To watch a video version of this podcast, click here: https://youtu.be/DIzBbXZGbWo
In this episode of the Structure Talk podcast, Reuben Saltzman is joined by Eric Houseman, filling in as co-host while Tessa Murry is on maternity leave. Reuben and Eric dive into a collection of interesting and sometimes surprising home inspection findings from recent inspections.
They discuss everything from a natural-draft water heater backdrafting after a furnace replacement to a leaking shower valve hidden behind a wall, a refrigerator water line leaking into an unfinished basement, an improperly installed AFCI/GFCI breaker, sewer gas coming from an unused standpipe, and a bathtub overflow that was discovered to be leaking. They also discuss a deck with a concentrated point load improperly supported by a ledger board and why documenting defects—even when they aren’t considered urgent—is important for home inspectors.
Here’s the link to Inspector Empire Builder: https://www.iebcoaching.com/events
Takeaways
Training can’t cover every defect, so knowing what correct looks like is essential.
Natural-draft gas appliances may require specific utility room access.
Watch for what happens around a shower after extended use.
Run fixtures long enough to reveal hidden leaks.
Use different water temperatures to help identify leak sources.
High-efficiency furnaces can orphan older water heaters and cause backdrafting.
Worst-case conditions can reveal combustion and venting problems.
Infrared cameras can help detect hidden leaks and moisture.
Check inside cabinets and other hidden areas for electrical hazards.
Dry traps in unused standpipes can allow sewer gas into a home.
Small exterior openings can allow pest intrusion.
Test accessible bathtub overflows for leaks.
Filling and draining fixtures can reveal hidden problems.
Document defects even when immediate repairs aren’t needed.
Reporting defects helps protect inspectors from future claims.
Important findings should be documented, even if they’re not emergencies.
Thorough inspections require curiosity, close observation, and following clues.
Chapters
00:00 Intro & Eric Houseman Fills In as Co-Host
02:11 Inspector Empire Builder Rapid Gain Training
03:21 Eric’s Home Projects & Inspection Talk
05:07 How Often Reuben and Eric Inspect in the Field
07:01 Working Alongside Inspectors in the Field
08:43 Interesting Inspection Findings
10:27 Utility Rooms, Gas Appliances & Access Requirements
11:41 Teaching Inspectors What Correct Looks Like
13:17 Eric’s First Inspection Finding: A Hidden Shower Leak
16:15 Finding Water Leaking Behind the Shower
17:39 Why Inspectors Run Showers for Extended Periods
18:33 Testing Multiple Fixtures and Identifying Leaks
19:19 Backdrafting Water Heater
20:12 The Problem With an Orphaned Water Heater
21:05 Testing Under Worst-Case Conditions
22:33 Deciding Whether to Repair or Replace an Older Water Heater
24:04 Refrigerator Water Line Leak
25:49 Using Infrared Cameras During Inspections
27:40 Improper AFCI/GFCI Breaker Installation
30:22 Electrical Hazards Hidden Inside Cabinets
32:43 Sewer Gas From a Dry Standpipe
34:17 Exterior Opening and Pest Intrusion
35:19 Testing a Bathtub Overflow
37:06 Why Inspectors Should Test Accessible Overflows
40:00 Simulating Real-World Use During Inspections
41:28 Testing Integrated Sink Overflows
42:15 Concentrated Load on a Deck Ledger
44:39 Why Defects Should Still Be Reported
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 (00:00.768)
Welcome back to the show. We are here. I am here with my new co-host, temporary co-host, Eric Housman. Eric, how are you doing in sunny Minnesota?
Eric Houseman (00:14.009)
I love this time of year, Ruben. Absolutely love fall. Yeah. Yep. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (00:16.589)
Beautiful.
Reuben Saltzman (00:20.46)
Yeah. ha tell me about your yard. You just told me a great story about your yard before we got on the show. What’s happening right now?
Eric Houseman (00:27.397)
So yeah, so my trash pickup is Thursdays. So I get home after being out and about on Wednesday and I’m like, trash pickups tomorrow. I got a ton of leaves in my front yard because we have an ash tree in our front yard that you know we we treat where we know it’s not long for this world, but it’s healthy. It it’s doing all right compared to some in our neighborhood. And it’s already started to drop its leaves. And last night I was looking at it, I’m like, it’s about 50% done. But I was like, okay, this is great. I can keep up on this.
Might not have to use leaf bags because this one’s dropping its leaves a little early. So I mowed the front yard last night. Basically filled the lawn bin, put it out on the curb, woke up this morning, opened up the blinds in the front yard, look like I didn’t mow at all. Just front yard was yellow again.
Reuben Saltzman (01:12.654)
Yeah, yeah. Every homeowner with trees can appreciate your story, Eric. I know how that goes. so we we got Eric filling in because Tessa is on maternity leave, and we she she went on maternity leave last week, basically on her due date, and we said we’re not gonna risk having you, you know, have having to cancel at the last meeting. And
Eric Houseman (01:19.683)
Yep. Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (01:40.747)
She is a proud new mama. She she had her baby on Sunday. That that would have been September 27th. And she got to welcome Callum into this world. Six pounds, 15 ounces, 21 inches long. Huge congratulations to you, Tessa. Proud new mama. Healthy, healthy little baby. couldn’t be more happy for you. So huge congrats then. Yep.
Eric Houseman (02:07.781)
Yeah. Congrats, Chess. Congrats.
