Robin Jade Conde

PODCAST: Regional Inspection Differences (with Mark Cramer)

In this episode of the Structure Talk podcast, hosts Reuben Saltzman and Tessa Murray interview Mark Cramer, a seasoned home inspector from Florida. They discuss Mark’s journey into home inspections, the evolution of training in the field, and the challenges modern inspectors face. They also cover regional differences in home construction, particularly in Tampa, and the impact of insurance inspections on the home inspection process. This conversation delves into the complexities and challenges of home inspections, discussing the ethical dilemmas faced by inspectors, the future of the industry, and common issues found in various types of homes. They emphasize the importance of thorough inspections, the impact of construction defects, and the significance of air quality and HVAC systems in maintaining a healthy living environment. They also share insights on client interactions and the necessity for home buyers to be informed and savvy in their choices. They also discuss various challenges related to insulation, humidity control, and air conditioning systems in modern homes. They delve into the issues with mini-split systems, the management of moisture in concrete block homes, and the implications of the ASHI standards on the home inspection industry. They highlight the importance of understanding building science to address these challenges effectively.

Check this link to learn more about Inspector Empire Builder:

https://www.iebcoaching.com.

You can find Mark at https://besttampainspector.com.

Takeaways

Mark Cramer began his career in home inspections in the late 80s after working in renovations.
The evolution of home inspection training has significantly changed with technology.
Modern home inspectors face challenges due to the vast amount of information they need to know.
Regional differences in home construction can greatly affect inspection practices.
Insurance inspections can complicate the inspectors’ home-buying process.
Learning is a continuous process for home inspectors to stay relevant.
The type of housing stock in Tampa includes a variety of construction styles and materials.
Stucco on wood frame homes often leads to water intrusion issues.
Mark emphasizes the importance of understanding the history of homes to predict potential problems.
The insurance landscape has changed, impacting the types of homes and materials seen in inspections. There is a significant amount of fraud in home inspections.
Many inspectors provide clean reports without thorough checks.
Good real estate agents will always refer to ethical inspectors.
Older homes often have more structural issues and mold problems.
Crawl spaces are a common source of indoor air quality issues.
Improperly installed HVAC systems can lead to serious air quality problems.
Home buyers need to be educated about potential issues in homes.
Mold is prevalent in humid climates, especially in crawl spaces.
Inspectors often face challenges with clients who are not handy.
The construction industry is slowly improving its practices.  Insulation thickness is often inadequate in many homes.
Humidity control is crucial to prevent mold growth.
Air conditioning systems can effectively manage humidity if sized correctly.
Mini-split systems can be oversized, leading to humidity issues.
Concrete block homes require careful moisture management to avoid mold.
The ASHI standards are under scrutiny for clarity and relevance.
Home inspectors must focus on significant defects rather than checklists.
Building science knowledge is essential for effective home inspections.
Energy efficiency in homes can complicate humidity control.
Proper installation of insulation is vital for performance.


Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Overview of Home Inspection Series
02:15 Mark Cramer’s Journey into Home Inspections
06:10 The Evolution of Home Inspection Training
10:54 Challenges of Modern Home Inspectors
15:19 Regional Differences in Home Construction
23:02 Insurance Inspections and Their Impact on Home Inspectors
25:39 The Challenges of Home Inspections
27:34 The Future of Home Inspection Industry
28:22 Common Issues in Different House Types
30:37 Understanding Construction Defects
32:46 The Importance of Proper Inspections
33:32 Advice on Home Buying
34:39 Mold and Air Quality Concerns
36:48 The Impact of Air Conditioning Systems
38:12 Identifying HVAC Issues
40:43 Client Interactions and Education
44:03 Insulation Challenges in Modern Homes
47:01 Humidity Control and Air Conditioning Systems
48:58 Mini-Split Systems and Humidity Issues
51:46 Concrete Block Homes and Moisture Management
56:01 ASHI Standards and Industry Insights


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 (00:01.046)

Welcome back to the structure talk podcast. I’m Ruben Saltzman, host alongside Tessa Murray. Tessa, how’s it going today?

