To watch a video version of this podcast, click here: https://youtu.be/noKM0Ijpafg
In this episode, Reuben and Tessa discuss various topics related to home inspections, including the impact of weather on home maintenance, the integration of AI in home inspections, and the importance of building relationships with team members. They share insights from recent ride-alongs, highlighting unique home features, safety upgrades, and challenges such as backdrafting and peeling paint. The conversation emphasizes the significance of understanding building science and the need for ongoing training in the industry.
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
AI is becoming increasingly relevant in home inspections.
Building relationships with team members enhances workplace culture.
Home inspections can reveal valuable information about neighbors.
Safety upgrades in homes are essential for preventing accidents.
Moisture issues can arise from improper ventilation.
Training in building science is crucial for contractors.
Unique home features can reflect the owner’s lifestyle.
Backdrafting can pose serious risks in homes with gas appliances.
Peeling paint can indicate underlying issues with the wood.
Understanding building science helps in diagnosing home problems.
Chapters
00:00 Weather and Personal Updates
03:01 AI in Home Inspections
05:59 Home Maintenance Challenges
09:07 Ride Along Insights
12:01 Building Relationships with Team
14:59 Home Inspection Stories
17:57 Safety Upgrades in Homes
21:00 Ventilation and Air Quality
24:00 Building Science and Moisture Issues
27:06 Training for Building Science
29:57 Unique Home Features
32:53 Backdrafting and Exhaust Issues
35:59 Peeling Paint Challenges
38:52 Final Thoughts and Wrap Up
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 (00:01.088)
Welcome back to the structure talk podcast on this rainy rainy day both in minnesota and in florida Sounds like we’ve got the same weather going on right now. How you doing today tessa?
Tessa Murry (00:13.153)
I’m doing well. Surprise Ruben! I’m actually in Minnesota, so it’s rainy in Red… it’s rainy in Red Wing too, actually. 69 in rainy. Surprise! Surprise! Yeah, I actually… came back… It’s… it’s usually rainy in Florida every day too this time of year, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s raining down there, but…
Reuben Saltzman (00:17.838)
I did not know you were in town. Okay. All right. Well, it’s not that much of a coincidence then.
Tessa Murry (00:38.401)
Yeah, I just came back. My mom had she had knee replacement surgery. So I’m here for a few days helping out with that. But we’ve pretty bad storm. Yeah, we’ve had some pretty bad storms the last couple days. How much rain did the Twin Cities get yesterday? I want to Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (00:45.289)
Aw, how sweet of you.
Reuben Saltzman (00:52.846)
This much I’m holding my hands together or apart. I don’t I don’t know it was a lot I’ve got standing water in my backyard right now, which is not typical
Tessa Murry (01:01.479)
Yeah, yeah, I think there was flash flood warnings, there were tornado warnings, at least in Goodhue County yesterday, and I think it rained like four inches yesterday, at least. So yeah, I, you know, I had a client who contacted me last night, desperately, because she had water coming up through the center of her concrete floor in her basement, and didn’t know what to do. Finished basement. Yeah. So that’s a bummer. That’s a bummer. But anyways,
Reuben Saltzman (01:11.225)
my goodness.
Reuben Saltzman (01:21.92)
no!
So frustrating. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (01:31.163)
Yeah, so we were going to dive into this podcast today. You had something you wanted to talk about. Before we do that, we always skip the show sponsors. Sorry.
Reuben Saltzman (01:37.772)
Yeah!
All right. Good call. Tessa. Thank you. Our show sponsors are IEB, Inspector Empire Builder. I’ve been a part of this group for a long time. I talk about it every week. So unless you’re a first time listener, you know what I’m talking about. But I talk about what’s going on with IEB right now. The virtual summer mastermind is coming up. That’s going to be on August 8th.
Tessa Murry (01:42.889)
Okay. Sorry.
Tessa Murry (01:54.497)
you
Reuben Saltzman (02:07.886)
And this is a four hour virtual mastermind and the topic on this one. I’m so excited about this one test topic is AI and home inspections AI on home inspections, how are home inspectors using AI? I’m super excited about this. feel like I cannot get enough information about AI right now. I feel like I’m so behind the eight ball or
Tessa Murry (02:14.932)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (02:21.265)
Yeah.
Mm.
Tessa Murry (02:28.612)
Same. Well, and it’s constantly changing. Yeah, well, me too. And that’s, think that’s just how we’re going to feel for the next decade or so because it’s changing so quickly.
Reuben Saltzman (02:39.148)
Yes, yes. I just this morning, someone was telling me about this class there’s they were trying to sign up for and it’s like 15 minutes a day for X number of days for like a month or whatever. And I was like, send me that please. I need this in small bits. And I did and I signed up for 15 minutes a day for the next three months. Taking this, you know, little bite sized pieces. So I’ll let you know how that goes.
Tessa Murry (02:57.024)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (03:02.017)
wow.
Tessa Murry (03:06.556)
Who’s putting this on? this… Who’s running this educational thing? Okay. Yeah, well, no, for the… this is IEB that’s doing the 15-minute classes? Every day? okay.
Reuben Saltzman (03:11.756)
I have no idea. Someone. you mean for IEB?
Reuben Saltzman (03:21.43)
Now I just totally stopped all over my commercial for IEB with that.
Tessa Murry (03:25.312)
Well, IEB is going to have a good discussion that’s geared towards home inspectors. So if you want to learn more about how other companies are integrating it into their business, I’m sure that would be a really good session to attend.
Reuben Saltzman (03:36.322)
Yes, Yeah, mark your calendar for August 8th and we will have a link to Inspector Empire Builder on the show notes. You go on their website, you look at upcoming events. It’s all very easy to find. So I am really looking forward to that one. Okay, so Tessa, you talked about the rain yesterday. I was sitting in my office.
Tessa Murry (03:49.172)
Yeah. Nice. Yeah.
Cool, cool.
Tessa Murry (03:57.385)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (03:59.102)
And I’m seeing all this water coming down, hitting my window inside of my house, despite the fact that I have overhangs and I’m going, boy, I am I am due to get up there and clean my gutters. They’re clearly overflowing. But then I see it happening on the backside of my house, too. And I’ve got one of those two story with a walkout. So basically it’s three stories up. I don’t have a ladder that goes up three stories and.
Tessa Murry (04:12.281)
huh.
