To watch a video version of this podcast, click here: https://youtu.be/hBY-5QroZsQ
In this episode, Reuben Saltzman and Tessa Murry explore a range of topics, including air quality concerns in Minnesota, the evolving role of AI in the home inspection industry, and a detailed case study involving a homeowner’s struggles with a new roof and moisture-related issues. They delve into the intricacies of building science, emphasizing the importance of proper insulation and ventilation, and discuss the potential long-term consequences of moisture in residential structures. The conversation underscores the importance of homeowners staying informed and proactive in maintaining their homes.
Here’s the link to check out Inspector Empire Builder:
https://events.iebcoaching.com/events
You can find more information on Tessa’s website:
https://www.yourhousecoach.com/
Takeaways
Air quality in Minnesota is affected by wildfires.
AI is set to disrupt the home inspection industry significantly.
Homeowners need to be aware of moisture issues after roofing work.
Proper ventilation is crucial to prevent ice dams.
Building science is complex and requires careful consideration.
Homeowners should track humidity levels to avoid moisture problems.
Older homes may have more durable materials than modern composites.
Moisture can lead to significant structural issues if not addressed.
Homeowners should consider the cost-effectiveness of repairs.
It’s important to consult with professionals before making major home improvements.
Chapters
00:00 Air Quality and Weather Concerns
02:53 AI in Home Inspection: The Future
05:59 Case Study Introduction: Homeowner Challenges
08:52 Case Study One: Roof Issues and Moisture Problems
47:51 Conclusion and Next Steps
TRANSCRIPTION
The following is an AI-generated transcription from an audio recording. Although the transcription is mostly accurate, it will contain some errors due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
Reuben Saltzman: Welcome to my house. Welcome to the Structure Talk podcast, a production of Structure Tech Home Inspections. My name is Reuben Saltzman. I’m your host alongside building science geek, Tessa Murry. We help home inspectors up their game through education, and we help homeowners to be better stewards of their houses. We’ve been keeping it real on this podcast since 2019, and we are also the number one home inspection podcast in the world, according to my mom.
Reuben Saltzman (00:01.02)
Welcome back to the show. It is a beautiful day here in Minnesota. The weather is perfect other than the indoor air quality. We’re getting those wildfires again, Tess. You know, the smoke. We’ve been getting that all year. I guess it’s those darn Canadians, I think. I don’t know where it’s coming from. But my wife this morning, she told me Minneapolis had the third worst air quality in the world yesterday.
Tessa Murry (00:12.526)
no.
Tessa Murry (00:30.804)
my gosh. Crazy.
Reuben Saltzman (00:30.83)
Yeah, I don’t yeah, I don’t really notice it other than it just kind of looks hazy outside a little little smell of campfire in the air and The Sun is beautiful in the morning. It is solid red like Yeah, it’s it’s really pretty. It’s just red as red could be Tess. How you doing?
Tessa Murry (00:38.35)
Yep.
Thank
Tessa Murry (00:48.074)
Wow. Wow.
Tessa Murry (00:53.834)
sign of the sign of death if you go outside and breathe deeply for too long. Yeah, you know.
Reuben Saltzman (00:57.734)
I suppose, I suppose. But otherwise it feels very pleasant. Like we’re over a heat wave. It is just 75 degrees. There’s no humidity, gentle breeze. Like this is it. This is so nice.
Tessa Murry (01:11.126)
I’m jealous of that temperature and the humidity. But yeah, it’s such a bummer. When I was up in Minnesota last time, it was the same thing, air quality alerts and some days where we had to kind of stay inside or limit how much time we were outside. It’s such a bummer because you want to get out and enjoy it, but you just can’t.
Reuben Saltzman (01:28.158)
Yeah, can’t or shouldn’t shouldn’t is a better word because
Tessa Murry (01:31.022)
Shouldn’t. Shouldn’t. Well, and I don’t know about you, but I mean, if I’m like doing a hike and breathing heavy, my lungs hurt like later. Yes, I can feel it. I can feel it. So, and I’m not, I wouldn’t say I’m an at-risk quote unquote person either, you know? So, yeah, same thing here in Florida. We’re trapped inside. At least I am. Thank goodness we have air conditioning because yeah, same old, same old, know, like hundred degrees with, you know.
Reuben Saltzman (01:39.088)
Really?
Reuben Saltzman (01:47.944)
Sure, yeah, okay
Tessa Murry (02:00.878)
Well, this morning when I woke up, was like 79 out and the dew point was 77. So that was at like 630.
Reuben Saltzman (02:06.971)
my gosh. and it doesn’t get better. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (02:12.366)
No, no, it’s it you know every day there’s an excessive heat warning that comes on and it you know it’s on from like noon until 7 and You just stay inside. That’s what people do you stay inside? So
Reuben Saltzman (02:23.946)
my goodness. Well, before we get too far in the show, I want to give a shout out to our show sponsors, IEB, Inspector Empire Builder. The big thing that’s going on this podcast, it’s coming out on Monday. So on Friday of this week, we’ve got a wait, is it Friday? Yeah, it’s Friday. It’s August 8th. IEB is holding a four hour virtual summer mastermind.
on AI in the home inspection industry. That’s what the whole thing is. And I can’t wait for it. I think I’m going to be out of town at the time, but it doesn’t matter. Wherever I am, I’m jumping on this and I’m taking four hours out of my day to participate. So if you’re interested, go to the IEB website. It’s iebcoaching.com.
and you can register, find all the details. If you’re not a member of IEB, I think you can still sign up for it. It’s just gonna, you’re gonna have to pay for it. If you’re a member of IEB, it’s included. I’m pretty sure. If I’m wrong, don’t tell me about it. I’m just wrong. I’m okay with that. You’ll have to deal with it. You’ve invested 30 seconds every time that you’ll never get back. talking about the AI in the home inspection,
industry. I was on a call from with someone this morning who wants to help us with our business and figuring out what else we can use for AI and she’s suggesting that it’s gonna it’s gonna be soon where any potential buyer is gonna go through a house with their phone they’re gonna do like a Matterport type of thing or a device they’ll go through and they’ll be able to gather maybe
75 to 80 % of the stuff that a home inspector would report on. And then you would just hire a home inspector to come through and check the other 20 % that AI can’t quite figure out. you know, of course she doesn’t know this. She’s just suggesting that this is the type of thing that’s coming. And whatever does come, I mean, it’ll be a disruptor. It’ll change what we do as home inspectors.