Tessa Murry (00:09.101)

Hey, it’s going well, Ruben. I’m grateful that today it’s above five degrees outside. Woo, everybody outside.

Reuben Saltzman (00:16.104)

We’ve got a yeah, it’s well above freezing outside here in Minnesota. It feels great. I mean, I was out in a sweatshirt today and that’s all I needed. Yeah, that I could tolerate this kind of winter all year long. That’d be just fine. But you know what? Before we bring on our guest, we’re doing the series. We’re interviewing home inspectors all over the country. But before we do that,

Tessa Murry (00:21.793)

Yeah.

Tessa Murry (00:26.179)

For you, that’s impressive. Yeah.

Tessa Murry (00:33.726)

I know. Yeah.

Tessa Murry (00:39.223)

Yes.

Reuben Saltzman (00:43.608)

Want to give a shout out to our show sponsors, IEB, Inspector Empire Builder. They help home inspectors be better business owners, better leaders, better managers, and just run their companies a lot better. It’s not the technical side. It’s more on the business side and the people side. We’ve been long time members of IEB, huge supporters, huge fans of them. If you want to learn more, please check out the link in our show notes. So today we’re continuing on with our series, regional home inspection differences. And today we’re going down to sunny Florida to interview Mark Cramer. And I was gonna start to give an introduction to Mark Cramer. I was gonna give a title, but he’s got so many potential titles. I could be here for a half hour.

Mark has done, he’s been on just about every committee you could think of. He’s taught on just about every home inspection topic you could think of. Mark, welcome to the show. How you doing today?

Mark Cramer (01:55.089)

Good afternoon. Doing great. Great to be here.

Reuben Saltzman (01:57.154)

Good. Glad to have you. Mark, if you would, can you just talk us through a little bit about your history? What did you do before you got into home inspections? What brought you into home inspections? And then what did your home inspection career look like?

Tessa Murry (01:58.647)

Good to have you on.

Mark Cramer (02:15.427)

Well, I started back in the late 80s. Prior to that, was doing renovations. was flipping houses before flipping was even a word. And we didn’t do it quite as aggressively as people did today or do today. But, know, I’d buy a house. I was single. I’d live in it. I’d fix it up, sell it. You know, the first house I bought was literally a shack. paid $16,000 for it.

Tessa Murry (02:45.411)

Mm.

Mark Cramer (02:45.662)

And I sold it a couple years later for 29,000. And I just kind of kept going. And then we had a bit of a real estate banking crisis back then. And the banks up to that point were very happy to give me all the money I wanted, all of a sudden just turned that spigot off.

Tessa Murry (02:52.131)

I’m

Tessa Murry (03:12.216)

Hmm.

Mark Cramer (03:14.259)

One of my friends real estate agent said, well, why don’t you do some home inspections? We need good home inspectors. So as a contractor, had some experience. had a lot of experience, actually, with a lot of different aspects of housing. So I started doing inspections. just as a business was totally different back then. We had paper forms. We didn’t have computers.

We didn’t have fax machines. We didn’t have cell phones. We had pay phones and, you know, pager and a miserable answering service. Map books. Yes. Yes. Finding the house was often a struggle. But my kind of warped personality is that I really like to study things and learn about things and really get very, very focused on things. So.

Reuben Saltzman (03:47.458)

Yeah.

Tessa Murry (03:49.155)

And paper maps.

Reuben Saltzman (03:52.782)

Yeah.

Reuben Saltzman (03:57.688)

Bye.

Tessa Murry (03:57.923)

Yeah. Right, I bet.

Mark Cramer (04:13.513)

I just started learning a lot about home inspections. I joined ASHI back then and also FABI, the Florida Association of Building Inspectors. And along with a couple other guys, we founded a local FABI chapter in the Tampa Bay area, which turned into an ASHI chapter. And then I later on got involved in ASHI a little more seriously on the national level.