Reuben Saltzman (04:27.754)
I ain’t climbing to the edge of my roof to clean out my gutter either. It’s too steep.
Tessa Murry (04:34.09)
Wait, how many years have you lived in this house?
Reuben Saltzman (04:36.494)
like, I don’t know, seven?
Tessa Murry (04:39.72)
and you’ve never cleaned out the gutters on the back? that’s true. Okay. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (04:41.762)
Well, on the backside of the house, I’ve never done it on the back. mean, there’s no trees back there. So why would they ever get dirty? And I’m not even convinced they’re dirty. I’m thinking maybe there was just so much water that it couldn’t handle that volume. I don’t know. what tests you got any ideas for me?
Tessa Murry (04:52.885)
Hmm.
Yeah. Yeah.
hire someone. I know you don’t. What about, well, I was going to say, can you, can you use a drone to see if your gutters are clogged in the first place?
Reuben Saltzman (05:04.206)
I don’t do that.
Reuben Saltzman (05:14.316)
I could, don’t own a drone, but there’s a bunch of people on my team who do. I’m sure one of them could do that. You know what I did last year? I would just remember this. I think I had the same thing last year and I took my leaf blower. I got one of those backpack leaf blowers, like a really powerful one. And I took the end of the hose and I duct taped it all to my downspout extension and I let her rip.
Tessa Murry (05:18.471)
Exactly.
Tessa Murry (05:26.921)
Yeah. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (05:41.854)
And I was hoping to see a very satisfying plume of leaves and debris come shooting out of there. And it wasn’t much. There was a little bit that came out, but it’s not what I was hoping for.
Tessa Murry (05:52.028)
Nothing. Hey, that was a good idea. Very creative though. Yeah, I gonna say, what’s the what’s the pitch of your roof?
Reuben Saltzman (05:58.67)
it’s, it’s probably, I would guess, no, it’s more than six. It’s probably like an eight, 12. I mean.
Tessa Murry (05:59.817)
Is it over a 6’12”?
Yeah, that makes my palms sweaty just thinking about going down at like an A12 three stories up. Yeah, no thanks. No thanks. That’s tricky. That’s not an easy one.
Reuben Saltzman (06:09.614)
Not to the edge. No. No. No thanks. Yep. Yep. Not gonna do it. No. No. No. So, yeah, maybe we’ll get a drone. Maybe I’ll tell you what I find out. Maybe it was just overloaded.
Tessa Murry (06:24.272)
Yeah, I was gonna say step I was gonna say step one see if it’s even a problem if it’s clogged
Reuben Saltzman (06:28.706)
Yep. Yep. If there’s any listeners, you got any great tips for me on how I could figure that out? I mean, of course I could take an extension pole. You know what? Maybe I’m going to do that. Just as I’m saying it. I’ve got a GoPro camera. I could just put that on the end of my painter’s pole. I’ve got like a 24 foot pole. That’d be so much easier than a drone.
Tessa Murry (06:40.928)
yeah.
Mm-hmm.
there you go. Yeah, do that. Do that. I was thinking you had a drone, but no, you just know people that have drones. So while you have a company that has drones. Yeah, yeah. Use your GoPro.
Reuben Saltzman (06:55.362)
Well, yeah, I’ve got a drone. I haven’t fired it up in like five years. I don’t know if it still works or not. I don’t even want to mess with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I’m glad we talked through this.
Tessa Murry (07:08.932)
You know what Ruben, that’s what I do for a living now. So I’m happy, to provide my services to you.
Reuben Saltzman (07:12.21)
You are so helpful.
Reuben Saltzman (07:17.036)
Yeah, yeah, appreciate you. What tell me about your business test? Just reminder for our listeners, what are you doing day to day with your business?
Tessa Murry (07:23.596)
Yeah, so your house coach, I help homeowners, help contractors, builders, basically kind of figure out house concerns or questions. It could be anything from, you know, my house is uncomfortable, I’ve got high energy bills, I want to make it more energy efficient, to I’m feeling sick in my house and I don’t know what’s going on. I’ve had in all these different contractors, they’re telling me different things, what do I do? And so I help people basically kind of prioritize
the most efficient cost effective way to get to their house goals and resolve their issues. And so I’m using my building science background, my home inspection background, and I’m looking at the house in a holistic lens. And I’m talking to, you know, whoever it is that has the issue to help them resolve that. So I point them in the right direction.
Reuben Saltzman (08:12.118)
Love it, love it. And how do people find you?
Tessa Murry (08:15.12)
I’ve got a website, you can go to my website, yourhealthcoach.com and all my information is on there.
Reuben Saltzman (08:21.464)
Sweet, Okay. Love it. I want you to maybe the next few share some case stories like when you’re thinking about it, that would be a, we’ve done that in the past with some stuff that you come up with. And I think those are fun to hear about. And that’s really what we’re going to be doing today for this podcast is doing the opposite side of that. I do ride alongs with my team when I can.
Tessa Murry (08:24.094)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (08:30.72)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (08:36.792)
One.
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (08:51.31)
I have tried to make a priority of that because I think it’s just good for me to connect with my team. I was on a call with some other home inspection company owners the other day. was with IEB and there was one person who was kind of just a little bit lamenting about how they have the leadership team go along on ride alongs with their team.
Tessa Murry (09:07.368)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (09:20.856)
But they have a hard time checking all the boxes and, and, know, making sure their inspectors are doing all the things that they’re doing. But then he was kind of going, but is that really what we want? That’s not building any relationships with my team. And that’s really why I’m doing the ride alongs is just, just to hang out with my inspectors and give them a hand when they need it. And, you know, I’m just there to be their assistant. Like, Hey, what can I do to make your job easier? How about, how about.
Tessa Murry (09:33.96)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (09:49.762)
How about I set up the ladder in the attic? How about I get up there today? How about I open up the panel? It’s just, you know, just hang out, be friends. That’s it. I’m not there with a checklist. Did they do this? Did they do that? And I get a ton of value out of it. Love doing these.
Tessa Murry (10:04.224)
You’re most awesome boss ever. Can I work for you? wait, just kidding. I already did. Yeah, I would say most company owners or most bosses would be going along to make sure that their employees are doing what they need to be doing. yeah, trying to check the boxes. you know, I appreciate that you’ve got a different perspective and you’re just trying to kind of, number one.
Reuben Saltzman (10:10.754)
Ha ha!
