To watch a video version of this podcast, click here: https://youtu.be/-8l0ZgYchPs
In this episode, Ruben and Tessa dive into common homeowner misconceptions, from the importance of home inspections on new builds to the realities of gutter guards and the complexities of HVAC sizing. Whether you’re a homeowner, buyer, or just love home improvement, this conversation provides valuable, real-world insights.
Takeaways
The myth that new construction homes don’t need inspections and why they should be inspected thoroughly
The truth about condo inspections and electrical panel issues like FPE hazards
Why size matters in HVAC systems and the pitfalls of upsizing thermostats
The reality of backdrafting water heaters being a building science problem rather than a faulty unit
The misconception that bedrooms need closets and the real minimum requirements
Why fans don’t cool rooms but provide comfort through air movement
The myth that gutter guards are maintenance-free and the importance of regular cleaning
Clarifying what a “red tagged” furnace truly means and safety considerations
The importance of proper egress and room size minimums in bedrooms
Chapters
00:00 – Welcome and episode overview
02:31 – How Ruben’s fitness routine is optimized with a Whoop tracker
10:07 – Sharing a DIY garage heater installation story
13:15 – Common pitfalls in venting a garage heater, venting options, and troubleshooting
23:30 – Insights into condo inspections, electrical hazards, and building components
34:11 – How fans work and their role in indoor comfort
36:43 – Energy use comparison: fans vs. LED lights
38:09 – Gutter guard realities and maintenance needs
42:39 – Understanding what “red tagged” furnaces mean in home safety
44:13 – Building science behind water heater backdrafting issues
52:08 – Clarifying that bedrooms don’t require closets, just minimum size and egress
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 (00:01.162)
Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. Tessa, we have got a power packed podcast today. We got all kinds of stuff to talk about. But first, how you doing?
Tessa Murry (00:13.788)
Good. I I’m doing well. I’m excited. It’s June now. it Reuben, you just had a birthday. Happy belated birthday to you.
Reuben (00:17.506)
Yes.
Reuben (00:21.312)
Yes. Well thank you. Yes. I just turned one year older on just a few days ago. Yes. No, I’m I’m forty eight. That’s okay. I like to brag about it because you know, like when I go to the gym and I’m competing against people who are half my age, I like to talk about it. Yeah. Yeah. a hundred percent. yeah, absolutely.
Tessa Murry (00:41.218)
yeah, you’re crushing them, I’m sure. You’re crushing Are you in the best shape of your life, would you say?
Reuben (00:50.178)
Yeah, I I feel the best that I’ve ever felt. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (00:54.246)
That’s amazing. I you know, I you’ve you’ve kind of been on a h health journey since I’ve known you and you’ve always been a healthy eater and you’ve always exercised and you’ve always been kind of tweaking your routines, trying to optimize, you know, everything. And I do you feel like you haven’t finally dialed in like what to eat, when to eat, how much sleep you need, w how you exercise?
Reuben (01:04.995)
Yeah.
Reuben (01:14.422)
You know, I kinda I really feel like I’ve got it more dialed in right now than I ever have. I you know, I I’ve talked about it in the past where I wear this fitness tracker called a whoop. And it’s I I wear it on my arm and it’s it’s kinda Yeah, it’s it’s it’s kinda like a Fitbit, but it doesn’t have a screen or any of that. It just talks to your phone. And the biggest thing I get out of it is it’s it’s always kind of reminding me like, okay, you had a higher
Tessa Murry (01:28.473)
wow. I didn’t realize there was a whole band across your arm. That’s serious.
Reuben (01:43.943)
strain day. You know, you worked harder than usual, so you need to go to bed earlier. And it’s always telling me when to go to bed. And I I used to like just say, okay, I go to bed at this time and I get up at this time. But now I really follow the advice of this thing. And I will go to bed earlier than usual if it tells me to. And I
Tessa Murry (01:50.447)
Really?
My gosh.
Tessa Murry (02:06.733)
You’re telling me you go to bed at like eight o’clock now?
Reuben (02:10.702)
Usually not eight, but you know, it it usually ends up being sometime between eight thirty and eight forty five is when I hit the light. And just getting close to eight hours of sleep, I mean, whatever my whoop is telling me I need, it really makes a big difference. So I I that’s that’s
Tessa Murry (02:18.789)
Wow. Yeah.
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (02:28.631)
Does. So do so does it is it based on like your physical activity level? Like you had a hard, stressful day like based on your heart rate, or is it like can it tell that you’ve had a stressful day like in the office and you’re being mostly Really?
Reuben (02:41.24)
That too. Yeah. Yeah. It monitors both your stress and your physical exertion. And and of course, it remembers how much you slept last night. And it’s like if you’ve got sleep debt, like you know, you didn’t get enough sleep last night, it’ll be encouraging you to go to bed earlier tonight. all those things. It’s just having the prompts really helps. So sleep. Sleep, diet, exercise. It’s amazing what those things will do for you.
Tessa Murry (02:46.873)
Wow.
Tessa Murry (02:53.175)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (03:05.519)
Well
Tessa Murry (03:10.873)
You know, Reuben, I I didn’t know if I was gonna say anything, but it feels like the moment I was gonna say we have a little announcement. That whoop would be yelling at me to go to sleep probably at four o’clock in the afternoon because I’m not sleeping at all these days. I have insomnia. I I’m getting like three or four hours of sleep a night. I can’t sleep. so I’m actually I’m twenty four weeks pregnant and
Reuben (03:25.612)
Why aren’t you sleeping, Tessa?
Reuben (03:37.43)
Woohoo hoo
Tessa Murry (03:39.484)
And I’ll tell you, you know, I I know it’s only gonna get worse from here on out. So I’m not complaining. I’m just stating it is so hard for me to get sleep. I don’t know if it’s the hormones. There’s like I don’t know. It’s obviously physically getting a little bit uncomfortable. You have to sleep on one in one position the whole night. You have to pee two hours. But, you know, I just it’s training, I think, for when the baby comes. But yeah, the the whoop would be going nuts, I think, looking at my sleep patterns, right?
Reuben (03:55.636)
yeah.
Reuben (04:01.965)
Yes.
Reuben (04:07.598)
I’m sure it would. It would not be happy with you at all. Yeah. Lots of little dings and alarms. But Tessa, that’s that’s so excited. I’ve known for a little while here, but I so excited that you’re sharing it.
Tessa Murry (04:11.639)
No, no.
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (04:18.481)
Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, it’s it’s very exciting news. We’re very excited and it’s gonna be a little boy and he’s due at the end of September. Actually a day away from my dad’s birthday, September twenty fourth. So we’ll see. We’ll see what happens.
Reuben (04:38.422)
Okay, all right. And we may even have to take like a week off of the podcast or something. No, just kidding. Yeah, there I there will surely be a little hiatus. You know, I was thinking maybe maybe I could maybe I could get Eric, maybe I could twist his arm and do a few podcasts with him. Yeah. Yeah, maybe we’ll get him to fill in for you for a little bit. But yeah, so exciting. do do we have a name yet?
Tessa Murry (04:43.407)
Maybe a week, you know.
Tessa Murry (04:50.523)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (04:54.339)
Yes. That’s a great idea. That’s a great idea.
Tessa Murry (05:01.327)
Yeah.
Perfect.
You know we do. I might as well I might as well just say it. Okay. Callum. C A yeah, C A L U is what we decided on.
Reuben (05:09.016)
Okay.
Reuben (05:13.848)
How
Reuben (05:17.366)
Okay. Okay. I don’t think I’ve ever met a Callum. Where’d you find that name?