Tessa Murry (04:29.304)
Gosh.
Tessa Murry (04:37.9)
Yeah. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (04:46.226)
Are we five years from that 20 years from that? Who knows? But I just the whole conversation is fascinating and the this business will be changing at some point dramatically. I mean, what we do today is not significantly different from what we did 20 years ago. I mean, we’re doing way more. There’s that we’ve talked about scope creep on this podcast, but
Tessa Murry (04:55.118)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (05:13.496)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (05:14.45)
There has not been a disruptor as far as I’m concerned. It’s just been a gradual change. It’s not like we’ve had an exponential change in what we do. So looking forward to this conference. I’m not trying to sell this, but it’s definitely something that’s on my mind and something that I’m looking forward to.
Tessa Murry (05:24.366)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (05:36.884)
The more I hear about it and the more I read about AI, the more overwhelmed I am because it’s going to change not just the home inspection industry, but the world as we know it. Who knows what the home inspection industry is going to look like in another five or 10 years because of this. I applaud you, Ruben, for staying.
up on these things and following them and talking to other home inspection companies about them because I think if you’re not on this AI wave, you are going to get left behind. whatever it looks like. Yeah, exactly. yeah, who knows what it’s going to look like. it’s a little scary to think that just a homeowner could walk through their cell phone and get 80 % of what a home inspector gets.
Reuben Saltzman (06:15.026)
Yeah, you’ll be blockbuster, right?
Tessa Murry (06:30.784)
You know, that’s the world we live in. Yeah. Wild. Absolutely wild. Well, I, you know, I’d love to hear and I don’t know if you can share this on on air on a podcast, but I’d love to hear your cliff notes from the like your takeaways from that. I be discussion like a high level what you learned from that because I am curious.
Reuben Saltzman (06:31.71)
Yeah, or even 50%, whatever it is. Nope.
Yeah, so that’s, that’s some fascinating stuff.
Reuben Saltzman (06:54.823)
I will share them.
Reuben Saltzman (06:59.004)
Yeah, yeah, I’m sure I can definitely talk about it. And by the way, talking about Cliff Notes and AI, how we’re using it, you know, the show notes, every time we do our podcast, you have a transcript of what we say, that’s all AI. It’s all automatic. Now we’re not paying a person to actually do it. And the show summary, the entire summary of our podcast,
Tessa Murry (07:17.09)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (07:24.868)
is AI and then it breaks it down into the show description. It says, you know, for the first five minutes, Ruben and Tessa talked about this at eight minutes. They go into this topic and you can click links to go ahead right to that part in our show. And all of that is AI. We don’t have a human figuring any of this stuff out.
Tessa Murry (07:45.922)
Isn’t that crazy? mean, just think how much time that that used to take to listen to something and try and, you know, organize it and put links in and summarize. Now, humans are being replaced. Poof. Done at the click of a button.
Reuben Saltzman (07:47.078)
It is.
Reuben Saltzman (07:59.263)
That’s right. Yeah. And hopefully we do things, you know, hopefully we do other things that is a better use of our time. Hopefully. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (08:09.076)
We can only hope, right? We can only hope. I will say it’s helped me with just the basic things like, you know, being more efficient with emails and just writing, although it is kind of scary how good it is at that. You know, it’s like something that would take me maybe an hour to write. I can kind of get done in like 15 minutes, you know.
Reuben Saltzman (08:36.668)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s really cool.
Tessa Murry (08:38.966)
And it’s probably better than what I would have written anyways. I’m not the best writer for anyone listening. I work at it, but you
Reuben Saltzman (08:41.534)
you
You get more credit than that. You are a very good writer.
Tessa Murry (08:49.75)
Well, thank you. Learn from the best. Okay. Well, should we dive into what the topic is today, Ruben? You want to announce it?
Reuben Saltzman (08:55.262)
Let’s do it. Although real quick, I just want to circle back from last week. I have not figured out a solution to clean in my gutter. We’ll come back if I do. I will definitely want to talk about it. And then did you have a chance to check out that YouTube video I sent you? What was it? Technology Connections. Did you watch that video?
Tessa Murry (09:04.814)
Tessa Murry (09:18.766)
I’m glad you brought it up. I did not watch the whole video. It’s still in my library and I want to because I watched the first five minutes and I was pulled in and I also think the guy is hilarious. yeah, yeah, I was like, he is my kind of nerd. I get this. I appreciate it and I think it’s awesome. So I will be watching more of his videos when I have time.
Reuben Saltzman (09:23.9)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (09:27.774)
Okay, good. Okay. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (09:37.33)
Okay. All right. Sweet. Sounds good. Okay. So today’s topic, Tessa with Your House Coach is going to be sharing some of her what did we call it? Case studies, right? Yeah, we’re doing some case studies today. So Tessa, you’re driving the ship.
Tessa Murry (09:51.874)
Face studies, yeah. Yeah.
You know, I was going to say I picked out two that I think are kind of interesting and we can dive into them and that should be, you know, when you and I get talking. I think that’ll fill up a whole show. So we’ll see. I know. I know. Okay. Well, so this is interesting. Yeah. I’ve, you know, the past, let’s see, how long have I actually been doing this consulting work now? About two years.
Reuben Saltzman (10:08.094)
Yeah, we always say this is going to be a 20 minute show and it never is.