Reuben Saltzman (02:11.93)
I want to give a shout out to our show sponsors, Inspector Empire Builder IEB. Before we get too far along here, latest thing we’re talking about right now is they’ve got their rapid gain training coming up. This is happening in Houston. It’s gonna be October 15th through the 17th. It’s in-person training, it’s happening right there in person live. And it’s for people who want to get a better handle on strategies, systems, and models that can help make.
Improvements in their home inspection business. Eric and I have both gone through it, learned a ton of fantastic information. If you want more info about this great training for home inspection company owners, click the link in our show notes. We will have information about RGT and event registration and all that other fun stuff there. So that’s that’s that. Eric.
Before we get into the show topic today, just want to ask you any big projects you got going on in your house? I know you talked last time, you got the the the siding, the roof is being redone, anything else you’re working on right now?
Eric Houseman (03:21.005)
No, my cousin who’s gonna be doing the work, he owns his own general contracting business. He actually sent me a text message this morning. Roof was supposed to happen tomorrow, but it’s been rainy here the last couple of weeks. And he had a couple other jobs that got delayed. So the roof is actually going next Friday now, which I was fine with. It actually kind of works better for our schedule anyway. but those are the big ones right now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How about you?
Reuben Saltzman (03:40.866)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (03:45.271)
Okay. Okay. All right. Excellent. yeah, nothing big. product of the week purchased at Costco. I’ll share this. It’s this little, it’s a LED light. It’s a it’s a three pack of these. I think I got them for about 20 bucks. And it comes with a remote switch and they’re USB chargeable, and you can adjust the the brightness of it.
But you put them in a closet or something where you don’t have any lights. And they’re they’re that that was the dimmest setting I’m showing you here. But it’s it’s a three pack. You just hit a switch on the wall, and now you’ve got light in your closet. And they just it’s these little magnets, and it happens to be off the charger, off the wall because it there it’s it’s charging. But I was just tickled with those because I got a couple of closets where I could use lights and I
I’m I’m not motivated enough to run wiring for these. It’s like it’s not that important. But this was a nice little stopgap. So that’s our very first product of the week. Might be the last two, but something I was thinking about. I was delighted with those once I put them in. It’s like, all right, finally I got some light in this closet. I don’t know how long the batteries are gonna last. We’ll see. but it’s motion activated too.
You can you can just flip something so you just reach in your closet and it flips on. And I’ve been I’ve been enjoying that. Okay, so today we’re gonna talk about some inspection findings. And I thought this would be a fun one because you and I, you know, neither one of us get in the field all that often. How how many inspections do you would you say you do in a month on average, Eric?
Eric Houseman (05:07.642)
okay.
Eric Houseman (05:11.621)
Love that.
Eric Houseman (05:31.227)
on average I’d say it’s like one to two. The I mean, these last couple of months it’s been about like four or five. I’ve had some requests, and there are some agents still that I choose to work with on a regular basis. but I just I still love getting out in the field with inspectors. I mean, even if I’m doing ancillary services, like I’ll budget extra time in my day just to be able to kind of
Reuben Saltzman (05:34.582)
Okay. All right.
Reuben Saltzman (05:40.344)
Okay.
Eric Houseman (05:59.737)
walk around and see things and talk to them and help them out if they need it. So yeah. Yep.
Reuben Saltzman (06:04.344)
Yeah. Yeah. I and and you know, I do the same thing. I I try to do at least two a month. Doesn’t always happen. Sometimes it’s more, but I I was able to get two this week in. And I just it it is so much fun. I get so much charge out of doing these inspections. It’s so much more fun than sitting at home at my desk. Like I get to get out, I get to see stuff, I get to converse with people and
And when I go along on these inspections, I mean my thing is tell me what to do. How can I make your job easier? Put me to work. And and you know, my my goal too is just if I can share a nugget or two with the inspector, like, hey, this is something you may have never seen before. Here’s what they’re doing here. Like, if I can, I’d like to share a little bit of wisdom. Feels like there’s less and less that I can share with people as the years go by, but still do what I can. but I I thought
Eric Houseman (07:01.037)
And for us it’s it it’s always fun to boss the owner around, you know? If he’s if he says, Tell me what to do
Reuben Saltzman (07:04.91)
Yeah, and that’s what I’m there for. That that is exactly what I’m there for. Like, what do you want to do? I whatever you don’t want to do. Like, you know, you want me to get on the roof? I’ll go knock that out. I don’t care. So and yeah, I was doing an inspection with Mike today, and it’s the funniest thing I should have asked. I said, Hey, you want me to go in the garage? I’ll go knock that out. I’m inspecting the garage. And then I see there’s a scuttle hole in the garage, and I’m like, great.
That probably goes to the rest of the house. I’m gonna get the whole attic inspected without even telling him. And I’ll make his job super easy. Cause I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, Eric. Isn’t that kind of our least favorite thing to do? Is you know, set up the ladder. You gotta put down the tarp on the floor, not make a mess, put your mask on. Like, I don’t know. For me, that’s my least favorite part of the inspection.
Eric Houseman (07:58.393)
I I would say it’s the most tedious part of the inspection. I I would rather get into an attic than go on a roof, but that’s just me personally. Yeah. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (08:03.629)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (08:08.118)
okay. All right. Interesting. I would I’ll I’ll take ten roofs over one attic. That but that’s me. I like I like being outside. But yeah, I thought I’m gonna I’m gonna knock this out for him. And it was kind of a pain to get up there and and got up in the attic and then what do I hear but Mike in the attic on the other side of the house? He’s already up there. I’m just like, What? Thought I was gonna save some time. So I got a nice picture of him looking down.