Tessa Murry (05:22.647)
It was the most random thing. I found it online when I was like looking searching for baby boy names and I I like I couldn’t find a name that I that I liked that Andrew also liked you know and and we agreed on and that popped out to me and it was the first one I was like, ooh, I really like that. And I told Andrew about it and he’s like, Yeah, I like that too. And and it it I like the meaning of it too. It it’s a old Scottish name and it means peace.
And dove and dove is a symbol of it, especially in ancient like well in Christianity. And after I found this name, I went out for a hike and I was like kind of contemplating should I it like is this a good name? And I kept hearing these morning doves, like nonstop, and I hadn’t heard them before. Like I there’s not a lot of them down here in Florida where I live. And I was like, my gosh, that’s they’re going nuts. And I was my gosh, they’re morning doves. The name the name means doves. So I I took that as a sign.
So we’re sticking to it. Yep. We’re sticking to it.
Reuben (06:22.367)
yeah, yeah, for sure. You have to. Love it. Love it. Really exciting, Tess.
Tessa Murry (06:28.995)
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. We’re very excited.
Reuben (06:30.562)
Yeah. Yeah. all right. So you’re you’re sleeping terribly. We’ve got a name picked out. Due date is gonna be somewhere around September.
Tessa Murry (06:36.843)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (06:43.489)
Yes, late September. Mm-hmm. Yep. So I’m gonna be very pregnant when it’s like 110 degrees down here. So I’m looking forward to that. It’s even worse. Yeah, it’s even worse. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much. Yes. Well, okay. So that got us super sidetracked. I know you have a special show planned for us today.
Reuben (06:45.206)
Late September. Okay. All right.
Reuben (06:52.558)
Yeah. So now every time you’re talking about how hot it is, it’s like it’s extra hot for you. Yeah, yeah. We can we can give you some extra sympathy. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (07:13.325)
what what are we getting into? Or you had a couple other things you wanted to hit before we get we dive in.
Reuben (07:16.044)
Okay. Well, yeah, you know, I I thought today’s topic, we’re gonna do homeowner myths that refuse to die. But before we go over a few of these myths, I thought I just wanted to close the loop on something. Last podcast, you and Eric and I were talking about well, I I had mentioned that I was installing a garage heater. And I thought I’d just share a couple of little things.
Tessa Murry (07:41.636)
Yes.
Reuben (07:45.635)
That I I did, or little piece of pieces of advice for people doing this. Number one was for the gas piping, I think I mentioned on the last show, I did all black pipe, all hard pipe. It was a pain in the butt. It’s way more work to do it that way, but I feel good about it because it it runs along the wall in the garage, and it’s like there ain’t nothing I can do that’s gonna damage this piping. I mean, the garage is a good place where you could accidentally hit your pipe or
Tessa Murry (07:58.746)
Yeah.
Reuben (08:15.106)
Do something to it, but just knowing that it’s all hard black pipe, I don’t need to worry about any physical damage. Mm putting it in place was hairy. I told you I was thinking about renting a lift. I did not. I ended up I I ended up getting this whole ladder rig set up. I used like three or four different ladders, and I had a two by twelve plank going from one ladder to some racking in my garage.
Tessa Murry (08:15.387)
For sure.
Tessa Murry (08:29.377)
Yeah.
Reuben (08:44.96)
At exactly the right height, and we were me we were able to lift it and set it on this plank so it was about a half inch away from the ceiling with the brackets installed. And then I was able to fasten the brackets to the ceiling, just kind of suck it up into place, and it all worked fine, but it was it was a little hairy. I mean, I thought that thing was gonna fall, and if it did, it’s like I would have broken it. but it worked.
Tessa Murry (08:47.566)
my gosh.
Tessa Murry (09:00.739)
Wow, Reuben. Wow. Wow.
Tessa Murry (09:08.425)
my gosh. Ruben, would you say this is one of the most complex DIY jobs you’ve ever done? Complicated, hard, difficult, whatever. Okay.
Reuben (09:15.022)
I I’ve done a lot worse. I’ve done a lot worse. It wasn’t that bad. but it was just getting it in place was scary, I’ll say that. and then and then for the the venting, originally I was thinking I was gonna vent out the side of the house, but then it it turns out for this particular unit, it they give you the option of either doing a category one or a category three category.
Tessa Murry (09:24.49)
my gosh.
Reuben (09:43.361)
Installation on the venting. And we’ve talked about this on the podcast probably years ago, but quick refresher a category one vent is where the vent is under it’s supposed to be under negative pressure, where the exhaust gases are just going to rise up and out through gravity. And if there’s a hole in the vent, air is going to go into the vent, and you can use
Tessa Murry (09:49.678)
Yeah.
Reuben (10:11.854)
Class B venting. You know, it’s not super expensive. If it’s a category three installation, the vent is under positive pressure the whole time, and you’re not gonna have condensation in the vent. And it’s the the vent material needs to be stainless steel venting, stainless steel double wall, class three vent, and it’s hideously expensive. I mean, it costs a lot of money and
If you’re gonna vent it horizontally, it needs to be a class three vent. But they say you can you can do it vertically, and they would consider it a class one vent. So of course I chose to go vertical. So it was it was yeah, it was a lot less expensive. And at first I thought it’ll be easier to not go through the roof, but then I I was like, wait a minute, I’ve got steel siding on my house. I don’t want to cut through that. What a pain in the butt.
Tessa Murry (10:52.645)
Huh. Of course. Through your roof.
Tessa Murry (11:09.605)
Yeah.
Reuben (11:11.17)
Like I’ll get on the roof and use a jigsaw and cut a hole in that all day long. That sounds simple, but cutting through steel, I’ve never even done that before. I don’t know how to do it. And then you gotta have like some trim kit. I said, forget it. So going through the roof actually turned out to be kind of a piece of cake. So did that. And then the the last part was I got it all installed, and then I went to test it and it would not turn on.
Tessa Murry (11:20.911)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (11:30.693)
Wow. Wow.
Reuben (11:40.323)
No, I mean I had everything hooked up and I could not get it to fire up. And I was just totally stumped. I was very frustrated. I was thinking I’m gonna have to hire somebody to figure this out. I thought, you know what, let’s just take a look inside. And I open it up, open up the service panel, and I look at all the wires in the back of where the thermostat connections are, and one of the factory connection wires on the thermostat console was not connected.
Tessa Murry (11:40.897)
Tessa Murry (11:45.114)
no.
Tessa Murry (12:07.429)
Yeah. my
Reuben (12:09.41)
They didn’t connect one of the thermostat wires inside of the unit. So I I take it and I plug it in and it it fires up immediately. I’m just like, my gosh. Well how how dumb is this? But but it works now. So
Tessa Murry (12:13.445)
Came like that. It was not your fault. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (12:20.546)
Whoa.
You know what? That I was gonna say that that’s a relatively easy, quick fix. Like it could have been much worse. And just think about all the all the homeowners who would never be able to figure that out. Like you just I mean, that’s crazy.
Reuben (12:33.996)
I yeah. Yeah, I feel bad for people who can’t troubleshoot this ’cause I mean I would have paid somebody two hundred bucks to show up, connect the wire one wire. Thank you. There’s your five minute fix and they’re on their way. So yeah. nearly nearly frustrating. I mean it was frustrating for about twenty minutes and got to the bottom of it. But it works. And so now I will have a heated garage this winter. Looking forward to that. So
Tessa Murry (12:39.181)
Yeah. Exactly. Come out.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Wow.
