hills that has a lot of dense vegetation. Well, there’s the 1991 fire. I don’t know if you remember, the Oakland Hills fire was a big deal because of the topography in the fall. gets really dry and windy.
Reuben Saltzman (17:32.416)
Okay.
Paul Barraza (18:00.0)
So there’s not been a lot of political will to make sure these infections are getting done for the defensible space. And now people are thinking about home hardening. So not just vegetation, like, hey, what can we do to the house to prevent from catching fire? Right? Because you can only, you know, if embers are blowing a mile in front of the fire, it doesn’t matter what the vegetation is doing around your house if an ember lands in your gutter and lights your roof on fire. So the home hardening is something that’s newer and something that we start touching on in our reports.
And some of the, like Berkeley is now, because there’s kind of a big park on the East side of Berkeley, if that caught fire, could basically take out the whole city. They’re going to try to create basically an area that has all the homes would be home, have home hardening to kind of create a buffer between the park land and the city. Because you need kind of a, you know, if you, if one person home hardens their house,
Reuben Saltzman (18:46.528)
Tessa Murry (18:49.671)
Wow.
Paul Barraza (18:55.606)
It doesn’t do a lot, if you have 90 plus percent of people doing it, then you can actually get a kind of barrier. So it’s going to take like kind of a city-wide effort to get this done.
Reuben Saltzman (19:04.139)
Kind of like a vaccine, huh?
Paul Barraza (19:06.542)
Yeah. Yeah. Third immunity, right? So it’s also true for home hardening measures too. Sorry to cut you off, but the home hardening methods, like if you do, there’s maybe let’s say 10 things you need to do for home hardening. If you do two, you don’t get a 20 % benefit. You just have to do basically all of it to get the benefit, right? Cause you see the chain is only as strong as the weakest link, right?
Tessa Murry (19:11.825)
Is this something?
no, no, go ahead, yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (19:29.247)
Hmm, sure.
Tessa Murry (19:31.625)
So is this home hardening thing, this is new lingo for me, I’m not familiar with it. So is this something that people have been doing for decades now in California and that’s what we call it, or is this a newer kind of development?
Paul Barraza (19:45.322)
It’s been in the code. So there’s a section in the residential code as well as the building code. It talks about wildfire protection. Don’t quote me on that, but it’s been in the code for least the last, I think, three or four code cycles. The problem with anything new in the code, the cities aren’t really quick on picking up on it, right? They don’t really, there’s this new section that we need to start enforcing. And most of the building code only applies to new homes because most of our homes are existing homes.
Tessa Murry (19:55.561)
Thank you.
Tessa Murry (20:06.707)
takes a while.
Tessa Murry (20:13.768)
Yeah.
Paul Barraza (20:14.254)
The problem is in the new homes, get built to the new standard, they’re fine, but then the rest of the homes are still vulnerable.
Tessa Murry (20:21.831)
So are these measures something that a lot of people are doing? Are they retrofitting their houses with this home hardening practice? Okay.
Paul Barraza (20:31.15)
they need to be, right? Especially in these hillside areas that are high fire severity zones. So you have high fire or very high fire severity zones that are mapped. The state of California has all these maps for these different zones. And if you’re in these certain zones, you have to do your home hardening. And then for existing homes, like, you know, when I’m doing an inspection, I’m up in the hills, there are trees everywhere. I’m saying, hey, you’re in the hills, this is prone to wildfire. Like you need to have defensible space, but you also need to do
home hardening if you want your structure to survive. So, you know, there’s people who will just throw up their hands, say, I’ll just rely on insurance, which, you know, mixed results, I would say, but I think I’m more of the state of mind where I’d rather just fix the building, make it resistant to fire, have a place to live after the wildfire, not rely on insurance or the government to help me out.
Reuben Saltzman (21:20.183)
Well, not only that, but you rely on insurance to replace your, you know, whatever it is, million dollar home, whatever you guys are paying for homes in your area for an average house. You all pay for that. We all pay for that. Well, you pay for I don’t. I’m in Minnesota. I’ve got my own rates here. But you guys all share this expense. It drives insurance rates through the roof. I mean, it’s just it’s yeah, it’s bad policy to say I’m going to rely on insurance.
Paul Barraza (21:32.268)
That’s the starter house.
Tessa Murry (21:34.674)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (21:51.441)
Yeah. So is this defensible space and the home hardening? You said the fire department does those inspections or how does that work?
Paul Barraza (21:58.862)
So the Fire Department does the defensible space inspections. There’s really no one doing home hardening inspections. So I think as an inspector in California, if you’re in a wildfire area, that’s something you could maybe add as an inspection, add on inspection. Obviously, we talk about a little bit in our reports because you’re saying, you’re in this area, you get defensible space inspection from the Fire Department. You should also think about doing all these home hardening features to your house.