As I was crawling across the rafters, but
Eric Houseman (08:38.491)
Where’s the where’s where’s the Spider-Man photo of both of you standing in the attic pointing at each other?
Reuben Saltzman (08:43.822)
Ha! That that would have been a good one, Eric. Yeah. Mess mess that up. We didn’t we didn’t capture it. But yeah, I thought today we could just talk about some findings that we’ve seen over the past month or two, some interesting stuff from inspections. one, the one that I was doing with Mike today, was it had the utility room was only accessible
through the basement bathroom. And you know, it’s a little bit of an unusual setup. And it it contained the furnace and the water heater. And I think we’ve talked about this on the show at some point where we we explained how you’re not supposed to have a gas appliance that’s only accessible through a bedroom or a bathroom. You can’t have it in the
The bedroom or the bathroom, you can’t have it only accessible through those with an asterisk. there there are some exceptions to that that would make it safe. One of those is if it’s a direct vent appliance. If that’s the case, you can put it in the bathroom, you can put it in the bedroom, you can have it accessible through those. That’s cool. And when I say direct vent, of course, we’re talking about an appliance that has two pipes. It’s gonna have an air intake and the exhaust.
And all of its air communicates directly with the outside. I many, many home inspectors, maybe many trade professionals have I’ve heard them refer to a power vent appliance like a water heater with one pipe coming out of it. A lot of them will say that’s direct vent. Well, that’s not direct vent. Direct vent obtains all of its combustion air directly from the outdoors. So the furnace was a direct vent. So no harm, no foul, perfectly fine.
Eric Houseman (10:27.247)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (10:41.304)
But then the water heater was a natural draft water heater, and it should not be accessible through the bathroom like that. So another asterisk we have in the fuel gas code says that you you can do this. And I don’t have the exact code language pulled up, so I may butcher it just a little bit, but you you can do it if you have a self closing gasketed door leading to that room. And it and it doesn’t need to be a 20 minute
fire rated door or any of that stuff. Just get or or does it, Eric? Does it have to be a solid door?
Eric Houseman (11:16.747)
I I don’t believe that that’s the case. I think it just needs to be a self closing, gasketed dope.
Reuben Saltzman (11:23.052)
Yeah, yeah. I I know whatever we put in our report, we have that language already kind of canned, because we we see this enough. So it’s not that big of a deal. It’s a fairly simple fix, but it it is an important fix. Something sh ought to be done about that. So
Eric Houseman (11:41.519)
And what’s interesting too, like we talk about quite frequently when we’re training new home inspectors, like, there’s no way that we can take you out in the field and show you every single defect there is. A great example of that is I went through training almost eight years ago now, never saw aluminum wiring during training. Very first inspection out on my own, aluminum wiring in the panel, right? What we can do, we have a much higher likelihood of showing them.
Reuben Saltzman (12:01.505)
Uh-huh.
Reuben Saltzman (12:05.998)
There it is. Yeah.
Eric Houseman (12:11.289)
What it looks like when it’s correct. So my reason for saying this is because I remember running into this at some point in time this year, where the utility room was only accessible through a bedroom. And I remember going into the utility room and the door closing on its own behind me. And I was like, why? Why did and then it clicked in my head. I was like, that’s right. So when you do see it right.
Reuben Saltzman (12:31.903)
sure.
Eric Houseman (12:41.293)
It kind of jogs your memory like, Yep, okay, this is the way it does need to be. And when it is done right, it’s kind of a surprise.
Reuben Saltzman (12:48.376)
Yeah, yeah. And it’s it’s definitely one of those topics that we include in the classroom training that I do when we’re when we’re covering all that stuff. Yep. so that well that okay, that was that was the only really interesting thing we found at that inspection today. I mean it certainly wasn’t the only thing. There’s a big list of stuff, but that was the only really interesting one. Eric, how about you? Let let’s share some of yours. And you know what? For anybody on YouTube
Eric Houseman (12:55.056)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (13:17.578)
Eric and I pulled up a few photos and we we could just talk through a few of them. Maybe I could maybe I could pull up some of the photos that you sent me and I’ll I’ll put them on my screen and you could just kind of talk through what we’re looking at and how you found it and why it matters.
Eric Houseman (13:26.843)
Sure.
Eric Houseman (13:35.973)
So in in real time before we go forward, I did look up what our comment says in our report template. And it says, the access to the appliance room is equipped with a solid weather strip door and an approved self-closing device.
Reuben Saltzman (13:50.209)
Okay, gotta be a solid door. Okay, all right. I’m glad we got that detail straight. Thank you for looking that up. okay, Eric, here we go. We are looking at a bathroom. We got some wood paneling on the walls, and you got a prefabricated shower surround. It all looks very nice. What’s the problem here?
Eric Houseman (14:13.945)
Yeah. Looks great. we’ve had some instances in the past, very few instances, of you know, we turn a shower on, we let it run for about fifteen to twenty minutes during an inspection. And we’ve had an instance in the past where we’ve had some the the drain back up, the drain is clogged. So we’ve always asked our inspectors, like when you turn these showers on, make sure that you stand there and wait. And you know, for
30 seconds and make sure that it’s draining appropriately. Did that here and turned the shower on, drained appropriately, closed the curtain, walked away from it, and I happen to to the left, the left adjacent wall, is a laundry room, unfinished, thank God, with a floor drain right in the middle of it.