Tessa Murry (12:54.004)
my gosh. Wow.
Tessa Murry (13:01.042)
my goodness, Ruben. Well congratulations. That was quite a project. And I am glad you you survived it. You didn’t fall off your your scaffolding.
Reuben (13:05.24)
Yeah. Yeah.
Reuben (13:11.534)
You know what I did do though, Tess? I was putting something away. I keep an angle grinder in my garage. Well, I I have all my tools like hanging up from this racking. And I hadn’t hung the angle grinder properly and I knocked it loose and it like flipped and came down, got me in the eye. And I had if we had done the podcast last week, you would have seen it. I had a I I I was walking around with a black eye for about a week.
Tessa Murry (13:18.097)
Uh-huh.
Okay. Yeah.
Reuben (13:41.197)
Mean I mean it it cut it. It was bleeding like crazy. I mean, you know, when you get hit in the head it bleeds. but didn’t didn’t end up needing stitches and it’s it’s all pretty okay. I mean, even if I lean in, you can you might be able to see a little something, but it’s it’s pretty much that. So yeah. Good. Good.
Tessa Murry (13:45.203)
- Yeah.
Tessa Murry (13:53.21)
Yeah, I can’t even Ruben. You Yeah. No, nothing. I can’t see anything. Well, you know, that’s I guess it it could have been worse coming out of this project. the angle anger got you got you on the way down, but
Reuben (14:03.446)
Could have been worse. Yeah. Yeah. One inch over. Yeah. Yep. All right. So had to had to close the loop on that little project. And then I had a fun little video to share with you. Jim had shared this video with me, and I thought we could get a good laugh about it. And we’ll kind of I’ll I’ll try to narrate what’s going on as I’m sharing it here. Let me let me see. I’ll share the video. Where is my button?
Tessa Murry (14:11.439)
Well, okay.
Reuben (14:33.208)
There’s the share button. Can you see it? Okay. All right.
Tessa Murry (14:34.629)
Button yes. I’m looking at a the side of a house. and there’s a yeah, okay, there’s a downspout that doesn’t have an extension on it, and it’s there’s a bunch of brown muddy water coming out the end of it and there’s a pool of water next to the foundation, the house. Okay. There’s a guy that’s putting in some gravel.
Reuben (14:40.492)
Yeah, you narrate.
Reuben (14:53.804)
Yes. And
Tessa Murry (14:59.993)
at the base of this downspout and then he put some mulch over it. Now he’s putting some nice rocks and he’s putting some pretty flowers. Well that looks beautiful. Okay, now it’s like a little it’s like like a little water feature in this person’s yard, having this little stream running through the peaceful rock and flower setting here. Okay. Nice. Yeah, that’s nice.
Reuben (15:14.35)
Yeah.
Reuben (15:19.596)
Yeah, isn’t that nice? No. But let’s just stop and ask ourselves What did we achieve?
Tessa Murry (15:32.081)
Beauty, Ruben. We achieved beauty.
Reuben (15:35.426)
We can cheap beauty but the water is still soaking at the corner of the foundation. We have done all this work and we have not solved any problems here. I just I found this hilarious.
Tessa Murry (15:47.826)
The you know, that might work for like people that don’t have basements, you know, that want to make it look pretty. But you know, in a place where we have basements and you want to get that water away, you’re right, that would be completely worthless. that’s good. That’s good.
Reuben (15:54.904)
Sure, sure.
Reuben (16:04.462)
Completely worthless, yes. But yeah, just had to share that with you. See if you were as angry as I was. no, I’m not angry. I just thought it was funny. Okay, good stuff. So I know, I know exactly. All right, so today we got we got some homeowner myths that refuse to die. I came up with a list of ten or eleven of them, and I thought we could just touch on each one of these.
Tessa Murry (16:15.491)
Never been so angry at nice landscaping before in my life. I’m outraged. Shh. That’s good.
Tessa Murry (16:31.161)
Yeah.
Reuben (16:34.381)
Sound good?
Tessa Murry (16:35.631)
That sounds good. Is and can I just ask, is this list based on you know, e emails you get from people, conversations you have with clients, what you hear about on the street? Like how did you make this list up? Okay.
Reuben (16:48.542)
all of those things. It’s just, it’s all the stuff that came to me off the top of my head. I’ve blogged about some of these things. In fact, I’ve probably I’ve probably blogged about all of this and and we’ve surely talked about a bunch of this in our podcast. So it’s not going to be a hundred percent new content, but it’s a nice theme.
Tessa Murry (16:54.266)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (17:00.345)
Think you have.
Yeah. Yes.
Tessa Murry (17:10.255)
I’m ready to dig into it, Ruben. Let’s do it.
Reuben (17:11.616)
Okay. All right. So number one is new construction homes don’t need home inspections. We’ve talked about this once or twice on the podcast. Yeah. There’s just a ridiculous amount of stuff that can go wrong on a new home. It’s humans building the house. You got a building official who’s gonna come through. They have a very limited amount of time. There’s no such thing.
Tessa Murry (17:21.987)
We have for sure. Yes. Yes, we have.
Tessa Murry (17:37.572)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben (17:39.282)
as an attic insulation inspection on new construction. There there’s so much that can go wrong. So
Tessa Murry (17:45.211)
Sure, I can.
Yes. You’ve got a whole don’t you have a compilation of photos of new construction defects too somewhere, maybe in a past blog?
Reuben (17:56.655)
I I blog about this just about every year. I put together a compilation of what what we found on new construction over the past year, just to really hammer home that point. Yep.
Tessa Murry (18:00.066)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (18:07.449)
And you know, Reuben, I will add to that. I I think because of the current climate we’re in right now, and you know, we’ve we’ve we’ve talked about this before, just lack of skilled labor out there right now in general in like any trade. But I think it’s only gotten worse this year. so who knows who’s building your house right now if you’re getting a new construction. So definitely, definitely get a home inspection if you’re buying a new house here. Yeah.
Reuben (18:28.098)
Yes. Yes.
Reuben (18:35.224)
Yep. Yep. And and the next one is the same thing for condos. And I I bring this up because I I talk to so many people who live in condos and you know they’ll be talking to me about this went wrong, blah blah blah blah blah and and they’ll say, Well, you know, did did you did you get an inspection when you bought no no we didn’t get an inspection because it’s just a condo. And I hear so many people say that and I just i I I I don’t get it.
Tessa Murry (18:58.982)
Yep.
Reuben (19:05.614)
Condos have so much in common with a single family home. I mean, you have all the interior components. You you have walls, ceilings, doors, floors, windows, you have all the plumbing components, all of the plumbing fixtures, you have water distribution piping, vents, drains, you have all the electrical. Every condo has its own electric panel. and I mean
Tessa Murry (19:11.299)
Yes.
Tessa Murry (19:32.483)
Yeah. Yep.
Reuben (19:34.668)
You know what’s an interesting statistic? One of the one of the bad electric panels that we regularly come across. What what’s the one you think of right away when I say that?
Tessa Murry (19:44.613)
Wanna say federal Federal Pacific electric F P panels.
Reuben (19:46.925)
Yeah. Yeah. Federal Pacific Electric. I had done a like a little research on the last one hundred FPE panels that we found doing home inspections. And out of those 100, 40 of them were at condos. But condos only make up five percent of our home inspections.
Tessa Murry (20:09.039)
Wow. Wow.
Tessa Murry (20:16.569)
Mm-hmm. Nice. Yikes.