Tessa Murry (10:23.214)
I’ve worked, I’d say primarily with a lot of just home owners. And a lot of them are first time home buyers that I end up working with, but a lot of them are just homeowners. And I’d say the more complicated, interesting cases are homeowners that have been in their house for a little while. And now they’re having specific issues and they’re having trouble kind of figuring out what’s going on. Usually the first time home buyers are like, what do we do? How do we take care of our house? What needs to be done? Is there anything we should be worried about?
And it’s more kind of a broad high level, you know, kind of a home maintenance plan or helping them set goals and better understand their house and what to do and how to invest their money, know, in a way that works for them. anyways, both of these case studies are from people that have been in their house for a while, a little while, and they’re having specific issues. So the first one I’ll start with came to me last winter. And the homeowner contacted me.
A few weeks after, he put on a new roof, and this was in December, and he contacted me because he had several concerns. So first thing, to set the stage, background info here. This is a 1911 house in Minneapolis, and he actually was referred to me through StructureTech. Turns out he had a StructureTech home inspection when he bought the house about
four, I think seven years prior. And so he sent me the home inspection report. It’s kind of part of my process when I’m working with a client, if they have information about their house, I like to look through as much as I can. So he sent me over his report first and I read through it. I was like, wow, this is a great report. Turns out you wrote it, Ruben. This is your client from 2017. So.
Reuben Saltzman (11:53.585)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (12:15.262)
Sweet. sweet.
Love it. thank you.
Tessa Murry (12:19.99)
Great report. Thank you so much. It’s very helpful when I have thorough information about the house before I get started. So anyways, he reached out to me because he put on this new roof and he was starting to see some new moisture problems. Okay, so let me dive into the details here. So they put on a metal roof and specifically it was an aluminum shingle type of roof. Have you ever seen those? It looks like
Reuben Saltzman (12:47.878)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (12:49.782)
shingles, like printed like shingles, but it’s actually sheets of aluminum. It’s pretty lightweight. And I had neither, but he had some excess panels that he kept and he showed me when I went to his house. I got to see him. So pretty cool. And they decided to go with this metal because he’d had problems with ice dams. They’d had problems with ice dams in the past and they did not want to deal with that anymore.
Reuben Saltzman (12:53.756)
Nope, never seen it.
Tessa Murry (13:14.744)
So they’re like, okay, we will do this new roof system and hopefully the snow will slide off the middle roof. Also, this house, it’s two stories and then it actually had a finished upper level that used to be an attic and they finished it. And so it was a vaulted ceiling upstairs and it was kind of an interesting space. was like the second floor. I think an architect had owned this house, he told me beforehand. So there were some interesting, unique design.
things that they had done to it when they remodeled it and changed it. So there had been a new addition off the back, which was like a single story family room, had its own attic, fireplace, all of that. And then the original house was the two story house with this attic. And they had opened up the second floor, one of the second floor bedrooms up to the attic space. And there was this tall stairway that led up to this finished attic space now. And that was like a loft basically. Yes. Is this coming back to you?
Reuben Saltzman (13:46.545)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (14:12.222)
Maybe, questioned. Did it have a bunch of copper tubing on the outside that they were using as a guard?
Tessa Murry (14:15.074)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (14:23.219)
topper tubing. I don’t remember seeing that.
Reuben Saltzman (14:26.842)
Okay, you’d remember if you did, then I’m not thinking of the house. Okay, carry on.
Tessa Murry (14:28.928)
Okay. Okay. Okay. Well, there’s some other details that might jog your memory. your inspection report, I cracked up when I read that there was a rat that poked its head out through the basement slab a couple times while you were doing your testing and running water. You had pictures. You had pictures of the rat looking through the crack in the report. Never seen that before. Yeah. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (14:45.182)
my.
Reuben Saltzman (14:50.194)
my gosh. Gross. Gross. Yeah, I have not seen a lot of rats. No mice, plenty of mice, but not rats.
Tessa Murry (14:57.938)
No, me neither. Me neither. Okay, so this attic space is finished and we’ve got a vaulted ceiling. And so there’s no accessible attic space whatsoever. And he’s using that for his office. And one of the side issues is that he’s got comfort problems. Like that space up there is always hot.
like heat rises and it’s just very uncomfortable up there. Heating and cooling is a problem. But the main issue was the ice dams. So they put on this new roof and then he started having these icicles forming in kind of an interesting location. So let me explain how this new roof assembly went. So they actually took off the original roof deck and they
They removed the shingles, know, tar paper, all of that, stripped it down to just the deck boards. And it was the original deck boards, I think, from like 1918. It was like skip sheathing. So there are little spaces in between the original dimensional lumber that you could see in the pictures. And then what they did after they cleaned off that existing roofing is they put on like half inch to an inch thick furring strips that went from the eave up to the peak. If you can picture that, you know, every
Reuben Saltzman (16:17.948)
picture in it. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (16:19.252)
Yep, every, you know, foot and a half or two feet or something like that. Then what they did is they installed a secondary roof deck over top of that with half inch OSB. And it’s my understanding that they put ice and water barrier on top of all of that decking, covered the entire thing in ice and water.
Reuben Saltzman (16:29.356)
huh.
Reuben Saltzman (16:41.63)
Okay. Yep. Yep.
Tessa Murry (16:44.684)
And then they put on another type of kind of underlayment meant for that type of metal shingle. And it’s like a, what was it called? I wrote it down here. It’s like a rooftop synthetic paper. It looks kind of like a felt. And that was laid down too. And then the metal shingles were installed on top of that, or the aluminum shingles were installed on top of that. And what they did for the venting space at the Eve, because the original house,
If you can picture the eave, it basically was just the roof decking and you could see the rafter tails sticking out along the eave. There was no original soffit or like soffit intake vents or anything like that into the attic space. If you would look up from underneath the overhang, you would just see the deck boards basically, you know, over top of the exposed rafter tails. Yep. And it was just a gable, kind of a simple gable roof basically.