And I was, as you said, I served on a lot of committees. I was on the standards committee for more than 15 years through two different versions of the standards that we revised. And I became secretary after being on the board. I became secretary, vice president, and president-elect, president, and past president. And now I’m pretty much a has-been.

Tessa Murry (04:53.345)

Wow.

Mark Cramer (05:12.877)

So I’ve been doing inspections full time, just one man band. Never had any employees. I was really too lazy to have employees. So that’s a lot of work. A lot of work and a lot of liability too. And that was by choice. that was by choice. And I taught home inspection for.

Reuben Saltzman (05:24.91)

It’s a lot of work, yeah.

Tessa Murry (05:26.989)

Yeah.

Mm.

Tessa Murry (05:34.467)

Yeah.

Mark Cramer (05:40.348)

Well, it was inspection training associates at that time, ITA, back in the 90s. And I taught in the classroom for 10 years for ITA. Later, they sold that to Kaplan and then became the ASHI School after that. And I enjoyed doing that, but that’s pretty hard work to teaching every day. it doesn’t pay very well either. I enjoyed doing it.

Reuben Saltzman (05:45.656)

Yeah.

Tessa Murry (05:57.719)

Hmm.

Tessa Murry (06:03.543)

Yeah.

Tessa Murry (06:07.715)

So.

Mark Cramer (06:10.603)

does not pay nearly as well as doing home inspections. So I’ve kind of migrated away from that. And I’ve done a lot of training on the local, state, and national level at seminars all over the country for different chapters. And at the ASHI conference, I’ve done a whole bunch of sessions there on all different topics.

Tessa Murry (06:13.965)

Hmm.

Reuben Saltzman (06:23.714)

Yeah you have.

Reuben Saltzman (06:33.622)

And I got to say, Mark is a fantastic teacher. And that’s how I know Mark is from sitting in on sessions that he has taught. And, you know, I’ve said it many times, you go to these conferences and sometimes it’s like, this sounds like a really fascinating topic. Then you look who’s teaching and you go, no, I don’t think I’m going to that one. Other times you look at topics, you go, it looks kind of boring. And you see, wait, Mark Cramer’s teaching. I don’t care if it sounds like a boring topic. I’m going to go to his class.

because he knows what he’s talking about and he’ll make it interesting. So Mark is a fantastic teacher.

Mark Cramer (07:08.109)

Well, kind of you to say. But I try and make it interesting because if it’s interesting for everybody else, it’s interesting for me. And the great thing about teaching is you learn a lot. I mean, you have to learn a lot in order to teach people. mean, I’ve taught electrical inspection to electricians in the classroom, and I’ve taught air conditioning inspection to air conditioning contractors in the classroom. So you have to know your stuff. You really have to continue to learn.

Reuben Saltzman (07:19.949)

Yes.

Tessa Murry (07:22.296)

Tessa Murry (07:32.716)

Yeah.

Mark Cramer (07:37.653)

in order to be good teacher.

Reuben Saltzman (07:39.65)

Yes. Yes.

Tessa Murry (07:40.487)

man. Yeah, I would say doing the training at StructureTech helped me become a better inspector because I had to relearn all the information we were supposed to know and know it like the back of my hand. So I actually I felt like I learned new things too that I probably should have learned in training. Sorry, Ruben. But I picked them up when I was putting all the training materials together.

Reuben Saltzman (08:02.958)

Hey, can I just take a quick side note about that? Right now, we’ve got two home inspectors in training. And, you know, for a while, Tessa was our hiring and training manager. She did all the hiring, all the training. She put together all the curriculum that would kind of replace what a home inspection school would do. We did all of that in-house training all the inspectors, and it would be basically eight plus days.

of classroom training where it was, I mean, intense and Tessa created the curriculum. And now with these two new inspectors coming on, I’ve been doing it because I don’t have Tessa to do it anymore. And I, it, my mind is just blown at how much content you had put together. mean, each one of these slide decks is about 500 slides and there is just so much to cover. I look over and I’m like,

Tessa Murry (08:59.907)

have.