Tessa Murry (22:03.282)
Okay.
Paul Barraza (22:27.512)
There are a home as a fortified home program, I believe that also addresses wildfire home hardening. And so you can get a discount on your insurance if you follow some of those programs. But, you know, I’ve reached out to the IBHS or whoever runs the program and they haven’t, you know, who does these inspections? They haven’t really gotten back to me. So I think that would be something that’d be valuable for homeowners if they can get this certification to lower their insurance rates to be pretty valid.
Tessa Murry (22:47.827)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (22:52.009)
Can you give us a rundown of what you would look for if you’re kind of assessing a house for home, quote, home hardening? What do those features look like?
Paul Barraza (23:07.822)
Okay, starting at the roof, you want a class A roof. And in this area, they’ve required class A roofs for many years. I don’t think you can get anything else. Putting a wood shake roof on in a fire area is a bad idea. The gutters, you want to have a gutter guard. So covering the top of the gutter keeps out the leaves, which of course that also clogs. But the idea is you don’t want the debris to be low enough when the ember catches it on fire that it catches the roof deck on
So that edge flashing transitioning from the roof deck to the gutter is critical for flashing, but also for home hardening. having that flashing as well as the gutter guard. The ease of the venting, whatever venting you have needs to be a special like fire rated vent, a Vulcan vent. Is that something you’ve heard about? So it’s a brand name kind of bandaid, but Vulcan vents have the smaller screen size, the embers don’t get in. And they also have kind of honeycomb matrix that’s behind the screen. So if it gets
Reuben Saltzman (23:42.187)
Wow.
Tessa Murry (23:53.161)
Yeah.
Paul Barraza (24:05.23)
too hot, the matrix will swell shut and then won’t allow the heat or the embers to get inside. So those are required for your roof. If you have eave or soffit venting, crawlspace venting, basically anywhere an ember could get in, those are required. Working our way down the siding, you need a non-combustible siding, something like a traditional three-cut stucco, fiber cement, something that is not wood. We have a lot of wood siding.
Tessa Murry (24:11.964)
Wow.
Paul Barraza (24:33.038)
Succo is probably the most common, but we also have a lot of wood. you’re talking to people about, yeah, you got this wood siding. How do you fix it? You’re looking at residing your whole house, which is not a nice conversation to have, but that’s kind of what you have to do. Your windows need to be tempered so that the radiant energy of a fire can just shatter regular plate glass and timber glass is a lot stronger. So you’re looking at, unfortunately, replacing all your windows, right?
Tessa Murry (24:33.523)
you
Tessa Murry (24:45.321)
you
Reuben Saltzman (24:59.555)
Wow. Holy cow. Yeah. Maybe I’ll let insurance take care of this. No, just kidding. That’s a lot.
Tessa Murry (25:00.699)
my goodness. I can’t. New roof, new siding, new windows. Yeah. Well.
Paul Barraza (25:02.808)
Yeah, so.
Yeah.
Paul Barraza (25:13.294)
Yeah, roofing in most cases is fine. Because again, like I said, the last 20 years, they’ve required class A, so most people have those. Every once in a while, I’ll see a wood roof where someone’s put a layer of drywall underneath because they just had to have a wood roof, which is kind of insane. yeah, I think most people are happy just putting it on. Yeah, yeah. Right.
Tessa Murry (25:29.038)
Rye wall under a wood roof. my goodness.
Reuben Saltzman (25:31.68)
Yeah, what could go wrong?
Tessa Murry (25:33.929)
my goodness. Okay.
Paul Barraza (25:37.592)
So that’s the basics of it. And we don’t get into too much details, but we want to let people know, hey, first of all, you’re in this zone, but there’s also things you can do, right? Because sometimes people say, you’re in this hazard zone, and people just give up. But now here’s what you need to do, right? Give them the steps, whether it’s earthquake retrofitting, home hardening retrofitting, whatever it is. Say this is the direction you need to go if they’re just throwing in the
Reuben Saltzman (25:59.864)
Okay, all right.
Tessa Murry (26:01.346)
we didn’t even get into the earthquake stuff. But is there a set of basic things you look for with that too? That a lot of houses may not have older ones?
Paul Barraza (26:04.238)
Yeah
Paul Barraza (26:08.236)
Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, older houses would need earthquake retrofit and a basic retrofit would be bolting the mudsill to the foundation. For me, a new house would be a 1950s house. So I’m like, this is a new house. This is nice, right? Most of homes are 20s, 30s, maybe 40s that I see. So the cripple wall area below the first floor framing is basically wide open. There’s basically nothing in there. So it just kind of
Tessa Murry (26:24.209)
Okay.