Reuben Saltzman (17:36.328)
tracking. Yep.
Tessa Murry (17:43.776)
So what they did is they created this airspace in between the two roof decks. And they put this continuous ridge vent along the peak. And they installed this material that looks kind of like continuous ridge vent, like core vent, along the eave. They installed it on the fascia. And that allows airflow to come up underneath the new roof deck.
and over the old roof deck and come up from the eave and then go all the way up to the peak. Yeah. Go ahead.
Reuben Saltzman (18:19.44)
Okay, just to go back to what you said, I believe you said they used half inch furring strips or sleepers. Didn’t you say half inch?
Tessa Murry (18:31.04)
Either half inch or an inch, I can’t tell from the pictures, but they’re probably an inch, I’m guessing, but they’re no more than that. They’re pretty thin. They’re pretty thin. Yep. Yep.
Reuben Saltzman (18:34.673)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (18:39.77)
Okay. Okay. All right. And I just, it kind of rose a flag for me because we both know the code minimum is one inch of venting. If you’re going to have a vented attic, you need at least one inch, half inch doesn’t cut it. Two inches is better, but okay, continue.
Tessa Murry (18:48.546)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (19:00.962)
I’m glad you brought that up Ruben, because I don’t know for sure what it was. I’m just looking at the pictures of it, and I would say it’s probably about an inch. And actually, here, let me share my screen. For those of you that are watching us on YouTube, I’m going to share a picture of this roof and what it looks like with the furring strips. Can you see that?
Reuben Saltzman (19:07.944)
Okay.
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (19:15.111)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (19:27.28)
Okay, you know, yeah, I can see it. And you know, you know what I don’t like about this right away, but that’s neither here nor there, I guess. The ladder, what? Come on. That’s not safe.
Tessa Murry (19:41.018)
Yeah, yep, a little sketchy ladder settings. Okay, so I’ll stop sharing that. so the problem was, weather got pretty cold, and the homeowner noticed water coming out of the end of that kind of core event, that intake vent along the fascia. There were icicles coming out of that material.
Reuben Saltzman (19:44.542)
All right.
Tessa Murry (20:07.51)
So the thing that’s connected to the airspace in between the two layers of roof deck had icicles coming out of it. And here’s another, I’ll see if I can share this picture with you too. Okay. For those of you that are watching, this is a good one to watch. If you don’t watch our podcast, maybe you’ll start after this. Lots of pictures of this. Okay. So yeah, you can see there’s icicles coming out of this little venting stuff. Turns out…
Reuben Saltzman (20:34.93)
Yep. Okay.
Tessa Murry (20:36.206)
As we can kind of continue talking to there was additional Icicles coming out of even the little spaces in between the roof deck boards that you could see under the the eve under the overhang like there was actually frost showing up kind of and even along the Gable end the the roof overhang along the rake there was frost coming out that you could see Kind of right at the exterior wall where it met
the roof decking. There was like almost like a spray pattern of frost coming out there. you know, lots of moisture kind of coming out, seeping out of this roof. But the interesting thing is he did not notice any new water at all inside of his house. So there’s no staining coming in through the ceiling or anything like that, that he noticed. So he, know,
Reuben Saltzman (21:27.848)
Good. Okay.
Tessa Murry (21:31.31)
I think he actually reached out to StructureTech and was like, hey, what’s going on here? And I think someone came out and then they said, yeah, you should probably talk to Tessa. And so then he reached out to me and was like, what’s going on? Do I need to worry about this and what’s happening? So it turns out he’s had an energy audit done in the past. They’ve had some blored door testing done. And didn’t find anything that was a big red flag. But he’s also had some insulation work done.
and some air sealing done here and there from what was accessible from the inside, basically. And from what I could see and what he knows, it looks like he’s got basically fiberglass bat insulation in his attic space between the drywall in the original roof deck. And it’s paper backed. And it also looks like there’s poly vapor barrier installed between the fiberglass bat.
and the drywall as well. So if we’re talking from like the warm side, we’ve got drywall, poly, and then fiberglass, and then original roof deck, and then airspace, and then new OSB roof deck with ice and water, with the felt paper, and then with the metal shingles. Does that make sense? That’s a lot of layers, but that’s what his roof assembly looks like. Okay. Okay, Rain Man Ruben. So.
Reuben Saltzman (22:31.282)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (22:50.462)
No, I could repeat it back to you. I know exactly what you’re saying. Yep. Yep.
Tessa Murry (22:57.674)
Yes, you are tracking. So, these icicles, yeah, these icicles were new and they were, for those of you that weren’t, are not able to see the pictures, a lot of them are kind of a brownish color too. So they’re picking up the tannins from the wood, from other things. And there, so they’re a darker color. So I got out to the house and I did my usual kind of walk through looking at everything inside, outside.
Reuben Saltzman (22:59.294)
I’m tracking.
Tessa Murry (23:27.188)
all of that. There’s another interesting detail. A large portion of the roof that the second floor bedroom that had been opened up and the ceiling was really tall, you could see all the way up to the attic basically from the second floor bedroom that they opened up into the finished loft area. So it’s like kind of a double story room. They had clearly cut some of the original rafters or truss supports.