Reuben Saltzman (09:01.336)

Goodness, this is solid content. I should sell this for a million dollars. It’s what you put together a solid gold Tessa. It’s very good.

Mark Cramer (09:06.723)

You

Tessa Murry (09:11.395)

Well, thanks Ruben. You know, I just put together everything that you were trying to teach each home inspector and it was gathering all of the resources and just putting them together in a cohesive way and trying to teach them the way that made sense and in order that made sense. So was drawing from the classes that you’ve put together, that you teach on a regular basis, all the blogs that you’ve written, teachings from other inspectors or other people that are in the industry that we respect.

from building scientists. it was, you know what, that was super fun. I don’t know, Mark, if you enjoyed this part about teaching to it. Part of the joy for me is like figuring out how do we take all of this information and how do we boil it down and make it digestible? And I don’t know, with our structure tech curriculum, like you said, Ruben, I tried to boil it down, but still I would even, I mean, when you’re talking about electrical and inspections.

There’s just so much to know and it you know every subject every area of the house There’s just so much know you don’t realize how much you have in your head when you’re a home instructor And you’re going through the house it just it’s almost like breathing when you’ve been doing it for a while But when you’re new starting out, it’s like it’s like drinking from a fire hydrant. Yeah

Reuben Saltzman (10:11.502)

so much.

Reuben Saltzman (10:24.173)

Yeah.

It’s like you’re drowning.

Tessa Murry (10:29.877)

And so, you know, seeing all this information get put together in the slides, like I said, I mean, for me, it was humbling, but then also kind of just like taking a moment to take a step back and like, wow, you know, we, you know, I know this and you know this and we want other people joining our team to know the same stuff too. So it’s a, it’s, it’s one of those things where you just always are learning. You have to keep learning too. So that’s the challenge.

Mark Cramer (10:29.995)

Yes, yeah, yeah.

Reuben Saltzman (10:53.56)

Yes.

Mark Cramer (10:54.424)

Yes, things change tremendously. And that was a struggle I always had teaching, is there’s just so much information and so limited time to try and force feed that information into their little brains. And I would tell people on the first day, look, when you leave here, you’re going to know what you don’t know.

Tessa Murry (11:11.939)

Thank you.

Tessa Murry (11:20.389)

Yes, that’s it. That’s exactly right. Yeah.

Mark Cramer (11:22.913)

I can’t make you a home inspector in one or two weeks, which is the time that we had. seven day classes and 14 day classes. Can’t make you a home inspector, a really good home inspector in that time, but I can teach you the basics and I can teach you what you don’t know so that you can continue to learn and understand that learning is a never ending process. It just, as long as you’re in the business. when I started,

Tessa Murry (11:28.291)

in.

Tessa Murry (11:44.126)

Yeah.

Reuben Saltzman (11:44.973)

Yeah.

Mark Cramer (11:53.304)

The one big difference between then and today is the amount of information available that you were expected to know. I mean, we didn’t have the internet. When I started teaching, we did not have a good internet connection in the classroom. And even if we did, you couldn’t go on the web and find 1 one hundredth of the information you can find today on any particular topic. So even your customers can.

Reuben Saltzman (11:58.818)

Yes.

Tessa Murry (11:59.736)

Yeah.

Reuben Saltzman (12:03.464)

huh.

Reuben Saltzman (12:17.123)

No.

Tessa Murry (12:17.879)

Yeah.

Mark Cramer (12:21.859)

unfortunately get on the internet and learn a lot of stuff, half of which is incorrect. But you got to keep up and you have to stay ahead of them and you have to be able to convey that information. any other difference is, know, buildings, the way we build houses changes and the materials change. I mean, we didn’t, you know, we didn’t have, you know, pecs.

Tessa Murry (12:28.259)

Yeah.