Paul Barraza (26:36.686)
If you have a three foot cripple wall, just the whole house will just tip over and be three feet shorter. So you want to put bolts, plywood on the cripple walls, and then make a little connector at the top, a sheer transfer tie at the top of that. And that’s your kind of basic retrofit. And then you get into situations where you have a garage opening that is a soft story or a hillside home, split level homes. You don’t get into, you know, crazy details, but being California, we’re definitely talking about that stuff more than you guys would in Minnesota.
Reuben Saltzman (27:05.665)
Sure. Okay. Yeah. I’m glad we don’t have to mess with that, but we got our own set of things we got to mess with, I guess.
Tessa Murry (27:06.483)
home.
Tessa Murry (27:10.729)
was gonna say…
Tessa Murry (27:15.229)
How often do engineers get involved in your inspections then? Because I would imagine, are you just assuming when it’s like the 1920s house, they don’t have those things. So you just kind of put that in the report, or are you visually looking for these things and then recommending them if the house needs them?
Paul Barraza (27:28.866)
Well, we’re crawling under the house, obviously. We have a lot of crawl spaces, which may be a little different than other areas. 90 plus percent of the houses I see have crawl spaces. It’s really important to get in there, even if it’s really tight to get to all, you know, kind of corners of the house. You’ll see that if they have bolting or not, you’ll see if they have the plywood shear and you’ll see if they have the shear transfer. Also, if you, you know, if there’s rot, you need to get back there and see all those areas. So we’re definitely looking for it when…
we see a garage has been covered up or a basement area that’s been recently flipped or something, we’ll have to say, well, we can’t see what’s behind you. Did they put plywood before the drywall? It’s anyone’s guess, but that’s, people can look under a crawl space and say, this is you have found retrofitting or not. But when they have the finished basement, you can’t. So you have to kind of defer it to an engineer. They might have to remove the drywall, see what’s going on. Or maybe they have plans that they can show an engineer, but yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (28:27.137)
Now how much nasty stuff do you see in the crawl spaces?
Tessa Murry (28:27.922)
Wow.
Paul Barraza (28:32.046)
I mean, it’s not nasty if you see it every day, I guess. You see a share of dead animals and you see dead raccoons and skunks and yeah. But I have a whole suit, you wear a respirator, you just get ready. If you have elbow pads, knee pads, the whole works, then there’s not that party that goes, I don’t really wanna go to the very end of the crawl space. You’re just kind of ready for the battle and just kind of grind it out.
Reuben Saltzman (28:34.807)
Okay, all right.
Reuben Saltzman (28:44.331)
Yeah. Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (28:59.681)
Do you leave a business card at the far reaches of the crawlspace?
Paul Barraza (29:03.574)
No, no, but let’s see some marks. Actually, the guy I learned from, he would scrape his name with his screwdriver in the foundation, not his initials, guess. He’s like, oh, he’s, John, where were you in June 16th in 1991? And he can tell you. He scraped it in the foundation.
Tessa Murry (29:18.44)
Yes sir.
Reuben Saltzman (29:22.359)
Love it. Love it. Anytime I would get to the far end of a crawl space, I mean, they’re kind of few and far between here in Minnesota, but anytime I’d go to the effort of getting in the far end one, I’d always leave a business card there. Same thing with the far reaches of an attic. Like, yep, I was here.
Tessa Murry (29:23.113)
my goodness
Paul Barraza (29:37.634)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (29:38.377)
man, Ruben, if you don’t have any more questions about the wild wildfire and earthquake stuff, I I have so many questions just about general housing stock for Paul that I’m just curious about. So, Paul, like what percentage of the crawl spaces that you see are encapsulated?
Reuben Saltzman (29:51.424)
hit it. Yeah, let’s go.
Paul Barraza (30:02.318)
maybe five, maybe 10%. I’ll say 5%. And that’s not like a full encapsulation. A lot of times it’s just, what they call clean crawl space is kind of the term around here where they have a vapor barrier covering the soil and they’re not just like insulating. It’s not conditioned. it’s just a way of keeping the damp out of the house. you know, people come from different parts of the country and they say all these, you know, East Berkeley, Oakland houses have this same smell.
Tessa Murry (30:22.193)
Yeah.
Paul Barraza (30:29.934)
And often that smell is just the wet crawl space soil because it’s just sitting right under our floor and there’s nothing keeping it out of the house. So people, you know, if they are worried about excess moisture getting in mold, stuff like that, they’re going to put a vapor barrier down. just the other day actually saw a, the crawl space with no vents. had mechanical ventilation, had a vapor barrier and insulation in the, in the crawl space walls, but no heat source. So you’re of like, well, it’s kind of like they almost made it to condition crawl space, but not quite.
Tessa Murry (30:35.335)
Yeah.
Bye.