Reuben (20:19.096)
So we have a disproportionately high number of FPE panels, hazardous electric panels at condos. So
Tessa Murry (20:26.191)
Well well, and you know, I think it’s even more important for a home for someone who’s thinking about buying a condo to know that because if you have an FPE panel, there’s a good chance that everybody else in the building has an FPE panel. And you can’t just really go in and just, you know, replace your panel. It’s gonna involve the board, the association, getting every you know, getting everyone on the same page in the building to invest in
basically replacing the whole building’s electrical panels. And that’s a that’s a process that I wouldn’t want to have to go through if I was buying a condo. I’d rather have a single family home where I could just do it myself and hire a contractor. I wanted and get it done quick. so I I don’t know. I think that’s a that’s an important factor that I’d want to know if I was buying a condo, if that’s something I’m gonna have to deal with or not.
Reuben (20:58.126)
They could, yeah.
Reuben (21:20.632)
Yes, yes. And you know, for the stuff that doesn’t get inspected, it’s it’s the stuff outside of your unit. It’s it’s gonna be the roof and the common areas and the siding and the structure. And in some cases, it’s gonna be you might have some type of heat central heating system. but I mean there’s there’s a ton of things that are in common with every other home inspection. It looks a lot more like a single family home than it doesn’t.
Tessa Murry (21:29.734)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben (21:50.668)
So every condo should always be inspected.
Tessa Murry (21:50.897)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (21:55.768)
You know, can I ask a qu a quick clarifying question too? I you know, when I was working at Structure Tech, we would still look at some of the exterior components, especially like if there’s a balcony or a deck or, you know, a sliding door or a French door, and still inspect that. And so that’s part of a typical inspection, right? And I I know you said not the exterior components, but if it’s a homeowner, you know, owned section of that building, then you’re still looking at it, right?
Reuben (22:12.099)
Yes.
Reuben (22:23.426)
Yeah, yeah, we definitely do. And and it’s just like you said, if there’s a deck or a balcony, and just about all of them have a deck or a balcony or both, we’re gonna look at that because it definitely affects that homeowner. If that’s leaking, you got water coming in, that that’s a big deal. So we pay a lot of attention to those. Absolutely. And and also if there’s I mean, I I say we don’t look at the parking areas.
Tessa Murry (22:32.965)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (22:41.305)
Yeah. Yeah.
Reuben (22:49.314)
That’s assuming you got this huge common parking garage, but there’s a lot of condos where you have your own dedicated parking space. There’s a lot of condos where you’ve got a tuck on her garage or you have a separate building and you can enter through your own door and you have a completely isolated space that just belongs to you. If that’s the case, we’re gonna look at that too. So yeah.
Tessa Murry (22:56.526)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (23:11.459)
Yeah. Yeah. That’s good. There’s definitely value in getting a home inspection with a condo. People don’t realize that you have all the systems a single family has, just in a more compact little area.
Reuben (23:23.554)
Yes, yes, exactly. And a lot of have their own furnace and water heater and air conditioner too. It depends. Yep, yep.
Tessa Murry (23:30.32)
Yeah, heat and cooling system, all of that. Mm-hmm. And even some of them have their own attics. I lived in a condo that had its own attic and that was there was a lot going on in that attic that needed attention. So that’s an important part too. Tried to, but there’s a lot. There’s still a lot going on. In fact, this was a this was a building built in the late seventies or eight early eighties. And
Reuben (23:36.749)
Yes.
Reuben (23:44.878)
I bet. Did you fix it all?
Tessa Murry (23:58.178)
all of the attics connected from on the upper floor. So if you went into one attic, you could crawl across and get to the other attic across the building. And everybody had a B vent from their furnace and their water heater going through. And there was ductwork in the attic and all sorts of things happening up there. So if you have a a condo that has an attic access, that would be inspected by structure tag too, I’m assuming.
Reuben (24:26.104)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And you know, the the nice thing though about yours is it’s like if you needed to borrow a cup of sugar and your neighbor wasn’t home, you can just pop through the attic. No, okay. All right. You probably never did that.
Tessa Murry (24:40.298)
yeah. And if there’s a fire in your neighbor’s unit in the attic, it’ll quickly spread to yours too.
Reuben (24:45.496)
Quickly spread yours. Yeah, delightful. I gotta assume it was a sprinklered building, right?
Tessa Murry (24:51.331)
I yes, there there was a sprinkler system, which also had some problems with it and smoke alarms would go off at in the middle of the night. It it was tied somehow tied to that system. That happened like twice while I lived there. So, you know, evacuations in the middle of the night. nothing went off though, so that’s good. I mean, no sprinkler systems were activated. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Reuben (24:54.487)
Okay.
Reuben (25:00.673)
Mm.
Reuben (25:07.036)
gosh.
Reuben (25:13.186)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s good. All right. So next one is the idea that a home can pass or fail an inspection. And I see people write about this all the time. Yeah, we got an inspection, it passed inspection, or we didn’t buy it, it failed inspection. There is no official pass or fail on a home inspection. It’s we we look at each individual component and we talk about it.
Tessa Murry (25:24.154)
Okay.
Reuben (25:41.997)
You know, we say, yeah, there’s no recommended service, or hey, there’s some things that you might want to do, or there’s some safety upgrades, or this is broken, you should fix it, or this is a safety issue and you should address it. I mean, we’ll talk about all the individual components, but there is no pass or fail on a home inspection, right?
Tessa Murry (26:06.201)
You know, I yes, Ruben, and I’m glad you wrote this as, you know, a a homeowner myth that refuses to die, ’cause it it I feel like it’s something you’re always kind of trying to educate people about and you’re battling. and I I wonder, you know, where do you think that that originates from? That people think that a home inspection is past fail. Do you think it’s because all the other inspections that a house goes through, like from the city and from everything else, is always either okay, your house passed or didn’t pass and now you gotta do these things to fix it.
And they just assume that a home inspection, quote unquote, is gonna be the same thing. Yeah. Okay. Okay. It’s not. They’re different. Yeah.
Reuben (26:36.611)
Yes.
Yes, I think you’re exactly right. I was gonna say it and you you you said it first. That yeah, that’s exactly what I think it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a sliding scale for a home inspection. okay, next one, talk about this one, Tess. Big H V A C systems are better.
Tessa Murry (26:59.005)
well, you know, I think that that’s not only a homeowner myth, I think that might be a myth with some of the HVAC industry professionals themselves too, because especially down here down here in hot humid Florida, if your thermostat is not keeping up, a lot of times the HVAC contractor will come in and just put in a bigger one. Let’s just r upsize it, you know. We’ll meet the thermostat attempts that way and
Reuben (27:07.244)
I think you’re right.
Tessa Murry (27:26.937)
That is, as we all know, if you listen to this show, that is not always the solution. And you can create more problems by putting in a system that’s oversized than appropriately sized. There could be lots of reasons why your thermostat isn’t being satisfied if you’re in a in a you know a cooling climate. one thing I’ve learned, you know, a lot about recently kind of working with TEC, the energy conservatory out of Twin Cities, is that a lot of times it it’s due to duct leakage.
And if you’ve got ductwork located kind of in the exterior part of the house or in a outside the the conditioned living space and that ductwork is leaking, you are actually pushing out that cold conditioned air that you want in your house, out of your house, and you’re sucking in hot humid air to replace it. And so it doesn’t matter how actually the larger the system you put in, the more of that air exchange is gonna be going on and you’re gonna be sucking even even more hot humid air.