Tessa Murry (10:30.826)
stay connected to your team and your employees, but also I think stay relevant too to what’s going on in the company and any challenges that arise and how you handle that. so I think that’s awesome that you’re doing that. I know it takes time, of course, but it’s a priority for you and that’s cool.
Reuben Saltzman (10:49.206)
It is, yeah, yeah. I’ve thought this is probably some of the best use of my time. And you know, sometimes it creates some podcast fodder, which is what we’ve got today.
Tessa Murry (10:51.296)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (10:54.952)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (11:02.144)
That’s perfect. You know, I was gonna say too, I think it’s an interesting approach to, you know, so many, so many companies and large companies as they grow in scale, they need, you know, they look, they look at, you know, what their inspectors do is kind of checking the boxes and did you do this? Did you do this? And so there’s like, I guess the motivation behind doing the right thing is fear that you’re going to get in trouble or you’ll get fired or something like that.
And instead of taking that fear approach, like you’re actually showing your team that you care about them and that you support them and that you want them to succeed. And that actually, I think, at least when I worked at StructureTech, it made me want to do my best every time. Cause I didn’t want to like let you down. I didn’t want to make a mistake and make the company look bad or just not do a good job. It’s like, well, here you are showing up for me. I want to show up for you too. And so it’s motivation, I think, and dedication and loyalty.
that you’re building by doing that.
Reuben Saltzman (12:01.216)
Well, I hadn’t looked at it through that lens entirely. That just reinforces what I’m doing. Thank you, Tess. See, you’re just such a good therapist here. Right? Yes.
Tessa Murry (12:08.52)
Yeah. There you go. Maybe I should open up another business. Just kidding. Just kidding. Well, yeah, let’s get into some of these interesting things that you saw when you were doing your ride along in Twister weather yesterday. last week. Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (12:22.698)
Yeah, well, you know, it wasn’t yesterday. This was actually last week. But so there’s two of them I’ll share. And I won’t talk about where these were just in case people get funny about sharing details. But I’ll talk about who the inspectors were. One of them was Greg. We did a nice little I think it was like an 80s built split entry home. And it was actually really clean and
Tessa Murry (12:35.37)
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (12:50.454)
I got to, you know, you know, what’s interesting is I was spending a fair bit of time outside walking around and I noticed there was a neighbor out there and she looked like she was probably retired and she was looking at us the whole time, like very interested. I don’t know if she actually had anything to do in the yard. I think she was just being a little bit nosy, but yeah.
Tessa Murry (13:09.664)
You were the entertainment for the day, for her.
Reuben Saltzman (13:15.086)
Yeah. So, and you know, we always set up our yard sign on the front yard says home inspections, our little tent signs, so people know what’s going on. And I just kind of moseyed on over to her side of the yard. Hey neighbor, how you doing today? And she came over and she started talking. And I think if you are buying a house, if there’s any way you can meet the new neighbors, I mean, especially in the pre-purchased part,
Tessa Murry (13:20.308)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (13:29.472)
Thank
Reuben Saltzman (13:44.748)
What? I mean, what a gem. Do it. Yes, do it. mean, maybe you’re gonna maybe you’re gonna learn you don’t actually want to live there. Maybe you don’t want to be next to these nasty people. No, I’ve never experienced that on a home inspection. Normally, they’re very nice people. And, and this woman was very nice, very talkative. And I learned a lot about the people selling and learned that they were they’ve been retired for a long time.
Tessa Murry (13:45.364)
Do it. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (14:13.622)
And they are not at all going to be missed. They were they were very cranky. They would take all of their leaves and they would always blow them into her yard. Like like every day they would blow their leaves into her yard. She’s like, I’m not going to miss that. And and I learned that they have a lot of money. And and it’s like, wow, if I were in negotiations.
Tessa Murry (14:18.557)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (14:32.928)
man.
Reuben Saltzman (14:42.478)
These would be really cool things to learn. Of course, we don’t share this with the buyers. mean, that’s none of my business. But if I were a buyer, I would kind of appreciate hearing all of this stuff.
Tessa Murry (14:49.67)
No. Yes. Yes.
She sounds fairly uncensored and she would have told whoever was willing to listen that information and if it happened to be the new buyers, then yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (15:00.956)
yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So that’s my, that’s my little tip for home buyers is try to get to know the neighbors. If you see them outside and you’re on a showing or something, go up and introduce yourself as a potential buyer. Yeah. See what’s going on. See what kind of dirt you can get on the house. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, as far as that inspection one, it was kind of a boring inspection. They had the, what’s that? The, hardboard siding,
Tessa Murry (15:06.197)
Wow.
Tessa Murry (15:13.632)
Say hi. Wow, wow, that’s rich, that is.
Reuben Saltzman (15:33.602)
what we call it Masonite sometimes. And, you know, it was, it was a little needy. They had a bunch of nails going through where it was swelling. It’s not like it had to be replaced, but there’s probably a few boards that could have been replaced. Few areas where they could touch up the paint. All in all, pretty good shape. They had a deck at the back of the house and it’s, it’s a couple levels to the deck. The upper level, totally fine. The lower level did not have a guard.
Tessa Murry (15:33.693)
huh. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (15:47.827)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (16:03.094)
And all right, Tessa, I’m testing you now, see how your memory is. At what height above the ground does the code require you to have a guard?
Tessa Murry (16:08.774)
boy.
Tessa Murry (16:14.835)
my gosh, is it 18 or 36? Am I wrong? Completely.
Reuben Saltzman (16:18.35)
Uh, it’s, it’s in between. It’s right in there somewhere. Yeah. No, I, yeah. That’s right on the border of what I can still remember. It’s 30. Yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (16:24.156)
It’s been too long! remind me, remind me. Wait, is it 30? Okay, 30 inches. Wow, I totally just had a… This is what happened when you don’t start, when you don’t use these numbers every day anymore, and it’s been a few years, they completely leave your brain.
Reuben Saltzman (16:40.504)
They go. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And I thought this would be a tough one for you because it was right on the verge of me forgetting. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (16:47.584)
30 inches. Yeah, that’s right. Thanks for the reminder. Yes. Okay, good. Yeah. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (16:51.95)
Yeah. Yes. Yes. So I went around and measured and it was like exactly 30 inches all the way around. So what do we say when it’s like, I mean, 29 and seven eighths inch? What do we tell people?