Didn’t see anything wrong with the shower, no leaking around the valve or the shower head when I was standing in the bathroom. Happened to go back into the laundry room to look at something, and walked in, and there is a massive puddle of water on the floor underneath the washer and the dryer going toward the floor drain. And walk over to, you know, kind of follow the trail of where the water’s coming from and
Reuben Saltzman (15:29.105)
gosh.
Eric Houseman (15:35.971)
That wall is completely drywalled, and you walk over into the corner, and all the water is coming out from behind the shower.
Reuben Saltzman (15:46.534)
no.
Eric Houseman (15:47.429)
just gallons and this thing hasn’t been running for more than you know 30, 40 seconds at this point in time, came to the determination that it was the valve that was actually leaking into the wall because the the drywall on the backside ended up getting wet basically all the way down, down to the base, down to the framing at the bottom, and that’s where it was coming from. So
Reuben Saltzman (16:13.528)
So was this that video I got here? All right, let’s let’s take a look at it.
Eric Houseman (16:15.951)
I think so. Yeah. So there was a little bit of a leak around here. Now some of that water is dripping down from the shower head up top. But as you can see, what I didn’t see at first is the water leaking out from around the bottom of the medallion or sconce, if you will. And that’s because most of it was leaking into the wall behind the shower.
Reuben Saltzman (16:28.216)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (16:44.002)
Yikes. And so is there a photo showing the water on the floor? Or we’re just gonna have to use our imagination
Eric Houseman (16:48.739)
I thought there was. I thought I Yeah. I mean it was it was a good size puddle. The laundry room was about, you know, eight by eight, nine by nine. And there was the floor was thankfully, concrete floor, all the water was going to the floor drain. Just a ton of water on the floor.
Reuben Saltzman (16:55.244)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (17:08.524)
Okay, all right. G good thing you walked around.
Eric Houseman (17:09.977)
Yeah.
Yeah. I don’t even remember what pulled me back into the laundry room, but
Reuben Saltzman (17:18.23)
And well something something you touched on is, you know, how we run the shower for fifteen, twenty minutes. Okay, if we’ve already run it for thirty seconds, we established the fact that it’s not clogging right away, why are we running it for another fifteen to twenty minutes?
Eric Houseman (17:39.151)
Depends on what level of the home you’re on. So if you’re at an upper level home or upper level of a home, you want to run it for that amount of time to try and see if there’s any leak from any of the drain piping. And then obviously if it’s finished space below, you go to the floor below it, point your IR camera at the ceiling, see if there’s a hot spot or a cold spot, depending upon what water you’ve run. and I know that there’s, you know, if you’ve
Reuben Saltzman (17:41.614)
Okay.
Eric Houseman (18:08.035)
If you’ve got the kind of the standalone shower and the soaking tub that are right next to each other, we always instruct our inspectors like run really hot water at one and run really cold water at the other one. That way you can differentiate which one is leaking. If you run cold water at both, you really don’t have a way of knowing. but
Reuben Saltzman (18:30.146)
Yeah. Yeah, you just gotta say something’s leaking up above. Yeah, that’s a great tip.
Eric Houseman (18:33.645)
Right. if you’re doing it in the basement, primary reason is is you’re looking to see if there’s any fixtures that are backing up in the basement, specifically a floor drain, because that’s gonna be your fail first point. That’s gonna be where the water comes in at if there’s a problem with the main lateral. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (18:50.03)
Sure, sure. And and also another reason we do it is if you’ve got a tiled shower, very important to run a lot of water in those because a lot of those tiled showers will leak. And sometimes it takes a while to get it to leak. And if it does, that’s a big deal. I mean, you gotta tear it out and start over. I don’t know how else to fix those. So that is a good find. All right. Next one, Eric. it looks like we’ve got
Eric Houseman (18:56.613)
Sure.
Reuben Saltzman (19:19.922)
A backdrafting water heater here. Is that is that what I’m seeing? Let’s see. Yeah. Yeah, you got your mirror sitting there, and I can see the mirror is sitting right next to the draft hood, and the mirror is fogging up, and the your camera lens is fogging up too. Beautiful. So why was this backdrafting?
Eric Houseman (19:24.525)
I believe so, yes.
Eric Houseman (19:39.481)
Yeah. Yep.
so this was an orphaned water heater, 17 years old. The furnace had been changed to a two-pipe newer high-efficiency furnace. Direct vent, yes, thank you. I think it was only about two or three years old. So you follow the bouncing ball, right? Like the old furnace was likely an induced draft furnace that drafted with the water heater.
Reuben Saltzman (19:58.659)
Direct vent. Yeah.
Eric Houseman (20:12.623)
The furnace does a much more efficient job of warming that flue vent, which helps pull those exhaust gases from the water heater upward when it fires. But now you’ve orphaned the water heater to only drafting through that vent on its own. And it does a very poor job of warming that vent without the assistance of the furnace. And there’s some telltale signs. I think I sent you the photo too of like.
the melting at the water piping at the top. It was pretty bad. so you know you natural draft water heater should draft. Yeah, there you go. Pretty nasty. a natural draft water heater should draft appropriately even under worst case conditions. So house completely closed, dryer running
Reuben Saltzman (20:54.85)
Yeah.