And so people put in these larger systems expecting it to cool your house faster. And it doesn’t because you’ve got a duct leakage problem. and I know in our climate, it you know, in Minnesota where we’re predominantly heating, if you’ve got a system that’s oversized in the AC system and we’re not dealing with the duct leakage issue like we are, like I just previously mentioned, then you you know, you can have a a house that feels really cold and clammy, that AC is running, you know,
And then it it doesn’t run long enough to remove the humidity out of the air and it satisfies the thermostat quickly and you you know, you’re left with kind of a cool humid environment inside and that’s not comfortable either. So you wanna system that’s size properly and you take you know, there’s problems with the heating systems too, not being sized appropriately. So
Reuben (29:10.734)
Well and and with the with the cooling system, well, with the air conditioning systems, I should say, we call it air conditioning. We don’t call it a cooling system because it’s it its job is to do two things. Number one is cool by removing heat from the air, the other is to remove humidity from the air, remove moisture from the air. Those are the two jobs. But the only thing we can track or the only thing we do track is temperature.
Tessa Murry (29:16.143)
Yes.
Tessa Murry (29:21.241)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (29:27.825)
Yeah.
Reuben (29:40.131)
That’s what controls it all. So if we if we just go big, all we do is we remove heat very quickly without removing humidity. And you know, I was just talking to somebody the other day, and then he was he was trying to figure out he he was a general contractor, he’s working on a customer’s house, and they’ve got severely sweating ductwork. You know, it’s it’s sweating a lot, it’s dripping down, it’s staining the ceilings, and
Tessa Murry (29:40.497)
Typically. Yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (29:48.216)
Yeah. Yeah.
Reuben (30:07.47)
You know, I’m I’m thinking it’s you probably have an oversized system. It gets super cold. The ductwork gets really cold, it gets below the dew point, you get condensation, but it doesn’t run long enough to remove all that humidity from the air, and it just condenses on the outside of the ductwork, right?
Tessa Murry (30:27.441)
It that could be very, very likely, Ruben. And another thought is too maybe that ductwork is running through a space that has a connection to the outdoors, like more than it should. Is it running through a a floor cavity or something that has leaks, you know, in the rim joist maybe? And so we’ve got hot, humid air in that space that’s making that moisture issue even worse because we’ve got hot, humid air touching a a cold duct and creating condensation too. So I had a friend,
It was a couple summers ago where she called me ’cause she’s like, We have this duct that’s just there’s so much w water coming off of it. We don’t know what’s going on. And it turns out that that’s what was happening. They had it in in between their their basement and their first floor. There was an old dryer duct hole that had never gotten sealed in the rim joist. And so all this hot humid air was coming in in the summertime when they’re running their AC and was condensing on the side of this cold ductwork and it was just sweating so bad.
Reuben (31:04.152)
Mm.
Reuben (31:21.205)
sure. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (31:22.275)
So they sealed up that hole in the rim joist and the problem went away. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Could be lots of things.
Reuben (31:26.356)
Easy. Easy. Okay. All right. So so appropriately sized HVAC systems are good. Bigger is not better. another one, you you will save money by closing vents in unused rooms. What what actually happens when you do this, Tess?
Tessa Murry (31:38.875)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (31:47.386)
Mm. First thing that comes to mind, comfort issues potentially. Obviously, you’re not getting the airflow and conditioned air that you want. you can have mold issues too. Actually, I was just talking to a a client on the phone who bought a house that’s only five or six years old, and they’ve got some mold issues in their finished basement. And
Reuben (31:59.609)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (32:14.737)
one of the things they tried doing was kind of, you know, closing off some of the vents ’cause they don’t use that basement very frequently. And and so the same thing can happen, you know, it if you’ve got a let’s just say you’re living in a cold climate and you you close off those heat registers ’cause you’re like, I don’t wanna waste my money heating a space I don’t use. Okay, well now your basement’s gonna be even colder. And if you’ve got any little bit of humidity down there and, you know, surface temps that get below the dew point, you’re gonna have condensation and
potentially mold growth. So you could be creating a a moisture problem by doing that.
Reuben (32:49.784)
Yep. Yep. So leave the vents open. No, I I agree. That’s that’s the same thought I had. The the one exception to that that I do do is in my basement in the summer, I do close off the registers in the basement because it it’s already cold and I don’t need more AC down there.
Tessa Murry (32:50.809)
What were you thinking? Yeah. Okay.
Tessa Murry (33:05.901)
Yes.
Tessa Murry (33:09.667)
Yes.
Tessa Murry (33:13.325)
You know, actually that’s a good point. I’m glad you brought that up because especially in houses that have basements or you’ve got a house that’s multiple stories, you know, you’re trying to push that cold air up to the, you know, to the upper level of the house because the cold air is more dense and it will sink eventually too. So your basement’s already cooler, it’s below grade, but then when you’re blowing AC down there and all the cool air from above is sinking down there too, it just makes the d you know, that it that much more uncomfortable. So I’m with you on that. If you’ve got, you know,
you know, a cooling or forest air A C system in a house that’s got multiple levels on it, damper the the the vents in the summertime, push that cold air up to the upper levels if you can. Kinda just let gravity do its thing and and
Reuben (33:55.863)
Okay. I’m glad I didn’t get in trouble with you over that one. Good.
Tessa Murry (33:59.566)
I’ve d I’ve actually done that in houses I’ve lived in. The key is remembering to open them back up in the wintertime though, in the heating season.
Reuben (34:06.158)
I always remember when my basement is freezing in in the in the winter and I go, wait, I forgot to open these. Yeah. Yeah. This will make everything much better. it okay, along with that, cooling, indoor comfort, we’ve talked about this. Fans don’t cool rooms. I gotta say this quietly, or my wife is gonna come down here and yell at me.
Tessa Murry (34:11.131)
Yeah.
yeah. Yes. Yes.
Reuben (34:35.502)
I’ll get in trouble. But am I right test? Fans cool people. They don’t cool rooms.
Tessa Murry (34:38.417)
Yeah.
Yes, can you can you give me a high level science explanation of that?
Reuben (34:48.712)
Sure. basically when you have air hitting your skin and it increases the evaporation on your skin, that’s what cools your body. Evaporation is what cools your body. That’s why we sweat when we get hot. It’s your body’s natural air conditioning system. And as that moisture evaporates, you feel cooler. When you have a fan blowing on your skin, it evaporates faster, it cools you down.
And it’s great. But if you have a room where you close the door and there’s nothing in the room that’s going to be evaporating, you turn a fan on, you leave for an hour, the temperature is going to be the exact same as if you had left the fan off. In fact, if you had a highly calibrated instrument, you would probably raise the temperature of the room because the fan itself creates heat. You’ve got a motor that creates heat.
Tessa Murry (35:19.227)
Mm.
Tessa Murry (35:47.025)
No, no.
Reuben (35:48.61)
So you’re actually adding a small amount of heat to the room.
Tessa Murry (35:52.454)
We leave our fans on twenty-four seven, especially in our living room and our bedroom. They just they don’t go off. It I think it’s southern living. It’s just like you just want the air circulation. You want the you want the movement of the air because it just it feels, you know, especially if it’s if it’s 95 degrees out every single day or 100 degrees out. You know, you’re you’re not setting your thermostat to 72 every day. That’s ridiculous. You set it to 76, 77, 78.
And it gets kinda hot inside, you know? And so you just having that air circulation gives you a little bit of relief, I think. It makes it more bearable to be inside when you feel a little bit of a breeze versus it being stagnant and seventy eight. Now this just could be pregnant me talking, but I think
Reuben (36:35.426)
Yeah. All right. Well, Tessa, if you do it, I’ll stop giving my wife crap over it. Okay?