And so that section of roof was just the plain vault with nothing supporting it. And I’m guessing that it was probably the original framing from the roof. And they never beefed it up because there was a huge dip in the ceiling that you could see from inside. And I was like, that’s a little, hmm, that’s a little questionable. you know, so then he got into telling me, well, yeah, I was an architect too on the house and blah, blah, blah. I was like, OK, well, I’m wondering if you can see that dip from the outside. He’s like, no, it’s not a problem anymore because the roofers put
Reuben Saltzman (24:12.967)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (24:26.19)
additional layer of furring strip over that section so that it would look level from the outside. It’s like, oh great, okay. Yeah, you know as a home inspector, like well we can only see what we can see. Yeah, it’s not a concern from the outside. So we have no idea what kind of what’s what’s happening there structurally, if that’s actually sound or not. That’s a whole other whole other can of worms. So from the inside I’ll tell you a couple things I saw in the
Reuben Saltzman (24:33.662)
Okay. Okay. All right. Structural for in strips. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (24:55.454)
loft space, he had some kind knee walls where the roof kind of comes down and meets a little short wall. And I was able to kind of peek my head behind that space and he had kind of just some little storage areas. And I looked up at the top and there were gaps in the drywall. So I was able to actually kind of see that that’s how I could confirm what kind of insulation was up there. There was some fiberglass sticking out. There was some poly that was ripped and kind of shredded and sticking out.
So there were little gaps, imperfections at the top of that knee wall in lots of locations. There’s also a chimney that went through the roof, penetration for the chimney. were plumbing vents that went through the roof that I could kind of see gaps around those things, those penetrations. And all of this was just telling me basically that we don’t have a perfect air barrier. We don’t have a perfect vapor barrier either.
As you know, in a really harsh, cold climate like Minnesota, there can be a lot of water vapor that can move through diffusion, but mainly through air transport. So like if we’ve got a little tiny leak, you know, a little tiny hole in the sheetrock and in the poly, just, you know, all of that warm air from the house and humidity from the house will push up through that little hole and carry that moisture with it.
So what was interesting is a lot of the icicles are kind of forming more so around where he’s got, where he’s had problems with more snow melt in the past and where a lot of these kind of penetrations in other areas line up. So that’s one indication that it has something to do with that. And my thinking on this is that
Basically, all of this humidity and moisture from inside of the house is kind of pushing up through these imperfections in the air barrier at the ceiling level. And it’s able to make its way through the holes in the plastic if, you know, if there’s even poly throughout the rest of that assembly. And it gets up to the original roof deck and it can diffuse through that and it can actually move through air leakage to that as well because that’s not
Tessa Murry (27:16.128)
an air barrier at all. And we’ve got little gaps between the boards as well. And as soon as that warm, humid air gets into that cold, vented airspace between the two roof decks, we can get condensation on the underside of that secondary roof deck. Because the whole point of the venting is to keep that upper roof deck cold so we don’t melt snow and create ice dams. We want that ventilation. We want that roof deck to be cold. And so we had some really
really cold stretches last winter. And when he noticed those icicles forming, it was kind of right after a long cold stretch and right when it had started to get above freezing. That’s when he saw the icicles. So, so my theory is that this moisture is moving through the assembly from the house up through the attic space, through the original deck boards, and then condensing on the underside of the secondary roof deck, especially since they did such a good job.
Reuben Saltzman (27:57.469)
Yes, makes perfect sense. Sure.
Tessa Murry (28:15.486)
sealing that secondary roof deck with ice and water and everything else and metal, no moisture is going to diffuse to the outside or dry through it. It’s just like plastic, basically, impermeable layer on top of that. The OSP might be able to absorb some moisture, but it’s not going to dry to the outside. It’s going to dry to that airspace. Exactly.
Reuben Saltzman (28:28.359)
Right. Yes.
Tessa Murry (28:40.33)
We get a layer of frost that builds up when it’s below freezing for a long period of time on the underside of that secondary roof deck. And then as soon as it starts to warm up, that frost melts and it drips all the way down that secondary root in that little space between the roof decks. And then it’s coming out of the eaves and it’s even coming out from the original roof deck in some areas too on the eaves. So that’s what I believe is happening with this roof assembly.
I don’t know. What are your thoughts on that Ruben?
Reuben Saltzman (29:13.694)
It tracks perfectly. I mean, as soon as you described what was going on when you were talking about the sleepers and then the new roof deck and then the ice and water shield, I thought, I really hope they did a perfect job of air sealing everything. Because if they didn’t, we know what’s going to happen. It’s going to be exactly what you proceeded to describe.
Tessa Murry (29:16.568)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (29:39.182)
I wish I could say that they did a perfect job. So he went back to the roofing con. So my advice was, or least what I told him was, here’s what I think is happening and explained what we just talked about. he also, on top of that, he had an April air humidifier, whole house humidifier that he was using in his house during the winter.
So he was also tracking the humidity and temperatures on all the levels of the house, and he was diligent about that. And so when I talked to him about what was going on, I’m like, okay, the lowest hanging fruit, easiest thing to do right now to try and reduce the amount of moisture getting up there is to turn off the April air. Just don’t use it. So he played around with, you know, turning it down, having it off, all of that. And, yo, yeah, your hand’s up. Go ahead. Speak.
Reuben Saltzman (30:36.402)
Well, you said he tracked it. Do we know what type of levels he was dealing with? I mean, where did he keep it?
Tessa Murry (30:39.522)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (30:43.102)
Well, so I, yeah, I don’t remember what they were before. don’t think they got above 30%. But with, yeah, with it off, he said it was still about 14 % relative humidity in the loft area. Even with the April air. It’s very dry. This is why he’s so frustrated because even with the April air off, it’s 14%, it’s super dry, it’s very uncomfortable.
Reuben Saltzman (30:50.839)
that’s pretty low. Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (31:00.52)
Well, that’s really, really dry though. That’s ridiculously dry.
Reuben Saltzman (31:08.466)
Yeah, I’d be frustrated too. Yeah. gosh.