Tessa Murry (30:59.177)
Yeah.
Paul Barraza (30:59.694)
The one mechanical vent that they had was unplugged. They actually had a sign on the wall saying, the attention inspectors, like this is a so-and-so crawlspace because most people are to be like, what the heck’s going on here? But unfortunately, they unplugged it. We don’t like the insulation on the critical walls because we can’t see what the damage would be. If it gets wet, how is it going to dry out without conditioning?
Reuben Saltzman (31:03.148)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (31:03.846)
no.
Tessa Murry (31:24.329)
Well, the reason I wanted to ask you about crawl spaces is because there’s a general consensus in the building science world that encapsulating crawl space is the best thing you can do for that space. Because like you mentioned, a lot of times it’s a source of moisture from the soil, radon, other soil gases. And also, it can cost you a lot with energy usage and comfort if it’s not properly air sealed and insulated.
I mean, you feel the penalties more, obviously, in a very cold climate like Minnesota, if you have a crawl space that’s not properly or ceiling slates. So I wasn’t sure if being in the Bay Area where the climate is much more mild, if people really care about that or if they’re doing anything about that. And it sounds like most of the houses just kind of have an open crawl space where it’s outside conditions are happening under the house. And that’s just how it is.
Paul Barraza (32:23.022)
Yeah, I mean, the climate in this area in particular is very mild. I was joking about the air conditioning. We don’t have a lot of air conditioning because it doesn’t get that hot. It doesn’t get that cold. It’s really damp and we’re close to the ocean. So the humidity levels are maybe higher. people, if they have insulation on the floor, I’m happy. I don’t hardly ever see that. I mean, to get it perspective, right?
Tessa Murry (32:45.351)
Yeah, wow, wow.
Yeah. And do you see a lot of mold and rot then happening in those crawl spaces because of the, you know, the unsealed dirt floor?
Paul Barraza (32:58.01)
Usually the rot is from coming through the windows or siding, or it’s coming from leaks in the bathroom. We’re always checking very closely under the front porch. We have a lot of concrete over wood porches in this area. Of course, the concrete cracks, it leaks, and you have the wood damage underneath. leaks in the bathroom. So you don’t just find random rot or mold in places that aren’t under the bathroom, under the porch, not next to the exterior wall.
Tessa Murry (33:11.607)
huh.
Paul Barraza (33:26.08)
So it doesn’t seem to be much of an issue. mean, obviously some homes with bad ventilation or high moisture levels are getting more mold in like the closets where they don’t get much airflow. We still have a decent number of floor furnaces and wall furnaces that don’t distribute the air very evenly. So areas behind the couch or in the closet tend to have mold. But it’s not that much of an issue given our climate.
Tessa Murry (33:37.073)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (33:50.121)
You can get away with a lot more. It’s a lot more forgiving when it’s in that comfortable temperature range most of the year.
Paul Barraza (33:53.674)
Yeah, absolutely.
Reuben Saltzman (33:57.846)
Yeah, that’s not where problems happen.
Tessa Murry (34:01.765)
I guess not. Yeah. Well, that makes more sense with the home energy scores that a lot of houses are not as efficient as they thought. mean, you think about it, it’s just like there’s no insulation under the entire floor and very little air ceiling. And I’m sure the attic spaces are pretty minimally insulated and there’s a lot of air leakage happening there too, just because, it’s a more comfortable climate. So why do all of those things?
Paul Barraza (34:01.884)
Thank
Paul Barraza (34:26.166)
Yeah, one of the reasons they went to the home energy score is because the previous ordinance said you have to insulate the attic, you got to put in low flow fixtures at the faucets, you have to do all these kind of prescriptive things. So for 10, 20 years, they were just throwing insulation in the attic, covering up knob and tube, but also not air sealing. because it wasn’t really catching up with the building science. So the idea of the home energy score is as things evolve, home energy score can also evolve and say like, hey, here’s what you need to do.
So they didn’t try to get away from the prescriptive measures that were maybe made sense in the 70s, but maybe not so much in 2000s when they started switching things over.
Tessa Murry (35:05.16)
Mm-mm. And what about the heating and cooling systems? You mentioned already, you kind of touched on it, you don’t see a lot. But your house, it sounds like you do need some sort of heating source. What’s predominantly do you see in most existing older homes?
Paul Barraza (35:19.374)
Gas furnaces, 95 % of the time it’s going to be gas furnaces. A of times in the crawl space. Another reason that you get in the crawl space and it’s always fun to try to put the cover back on as you’re like horizontal in like a 18 inch crawl space.