Tessa Murry (36:42.161)
Yeah.
Reuben (36:43.406)
But what I it just I don’t know. For me, it drives me nuts because we have our our bedroom is on the second floor and nobody is up there all day long. And I’ll come up there at the end of the day and the fans running. And it’s like what were we achieving for the last eight hours other than using electricity? It’s like people don’t think anything about leaving a light bulb. people will never leave a light bulb on. But
Tessa Murry (36:51.768)
Yeah.
The fan is on.
Reuben (37:12.332)
When you compare the energy usage of today’s modern LED light bulb versus the energy usage of a fan, I mean it’s a different world. The fan is doing work. We’re using a lot of electricity.
Tessa Murry (37:26.383)
You know, have you actually tracked that on your I know you have I know you have monitors and do you have you seen how much energy a fan uses versus like a an LED light bulb?
Reuben (37:37.007)
No, I’m just saying this based on physics. If something is actually doing work, it’s going to be using a lot more electricity. But I’ll tell you what, Tess. I I will do that for the next podcast. I’ll tell you. Because yeah, I’ve got that app on my on my home, and I can tell you what anything uses. I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you what the difference is. Yeah, we’ll check it out.
Tessa Murry (37:43.501)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (37:46.928)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (37:52.731)
Are you gonna test it?
Okay.
Tessa Murry (38:02.491)
Perfect. I’m looking forward to the data.
Reuben (38:05.454)
All right. So you didn’t jump on board with this one as much as I thought you would. That’s okay.
Tessa Murry (38:09.913)
Cause that ’cause I’m in Florida and I’m pregnant and it’s summer.
Reuben (38:12.46)
Yeah. Yeah. I I I can’t blame ya. That’s fine. okay. Next one. Gutter guards are maintenance free.
Tessa Murry (38:23.823)
What they’re not.
Reuben (38:26.83)
There’s no free lunch. There’s no such thing as a maintenance-free gutter. They all need service. It doesn’t matter how nice of a gutter guard you get, you know, the leaf-free systems or the gutter helmet, whatever. We have seen all of them clog. When you got a lot of leaves coming down on a roof, little little seeds, pine needles, all this little stuff, it will still accumulate in the valleys.
Tessa Murry (38:32.145)
And you’re crushing me. Ugh.
Reuben (38:54.572)
It’ll still pile up on top of your gutter guards. I’ve seen trees growing up out of valleys on roofs where you’ve got just copious amounts of leaves that have built up over years because people think I’ve got gutter guards, I don’t need to get up there and do anything. And you literally have trees growing up out of the roof, out of decomposing leaves. So there’s there’s no such thing as a maintenance-free gutter system.
Tessa Murry (39:23.011)
Just had a vision of the nice water feature on the side of the house by the gutter and and the nice trees growing out of roof valleys. You could make a little collage of, you know, bad landscaping. You know, question for you though. Going back to this maintenance free gutters that are actually not maintenance free, would you recommend them to homeowners? Do you think that they’re a good idea or are they just a waste of money?
Reuben (39:34.291)
I’ve I’ve got one. I’ve got one. Yes. All right.
Reuben (39:50.499)
No, I think they’re nice. And you know, if I could just snap my fingers and have some on my house, I would do it. Cause yeah, I I’ve got this tree at the front of my house and I gotta get up there with my two story extension ladder every spring and every fall, and I gotta get all this muck out of there and it’s a lot and it’s gross. And I mean it is I I don’t enjoy that at all. I get
Tessa Murry (39:57.498)
Yeah. You would?
Tessa Murry (40:10.331)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (40:17.457)
Yeah.
Reuben (40:17.592)
I get like gutter water on myself, which is just it’s like swamp water. It’s gross. You gotta take a shower when you’re done and wash your clothes. it’s it’s nasty. And if I had a gutter guard, you know, I could probably just get up there once a year and just take a broom or something and just brush it off real easily off the top, top of the stuff that hadn’t made its way over the edge of the gutter guard. It’d it’d be pretty simple, way easier than cleaning gutters.
Tessa Murry (40:20.581)
Yep. It’s gross. Yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (40:37.839)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (40:45.347)
Okay. And one l one last gutter question. Is there a certain type that you think’s the best for maintenance free?
Reuben (40:53.576)
you know, I I kinda like the helmet style, and I know there’s a a brand name out there, like gutter helmet, but but it’s also just a style where it’s it’s a big piece of metal that kind of overhangs the edge of the gutter just a little bit, and capillary action of the water pulls the water back into the gutter, but leaves and all that other stuff go over the top. Those I I I feel like those are the best ones. But
Tessa Murry (40:57.989)
Do you?
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (41:14.192)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (41:22.147)
Okay. Stuff still gets in there and you how how do you get in there to clean then?
Reuben (41:26.636)
Well, not much stuff actually gets underneath it. It’s usually stuff building up in the valleys and sitting right on top of the gutter. Yeah. Yeah. Now if you do get stuff inside there, boy, I don’t know how you clean that. That would be a huge pain in the butt. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (41:31.46)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (41:35.213)
Okay, over top of it. Okay. Okay.
Tessa Murry (41:43.021)
Yeah, I don’t either. I mean, you do you like shoot a you like stream of water with a hose through the crack to try and power wash it out? I have no idea.
Reuben (41:52.055)
Yeah, I’m picturing that or a high powered leaf blower with a small nozzle on the end, but then well how’s it how’s it get out? I yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know. Th there’s no perfect solution. They all need they all need some work. Yep.
Tessa Murry (41:57.945)
Call your wife. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (42:04.417)
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay.
Reuben (42:10.402)
okay, the next one, and it’s funny, I was just having lunch with somebody the other day, and we were talking about this. very experienced Realtor, and I was explaining this to them that a red tagged furnace doesn’t actually mean anything. When a company, a heating contractor or somebody comes out and they red tags a furna they red tag a furnace, what you have is a tag that gets affixed to the furnace and
The color is typically red, and that’s it. There’s nothing else to it. There’s no red tagged furnace database. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn’t get reported to the city. It doesn’t get put on a list of homes with red tagged furnaces. You’re not on a repair list. There’s nothing to it. It’s just a tag that is colored red that gets affixed to the furnace. Nothing else.
Tessa Murry (42:45.625)
I see what you it’s just a piece of paper stuck to a furnace. Yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (43:00.966)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (43:04.313)
Yeah. You nobody is no homeowner is forced to to take replace the furnace. No utility company is forced to turn off the gas to that furnace. It’s just a piece of paper put on that furnace to let someone know that it’s not safe to use, correct? Okay.
Reuben (43:18.028)
Right.
Right, right. At least that’s how it is in Minnesota. You get outside of Minnesota, you know, maybe somebody could email us if they have a different experience. Maybe there’s other states where they do have some type of official registry and and you you know, you have some thugs knocking on your door telling you you gotta replace your furnace. I don’t know. But in Minnesota, nothing happened.
Tessa Murry (43:24.835)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (43:42.641)
We’re here to save you and take away your furnace.
Reuben (43:46.575)
Yes, yes, exactly. All right, so that’s a red take furnace. Another one. And this is one that comes up during home inspections where we find a backdrafting water heater. And so often the next step, what people say is, okay, so we need to replace our water heater. No, no, a backdrafting furnace.
Tessa Murry (44:00.082)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (44:09.305)
Now this is an interesting take, Ruben. Explain to me why you think that way.