Mark Cramer (12:49.348)

piping. We didn’t have high-efficiency furnaces. We didn’t have high-efficiency AEC systems. We didn’t have five different kinds of siding that are common today back then. these are all things that come along that you have to digest and learn about to stay ahead of the game or do you just even stay even. And it’s difficult for home inspectors out there, especially if they’re learning

Tessa Murry (13:10.135)

right.

Mark Cramer (13:18.167)

challenged like a lot of people are. don’t really like to spend the time to learn those things. So hard to keep up. It’s amazing. As you said, Tess, it’s amazing the amount of stuff you have to know that you have to have in your head every day to be a really good home inspector. Yeah.

Tessa Murry (13:34.467)

Yeah. And until you start trying to write it all out, you don’t realize it. You know, it is. But, know, it’s interesting that you say you’ve just, you’ve seen things change over the years, just in terms of the materials that are used, the sightings that you see, and you just have to stay up with the times to be able to be a competent, good inspector and know what you’re looking at and know what it should be and shouldn’t be. And I’d, you know, it’s one of those things that I think

For the people that get into home inspection today, you have to realize that things are changing and they are only going to continue to change even faster with technology and AI. There’s not only learning how a house is built and how the materials have changed and how they perform differently, but there’s like the whole tech business side of this as well, I feel like that’s changing. you said, Mark, you just decided to be a lone wolf.

Mark Cramer (14:15.277)

Yes.

Tessa Murry (14:33.815)

I respect that because I think if you want to be a business owner in this day and age, it’s a whole other animal to learn how to run a business and how to stay up to date with all the technology that’s changing so quickly.

Reuben Saltzman (14:49.794)

Yeah, so true, so true.

Mark Cramer (14:49.823)

Absolutely.

Tessa Murry (14:52.919)

That’s why you love IAB, right Ruben? And then why you talk about it every podcast. Good resources. Well, Mark, usually we ask our different experts from around the country specific questions about kind of their housing stock that they deal with and what they see and what the houses are like and some typical challenges. Can you give us kind of an overview of the types of

Reuben Saltzman (14:55.692)

Exactly, Yeah.

Tessa Murry (15:19.831)

houses that you see in Tampa? Like how are they constructed? I’m guessing they don’t have basements, but what are the types of materials you see and what are some of the biggest challenges that you run into in your area?

Mark Cramer (15:32.74)

So we have a variety of housing stock going back to the late 1800s. And of course, that time frame there mostly wood frame, crawl spaces. There are a couple basements in Tampa. I’ve been in a couple of them, but very rare. So that goes, takes you up to about the 1940s.

Tessa Murry (15:51.906)

Really?

Mark Cramer (16:01.443)

know, wood frame crawl spaces, one-story, two-story, bungalow style, sort of craftsman style. And then you start to see concrete block slab on grade houses. Mostly one-story truss framing typically. And that takes you up to about the late 1980s where

As a result of the increasing cost of land, builders started building two-story houses instead of one-story houses. And those are mostly block on the first floor, wood frame on the second floor. predominant siding is, going back to the 19…

Tessa Murry (16:39.107)

Mm.

Mark Cramer (16:57.848)

hundreds era, early 1900s wood siding or asbestos shingle siding. And then when we went to that, some stucco on wood frame. And then when we went to the 50s, 60s, the one story block houses were either painted block or stucco on block.

Tessa Murry (17:01.293)

Okay.

Mark Cramer (17:23.733)

or combination of both. Maybe they put some stucco on the front and painted the sides. And then after 1960s, it would have been all stucco on block. The two-story houses were mostly stucco, block on the first floor, stucco on the second floor, which have led to some interesting water intrusion problems to the point of

catastrophic failures of that type of housing for a long period of time.

Tessa Murry (17:56.653)

Hmm.

Reuben Saltzman (17:58.54)

No, no, no, let me ask you, are you finding problems with the stucco on the block? Is that where it goes wrong? Okay.