Tessa Murry (35:25.488)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (35:31.377)
gosh. Yeah. We have a tough enough time getting those covers back on when you’re sitting right in front of it. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (35:32.381)
Paul Barraza (35:38.318)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, almost all gas furnaces, there’s a new regulation, I guess we would call it. So there’s a air quality management district, and they’ve been regulating NOx emissions since the 80s. And every five, 10 years, they’ve kind of ratcheted down the amount of NOx that gas appliances can emit. And starting in 2027, your water here can no longer emit NOx. So you can have a gas water heater.
Tessa Murry (35:40.562)
Yeah.
Paul Barraza (36:07.756)
It just can’t emit NOx, which is, I don’t know how you do that, but you’re basically, in essence, mandating a switch to electric resistance where you can block either.
Tessa Murry (36:15.537)
Yeah, was gonna say. Yeah, force electrification, it sounds like. Yeah.
Paul Barraza (36:21.228)
Yeah. it’s been in the news that Berkeley tried to ban gas and then they got fought by the gas industry and then it got overturned because there was no basis basically for that lawsuit, guess. for pollution regulations, there’s a track record for those. They’ve been doing it since the 80s. Pollution has been regulated. The industry doesn’t have a way to stop it, I guess.
It’s just moving forward. And I think a lot of times, you know, people resist change, right? That’s something that we do. And then, you people are like, I need my incandescent light bulb. And then years later, like, well, why didn’t I just switch to LED? They’re better, right? Like, why was I resisting? And I think it’s similar with heat pumps where like, I need my gas furnace. And then after you get a heat pump, like, well, actually it’s a lot more efficient and I get cooling. then maybe one week a year, would you like to have cooling in our area? It’s kind of nice to have it. So, you know.
Tessa Murry (36:56.361)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (37:17.459)
Yeah.
Paul Barraza (37:18.53)
get resistant and then they realize they’re changing to this new thing because that’s pretty better.
Reuben Saltzman (37:23.681)
So how about heat pump water heaters? Do you see many of those?
Tessa Murry (37:24.243)
Yeah.
Paul Barraza (37:27.746)
I’m starting to, yeah. So what we’re saying is, hey, you know, this is coming, right? In our reports, we’ll tell people that these regulations are coming pre-wire for your next water heater, because almost all the water heaters are zero gas. The next one’s probably going to be electric. So if you run your 240-volt circuit, you’ll be ready to go. When your water heater dies on a Friday afternoon, which is when they always die, then you’ll be ready.
Reuben Saltzman (37:28.833)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (37:29.235)
Hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (37:53.794)
Man, the electricians in your area must just be salivating. mean, you’ve got everybody needs an EV charger now. You’re going to have electric water heaters. You’re going to be switching furnaces over to heat pumps. And with all of that comes your 100 amp service isn’t going to cut it anymore. Now you need a 200 amp service. I mean, there is a lot of work for electricians out there.
Tessa Murry (37:57.865)
Thank
Paul Barraza (38:17.678)
Yeah, I think it’s interesting. You think that it would be as kind of a slam dunk, but a lot of the trade work has been segregated, right? So the plumbers are putting the water here and they don’t want anything to do with electrical. And you’re like, just learn to put in a 30-amp circuit and you’re going to make a lot of money, but they seem to be very resistant to that.
Tessa Murry (38:34.921)
So you need a plumber and electrician. Yep.
Reuben Saltzman (38:34.977)
Well, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. We got the same thing here.
Tessa Murry (38:40.019)
You know, was going back to the, yeah, going back to the crawl spaces, I was just thinking, it’s very interesting. The way that you described most of these crawl spaces are just kind of, vented, they’re open to the outdoors, and you’ve got a furnace down there, and I’m assuming all the duct work that’s distributing that air to all the different rooms. And as you know, most duct work is not perfectly air sealed or air tight. There’s a lot of joints and connections. And so,
You know, I’m just imagining there’s just a lot of interchange between outside air and inside air with your houses, probably. Like there’s a lot of outside air being pulled in or drawn in, depending on where the duct leakage is happening. But just thinking about wildfires and smoke and all that must be a challenge to really try and control the air quality in those houses.
Paul Barraza (39:35.17)
Yeah. And it’s funny, a lot of times we had the fires that were pretty bad a few years back. You know, people were stuffing things in their chimneys because they didn’t have a damper. They didn’t have any way to seal it and all this smoke and ash. And so it was like coming down the chimney, not up the chimney. So it’s pretty wild, right? I think they, you know, people should have a forest air system that could have a filter on it. So when we basically, they help you to close all the doors and windows and the wildfire comes.
Reuben Saltzman (39:51.649)
Sure.
Paul Barraza (40:04.942)
the smoke comes in, you can have a way to filter it, put it in a MERV 13 or better filter. So that’s another motivation to, know, because there’s heat pumps that have the heads on the inside that don’t really filter the air. So people, they’re making a choice between the ducted system or a non-ducted system. think a lot of people are opting for the ducted so they have ability to control the air, like the quality of the air and filter it.