Tessa Murry (31:12.598)
and he’s still having frost. So it’s a very unforgiving assembly. You can have these tiny little penetrations, like around a plumbing vent or around these knee wall tops or the masonry and chimney, and you can get a ton of moisture through these little holes. Building Science Corps did an experiment a while back, and most people I’ve seen, I know I’ve read this research and I’ve seen the image.
that shows basically a four by eight piece of sheetrock that they cut a one inch by one inch hole in. And they did a study to see how much moisture moved through that little hole during one heating season when it was like 70 degrees inside, 30 degrees outside, and I don’t know, 20 % humidity or something like that. And it was like a hundred times more moisture moves through that one inch by one inch hole than it does through just diffusion through the sheetrock. So, you know.
Reuben Saltzman (32:05.875)
Yes.
Tessa Murry (32:09.446)
What is it, like 100 liters or something like that of moisture got into that wall overheating season. It was a ton. So you think about that, you add up all these little one inch by one inch holes everywhere, and you can have, you can definitely have icicles forming, you know, along the eve.
Reuben Saltzman (32:12.594)
It’s a lot. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (32:24.254)
Sure. And one other thing is, mean, even though 14 % relative humidity at 70 degrees is ridiculously dry, you take that same air and you cool it down and your relative humidity is going to skyrocket. And there was a great demonstration of this in that video I had showed you on dehumidifiers where he took like a
Tessa Murry (32:51.519)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (32:54.302)
of air and he had his hygrometer or whatever it is that measures humidity, I can’t remember the name of the device, he had the humidity thing and he had a thermostat in there and he cooled the air and as the air dropped the relative humidity rose. Now we’re not changing the amount of moisture in the air whatsoever, the amount of moisture is staying exactly the same but the relative humidity
Tessa Murry (33:00.611)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (33:22.494)
temperature goes down, relative humidity goes up and it’s a gigantic chain and it just refers to the amount of moisture that air can hold. Cold air can’t hold that moisture. So even small amounts really add up. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (33:25.326)
Yes.
Tessa Murry (33:34.294)
Yes.
Exactly. Yep. That’s exactly right, Ruben. And if you’ve ever played around with a psychrometric chart, that’s just a visual representation of how that actually works. It’s like the warmer the air, the more moisture it can hold. The colder it gets, the less moisture it can hold. And so as soon as that air that’s pretty dry, it’s 14 % when it’s 70 degrees.
You can look at a psychrometric chart and figure out, if the outside temperature is zero degrees and the underside of that secondary roof deck is somewhere between, let’s say it’s 70 degrees inside and it’s zero degrees outside, maybe that secondary roof deck is, I don’t know, 20 degrees or something, it’s probably going to be lower than the dew point of that air and you’ll get condensation.
Reuben Saltzman (34:24.222)
And then you get condensation. Yeah. It’s just good building science.
Tessa Murry (34:27.822)
Exactly. lots of like, yeah. And you know, what’s interesting is that water is running, the water is making its way out to the eave. Luckily, it’s not coming back down through the gaps in the original roof deck, and then coming through the insulation, and then hitting a ceiling. It’s not doing that. And it could be that maybe there is some moisture coming through, but the polyvapor barrier is good enough that it’s like getting trapped.
Reuben Saltzman (34:45.596)
Yes. Yes.
Tessa Murry (34:56.35)
on the other side of the polyvapor barrier and it’s not making its way to the sheetrock yet. But he’s a very diligent homeowner. And so I would imagine if he sees any sort of staining, he would notice that. And he hasn’t seen that yet. And also, I forgot to mention, he’s got a few different skylights up in that vaulted attic space too. So there’s some areas that don’t have any venting at all. And there’s a few areas that have even more penetrations and more holes through them as well. So
Reuben Saltzman (35:22.578)
Sure.
Tessa Murry (35:26.19)
So yeah, he’s in a tricky spot where he just invested a lot of money putting on this new roof to take care of an ice dam problem. And now he’s got this other moisture issue that’s going on. And there’s not a real cheap, easy way to completely fix this issue. There’s ways you can maybe kind of mitigate it or reduce the problems, but to fix it, not simple.
Reuben Saltzman (35:52.817)
Okay, another question for you Tess. How big of a deal is this? Does he need to fix it?
Tessa Murry (36:00.43)
So that’s another great question and we talked about that. you know, it’s something that I think it depends on as a homeowner, what’s your comfort level? There’s, I realized doing this consulting work, there’s a lot of gray area. So if you are someone that does not want any moisture going somewhere where it’s not supposed to be, this would make you extremely uncomfortable. And I would say that that is
Reuben Saltzman (36:11.806)
Mmm.
Reuben Saltzman (36:27.72)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (36:29.302)
you know, tends to be more so this client. He’s very uncomfortable with that moisture being there. On the other hand, you know, I deal with people that are like, you know, is it gonna rot my roof deck out in the next few years? Is it gonna create any major structural issues? Well, I’m not seeing any problems inside. Okay, well, then I’m not worried about it. Just gonna let it keep doing its thing. So I think what I do is I, you know, I try and explain why it’s happening and what’s causing it.
And we try to reduce the amount of moisture that’s getting up there in the first place by, you know, turning off the April air and doing a better job of air sealing those penetrations that are accessible from the inside. So going back through and working with, you know, an insulation contractor who understands air sealing and trying to target those areas at the top of the knee wall and around the plumbing vents and these other penetrations and trying to seal them up as best they can from the inside. And
kind of do these, I take a less is more approach. So it’s like, let’s try these things. Let’s reduce the humidity. Let’s try and, you know, improve the air barrier from the inside and let’s see what happens. Let’s wait another winter. Let’s see how bad it gets. And obviously the colder it is outside, the worse it’s going to be. You know, and if we have some winters that are pretty mild and it barely gets below freezing, or it only does for a little while, well, then he’s not going to have a condensation issue. Or in theory shouldn’t.
Reuben Saltzman (37:52.04)
Sure. Yeah. Agreed. Agreed.
Tessa Murry (37:54.86)
So how long can, you know, does it take for OSB to start to rot out or for the original roof deck to start to rot out? I don’t know. I think it depends on how much moisture there is in the house, what the temperatures indoor and outdoor are like, you know, lots of different variables we just don’t have control over.