Mark Cramer (18:05.523)

No. Stuck on block is absolutely the best structure siding combination for this climate. It’s pretty much bulletproof. It’s really hard to mess it up, although I have seen it done, but 99.9999 % of the time is going to be perfectly fine. You don’t really even need to spend a lot of time looking at it.

Tessa Murry (18:16.589)

Hmm. Okay.

Reuben Saltzman (18:17.102)

Okay. Okay. All right.

Tessa Murry (18:21.527)

Hmm.

Tessa Murry (18:32.077)

Hmm.

Mark Cramer (18:33.887)

you know, walk around the house and you’re pretty much done looking at the stucco. The problem is with stucco on wood frame where we have water intrusion issues.

Tessa Murry (18:42.636)

Okay.

Reuben Saltzman (18:42.69)

Yeah, yeah, okay That that’s kind of what I thought you’d say but I wanted to make sure because I don’t inspect any stucco on block here in Minnesota Yeah, okay

Tessa Murry (18:45.802)

Yeah.

Mark Cramer (18:53.12)

Right, right. So it’s just like aphes, only it’s a different material, but the same sort of water intrusion problems and structural damage problems.

Tessa Murry (19:06.531)

You know, sounds like, you know, you’ve got this variety of housing stock there, you know, hearing about some of this original like wood framed, the bungalow styles, you know, how to crawl space underneath them that are, you know, pretty old to like early 1900s, you said, even. Okay. Yeah, all the way to like slab on grade homes and then back to two story. And I would imagine that

Mark Cramer (19:24.119)

Yeah, correct.

Tessa Murry (19:32.483)

You’ve seen enough of these homes now doing inspections for the last, 30 plus years that you just kind of, you see when the house was built and what style it was, and you kind of have an idea in your head of what things to look for, where you’re going to see the problems. Is that true?

Mark Cramer (19:49.974)

Absolutely, absolutely. I can look at the real estate listing and pretty much predict what kind of problems we’re going to find with that house or what we’re not surprised to find.

Tessa Murry (20:01.025)

Can you give us a highlight real mark? What you’re thinking as you’re going through these different… Yeah. Yes.

Reuben Saltzman (20:05.676)

Yeah, yeah, what’s the most common stuff you see pictures of and you just go, ooh, that’s juicy. I know what I’m gonna see there.

Mark Cramer (20:13.089)

Well, if I see it’s an old warehouse with a crawl space, the first thing I’m looking at is how many steps are going up to the front porch. That tells me how high off the ground that crawl space is. Tells me whether I even want to take the job or not. And today I turned down most of those.

Reuben Saltzman (20:22.733)

Mmm.

Tessa Murry (20:27.07)

Yeah, okay.

Reuben Saltzman (20:32.439)

sure.

Tessa Murry (20:32.546)

Yeah, okay, I would I would do to be honest

Mark Cramer (20:35.681)

You know, I’m too old to be crawling through crawl spaces. I’ll do it if there’s enough room, but I’m not crawling through an 18-inch crawl space. So that’s the first thing I look at.

Tessa Murry (20:44.663)

man, you guys have spiders and snakes down there that’ll kill you, so no thanks.

Mark Cramer (20:48.612)

Yeah, yeah, but that’s not really the nastiest thing in a crawlspace. and then with that arrow house, I know there’s going to be termite damage. It’s just a question of how much. And I know that if they’ve had subterranean termites, there’s going to be visible damage in the crawlspace. And that’s something, you know, something you’re going to focus on. And we know that the

Tessa Murry (21:01.699)

Okay.

Mark Cramer (21:15.743)

foundations were woefully inadequate in, you know, most homes of that era. So there’s going to be settling problems going on. Brick piers that are deteriorated because the mortar we had was just a lime mortar. You know that there’s, well, used to be not so much anymore, it’s all gone. But you know, there’s probably some knob and two wiring under there. And you know that there’s going to be cast iron drain lines under there that are going to be

Tessa Murry (21:24.291)

So.

Tessa Murry (21:30.136)

So.

Tessa Murry (21:39.639)

Mm-hmm.