Tessa Murry (40:06.697)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (40:10.193)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (40:18.331)
Right.
Tessa Murry (40:29.833)
Yeah. Well, even if you’ve got a filter, if you’re lucky enough to have a furnace with ductwork so you can have a filter and have that way of cleaning the air, if you have an open crawl space and unsealed ductwork, you’re still going to be pulling in potentially pollutants. Unless you seal off that crawl space and encapsulate it and bring that ductwork inside the building envelope or you duct seal
all the doctor work with like aeroseal or something like that. That would be, think, an ongoing issue too.
Paul Barraza (41:06.124)
Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting. think the, it doesn’t seem to be an issue for the crawl space as far as the smoke getting in and like getting into the house. It’s usually our old windows that are like, you know, the low hanging fruit. have old double hung windows that they rattle when you raise them up and they’re right when they go down. you know, God forbid we have a double pane window. and so it’s the bigger things that are causing the problems. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (41:16.233)
Okay. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (41:21.54)
Okay.
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (41:29.637)
man.
Reuben Saltzman (41:35.32)
You know, I got a question for you talking about, you know, the wildfires and the smoke. And earlier this year on the podcast, I was talking about how we were getting some air quality alerts in Minnesota. We’re getting a lot of them where I mean, it was just hazy outside, just gray and dark from all these wildfires that we got coming from Canada and whatever. I’ll blame them. I don’t know. Maybe it was Minnesota. But, um, and but I never the thought never even occurred to me to
Tessa Murry (41:36.039)
Wow.
Paul Barraza (41:47.552)
yeah.
Paul Barraza (41:56.238)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (42:03.521)
put in a really high efficiency filter like a Merv 13 or something on my furnace and just keep it running. Is that actually effective? It never even crossed my mind.
Paul Barraza (42:14.03)
Yeah. Yeah. As long as it’s 13, it’s kind of a threshold for the 2.5 particulate that you need for wildfire smoke. And then we, for our house, we put in a Merv 16, just because I’m a house geek and wanted to one up everyone else. But also it does trap viruses and other things. if you, in the age of COVID, you’re like, well, that might be kind of nice if we had people over. Someone’s like hacking up a lot to have that ability. you know.
Reuben Saltzman (42:20.989)
Interesting. Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (42:26.56)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (42:30.357)
Yeah, yeah, of course.
Tessa Murry (42:36.989)
Yeah. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (42:40.47)
Mmm.
Paul Barraza (42:42.03)
If you have a one inch filter though, putting in a MERV 13 is probably going to reduce the flow too much, right? So you have to make sure the filter housing is thick enough that it can handle the airflow. But if you’re just running for the fan only, not heating or cooling, guess the flow doesn’t matter.
Tessa Murry (42:53.862)
I was just going to
Yeah. That’s true. Just to circulate the air. Yeah, without heating. You know, I was just going to say, Ruben, that’s a good question. And I think about just all the testing that you can do on a furnace to make sure that it’s working efficiently and the fan is working at optimal speed and the supplies and returns are balanced so that don’t have, you know, the pressures aren’t off. there’s, mean, who does these tests?
Reuben Saltzman (42:57.461)
Yeah, yeah, then you’re just using it as a filter and that’s it.
Tessa Murry (43:25.609)
not very many HVAC contractors out there do that, but it can really help prolong the life of furnace and improve comfort in the house. But there are so many furnaces out there that don’t work properly or like don’t have enough return air or there’s not enough supply air or you know, the fan hasn’t been adjusted properly or the filter is, you know, restricting the airflow too much. So you have inadequate, you know, temporize and stuff like that. But
In general, yeah, like a high-mer filter seems like a good thing, but I could see how it could also mess things up if it really does restrict your airflow a lot and you’re using your furnace for heating on a regular basis.
Reuben Saltzman (44:04.279)
Sure, yeah, okay.
Paul Barraza (44:06.574)
Yeah. mean, one thing we’re recommending is, getting a manual J when people are replacing their furnaces or whatever heating system they have, because the contractors are just doing the rule of thumb. I threw one of these and it worked last time. Didn’t get a call back. But also getting the manual D for duct design and manual S for selection. So the ducks are a total mess. I mean, they’re in the crawl space, they’re sagging, the rats are living in them. actually getting the duct.
Tessa Murry (44:06.953)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (44:20.125)
Yep.
Tessa Murry (44:25.981)
Yeah.