Eric Houseman (21:05.209)
Bath fans running, kitchen exhaust running, basically creating negative pressure inside the home. And that’s what I had going here. And sure enough, it backdrafted as the video shows. But then the other portion of this is the makeup air intake in this particular house was ducted to the return of the HVAC system. So you don’t have any makeup air coming in to make up for the air that’s being used by those combustion burning appliances and
Reuben Saltzman (21:11.394)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Houseman (21:34.571)
exhaust fans. and that in this case it just kept on backdrafting and I walked over to the only window in the basement because this was like a daylight basement and I opened that window and I walked back and it was still continuing to backdraft. So right it usually does. Now this window was probably a good 30 feet away from the water heater. So who knows? Maybe it it shouldn’t matter.
Reuben Saltzman (21:52.334)
Mm, usually that fixes it.
Reuben Saltzman (22:01.998)
Shouldn’t matter. Shouldn’t make a bit of difference. Yeah.
Eric Houseman (22:05.199)
but you know, the conversation with the client is that I had with the client was look, if if this was a two or three-year-old water heater, maybe you want to look at getting an HVAC plumber or a contractor or a plumber in here to to fix this, to get as much life out of the water heater as you possibly can. This is a 17-year-old water heater. It’s not long for this world, likely. And
Reuben Saltzman (22:32.268)
No.
Eric Houseman (22:33.541)
Probably cost prohibitive to fix the issue, knowing that in the next however many years, we don’t predict it, but in the next however many years, you’re going to have to spend money to replace this, and you’re probably not going to replace it with a natural draft anyway. Plus, having talked to the client ahead of time, they had grand plans of finishing the basement. So it’s one of those if this then that, it’s going to be much easier to.
install a new electric or power vent water heater with the basement unfinished, then go through all of this work to finish the basement, only to have to tear part of it out again in order to vent the new appliance appropriately.
Reuben Saltzman (23:09.4)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (23:15.928)
Yeah, totally agreed. Yeah. And if Tessa were here, she’d be saying, Yes, please replace this with a power vent. I know she hates any water heaters that have a natural draft. She’s just so concerned about this happening. And yeah, good recommendation. Replace that with a power vent. Agreed.
Yeah. All right. let’s see, what else do we have here, Eric? I’ve got
What are we looking at here? looks like we’ve got some water. well, I’ll share it here. Looks like we’ve got some water at the ceiling of an unfinished basement. I’m looking at the floor joists, and one of them appears to be completely saturated. Maybe even there’s water coming off of it. What’s going on there?
Eric Houseman (24:04.154)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Houseman (24:08.079)
Yeah, so you can see, I don’t know, you might not be able to zoom in, but you can see there’s a copper water line that’s stapled to that eye joist. That is immediately below the fridge in the kitchen. So that’s the water line going up to the fridge. And then shortly above the floor, it transitions from a copper water line into a
Reuben Saltzman (24:25.39)
okay.
Eric Houseman (24:36.613)
braided stainless steel and then it’s got a water filter built in on it behind the refrigerator. So of course I went upstairs and pulled the refrigerator out from the wall about five or six inches and couldn’t really identify. I didn’t want to pull it out any farther than that because I don’t want to do any damage to the floor. But considering the proximity, this is leaking from that water line. That’s a lot of water coming from that area. And yes, it was dripping down onto the floor below. but
unfinished basement, people probably aren’t going down there very often. They’re likely not spending any time down there. And this has probably been going on for a while at this point.
Reuben Saltzman (25:18.798)
Gosh, I don’t know how you live in a home with this happening and you don’t know about it. It it boggles my mind, but whatever. Okay. All right, that’s a good fix. And you know, on that, this is why part of our standard procedure for home inspections is we’re supposed to take an infrared camera and scan. I mean, if if it’s finished, scan below the dishwasher and scan below the refrigerator, because so many of those leak.
Eric Houseman (25:24.603)
Sure. Yep.
Eric Houseman (25:48.975)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (25:49.295)
So I I’d say we would have found this even if it wasn’t unfinished. All right. And then okay, we got the water heater. All right. I’ll share a couple of photos I’ve got here. Let’s see, we’ll start with this one. and all all of these that I’m sharing were from the same inspection I did earlier this week. It was a it was a very nice, very large, it was a like a
1.2 million dollar home or something. just high-end finishes, everything. And they had pulled a gazillion permits. I looked up the permit history for this house. And so, you know, they’re using licensed contractors. This isn’t DIY type of stuff, but it doesn’t mean it’s perfect. This first one I’m showing is this is a combination arc fault and GFCI circuit breaker.
And it stood proud of all the rest of the breakers. It was sticking out like a good quarter inch from all the rest of them. And it’s the same brand of circuit breaker. Sometimes when it doesn’t fit, right, it’s because someone used a different different brand that doesn’t fit in that panel. It was the same brand, same general style as the rest of them, but with some of those newer.