Tessa Murry (17:03.648)
I mean if it was me inspecting this I would just probably put it in the report that it was kind of close to 30 inches right at 30 inches and just be aware if it’s more than that it should have a guardrail technically.
Reuben Saltzman (17:20.206)
Yeah, we put a note in the report saying it’s very close to 30. And while the code requires it at 30, there’s nothing stopping you from putting one up anyways, because if a child falls off the edge of that guard, are they going to be totally fine if it’s 29 inches, but they’re going to get traumatic head injury at 31 inches? these two inches are not a magic number. That two inch difference. mean,
Tessa Murry (17:41.166)
Okay.
No.
Tessa Murry (17:47.89)
Yeah. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (17:49.454)
There’s not a whole lot of science behind this. Someone just arbitrarily said, all right, we’re going to require them at 30 inches. So it’s a good idea to add it. We don’t list it as a defect or anything like that. We just say, Hey, this would be, and you know, I think the right term for this would be, this is a good safety upgrade.
Tessa Murry (17:53.544)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (18:00.672)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (18:08.508)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I like that.
Reuben Saltzman (18:11.886)
And, you know, same thing goes with smoke alarms. If you don’t have smoke alarms in the bedrooms, it’s a good safety upgrade. If you don’t have photoelectric smoke alarms, which of course most houses don’t, it’s a good safety upgrade to add photoelectric smoke alarms. Not a defect that you don’t have them, just a good thing to do.
Tessa Murry (18:33.504)
Now would you say the same thing for like a new construction house if you’re inspecting it and they don’t have smoke alarms in the bedrooms? Is that a safety upgrade or is that a code violation?
Reuben Saltzman (18:44.098)
That’s just plain wrong. And, you you’ve got the right to push back on a builder. You know, there’s someone who is unquestionably going to pay for that. And I think a really good example that would be insulation. If you’re on a new construction house and it’s got 10 inches of insulation, but you’re supposed to have 16 inches, this is done wrong. And I think any buyer
Tessa Murry (18:46.141)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (19:13.408)
ought to be pushing back on the builder and say, hey, I want you to fix this. This is what I’m paying you for. This is the code minimum. But if that house is now two years old and you’re buying it from somebody else and they didn’t put enough insulation and now what? Do you push on it? No, you really don’t. Because who’s going to take care of it? This is an existing house now. So I think it’s a totally different animal.
Tessa Murry (19:16.704)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (19:31.85)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (19:37.344)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (19:42.85)
when you’re doing new construction. We do have a different lens for that.
Tessa Murry (19:45.788)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, different standard.
Reuben Saltzman (19:49.548)
Yep, yep, definitely. It’s a good question. So when they originally built the house, they had the overhead electric wires, also known as the service drop. They had them coming in to a nice high point on the house and met all the clearance requirements. But then they added a deck on the back of the house right by the service drop. And so now the service job, I can just reach my hand up just a little bit above my head and it’s right there.
Tessa Murry (20:02.152)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (20:10.08)
Mm.
Tessa Murry (20:16.029)
no.
Reuben Saltzman (20:17.934)
And so I, you know, I put my hand behind the wires and I took a picture just for perspective going, Hey, uh, this is a lot closer than it should be. And I think, I think a really easy solution to that instead of moving the service drop and doing all this stuff, just build the fence. I mean, take the guard or, you know, we keep saying guard. That’s the technical name for it. A of people call it a guard rail. You could just take that guard and extend it up.
Tessa Murry (20:21.546)
picture. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (20:27.08)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (20:39.136)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (20:43.69)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (20:47.22)
above the service entrance and now nobody’s going to touch it. while I mean, I don’t know if that technically meets the letter of the code, but it would definitely meet the intent of the code. And you’re not going to have anybody accidentally touching the overhead wires. What do you think about that for a solution?
Tessa Murry (20:51.935)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (21:03.104)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (21:10.145)
Well, you know, I trust you. It sounds like that’s a good solution. I’m a more visual person, so I’d have to see what the house looks like, the service drop, and the deck to be like, okay, does having a nine-foot high fence between… Well, I don’t know. How tall does it have to be? How high up is that?
Reuben Saltzman (21:26.934)
I’d say, well, you know, the way it worked was the service drop came in right to the corner of the house and the deck came right to the corner of the house. So really all you’d need to do is extend the guard up.
Tessa Murry (21:34.24)
Huh.
Tessa Murry (21:41.063)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (21:42.462)
seven feet, six feet, seven feet, something like that. Exactly. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (21:43.809)
just so people can’t reach out and touch it, yeah. That sounds like that’s probably the easiest and cheapest solution to that, because how much would it cost to have the utility company come out an electrician and raise that service drop? Thousands, I would think. If you’re paying an electrician, yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (21:59.114)
I would think I would think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We’re going to pay a lot of money for that. So that was our suggestion there. Now, next one. I thought this is a fun building science issue. I’m looking at the site. know, in the attic, they had a ton of insulation. I mean, there’s a lot of it. It’s cellulose. There’s probably some attic bypasses, but it was so deep and the roof pitch was so low.
Tessa Murry (22:12.042)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (22:27.896)
that there’s nowhere I could actually crawl in that attic. I mean, all I could do is look, but didn’t look like they had had moisture up there. I mean, there’s no staining on any of the nail heads, no staining on the sheathing, no evidence of any moisture up there, no evidence of ice dams. I mean, it all looked like a really nice, clean attic. And you know, a cellulose, when that stuff gets messed up, you notice it. But when it’s been sitting there undisturbed for 20 years, it looks very even.
Tessa Murry (22:28.0)
Okay.
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (22:58.464)
So it looked like nobody had messed with the attic, but on the side of the house, on one side, they had a stain coming out of the siding. And it wasn’t the top course of siding. was like one or two courses down on the siding. And there’s these brown stains coming out. What’s going on, Tess?
Tessa Murry (22:58.495)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (23:22.484)
Well, lots of questions for you. What was on the other side of that siding? Is there a bathroom? Is there duct work in the exterior wall? What’s going on there? Because there’s moisture, obviously.
Reuben Saltzman (23:33.494)
Yeah, I think they had some duct work in the exterior wall or right by it.