Reuben Saltzman (38:14.596)
It depends. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (38:16.596)
It depends. Yeah, it depends. you know, I, a lot of times I’m kind of here to be a sounding board with someone and be like, okay, well, here’s what, you know, here’s here different options. You know, here’s the basic, the simple approach is do nothing all the way to going back to the roofer and trying to work with the roofer on various fixes for this. Adding more intake ventilation, adding more, just adding more ventilation in general or
you know, worst case scenario, it could be completely gutting the inside of this attic space and trying to do a consistent, perfect air barrier installation. you know, which would be super frustrating for him because he’s had other insulation contractors out before they decided to do this new roof.
because of this ice dam problem. And he’s like, hey, how do we fix this ice dam issue? Should we add more insulation? If so, how do we do that? And all the insulation contractors he talked to were like, well, you’ve got this beautifully finished inside space. we’re guessing based on the age of the house and what we’re seeing is that it’s a two by six rafter. And from what we can see, looks like it’s a fiberglass bat in there. And so…
The only way we can really kind of improve it is to remove all the sheetrock, expose it, remove the fiberglass, and then do close cell spray foam. And if we don’t change the ceiling height, you know, six inches, well, five and a half inches of close cell spray foam isn’t that much of an improvement from what you already have. And it’s not very cost effective. And you’ll probably still have snow melt from, you know, only having six inches of insulation. And you’ll certainly have snow melt.
through the thermal bridging with the rafters if you don’t put any continuous insulation over top of them, which loses head height even more, which he didn’t want to do because it’s already pretty tight space up there. he didn’t… Yeah, so he… Okay, I understand where he’s coming from. He didn’t see any cost-effective reasons why he should try and change the existing insulation up there to deal with the ice dams. He thought, well, this doesn’t make sense. Why would I rip out all my sheetrock?
Reuben Saltzman (40:13.074)
Yes, I’ve experienced that myself.
Tessa Murry (40:31.808)
spend tens of thousands of dollars putting close cell spray foam and still not be guaranteed a solution to my ice dams, I’ll just go with this vented roof system and that should fix it.
Reuben Saltzman (40:41.212)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (40:43.69)
So that’s where he’s at. a lot of people I work with are like, I wish I could have just talked to you before I did these things. So I knew what I was getting into or knew about things that we should think about beforehand to try and prevent these building science problems down the road. if anything, I would have said, we definitely need a bigger airspace to allow for more ventilation potentially. I don’t know.
You know, if that secondary roof deck is going to be cold and you’re going to get condensation, let’s get as much ventilation as we can so that we can try and move that warm humid air up and out through the ridge vent. But you’re not going to go ripping apart a brand new roof, you know, one year after you put it on to try and get a thicker furring strip in there.
Reuben Saltzman (41:22.94)
Yes. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (41:31.154)
Yeah. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (41:37.659)
Yeah, Tess, I think if it were me, I would wait at least another year before I did anything with this house. If this were my house, I mean, I’d say keep humidity low. And if as long as we have, you know, more of a mild winter, if there’s a week where it’s super cold and I get a few icicles, OK, I got some water where it doesn’t belong. But houses can take wetting and then they dry out. I mean, they’re designed for that.
Tessa Murry (41:46.328)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (42:06.652)
It’s not the end of the world. If you have a leak that happens once a year, it’s where you have chronic leakage, chronic water going up there. That’s where you end up with problems. But if it only happens during the coldest week, you’re not ruining your interior finishes. Personally, if that were my house, I wouldn’t do anything about it. I’d say it are cost prohibitive. And whatever the damage is being caused, the fix
Tessa Murry (42:14.702)
Hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (42:35.696)
is going to be far more than the prevention.
Tessa Murry (42:41.954)
I 100 % agree with you, Ruben. I do. I agree with you on that. The fix is going to be cost prohibitive, I think, and not worth it because ultimately, like you said, hopefully it’s a small enough issue that’s happening infrequently enough that it’s not going to cause any major structural issues or any, as long as he’s not seeing any staining on the inside at this point, hopefully whatever moisture is getting up there is able to escape or dry over time.
Reuben Saltzman (42:44.19)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (43:10.926)
You did say one thing that I want to hit on though is that our houses are meant to dry or building assemblies are meant to dry. In theory on paper, hopefully they’re able to dry. But you can have a lot of assemblies that have vapor barriers and if they’re installed properly, perfectly, what they do is they prevent moisture from moving through it.
Reuben Saltzman (43:39.304)
Yeah. And it stays wet. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (43:40.686)
You know, and it stays. Yeah, it can be trapped. So yes and no. I think having a house that’s 1911 is actually in his favor because he’s got the original wood deck boards that are hopefully pretty durable, more durable than an OSB would be. And that’s what’s seen the brunt of the moisture, I think, at this point, as the froth continues to drip.
Reuben Saltzman (44:02.45)
Well, well, and you know that you have an airspace in this area. So you have something where it will eventually dry out.
Tessa Murry (44:06.635)
Yes. Yes.
Tessa Murry (44:13.098)
Yeah. Yep. Exactly. Exactly. So it’s the conundrum. It’s like, you know, we try and make, we try it, we take old houses that are leaky and drafty and inefficient, and we try to make them more comfortable and more energy efficient. And so we add insulation to them. And then, you know, we don’t have perfect air bears, we don’t have enough insulation or we
create a little gap in an airspace and put another layer of something on the outside. And then we create these moisture issues that start showing up that never used to be there. And so, you know, our houses are just getting more complicated and complex and how heat and air and moisture moves through these tricky assemblies as we change and adapt them. And, you know, and what makes it even more challenging is a lot of times
Reuben Saltzman (44:49.18)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (45:04.236)
When we do these renovations or these additions, we’re using materials that are a lot less durable than what we had 100 years ago with materials that are wood composite products and can’t hold and survive getting wet over and over again. So we rot things out faster. we just have to be… And the challenging thing is, I come across this type of issue time and time again with hot roofs, especially in a cold climate, where a roofer puts on a new roof and…
Reuben Saltzman (45:10.877)
Yes.