Arc fault or GFCI breakers, they got this new way of doing it where instead of having a neutral wire coming out of the breaker, this little coily neutral wire, and it connects to a neutral bus bar, and then you run a neutral wire into the breaker. So it’s basically the neutral is passing through the breaker. It’s a little bit of extra work to do it that way. They’ve got these newer panels where I I think it’s called a plug-on neutral, where they’ve got
Eric Houseman (27:40.496)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (27:41.729)
A neutral bar coming down, just like they do with the the hot. And you can take a circuit breaker, you just clamp the circuit breaker on, and it makes the connection for the neutral directly into the panel without having to run an extra wire. Now, of course, you still need to run your neutral wire on the circuit leaving, but it’s it’s less wiring. It’s a nice time-saving thing. And with with all of the demand for
so many arc fault circuit breakers in modern homes. I mean, I I don’t know. Do do you d are we seeing any new panels that aren’t plug on neutrals today, Eric?
Eric Houseman (28:24.929)
I would doubt it. It it it’s been a while since I’ve done a new construction. I have an eleven month warranty next week. And now I’m gonna be looking to to see like specifically is it if it’s plug on neutral or if it’s not, but i I can’t imagine. Like it’s it’s easier for the electrician, it’s cleaner. Why would you not?
Reuben Saltzman (28:26.658)
Yeah, I yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (28:44.312)
Yeah. Yeah. I I can’t imagine anybody’s putting in new panels that aren’t plug-on neutrals today. But you know, that that’d be I I’m stepping outside my lane. I’m not an electrician and I don’t I’m not in the field enough like you to know for certain. But that that’s what they’re all doing. But the the point here is that this circuit breaker was not well the circuit breaker panel, excuse me, was not a plug-on neutral panel.
This was an older panel, probably about 20 years old or so. It predates the existence of those plug-on neutrals. So the it’s not the right breaker. The neutral bar where all the neutral wires connect to, it it actually lined up just about perfectly with the clamps on the breaker. So the clamps, at least one side of the clamp, was making contact with the neutral. So it kind of worked, but
I mean, there’s no way this is right. I mean, absolutely no way. You you’re looking at this photo, Eric, and you can see one of those what one side of the clamp makes contact with the neutral bar, the other side doesn’t. It’s not grabbing anything, that’s for sure. It’s just incidental contact. There’s absolutely no way this is right. And there’s current going through there. So it, you know, the the fix is swap out the breaker. It should take an electrician about five minutes.
You just pull the breaker out, you get a new one, and you know, the breaker itself, it’s probably gonna cost I don’t know, fifty, a hundred bucks. What are they up to now? Have you seen them recently?
Eric Houseman (30:22.009)
No, I haven’t looked recently.
Reuben Saltzman (30:22.966)
Okay. Whatever it is, in the grand scheme of things for this home, it’s a drop in the bucket, but I think this is an important thing that ought to be fixed. So that that was one in the panel, and then I’m just flipping through a few of these other photos. This was a fun one. This was in the bar area, looking inside the cabinet below the sink.
If you kind of get inside the cabinet and you look, there’s a little cutout in the corner of the cabinet. And I was like, why is there a cutout? And I kind of went inside the the cabinet a little bit and it had access to a receptacle that was one cabinet over behind some drawers that you couldn’t really see. But it’s a it’s an outlet, and the outlet is just hanging out into the wall. So if someone were to reach back there, I mean there’s there’s exposed screws. If anything goes wrong, there’s nothing content.
To contain any sparking, that this is this will be a shock and a fire hazard. And so it’s just an encouragement to home inspectors when you’re looking inside cabinets, do all you can because you see crazy stuff like this all the time. another one, and this is a video that I’m gonna have on loop here. As soon as we walked into the utility room, we smelled sewer gas. We’re like, there’s something going on, and we looked at the floor drain right away.
so often you got a a dry trap with the floor drain. That wasn’t the case. So we looked around a little bit more and we found a standpipe in that room. And I don’t know what the standpipe was for. Whatever it was doing, it was no longer doing. There was nothing draining into the standpipe. And if you have a plumbing fixture or a well, a drain with nothing going into it, eventually that trap’s gonna dry out. And that’s exactly what we had here. This is that’s what was causing the sewer odor. And I mean
W th this house had a lot of exhaust fans. It had a super big kitchen exhaust fan. So it’s pulling tons of air out of the house. Well, this the this opening to the sewer is now kind of acting like a makeup air intake. And I mean, there was air just pouring out of this thing. I took a I mean, you could put your hand over it and you could feel it. And when I say air, I should say sewer gas.
Reuben Saltzman (32:43.426)
And I mean, I could take a piece of tissue paper and hold it over the top and it just blow tissue right off. We had a nice current of air coming out of there. And so just for the rest of the inspection, I took some paper towels and I stuffed them in there because we did not want to keep breathing that. Super simple fix. I mean, either get some RV anti-freeze and pour it in there because that stuff will never evaporate, or you could just get a cap. I mean, cap it off. Super easy.
Very minor fix. Again, this is a five minute fix, but those sewer gases coming into the house, that’s nasty stuff. I mean, that that’s bad for your health and it smells awful. So
Eric Houseman (33:25.219)
Yeah. I mean y you already fixed it though. You you put paper towel in there. You don’t need to work you don’t need to report on it now.
Reuben Saltzman (33:29.132)
I stuffed paper towels in there. That’s that that was a nice temporary repair. Yes. Yes. another one we had was on the roof. There was one little corner at the front of the home. It was well protected with an overhang, but you had a ridge coming right up to the overhang. There was probably about a foot between the ridge and the overhang. So it was very well protected from rain.