Reuben (44:13.462)
Okay, it’s backdrafting because it’s a building science issue. All of the conditions that cause a water heater to backdraft are happening outside of the water heater. Now, I I know where you’re going, Tessa. You’re saying if you have a backdrafting water heater, it’s a natural draft water heater. It’s atmospherically vented. The exhaust gases leave the house by rising up and out through gravity. And
For you, you’d love to replace the water heater with a power vent, one that’s got a fan on it and pushes the exhaust gases out outside outside of the house. Of course, you could fix it that way. You’re totally changing the way it vents. But in my mind, you’re really fixing it by changing the venting. But if you have an atmospherically vented water heater and it backdrafts and it’s 20 years old, you put in a brand new one.
It’s going to backdraft too. It ain’t the water heater that’s that’s causing the backdrafting. It’s everything else. It’s the vent, it’s makeup air, it’s stack effect, it’s lack of a cap, it’s a a clogged vent, it’s all these things outside of the water heater. Back me up.
Tessa Murry (45:11.791)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (45:16.974)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (45:30.149)
You know, I think we’re I think we agree. We maybe had came to different conclusions on on it, but there can be lots of factors that affect why a water heater backdrafts. I think th the most important point to all of this is if you have a water heater that’s backdrafting, you need to get it fixed somehow. You don’t want to live in a house that has a backdrafting water heater. We both agree on that. How you do that can can yes, there can be lots of ways that you address that.
Reuben (45:52.534)
Yes, yes. Violent agreement. Yes.
Tessa Murry (45:58.212)
And you hit a few on the head, Ruben, you could put in a power vent water heater. You could buy a heat pump water heater. You could put an electric water heater. You could, you know, there’s a lot of options. Or maybe it’s a a matter of adding a a larger makeup error or combustion makeup error or a combustion makeup error if you don’t have one, or playing around with different pressures in the house, which gets a little bit more tricky. especially in newer homes where, you know, they’re pretty airtight already, at least,
Reuben (46:20.845)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (46:27.129)
in the northland where we have we have we’ve worked on that for a long time. But so I think having a water heater that’s not susceptible to indoor pressures is probably the best way to go as we build tighter and tighter homes. That’s my take on it.
Reuben (46:42.488)
Yeah. Yeah. And that’s that’s about the only way we build houses today. I can’t remember the last new construction house I went in. I mean, last twenty years or so, where they had an atmospherically vented water heater. It’s all power vent or electric. That’s it.
Tessa Murry (46:55.888)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (47:02.149)
Here in Minnesota. But I you know, I’ve talked to home inspectors from other parts of the country that don’t have a lot of I think regulations or quality building going on and and they still are putting in natural draft water heaters and even in attics and sometimes not venting them out properly still. So they’re around. They’re around.
Reuben (47:21.122)
Mm. Mm.
Yep. Yep. Still a lot of those out there. Okay. Next one. We’ve talked about this on the podcast. I’m sure we have. Bedrooms don’t need closets.
Tessa Murry (47:36.785)
If we’ve talked about this, this would have been years ago, Ruben, and I should revisit that podcast because I don’t remember exactly what we covered in that, but I feel like this is a not only a homeowner myth, but it is I feel like it r it dominates the real estate industry.
Reuben (47:39.64)
Probably so.
Reuben (47:55.181)
Yes, yes. I mean, everybody, quote unquote, knows that you need to have a closet to call something a bedroom, but there’s nothing in the building code that says anything about this. And every time I challenge anyone, show me in writing where you need a closet to call something a bedroom. Nobody can ever come up with anything.
Tessa Murry (48:06.447)
Right.
Reuben (48:24.398)
There’s nothing in writing. It’s just the the biggest myth that there is in real estate.
Tessa Murry (48:31.727)
Yeah, it’s it’s everywhere. It’s it runs rampant. So that that was something I learned from you and when we were teaching the C E classes in person a w a while ago. It was part of one of the classes we were teaching and all the real estate agents would get so whipped up about that.
Reuben (48:48.14)
Yeah, yeah. And they’ll be like, no, but you do, but you you need it. Otherwise it’s not legal. What legal according to what? go to the building code. Where does it say anything about that? And and you know, if somebody does want a closet, it’s like it’s not defined. They they don’t say what it is. It could be anything. I mean, I’m seeing a stack of cube shelves behind you, Tess. Could we call that a closet?
Tessa Murry (48:56.166)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (49:00.123)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (49:14.849)
Yeah. Sure. Why not?
Reuben (49:17.43)
I mean, what if what if you removed some of the horizontal shelves and you put a hanger rod in there so you could hang clothes? Is that a closet? Well well no, you gotta have a door. Okay, put a door on. Now is it a closet? Well it needs to be attached to the wall. Okay, put a screw through it. Now is it a closet? I mean, like like if if you if you want to go down this path, you could do some really, really simple stuff to add a closet.
Tessa Murry (49:31.321)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (49:37.252)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (49:43.439)
Mm.
Tessa Murry (49:47.535)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben (49:47.778)
But the this whole idea that it’s got to be framed in and it’s got to be some certain size, it’s all 100% myth. Yeah, it has no teeth.
Tessa Murry (49:53.17)
Mm-hmm. Right. Well, so if someone’s asking, okay, well, what does matter then if a closet doesn’t define a bedroom? Okay, well, we want a certain amount of space, width and and length of a room, right? There’s minimums. There’s minimums for that. Is it seven by seven?
Reuben (50:08.098)
Yeah. What is it? Gonna test it here, do you remember?
Kind of, kind of, yeah. I mean it’s gotta be seven, at least seven feet in length, at least seven feet in width. You can’t have any dimension less than seven.
Tessa Murry (50:21.989)
Yeah. Why? With a minimum of with a yeah, with a minimum of what square footage? I can’t remember though.
Reuben (50:30.047)
yes you can. Come on. Seventy.
Tessa Murry (50:34.287)
Was it? yeah. Man, it’s been a few years since I thought of that number. Okay. Yep.
Reuben (50:35.234)
Seventy. Yeah. Seventy square feet. And so if you
So if you have one one width that’s only seven feet and the other one it would have to be ten feet. So seventy square feet of floor area. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (50:49.261)
Yep. Okay. It’s coming back to me now. And we also need some sort of designated heating source to the room or I guess yeah a way to deliver conditioned conditioned air or whatever if it’s not air, if it’s a boiler system, a radiator or something.
Reuben (51:05.592)
So yeah, something to keep it at the at the winter design temperature, measured three feet off the floor. I think in Minnesota, I think we say it needs to be capable of keeping it at at least sixty eight degrees.
Tessa Murry (51:09.827)
Yes.
Tessa Murry (51:19.375)
Now, is that required requirement still the same in a like a a cooling only climate? Like where there you don’t need a heating source?
Reuben (51:28.77)
Haven’t read their code book. I’m not sure.
Tessa Murry (51:30.714)
I don’t know. Cause there are some old houses in in, you know, southern climates that didn’t have any sort of heat or cooling system and you might have like a little space heater that you’d see every once in a while someone would plug in or whatever. You know, the house was built before air conditioning came around and they didn’t have heat, so they’d use a fireplace or whatever. so I don’t know. Well, it might vary based on where you live, but in Minnesota you need a doesn’t need heat supply or heat source for a room to be a bedroom.
And you also need some sort of proper fire, escape, rescue, egress, whatever what are we calling it these days.