Tessa Murry (23:38.035)
Okay. Yeah, so I’m just, I mean the staining obviously is moisture. Where is it coming from? Is it coming from frost in the attic and it sounds like the attic doesn’t look like it’s been wet or has a moisture issue so it’s probably coming from somewhere else. So is it coming from a higher source of humidity like a bathroom and it’s moisture is somehow pushing out? Is there disconnected bathroom somewhere or is it or is it maybe a ductwork issue and maybe they’ve got human air that’s leaking out of this ductwork in an exterior wall and
Reuben Saltzman (23:49.174)
No. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (24:05.438)
kind of pressurizing this extra wall cavity and creating moisture issues.
Reuben Saltzman (24:09.89)
That was my thought and I don’t have an answer for you. I don’t know definitively what it was, but one of my first thoughts was, you know, we’ve talked on this podcast a number of times about whole house ventilation strategies. How do you change out the air in the house? And you know, the way we’re doing it today is with balanced ventilation, where you put in, where we’re trying, okay, yeah, thank you, we’re trying.
Tessa Murry (24:13.865)
and
Tessa Murry (24:32.234)
Trying to, we’re trying to do it today. But tempting.
Reuben Saltzman (24:38.53)
You put in a device that brings air in and exhausts air out. It’s called an air exchanger. We call them a heat recovery ventilator or an energy recovery ventilator. But back when this house was built, there was no such thing. And one method they would use is positive pressure ventilation where you take your return duct on the furnace and you run a
insulated flexible duct to an outside wall and you have a register on the outside wall that we typically call the combustion air duct. But really it’s connected directly to the furnace’s return plenum. And so every time that furnace blower fan turns on, you’re sucking air in from outside the house. But there is no way for that air to leave the house. But it’s going to leave the house somehow. You just don’t have a nice pathway for it to go.
Tessa Murry (25:28.64)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (25:34.826)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (25:37.676)
and it’s gonna find its own pathway. And so as soon as I saw these stains, I’m thinking, I wonder what they did with that combustion air duct. And sure enough, sure enough, the duct was connected to the return duct. And so…
Tessa Murry (25:47.716)
interesting.
Tessa Murry (25:52.936)
Wow, really? Good job sleuthing on that. You still got it.
Reuben Saltzman (25:57.006)
I think that was the issue and I think if they want to solve this all they’d need to do is disconnect that combustion air duct from their return just drop it down into the room seal off the hole in the return and The whole house is gonna be a lot happier. What do you think?
Tessa Murry (26:01.875)
I can believe it.
Tessa Murry (26:09.706)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (26:18.408)
I like how you’re thinking Ruben, you’re a man of action, you like to get things done and you do it yourself and that would be, you know, one thing that you could try to see if it changes it. But, you know, in the building science world there would be people that would want to do a whole list of tests to try and figure out what’s exactly going on and then to actually fix the issue that they figured out what was going on.
Some of the testing I’m thinking that they would be doing would be just doing an overall blower door test. Let’s see how leaky the house is. Let’s see where the air leaks are happening. Let’s do duct leakage testing. Let’s measure the leakage from the inside to the outside. And they’d be checking if you’ve got duct work in exterior walls or the attic spaces, how much is actually leaking out of that duct work. They could be checking the combustion air.
coming into the furnace and how much that’s actually pressurizing the system and if it needs to be balanced or not and tweaking all of that, adding supplies or returns. So there’s a lot of different tests that can be done to try and figure out, you know, is the system balanced? Is the house leaking? Where are things leaking and how do we fix it in a way that’s not going to create more problems? In general, I mean, yes, you could disconnect that.
Reuben Saltzman (27:16.063)
gosh.
Reuben Saltzman (27:22.285)
Thank
Reuben Saltzman (27:30.883)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (27:34.456)
Sure.
Tessa Murry (27:39.189)
Combustion air to the furnace. Hopefully it’s not then pressurizing things But what if you’ve got you know a change in ownership and you get you know Let’s just say it was like, you know an elderly couple living there before and you know, pretty pretty you know, they showered, know regularly cooked regularly But then you change it you’ve got like a family with three kids that move in and they’re doing you know lot of showers more cooking. There’s more humidity in the house It’s gonna change things and if the duct work in next year wall is still leaky
Maybe they’ll have more humidity issues or if they add like a whole house humidifier at some point I mean didn’t ask you that I’m assuming it didn’t have that otherwise you probably would have said disconnect that like if someone ever changed it and added one of those things, know, even if you disconnect the Combustion air from the return you add a humidifier you add, know moisture load on the house that that could change things too, so This might it might work. Go ahead. Try it. It’s not gonna hurt anything
Reuben Saltzman (28:17.056)
It did not know. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (28:38.972)
But to know for sure there’s a bunch of tests you could probably do to try and figure it out.
Reuben Saltzman (28:44.289)
my gosh, it makes my head hurt to think about all that.
Tessa Murry (28:46.512)
Yeah, it’s a lot. It’s a lot. the tricky part is there’s not a lot of people out there that know how to do that or can do that. And maybe you find someone who can do the testing, but then good luck trying to find like an HVAC contractor who can actually fix it too. Right? Exactly. Yeah, yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (28:55.778)
Yes.
Reuben Saltzman (29:03.606)
Yeah, it’s rarely the same person who’s going to test for it and who’s going to actually do the work. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (29:09.504)
Well, you know, it’s interesting. So, so there’s a there’s a company called the Energy Conservatory based out of the Twin Cities, and they are the ones that basically build blower doors and a bunch of other diagnostic testing tools used for building science stuff, docked blasters, flow meters, and all these things. And, and so I’ve been kind of talking with them and recently, and I’m going to be working with them to help.
create some curriculum, training curriculum, because what they want to do is basically, there’s this whole, as you know, and we all talk about, there’s a need for people who understand the house as a system, building science, and have tools that they can use to test and figure out what the problem is and how to fix it. And so the Energy Conservatory creates a lot of these tools and they want to teach these contractors how to think that.
Reuben Saltzman (29:38.963)
fun.
Tessa Murry (30:02.224)
think holistically, think about building science, all these parts and pieces, understand it, have the tools to be able to test, and then know how to fix it too. And so they’re working on training HVAC contractors and other building contractors on how to actually do this. So hopefully we can have a workforce that is able to come in there and think about these things and do some of these tests and then actually do the work to fix it too.
Reuben Saltzman (30:18.871)
Hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (30:29.678)
That is so smart. I love it.
Tessa Murry (30:31.84)
Yeah, yeah, so I think that’s a pretty cool initiative and want to help them do that. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (30:39.202)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I’m going to be very interested to watch some of your content once it’s created.