Paul Barraza (44:35.374)
Um, sizing correct. And as far as like you starting off with a bigger trunk and narrowing down as you go farther out, makes a huge difference in like how it performs. But also the comfort of it, like you’re not getting one room that’s like blowing a hundred miles an hour and the other rooms that are not getting enough. Right. So we get a lot of complaints as you know, just talking to people like, I hate forestry. I would never have forestry in a whole, well, why? You know, well, it’s just loud. It’s blows in my face. You know, with one room, you know, all these things are basically a symptom, not of
enforce their system is a symptom of bad duct installation or design.
Tessa Murry (45:07.325)
Yeah. A performance issue, you would say. Yeah. Very interesting.
Reuben Saltzman (45:07.543)
Sure.
Paul Barraza (45:11.35)
Yeah. And doing my own house, I realized how much actually is involved in that. And I’m realizing why the contractors aren’t doing it because it’s a.
Tessa Murry (45:19.673)
Yes. Well, and the reason I’m thinking about that is because I’m kind of working with the Energy Conservatory a little bit these days. And that’s what this organization, they’re based out of the Twin Cities, does is they create diagnostic testing equipment for home performance. And so they are in this realm of making blower doors and duct blasters and creating apps and pressure gauges to help contractors out there measure these things and improve the efficiency and comfort for HVAC systems.
So there’s a long way to go in the industry though. I think we can all agree. I know we probably need to wrap up this podcast soon, Ruben, but one more just general question for Paul. Is there anything that we have not asked, any questions we have not asked you that we should have or anything, any topics that you want to talk about?
as a home inspector or with your houses, their problems that you see that you think would be good to include on this podcast that we haven’t touched on yet.
Paul Barraza (46:23.2)
You know, one thing that’s very, I guess there’s two things, but one thing that was particular to this area is we have a lot of stucco. In the twenties it was very popular to do stucco houses with a parapet. So you have, you know, what I call a bathtub roof. get the, you know, the drain gets clogged and have a bathtub on your roof. So for many years, the pests, so there’s a structural pest control operator who has a separate license who would come out and do a pest inspection.
Reuben Saltzman (46:38.059)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (46:38.537)
you
Paul Barraza (46:49.038)
and they would often do test holes because you could look at the stucco, it looks totally fine, there’s no signs of damage on the inside. You would start probing, drill holes, start probing in the stucco and it’s totally shot. mean, like basically your wall is just stucco and there’s not much wood left. yeah, otherwise old three-coat stucco is pretty darn tough. It’s got a lot of times a wire mesh in there, so it’s actually doing okay. But so it’s important to see like a stucco house and not just…
Reuben Saltzman (47:04.151)
structural stucco. Yes.
Tessa Murry (47:06.301)
Yeah.
Paul Barraza (47:18.136)
presume that what you’re seeing on the outside is what’s on the inside. So recently they made a change where they felt like the Pest Inspectors were kind of like fishing for work by recommending testiles, even though like it was a valuable service because they’re actually seeing what’s going on behind the wall. So we even as home inspectors, we’ve been trying to help the industry out saying like we have a stucco, barefoot house, like it’s important to get testile openings.
So we’re kind of letting the clients know this is something that’s important to go to do. They might do test holes and find zero. They might do test holes and find $50,000 in damage. I mean, it could go either way. So it’s important to know. And then we’re trying to inform the public so that the test guys aren’t being labeled as the bad guys. And as California inspector, there’s actually a pool inspection law that passed a few years back. And that’s been kind of a big deal.
Tessa Murry (47:58.235)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (48:04.939)
Sure. That’s good.
Tessa Murry (48:06.012)
Bye.
Paul Barraza (48:14.766)
Because before, we don’t actually inspect pools. We don’t have many pools. So we could just say, we’re not inspecting that. But this law came in basically as like an anti-drowning prevention thing where they have to categorize, you have these seven pool drowning prevention measures and if they’re installed properly. But the original law was written in a way that was impossible to follow. Like you have to determine if it meets all the parts of an ASTM standard that we don’t have access to. And it was maybe well intentioned, but poorly.
executed. A lot of things are. But if you’re in California, you can’t just ignore a pool. And now because of the state law, you have to talk about these different grounding prevention measures. If there’s less than two, you have to put the certain verbiage in the reports. So I’m sure if you’re in California and you’re listening, you’ve probably already done that. But if you’re not, you’re going to be in trouble soon. So make sure you’re talking about the things, the way the law is written.
Reuben Saltzman (48:45.771)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (48:46.705)
you.
Tessa Murry (49:10.422)
goodness.
Paul Barraza (49:13.166)
You have to kind of craft your language a certain way. We’re never, of course, saying it meets an ACM standard because that’s not our job. we were not like balance testing, like mesh to see how much electricity it has and things like that. And with earthquakes, we have lot of problems with chimneys. So chimneys like to fall over. And we have that same air management quality district that is going to be reducing the amount of knocks in the air. It’s also going to say it’s
Tessa Murry (49:28.635)
Thank you.