Mark Cramer (21:46.126)

deteriorated. And you know there’s going to be galvanized water piping underneath there that’s know end of life also. So those are all things you’re know you’re kind of focused on.

Tessa Murry (21:47.843)

Mm-hmm.

Reuben Saltzman (21:53.134)

Yep. Yep.

Tessa Murry (21:54.432)

Okay.

Tessa Murry (22:01.247)

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So structural issues, termite issues, then just the old system stuff, old electrical, old plumbing. Okay.

Mark Cramer (22:07.529)

Right. Right. Now we don’t have too much old electrical or plumbing left because of the insurance situation here. We’ve been doing insurance inspections for a long time here and you can’t get an insurance policy with knob and tube wiring in Florida. You can’t get insurance with old galvanized piping.

Reuben Saltzman (22:28.334)

Mmm.

Tessa Murry (22:29.187)

Mm-hmm.

Tessa Murry (22:33.452)

Wow.

Mark Cramer (22:34.616)

difficult with old cast iron piping also. So we don’t see any knob and tube anymore. It’s all been replaced. We don’t see any fuses anymore. They’ve all been replaced. We very rarely see like an FPE panel because they’ve all been replaced. But those were all issues. But the insurance side of that has sort of cleaned most of those up.

Tessa Murry (22:39.829)

I know.

Tessa Murry (22:44.77)

Okay.

Tessa Murry (22:48.422)

Reuben Saltzman (22:57.015)

Okay.

Tessa Murry (22:57.994)

Yep.

Reuben Saltzman (23:02.721)

Okay.

Tessa Murry (23:03.337)

Okay. You’re a few decades ahead of us. I think that’s coming where we are over the people we’ve talked with and hearing about the rest of the country is that, you know, just the whole insurance game is really impacting, you know, the housing market and what we’re seeing.

Mark Cramer (23:19.467)

Yes, yeah. And you don’t know how bad it’s going to be. you guys don’t. And I listened to another podcast you did, I think, with John Bolton, who I know about insurance inspections. But what you didn’t touch on there is what really happens as those start to become more common and how that whole system is basically based on fraud and deceit.

Reuben Saltzman (23:31.469)

yeah.

Tessa Murry (23:35.053)

Yep.

Mark Cramer (23:49.053)

and how it puts the home inspectors in a really, really bad place.

Reuben Saltzman (23:53.134)

Tell me more.

Tessa Murry (23:53.635)

Mmm.

Mark Cramer (23:55.204)

Okay, so I’ll give you a typical scenario. So you’re familiar with four-point inspections. If we go out and do a home inspection, well, I’m going to spend three, four hours there. I’m going to find every little thing wrong with the roof electrical, plumbing, heating, and cooling systems. And then I got to do a four-point report, separate report, separate form. I got to put every defect on there that I have discovered.

Mark Cramer (24:25.377)

The seller has to fix those things because the buyer can’t get insurance until that form is cleared. You cannot submit that form to the insurance company with any defects on it. They’ll just kick it back and say, fix all these things, get another inspection at your expense, of course. So now the seller, who doesn’t really care that much because they’re selling the house, they’re tasked with fixing these things and they procrastinate.

Tessa Murry (24:52.279)

you

Mark Cramer (24:55.18)

They hire the cheapest people they can find if they can even find them. And this is all very time sensitive, as you know, this whole real estate transaction is very time sensitive. So they get to the last week and they’re fixing these things. And then we’ve got to go do another inspection, which the buyer doesn’t really want to pay for, you know, and we go out there and half of the things are done. Half of them are not done or some of them that are done or not done correctly.

Tessa Murry (25:03.553)

Yeah.

Mark Cramer (25:23.907)

So now it’s one day before the closing and the inspector all of a sudden is the bad guy who’s holding up everybody’s commission and the whole transaction. The buyer’s mad, the seller’s mad, the real estate agents are mad. Everybody’s mad at you. Then the flip side of that is that there are some people who will do insurance inspections and that ride past on a galloping horse with their seeing eye dog and their white cane.