But there there’s just a big old gap where it comes in contact with the house. And I mean it was it was certainly large enough where you could get mice coming in there. You might even fit a small squirrel in there. Eric, you’re holding up your pinky. Is that how big of an opening a mouse needs?
Eric Houseman (34:17.039)
Mouse can fit into a hole the size of a normal human pinky. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (34:21.158)
okay, yeah, yeah. So maybe, yeah, maybe a small squirrel could fit in here. And you can see there’s exposed framing and whatever else. Fix it. Fix it. it’s not again, it’s not a water intrusion issue, but it’s definitely an issue. That’s that’s a pest intrusion issue. And then Eric, we’re coming back. I’m not gonna cover this, but I I got a photo of what you took behind the fridge. I can see those water lines.
And let’s see here. Okay, what Eric, this photo is yours. I’m looking at an well, I want to call it an access panel for a bathtub, but it’s more like somebody took their foot and put it through the wall. I don’t know if that’s the point of the photo, but this is certainly not an access panel. Someone kicked a hole in the wall to get at the bathtub train. Is that the point of this or what’s going on?
Eric Houseman (35:19.093)
No, it now looking back on it and thinking about it, it does look like somebody was laying on their back and just kicked a hole through the drywall. But this was the back side of the tub of the other photo that you just flashed up for a second there. Anytime we have access to the back side of a tub and we can, you know, see the drain piping, see the overflow piping, we will always fill the bathtub like I’m doing here, and then
Reuben Saltzman (35:34.124)
This one, okay.
Reuben Saltzman (35:47.875)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Houseman (35:48.719)
Take and splash the overflow multiple times to see if the overflow is leaking. if we don’t have access to the backside of the tub, we don’t test the overflow because we can’t tell whether it’s the overflow that’s leaking or whether it’s the drain that’s leaking, going back to the IR photo at the ceiling below. In this case, I was able to move some stored items and get to this
Reuben Saltzman (36:00.451)
Right.
Eric Houseman (36:16.763)
quote unquote access panel at the back side of the tub and tested the overflow. And sure enough, this photo is really difficult to see. But just to the right of the drain pipe, just to the left of the supply pipe, you can see a bead of water or stream of water running down from the overflow that was leaking onto the ceiling below. And I was able to weasel my way back in there and kind of get my head into that hole.
And you could see that there was staining on the drywall below, just superficial staining on the drywall below. But you went to the ceiling below that, there was no indication that it had been enough to transfer all the way through and deteriorate the texture or cause staining or whatever. Yep.
Reuben Saltzman (36:50.914)
Mm.
Reuben Saltzman (37:06.19)
Sure. And I’ll tell you the reason we do this test was there there was a friend of mine, and I’ll tell you after the show who it was. This is a Home Depot acquaintance, where I had done an inspection on her townhome. And after she moved in, they they ended up using the bathtub, and a bunch of water ended up going through the overflow.
And the overflow leaked like a sieve. I mean, just tons and tons of water coming out of there. And I came over to visit them one day and I look up at the ceiling and I’m just horrified. It’s like there’s just crazy stains all over the place. And I’m like, what what happened? And it it’s like I I can probably feel my own face flushing. And they’re like, yeah, I think the bathtub.
yeah, something with the overflow leaked or whatever. I’m like, what what’s going on? And you know, I had to get to the bottom of it right there and then. And it turns out it just it leaked like crazy. And I could have found this. I mean, at the time, this was probably 20 years ago. At the time, we weren’t doing anything special with overflows. I mean, our standard of practice says home inspectors do not need to test bathtub overflows. But that doesn’t mean we can’t. I mean
For the love of love, if there’s a way to do it, if you have access to it, d test it. You don’t need people ruining their ceilings like that. People are gonna I’m people want to use the bathtub. And I’ll tell you, I mean, if I’m I I recently stayed at a hotel in a very hot climate. I was down in Florida, and I had this conference thing I was doing, and I was there all day and
All the rooms were like 65 degrees. I was just cold to the core after all these meetings all day long. And and I thought, you know what? I’m taking a bath. I’m gonna read my book. And and those overflows are so dang low that it’s like there’s barely enough room to get your legs under the water. And first thing I do is I I bring tape along and I tape the overflow shut. It’s like
Reuben Saltzman (39:30.507)
And but the the point is, pe i if you’re actually gonna use the bath so often those overflows are lower than what you would want. So it’s very plausible that people are gonna have water going through those overflows. This is not like some emergency unusual situation that we’re creating when we’re testing these. This is very realistic everyday stuff. So I think it’s I think it’s a great thing for home inspectors to do if you have the ability to do it without ruining the house.
Eric Houseman (39:53.85)
Yeah.
Eric Houseman (40:00.923)
Sure. Yeah, I mean I’ll I’ll even take it one step further than that. And you know, in the previous photo you saw that I had water in the tub. Correct me if I’m wrong, Ruben, but there’s nothing in the standard of practice that says that you have to fill and drain a vessel, right? It just used Sure. Why do we do it? Because we’re simulating use or how that vessel could be used.
Reuben Saltzman (40:20.033)
No, absolutely not.
Eric Houseman (40:31.011)
And the other side of it is is that head pressure on the drain plumbing. I’ve had this conversation with so many clients and agents and contractors after the fact. You talk about especially laundry sinks, right? Laundry sinks rarely ever get used in houses. And you’ll fill and drain that laundry sink and you’ll get a leak. And you report on it.