Paul Barraza (49:42.572)
You can’t burn wood in the in winter because of the particulate matter getting in the air and causing health effects. So as I think in this area, most inspectors basically are saying we don’t like chimneys and they should be removed in this area. They’re all brick and mortar and they’re heavy and they’re poorly attached to the house. Even if you did try to attach to the house, it probably just damaged the house more if you, you did that.
Reuben Saltzman (49:43.799)
Mmm.
Reuben Saltzman (49:48.097)
Bye.
Tessa Murry (49:50.546)
Wow.
Tessa Murry (49:55.355)
Yeah. Wow.
Tessa Murry (50:02.599)
You
Tessa Murry (50:06.952)
They’re just a giant liability.
Reuben Saltzman (50:08.864)
Yeah.
Paul Barraza (50:09.486)
Yeah, and people don’t use them that much, right? I mean, it’s a nice idea. I mean, you could maybe take down the chimney and keep the fireplace just for aesthetics. But having this big, heavy masonry structure looming over your head is probably not a good idea. So we do talk about that probably more than other parts of the world.
Tessa Murry (50:12.211)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (50:25.205)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (50:25.619)
Wow. Well, and yeah, with gas going away too and electrification happening, what, I mean, why would you even have a firebox where you could put a gas insert in, guess?
Paul Barraza (50:38.638)
Yeah, I mean, think the laws are kind of made for water heating and heating. They’re basically making a transition. It’s notable that they’re not trying to ban gas ranges because that’s where people are most kind of passionate about having gas. Right. And if you have a percentage of pollution, there’s not as much coming from ranges as most of other ones. But, you know, they’re sidestepping the hot button political issues so that people don’t react and they can still have their gas range.
Reuben Saltzman (50:59.937)
Pretty minor, yeah.
Tessa Murry (51:06.503)
Wow.
Paul Barraza (51:08.62)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (51:08.839)
Well, I’m just thinking, Paul, you’ve got your work cut out for you out there in California. mean, I can see if, you know, home inspecting is a whole different ballpark, feel like compared to Minnesota. We have it easy here. We don’t have to do the mandatory pool things. We don’t have earthquakes we need to be thinking about. We don’t have wildfires. Yeah. You have a little…
Reuben Saltzman (51:29.227)
The energy things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We would not be able to easily just swap places. Yeah.
Paul Barraza (51:33.046)
I’ll be relaxing.
Tessa Murry (51:37.114)
No.
Paul Barraza (51:37.761)
Yeah, I mean, it does keep it interesting. I’ll give it that, right? if it is expecting the same house every day, you got to admit it’d probably be a little boring after a while. But when you see 100-year-old houses that could have all these little Easter eggs kind of here and there, you might see random things like transite roofing once every 10 years or whatever it is. It helps keep it busy and keeps it interesting. I think I’d rather have that than, you know.
Tessa Murry (51:58.793)
Asbestos, yeah.
Paul Barraza (52:06.606)
Just doing a track tone.
Reuben Saltzman (52:08.044)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (52:09.841)
So you’re up for the challenge if you’re a home inspector in California.
Paul Barraza (52:13.484)
Hopefully.
Reuben Saltzman (52:15.297)
Well, Paul, if people want to reach out to you, they got other questions about this. What throughout your business name website where people can find you.
Paul Barraza (52:24.078)
The business name is JMC inspections. So that was named after the founder and I took it over for him many years ago and JMC inspections.com. You just go to our website. If you have questions for me, feel free to just email me directly. It’s paul at jmc inspections.com. The business phone number is 510-525-7173. Of you can probably just find that at Google, but I don’t mind if you want to reach out and have questions about different things about inspecting California.
Reuben Saltzman (52:30.464)
Okay.
Paul Barraza (52:52.46)
you if you want to debate some random topic, mean, whatever it is, I’m all in. Even with clients, I tell them, hey, if you have a question in five years, just email me. And no one does it. I’m like, I’m trying to get these people to email me if you have problems with contractors or whatever. I’m like, I know, I’m serious. And the people that do, like, answered all my questions. I’m like, well, I can answer their questions, but I also get to learn what they’re going through. And that helps me be a better inspector.
Reuben Saltzman (53:06.283)
Yes.
Tessa Murry (53:11.485)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (53:19.797)
Love it, love it.
Tessa Murry (53:20.507)
Yeah, yeah, great. Thank you so much, Paul, for coming on the show today. It’s been great having you on and thanks for answering all of our questions.
Reuben Saltzman (53:29.676)
Yeah, appreciate it, And for the listeners, if you got any questions for us, you’re welcome to reach out. You can contact us by emailing us. It’s podcast at StructureTech.com and we will catch you next time. Take care.
Paul Barraza (53:30.04)
You know, thanks for having me.