Reuben (52:07.924)
the the what we call it today, I always say egress when I’m talking to clients, but if I’m talking to home inspectors, we call it an emergency escape and rescue opening. Yeah. That’s
Tessa Murry (52:12.219)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (52:18.703)
Rescue opening. Thank you. Emergency escape and rescue opening. Very technical sounding. But yes, you need a window of some sort. Some way or a d door. Some way to get out. Yeah, door could work. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yep.
Reuben (52:27.342)
It could be a door, yeah. Usually it’s gonna be a window, something you can get out of. Yep. And it’s gotta be big enough, you know. For the the current standard is needs to open at least 24 inches high, and it needs to be at least 20 inches wide. But just like the the floor area, if you just hit those two numbers, it’s not gonna be enough because you also need 5.7 square feet of openable area. So
Tessa Murry (52:56.913)
Yeah.
Reuben (52:57.078)
If you just had 24 by 20, that’s not going to get you near 5.7. So it’s it’s a fairly large opening, and that’s that’s with the window open, that’s that’s the box that you can get out of. So it’s gonna be a big box. The one asterisk there is if it’s a grade level opening, if it’s within 44 inches of the floor or 44 inches of grade at the exterior.
Tessa Murry (53:01.72)
Yeah. Okay.
Tessa Murry (53:10.874)
Yeah.
Reuben (53:24.332)
You can actually reduce that to five square feet. So little yeah, yeah, little asterisk as long as we’re talking about it. And what what else do we need to call something bedroom? You need ceiling height.
Tessa Murry (53:28.718)
I forgot that little caveat. Okay, fun fact.
Okay.
Tessa Murry (53:37.579)
Yes. Just gonna just gonna touch on that too. So what do you do if you l have a house that has like slanted ceilings upstairs? Does that impact it being a potential legal bedroom?
Reuben (53:47.277)
It could, yeah. You still need to have well the the minimum height is seven feet. And if you’ve got slant walls like you’re talking about, like a one and a half story house, you I’m gonna you need you need seven feet of height for a width of at least three and a half feet.
Tessa Murry (53:52.902)
And
Tessa Murry (53:57.465)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben (54:12.59)
Does that make any sense?
Tessa Murry (54:12.665)
Three and a half feet wide at seven feet high minimum. Okay.
Reuben (54:16.428)
Yeah, yeah. And you need to have that for what is it? I’m not gonna go into any more detail because I’d have to look at my illustration. Yeah, yeah. And I I I I believe I I believe on the slant walls you can also count that as part of your floor area all the way down to five feet.
Tessa Murry (54:25.603)
I was gonna say I’m impressed you made it this far, Ruben.
Reuben (54:44.704)
And you need to have seventy square feet still. So it it gets tricky with those yeah, with those one and a half story houses. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (54:44.783)
Yeah.
Yeah. It gets a little tricky with storing a half homes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the main thing is we don’t care about closets as home inspectors. We care about stuff about life and death and comfort and safety. So there you go. All right. Last one.
Reuben (54:58.062)
We don’t yeah, we care about all this other stuff.
Reuben (55:05.794)
Yeah, yeah. We don’t care where you put your clothes. Yeah.
And then you know what, I I think we’ll end on that one. That’s a good one to end on, because that’s that’s really the biggest myth. We we saved the biggest one for last.
Tessa Murry (55:18.353)
Perfect. There we go. That was exciting. We pissed off a lot of real estate agents. So there you go. Sorry.
Reuben (55:24.896)
Or maybe we made happy. Maybe we made happy.
Tessa Murry (55:28.399)
Hey, now you can call that room that you thought was just an office a bedroom. You’re welcome.
Reuben (55:32.756)
Exactly. Exactly. Yes. I mean, as I’m sitting here in my office, I don’t have a closet, but I mean, tell me why I can’t call this a bedroom. Give me one good reason. It’s got everything. I got a smoke alarm on the ceiling. I can get out of the windows. I I meet all the requirements. This could be another bedroom.
Tessa Murry (55:57.02)
Could be. You’re set. You know, along those lines, you know what really frustrates me? When real estate agents call a toilet in the basement a second bathroom, can they stop doing that?
Reuben (55:57.903)
Yeah. Yeah.
Reuben (56:09.686)
Like like in the middle of a utility room and there’s just like a toilet sitting all by itself and they say it’s a bathroom. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (56:15.857)
Yeah. Or it’s a a toilet that’s been put into like a corner and there’s a little sink and a door, you know, and and you know, they advertise it as a second bathroom and you’re like, it at at best it’s a half bath, okay? It’s it’s not even a full bath.
Reuben (56:30.836)
Yeah. Can we and you know there’s there’s two words there. It’s a contraction. Bathroom. Like when you have a room, I I feel like you need to have walls. And in this case we would let’s just call it a plumbing fixture. How about that? It has a plumbing fixture.
Tessa Murry (56:45.291)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (56:50.723)
Yeah. Yes. Yes. I you know, that’s like the false advertising that just gets me though. I’m like, okay, if yeah, if if you’re trying to bait me with that, like what else? What else are you not telling me about this house that’s accurate? You know? Yeah.
Reuben (57:03.19)
Yes, yes. And I I mean I I know I’ve shared it, but in at my last house I had an unfinished basement and my office was just in part of that unfinished basement. And I’d hate running up down up and down the stairs all the time. So I installed a urinal and and and a sink and a a lab. I installed both of those. I could I could do my business and I could wash my hands. And I didn’t dream
Of saying anything on the listing about it. I mean, I didn’t I did not call it a bathroom. I didn’t say there’s additional plumbing fixtures. I just we didn’t take pictures of it. There’s nothing because this is just me slamming some extra.
Tessa Murry (57:46.533)
Okay. I thought you were gonna say your agent y your agent wanted to call it a bathroom. Okay.
Reuben (57:51.83)
No, no, no, no, no, no. My agent my agent knew better. I didn’t try to tell him to call it a bathroom. Like, it’s none of this. It’s just it’s it’s a bonus. If you like it, great. If you don’t like it and you’re gonna buy my house and you’re like, hey Ruben, I don’t like this, I’ll take it out. It’ll take me a half hour. I’ll disconnect it, I’ll cap off the water lines and and you won’t need to be bothered by it. You know, it’s just it’s it’s it’s an oddity in the house. And
Tessa Murry (57:57.143)
Yeah. That’s just a bonus. We yeah, that’s just a bonus for whatever homeowner yeah.
Tessa Murry (58:16.569)
Even
Yeah. Yeah.
Reuben (58:21.344)
Apparently the the people who bought it really liked it. Or at least at least half of the couple liked it.
Tessa Murry (58:26.693)
He’s gonna say the the XY chromosomes.
Reuben (58:30.434)
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, this is a fun show. great news from you, Tessa. Callum.
Tessa Murry (58:33.457)
that’s good. Okay. Yeah. We went way Yeah. Thank you. Excited to share. so appreciate the support and I’ll keep you posted on how things go. Hopefully I can get some more sleep here in the next few months.
Reuben (58:53.622)
I hope you do too. I’m hoping so too. I’m sure it’ll be great. Yeah. All right. For our listeners, if there’s any other myths that you think of that we forgot, send us an email. We would love to hear from you. Yep. All right. Well, until next time, I am Ruben Saltzman with Structure Tech Home Inspections. We’d love hearing from you. Our email is podcast at structure tech.com.
Tessa Murry (58:57.241)
Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (59:05.529)
Mm.
Please do. Yep.
Reuben (59:22.328)
And we will catch you next time. Take care.
Tessa Murry (59:24.658)
Thanks for listening.