Tessa Murry (30:46.6)
We’ll see. Yeah, we’re working on it. We’re working on it. And you know what? They’re building some very, they’ve got a new facility out in the Woodbury area and they are Oakdale, guess. It just needs a St. Paul and they are building actual like houses, test houses, kind of like InterNACHI has the House of Horrors for home inspectors where you can go and you can actually kind of do all these, you know, just practice inspecting a house with all these issues.
Same thing, they’re building several different kind of fake houses where they have all these different issues that you can then use these tools to do the testing and see how you change one thing and impacts another. So that’s pretty neat too. They’ll have a great facility when they’re done with it.
Reuben Saltzman (31:30.806)
Really cool,
Tessa Murry (31:32.092)
Yeah, yeah. Sorry, I didn’t mean to turn this into a plug to the energy conservatory. What you’re saying is tying into, yeah, where my head is at. Yes, there will be there there is now and then there will be more hopefully a lot more in the future where we can do more trainings like that for contractors that want to know how to do that stuff.
Reuben Saltzman (31:37.078)
No, it’s great. It’s good to know that there’s resources for people to get trained on this. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (31:51.502)
And I’m thankful that we got this in our backyard here.
Tessa Murry (31:55.002)
I know, isn’t that awesome? Yeah. Very cool.
Reuben Saltzman (31:56.844)
Yeah, it is. And are they associated with the Minneapolis blower door?
Tessa Murry (32:04.032)
Yes, they’re the company that builds and creates the Minneapolis Bloridor. Yep. Yeah, if you’re someone out there who uses a Bloridor, you probably use Minneapolis Bloridor or another company called TechTite. And maybe there’s other players in the field, but those have kind of been the two main ones for a while now. But yeah, they come right here, right out of Minneapolis. Yeah, very cool.
Reuben Saltzman (32:08.654)
Okay, all right.
Reuben Saltzman (32:27.426)
Love it, love it.
All right. so that, that was, that’s okay. That’s what we do. That’s what we do. This is our podcast. We can talk about whatever we want.
Tessa Murry (32:32.37)
Sorry, we got off track. Yeah. It’s going back. Yeah, that’s true if anybody’s listening. So what else did you find in this 1980s house besides these interesting watermarks on the exterior?
Reuben Saltzman (32:45.432)
Well, that was it. That was it. Pretty boring inspection. So, inspection number two, this was a, this is like a 1960s Rambler with a walkout. And I was doing this one with Jeff and it was an interesting day. was kind of nice outside and then the sky started getting dark.
Tessa Murry (32:50.258)
Okay, well that’s good.
Tessa Murry (33:00.223)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (33:12.704)
And we got the outside inspected and then we head in and the storm came in, man. was something. And it was like, you could just see it going across the backyard. We just stopped inspecting. We started staring out the windows because it was coming down in sheets. I mean, really heavy. Yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (33:27.872)
Good timing! Yeah, you finish the exterior before it hit.
Reuben Saltzman (33:36.418)
Yeah, it’s always nice when you don’t get stuck in that.
Tessa Murry (33:39.484)
It’s true. I mean, you do, we do talk about inspecting when it’s raining and you can see a lot of things that you wouldn’t normally see. So it’s nice to be able to check those things, but it’s also nice to also be in the house when it’s raining like that.
Reuben Saltzman (33:50.35)
It is. And you know, we’re looking out in the backyard and right in middle of the backyard, we see this like geyser of water coming up. It’s coming up about a foot out of the water just shooting up. And the buyer, the new owner is like, what, what is that? Is that part of the city? blah, blah, blah. And we’re able to say, no, we actually saw some downspouts going into an underground system. And we don’t always get to figure out where that underground system terminates.
Tessa Murry (34:14.368)
Cool.
Reuben Saltzman (34:18.348)
But today we know exactly where it’s going. So. It’s working, yes, yes. Yep, yep. So this is a bonus. We get to see that today. I should have taken a picture of it, but that’s all right. And then the house had these huge overhangs like four foot overhangs, and then the windows were tucked right up underneath the overhangs. And this is one of those houses where.
Tessa Murry (34:21.96)
terminates and that it’s working. It’s not clogged.
Tessa Murry (34:30.15)
Awesome. Yeah, that’s cool. That’s cool.
Reuben Saltzman (34:47.042)
I would have told the buyer these windows will never get wet. I mean, they will never see a drop of water. But Tessa, darn if you didn’t get this huge wind gust and I could see the rain coming up the hill. We’re kind of high up on a hill and you’re looking down. You could see the rain coming up and darn if it didn’t get the tops of these windows wet and the soffits actually got wet.
Tessa Murry (34:59.07)
you
Tessa Murry (35:03.786)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (35:10.376)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (35:13.506)
Four feet in at the house the wind I kid you not it was blowing the water up Underneath the house and I’m telling the buyer. I was like, you know what? Two minutes ago. I would have told you these windows will never get wet for their entire life I would have said that two minutes ago and here we are. They are they are getting wet This is not normal
Tessa Murry (35:19.075)
my gosh, wow.
Tessa Murry (35:37.537)
Mother Nature will humble us, but you know what? It’s a good reminder Ruben that yeah, you’re right like 99 % of the time that part of the window will not get wet but on the 2 % of that 1 % of the time that it does It could create some issues if it’s not flashed Never say never and especially I’m just thinking about you know now I’m spending more time in Florida places where they have rain that comes horizontally or upward from hurricanes or high winds that
Reuben Saltzman (35:51.16)
Yep. Yeah, never say never, right?
Tessa Murry (36:06.388)
that you never know.
Reuben Saltzman (36:08.746)
yeah, you get to deal with that all the time. Sure.
Tessa Murry (36:11.358)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that’s interesting observation.
Reuben Saltzman (36:16.974)
Yeah, yeah, that was fun to see. Another thing we noticed was on the south side, they had a fair bit of peeling paint on what I think was redwood siding. And I used to have a house that had redwood siding, why I used to live in Minneapolis. And there was nothing I could do to keep that paint from peeling.
Tessa Murry (36:30.538)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (36:41.358)
I mean, we went through hell and high water. I ended up having a buddy. He worked at a paint store and he’s like, here’s what we’re gonna do. And we scraped it all down. We used sanders to get it all smooth looking. And we took this stuff that was the consistency of Elmer’s glue. And we painted that around the whole house and caulked everything and made it all perfect. It’s supposed to be the super primer that’s never gonna fail.