Reuben Saltzman (40:37.814)
Yes.
Reuben Saltzman (40:45.464)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Houseman (40:56.821)
And a contractor comes in a few days after to fix it and they go downstairs. It sounds like I’m throwing all contractors under the bus. I’m not. There’s a lot of really good ones that are out there. But this is why it’s important that you report on things and specifically state how you test them. If you fill and drain the vessel, it is far more likely to leak at the drain because you have head pressure on that drain piping. You should be simulating how the vessel could be used.
Reuben Saltzman (41:12.845)
Yes.
Reuben Saltzman (41:22.24)
Excellent point.
Reuben Saltzman (41:26.936)
Yes. Yep. Yep. And if you’re yeah, if you’re just running water down the drain, you ain’t gonna cause a leak. Yep. And
Eric Houseman (41:28.089)
Yes.
Yep. Correct. Yep. Another good one too, like overflow-wise, is how many times, you know, how many inspectors test integrated overflows on those, you know, one piece vanity top sync units. I have seen so many of those integrated overflows cracked. And they leak into the base cabinet below them.
Reuben Saltzman (41:56.046)
Mm, sure.
Eric Houseman (41:59.713)
Or you stick your head underneath there and you look and somebody has taken an entire tube of caulking and smeared it down the overflow. Like th this is the point of, you know, like you said before, stick your head in places, be curious, look at stuff. Yep.
Reuben Saltzman (42:15.202)
Yeah, yeah, agreed. All right, I think we just had one more to share, and this was on the deck at this same house we were looking at. And what you’re seeing here is a triple beam. There was a porch directly above it. so there’s a there’s a wall above this, and so you’ve got a concentrated point load on a deck coming right into the ledger board.
And it’s supported on that ledger board with a triple triple hanger. You’re not allowed to do this. I don’t know when the code changed. I don’t know if it ever changed. Maybe they just got more specific about spelling it out in the code. But it says right in the code, chapter five of the IRC, that you’re not supposed to ever have a point load on a ledger board. If if you have a concentrated load, you need to do something else.
You could have a post going down to the ground, or you could have that beam let into the house. You know, you’d cut out part of your ledger board, the beam would come into the house, and then you have framing inside the home to carry that load all the way down to the ground. That’d be an acceptable way to do this, but you can’t just hang it from the ledger board. Now, on the other hand, it looked like it had been this way for a long time. This was probably
I don’t know, 20 years old, something like that. I mean, the wood is well weathered. There’s absolutely no signs of anything pulling away or problems. So at this point, we just said, look, he can’t do it this way anymore. This you’re not supposed to have a concentrated load, but there’s no signs of issues. And we just kind of left it at that. I I don’t feel like every defect needs to have a big deal made about.
Sometimes you just say, look, that’s how it is. I mean, how often do we see decks where you’ve got a one foot cantilever coming out and we know that there’s no proper path down below it, but we don’t always say, look, tear it apart and have it redone. Sometimes we just say, look, you’re not supposed to do it this way. Most of the time it works fine. Sometimes it fails. Leave it at that. I don’t foresee any catastrophic failure happening here. Agreed?
Eric Houseman (44:39.713)
I would make the argument it’s definitely not worth glossing over and not putting it in the report. Put something in the report because inevitably, and I could share countless stories about this. Somebody else goes out there to look at something else completely unrelated, they end up noticing this.
Reuben Saltzman (44:49.72)
Totally agree.
Eric Houseman (45:03.501)
And then they make a comment about it and they make a much bigger deal about it than we would have had it been in the inspection report. And then it comes back to us. You’re better off getting in front of it and reporting on it and saying, hey, I’m not seeing that this is a big deal. We wouldn’t do this way anymore. I don’t think you need to correct it.
Reuben Saltzman (45:10.68)
Yeah. Yes.
Reuben Saltzman (45:23.54)
And I saw it right.
Eric Houseman (45:25.305)
Yes Yes Yes.
Reuben Saltzman (45:28.418)
Just ’cause ’cause as soon as they think you never saw it, it doesn’t matter what you say. They don’t believe you.
Reuben Saltzman (45:39.374)
Yep. All right. Well, I think that’s well that that kind of makes up our show. That’s those are some fun findings. And I thought this is just it’s fun to discuss some of this stuff. Like how do we find it? What do we say about it? Does it matter? Yeah. All right, cool. Well, Eric, any any final thoughts before we wrap up the show?
Eric Houseman (45:51.609)
Yeah.
Eric Houseman (46:05.007)
I got nothing. Thanks to anybody that listened. That that’s that’s what I’m gonna leave it with.
Reuben Saltzman (46:07.35)
Okay. All right, cool.
Reuben Saltzman (46:12.822)
All right. That sounds good. Well, then we will catch you all next time. And I think we’ve got a few guest we’re gonna have it’s gonna be kind of guest heavy coming up here. We got a bunch of guests coming up. I I won’t tease it too much because we don’t have all of our dates confirmed, but I’m excited for some of these upcoming shows. And Eric, really appreciate you filling in for Tessa.
Eric Houseman (46:33.659)
I’m looking forward to it.
Absolutely.
Reuben Saltzman (46:38.904)
All right, for our listeners, if you got any comments about today’s show, anything else, upcoming ideas for shows, whatever, we would love to hear from you. You can email us. We read all. It is podcast at structure tech dot com. And we’ll catch you next time. Take care.