Tessa Murry (45:34.306)
they’re unaware of these challenges. And then the homeowner has problems like this. Now, I haven’t seen the specific problem before the secondary roof deck and the venting issue, but I see a lot of times where people have hot roofs and they’ve got a tongue and groove ceiling on the inside and they put on a new roof and they decided to do an upgrade with the insulation at that time. And so they did like a spray foam and maybe it’s not installed perfectly.
And then there’s little spaces and gaps where warm, moist air can get in into the attic space. And then again, we get condensation issues and then that moisture has nowhere to go, can’t be absorbed by anything. And it drips through the foam and through the tongue and groove ceiling and it drips everywhere. And then they’ve got basically like a raining ceiling in the middle of winter, you know. It’s not a roof leak, it’s a condensation issue. And, you know, it’s all in the name of improving.
their house and making their house more airtight, making more energy efficient, making it more comfortable. But now they’ve got these home performance issues and the roofing contractors like, I didn’t do it. I don’t know what’s going on. We just put on a new roof and you know, and we hired a great insulation contractor who sprayed in foam. Why is that a problem? You know, and it’s how you spray the foam where it applies to.
where we’ve got little spaces where that foam may pull away from the framing or allow air leakage to occur. Or maybe they used a cardboard backer and they put that down on the backside of the tongue and groove ceiling so that the spray foam wouldn’t come through the tongue and groove. And now we’ve got a little air space between the cardboard and the tongue and groove that is allowing air to get up into that assembly and move and create condensation issues too. So, yes.
Reuben Saltzman (47:18.046)
and then you get convection through this space because the air can move.
Tessa Murry (47:22.094)
Yeah. Yeah. So there’s just all these little details that just depending on the house and the assembly and materials and conditions inside and outside, we can have lots of moisture problems. that’s just a little sample of some of the clients that I am working with, the problems that they face. I feel for them because they’re trying to do these improvements and they usually end up spending.
thousands and thousands of dollars on their house doing these major upgrades with insulation and roofs and stuff like that and then they just create a nightmare situation that they can’t really easily fix afterwards.
Reuben Saltzman (48:02.066)
Yeah, yeah. yeah. My heart goes out to him too. That’s so frustrating. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (48:08.116)
Oof. It’s tough. Yeah, it’s tough. yeah. Well, that was case study one. looks like we’re done. We’re done.
Reuben Saltzman (48:16.606)
We’re we’re yeah, yeah, we’re we’re 48 minutes in we’re gonna have to save case study two for next week. Is that cool?
Tessa Murry (48:23.246)
I was gonna say, yeah, the next one is also a moisture issue and it shouldn’t take as long, but we can talk about it another time.
Reuben Saltzman (48:27.697)
Okay.
Well, maybe it’ll be a 20 minute podcast. Like we always talk about doing someday. Okay. All right.
Tessa Murry (48:34.456)
There we go. Well, and you know what, you can share some interesting stories from clients that you’ve worked with too, Ruben, because you see stuff like that as well when you’re out inspecting and you know how to identify that kind of stuff.
Reuben Saltzman (48:44.902)
I will come up with some, that sounds good. Seen a lot of fun case studies. All right.
Tessa Murry (48:49.932)
Yeah, yeah, cool.
Tessa Murry (48:55.67)
I know you have. How many houses have you inspected, would you say? That’s a tough question.
Reuben Saltzman (48:59.934)
I seriously don’t know. I really don’t know. I mean, I was out in the field doing home inspections from what 2004 to I really started getting out of the field. I was totally out by 2019 or 20 maybe maybe a little in the 20 and let’s just say 15 years to make the math easy. And I probably did about 300 a year. So less than 5000 I would guess.
Tessa Murry (49:15.214)
- Yeah.
Tessa Murry (49:21.1)
Yep.
Tessa Murry (49:28.206)
Wow. Yeah. Well, and you’ve been, mean, but you haven’t, you’ve also been in hundreds and hundreds of other homes too that you haven’t personally been inspecting, but you’ve been tagging along or training or something like that too. So.
Reuben Saltzman (49:39.315)
Yeah.
Yep. Yep. So I know there’s there’s a lot of inspectors on my team who have surely done a lot more home inspections than I have. That’s just how the numbers go.
Tessa Murry (49:51.602)
I wonder, I wonder who has done the most home inspections at StructureTech and what that number is. I’m curious.
Reuben Saltzman (49:58.854)
I might get back to you with that. I’ll better be my dad. then after that, yeah, I don’t know. I might dig into that. I’ll tell you. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (50:01.07)
yeah. Curious. Okay. Maybe we can ask AI to do that.
Reuben Saltzman (50:12.51)
right? It should be easy enough. All right, cool. Well, that was a great show. Tessa, fascinating case study. I’m looking forward to the next one. It’s always fun discussing this stuff.
Tessa Murry (50:15.872)
Yes.
Tessa Murry (50:24.992)
Yeah. Well, thanks. Yeah. Thanks for thanks for letting me kind of dive into it with you on this show. It’s fun.
Reuben Saltzman (50:32.443)
yeah, and if people want to get a hold of you, how do they do that?
Tessa Murry (50:36.027)
The best way I’d say is go to my website. All my contact information is on there. can shoot me an email or give me a phone call. My website is yourhousecoach.com.
Reuben Saltzman (50:46.376)
Perfect. And for the listeners, you want to reach out to us on the podcast, you can email us. It’s podcast at StructureTech.com and we will catch you next week. Thanks for tuning in. Take care.
Tessa Murry (50:58.862)
Thanks. Bye.