Tessa Murry (36:41.706)
Huh.
Reuben Saltzman (37:11.47)
And then we painted it two years later. Same thing. And at that point, I just kind of gave up and I said, I’m not going nuts anymore. And the next time it needed work, I just kind of did a half, you know, I, I, I scraped it as good as I could and then use the same color of paint.
Tessa Murry (37:31.048)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (37:35.177)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (37:37.966)
to paint the whole side of the house. I, you know, it was only one coat that way since I’m not changing colors and just did it quick and dirty. And I just resolved, I’m gonna have to keep doing this. And I got a painter I was talking to recently and I was asking, what do you do about that? And you know, he’s been a painter for 20, 30 years. He said, there’s nothing you can do. When we, it has to do with the wood, the tannins in the wood.
Tessa Murry (37:42.856)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (37:49.696)
Mm.
Tessa Murry (38:00.523)
Why is that?
Reuben Saltzman (38:06.234)
and how this wood does not like to hold paint. And he said the only way when we deal with that is we blast it. We use like, I don’t remember what the term was, but I remember he said something about using walnut shells and they blast all the paint off and they get right down to the bare wood and then they stain it, but they won’t paint it.
Tessa Murry (38:10.442)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (38:26.304)
Mm.
Reuben Saltzman (38:32.504)
Cause he said there’s nothing he can possibly do. It’s not going to hold paint. Thankfully the rest of the house looked pretty good and the amount of peeling wasn’t major, but I thought that’s interesting. So we put a note, you got some peeling paint. We don’t go into all these little details about how you might not ever be able to solve this problem. Cause I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe my house was just an anomaly, but I’ve got it on some pretty good authority that this is a challenge to deal with.
Tessa Murry (38:33.971)
Hmm.
Wow.
Tessa Murry (38:40.702)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (38:52.914)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (38:59.143)
No.
Tessa Murry (39:03.544)
Yeah, I’m picturing the exact house that you’re describing, 1960s Rambler with the woodshake siding and… Or I don’t know if it’s woodshake, is it lap siding or shake, but lap siding? Okay, okay.
Reuben Saltzman (39:14.21)
It was lap siding, big thick laps. I mean, somewhere between three quarter and one inch siding, real thick stuff.
Tessa Murry (39:21.996)
Yeah, wow. Okay. Yeah, and that’s the type of siding you don’t want to tear off and redo it because it’s such a good co- I mean, it’s this old good quality wood that is so durable. You’ll never find an equivalent for that nowadays. So you keep it, but what do you do? Yeah, you just have to battle the peeling paint forever for the rest of your life. Unless you want to sandblast it with walnut shells and just, I guess, stain it. But can you do that to the whole house? Can you remove all of the- I’m sure it would-
Reuben Saltzman (39:26.734)
No.
Reuben Saltzman (39:35.198)
so true. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (39:51.499)
take a long time and be expensive, but yeah, that wouldn’t be a fun job.
Reuben Saltzman (39:53.55)
I can’t imagine. Yeah, I would think so. Yeah, maybe we’ll get them on the podcast to talk about that. That might be a fun topic.
Tessa Murry (40:03.016)
Yeah, yeah, we did have we did have someone on a while ago to talk about new paint products and I have to relisten to that one. But that was an interesting show too. New part two.
Reuben Saltzman (40:08.684)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (40:13.068)
Yeah, yeah. But yeah, we were really focusing on stucco. We never got into the wood stuff.
Tessa Murry (40:18.342)
Yeah, yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (40:21.114)
I should ask him about it. well. OK. Another thing we found was that the house was I mean, it was really nicely maintained. It was really buttoned up. They they had a nice job of all the insulation. All the windows and doors were nice and tight, but they had a really powerful kitchen fan and they had an orphaned water heater. And so, of course, you know what we found?
Tessa Murry (40:23.859)
Interesting.
Tessa Murry (40:41.726)
Hmm.
Can you find some back drafting at the water heater?
Reuben Saltzman (40:48.462)
Yeah, yeah, we had back drafting at the water heater. They did have a combustion air duct, but I just, don’t think it was sufficient. It wasn’t big enough because as soon as we opened the door, the back drafting stopped. Close the door. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or a window. As soon as we allow more air into the house, back drafting stops, close the door, starts back drafting again. So.
Tessa Murry (40:54.631)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (41:03.776)
A door to the exterior? As soon as you open an exterior door? Okay. Yeah. Sure.
Tessa Murry (41:16.684)
Yeah. Yeah. You know, I was gonna say that that house sounds like a good candidate for a power vent water heater, electric water heater, heat pump water heater, something that we don’t need to worry about backdrafting for. That’s my take on it. Instead of cutting more holes into your house and trying to get more from the outside in, let’s let’s just make sure that this can’t exhaust carbon dioxide and other harmful products into your house.
Reuben Saltzman (41:18.368)
The solution is pretty straightforward.
Reuben Saltzman (41:29.474)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (41:39.532)
Yep. Yep, agreed, agreed. That would be ideal.
Tessa Murry (41:44.531)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (41:45.902)
What else did we find? There was a whole bunch of outlets in the basement that didn’t work and there was one GFI that would not reset. there’s…
Tessa Murry (41:52.821)
Hmm.
what was hooked up to that GFC? Hopefully not the refrigerator or anything important. Okay, good. good. Good. Okay. Okay. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (42:01.59)
Nothing. Nothing. And we didn’t trip it either. It was already tripped when we got there. So we know why all these outlets don’t work. Somebody surely knew about this. The house had subslab duct work in the basement. know, it’s that duct work that runs under. Yes. Yes, it was. Yes. Transite asbestos. Yep. Yep.
Tessa Murry (42:13.843)
Yep.
Tessa Murry (42:19.808)
was it asbestos?
Okay, 1960s, yep.
Reuben Saltzman (42:31.626)
And so we were very diligent about removing every registered cover. We took our long skinny mirror and we stuck it in every hole and we took a flashlight and looked both ways down it everywhere possible, dry as a bone. Didn’t look like it had ever seen any water. And it was, was relatively clean, you know, not, not pristine, of course it’s, it’s old, but
Tessa Murry (42:37.812)
Wow.
Tessa Murry (42:45.663)
Wow.
Tessa Murry (42:49.277)
Really? Okay.
Tessa Murry (42:57.792)
You know, I was not expecting that outcome. Usually there are stains or there are some signs of water. So that is a happy story. Was the house on top of a hill or did it have sandy soil too? Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (43:02.114)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (43:05.772)
Yes. Yes, it was. Yep. Yep. It was located kind of high up on a hill. I mean, you can look down the backyard and you could see way down. You could see the neighbors a block away.
Tessa Murry (43:12.551)
Yeah.
Okay. Wow. Yeah. So that was definitely helping the situation. Yeah. Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (43:21.24)
That was their saving grace. Yep. Yep. I think so. So nice to not find any problems there. And then probably the last, mean, there’s a handful of other things that are boring, but the last one we found was that in the garage was where they had the access to the attic. And there’s no opening. It was an insect screen.
Tessa Murry (43:44.478)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (43:49.792)
separating the garage from the rest of the attic on the house. And of course, that compromises our fire separation. It’s supposed to be covered over. Simple fix, get a piece of drywall, screw it in place over that. If you need to get in the attic, unscrew it. That’s all there is to it. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (43:53.127)
No!
Tessa Murry (43:57.809)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that’s an easy one.
Tessa Murry (44:08.126)
Yeah. Well, that sounds like a pretty, pretty, pretty easy house. I mean, there’s some things, but it’s not like there’s anything that’s disastrous going on there.
Reuben Saltzman (44:20.066)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing disastrous, but just fun to stay on top of this stuff and see what’s going on. See what house they’re selling for the new features people are adding to these old houses. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (44:26.026)
Totally.
Tessa Murry (44:33.12)
my goodness. Did you see some new things that people added on both of these houses? Updates?
Reuben Saltzman (44:38.798)
Well, the one where the retired people were moving out, no, but on the other one, man, they had this was interesting. They had TVs, little TVs set up all over the house. Like, I mean, they had them in the bathrooms and in the closets and in the kitchen.
Tessa Murry (44:44.093)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (45:06.08)
What?
Reuben Saltzman (45:07.892)
And just these little wall mounted TVs, probably 12 inches or whatever. And they had, yeah, yeah, little flat screens. And they had everything. They had coax run to all of the locations and all the coax came together and it went to one single cable box in the basement. And I guess this person had good reason to be watching the news all the time. You know, it had something to do with their job.
Tessa Murry (45:12.254)
Like flat screens, just little flat screens.
Tessa Murry (45:33.848)
my gosh.
Reuben Saltzman (45:37.134)
and they had it set up so that they could have all the TVs on and no matter where they went in the house, they’re not going to miss a minute of the news cycle. because you change the channel, the channels on all the TVs with one device. Pretty weird, not weird, but unusual.
Tessa Murry (45:52.031)
my gosh. Wow. That’s… I’ve never seen any! Well, I’ve never seen a house that has a TV in the closet. I mean, I’ve seen houses that have TVs maybe in the bedroom, of course, and maybe a bathroom. The kitchen sometimes. Never a closet! That’s a new one. I wonder what that person did for a living. Why they needed to be that in tune with it.
Reuben Saltzman (46:06.85)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I was very curious myself. Yeah. But that was a very unique feature.
Tessa Murry (46:16.742)
Interesting. Huh. Extremely unique. Hmm. Hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (46:22.478)
Yep. But they, mean, they they had spent a lot of time on this house. They redid a lot of stuff. mean, just cool light fixtures everywhere. Everything was new and shiny and high end appliances. I mean, it just, it was a really nice house.
Tessa Murry (46:29.337)
yeah.
Tessa Murry (46:35.4)
Wow. It’s… except for the water heater. They probably didn’t. Yeah. Was that thing backdrafting when you had all the exhaust appliances turned on? And was it not backdrafting when you turned them off? I know you said you opened up the door and it stopped, but did you ever try it with all the doors closed and just none of the exhaust fans on to see if it was backdrafting and just kind of like a normal condition? Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (46:39.054)
Yeah, I don’t think they knew about that.
Reuben Saltzman (47:02.423)
I don’t think we did.
Tessa Murry (47:04.65)
Just curious, because sometimes too you’ll notice like just turning off one of the fans in the house will be enough to help that water heater establish a certain graph that’s just kind of right on the edge.
Reuben Saltzman (47:14.698)
Yeah, I would bet if we had turned off the kitchen fan, it probably would have been fine because I mean, everything on the installation looked good. It had a nice rise. It all looked fine.
Tessa Murry (47:18.784)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (47:24.85)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and you know what? Kudos to you guys for checking that because a lot of home inspectors probably don’t even know what backdrafting is. Me too, me too. But if you’re listening to this podcast, we’ve talked about it a lot, so you know. Yeah, yeah. And if not, go back to a podcast where we dive into it a little bit deeper, because I’m sure we have.
Reuben Saltzman (47:38.222)
I hope you’re wrong.
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (47:46.208)
You know, if you’re a regular listener, you know all about this. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (47:54.725)
you
think we have. Yeah. Cool. Interesting, Ruben. That was fun. Anything else that you saw at those houses?
Reuben Saltzman (48:04.514)
Yeah, yeah, good times.
No, I think that was it. That’s the rest of it was pretty little stuff. Yeah. Cool. Well.
Tessa Murry (48:09.961)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (48:13.458)
Nice. One last question. Did that 1960s house with the walkout, did it have asbestos tile flooring?
Reuben Saltzman (48:22.772)
It probably did at some point, but the previous owner had redone everything. So maybe it did underneath the existing stuff. We didn’t see it. Yeah. Yeah. It was really clean.
Tessa Murry (48:30.823)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (48:35.378)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, nice. Okay, good, good. Well, that’s fun.
Reuben Saltzman (48:41.038)
All right. Well, good show. Thank you, Tessa. I think your Internet is getting a little choppy because I think we’re both talking over each other now. But but we got 49 minutes out of this before that happened. All right. If for the listeners, if you got any questions, thoughts, whatever, you’re welcome to email us anytime we read them all. You can reach us at podcast.
Tessa Murry (48:52.672)
Time to end the show. Thanks for listening everybody. Yay us.
Reuben Saltzman (49:10.27)
at StructureTech.com and we will catch you next time. Thank you.
Tessa Murry (49:15.531)
See ya, thanks for listening.