Reuben Saltzman (25:39.533)

Yes.

Mark Cramer (25:54.172)

and spend 15 minutes and they will never find anything wrong. And well, why can’t I do that as a home inspector? So it’s, and there are so much, you know, fraud that goes on. And everybody knows this, the real estate agents know it, the insurance agents know it. But unfortunately, there are plenty of inspectors out there.

Reuben Saltzman (25:54.606)

Hahaha.

Tessa Murry (26:02.357)

Yeah. boy.

Reuben Saltzman (26:03.597)

Yeah.

Mark Cramer (26:21.859)

And a lot of them just do insurance inspections. They don’t do home inspections because they don’t have the business. But there are a lot of inspectors out there that will give you a clean report. So it’s to the point where I won’t even do four point inspections anymore. It’s just too much grief and aggravation. And I tell people, look, you really don’t want me doing your home inspection or your insurance inspection.

Tessa Murry (26:38.317)

Thanks

Reuben Saltzman (26:46.798)

because you’re not gonna pass.

Mark Cramer (26:48.772)

because it’s not going to pass and it’s just going to cause all kinds of grief. Just ask your insurance agent for the name of somebody that’ll, you know, can do an insurance inspection for you. You know, you.

Tessa Murry (26:49.187)

Yeah.

Reuben Saltzman (26:58.722)

Someone who specializes in giving you a four point inspection report, right?

Mark Cramer (27:03.489)

All right, you want a white cane inspection.

Reuben Saltzman (27:06.38)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tessa Murry (27:07.261)

my goodness. Look, what do think the industry is going to look like in another five or 10 years? Do you think a lot of the people that are out there doing a really thorough inspection and they’re extremely ethical, do you think they’re going to die out because they won’t be able to get any business and the only like industry that will survive for home inspection is going to be basically employees of the insurance company that are kind of flying by and checking some boxes?

Mark Cramer (27:34.211)

No, no. Look, you know, the good real estate agents out there that would refer people like me, you know, they’re going to want good inspections because they realize that it’s to their benefit. It’s protection for them along with their buyers. So, you know, there’s always going to be a demand for that, regardless of, you know, what happens with the insurance industry.

Tessa Murry (27:49.771)

Yeah. Okay.

Reuben Saltzman (27:59.97)

Sure. Okay. Yeah.

Tessa Murry (28:00.769)

That’s good to hear. You just got to find as a home buyer, you have to be savvy and you have to have a good real estate agent who’s ethical and they know what they don’t know and that they have a good ethical home inspector as well.

Mark Cramer (28:14.207)

yes and that’s a whole other can of worms we don’t really want to open

Tessa Murry (28:18.359)

That’s it.

Tessa Murry (28:22.689)

I’m sure you see a lot of things that are pretty deflating and frustrating in Florida.

Mark Cramer (28:29.066)

Yeah, but I don’t think it’s a little different because of the insurance problem, but it’s the same story everywhere. I everybody I talk to all over the country, same issues, same conflicts.

Tessa Murry (28:40.385)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So take us back through, it was really interesting hearing your, you know, the kind of the highlights for the things that would be the, you know, typical problems in the house. That’s like a 19, early 1900s wood frame, you know, crawl space. What about some of these other houses that you see that are built later, like slab on grade, both wood frame and concrete block, and then the two story houses?

Mark Cramer (29:06.519)

Well, the later slab-ongreid block houses from the 60s, 70s era, those are at the age where they’re 50, 60 years old. So a lot of the original systems are at the point of failure, it piping under the slab or windows, things like that. And the longer the house sits there, the more opportunity there is for

Tessa Murry (29:28.291)

Mmm.

Mark Cramer (29:36.292)

show a homeowner to come along and do things incorrectly. So those tend to have a lot of just wide variety of problems over various systems. If I go look at a, well, I did the day before yesterday, a one-year-old slab on grade house, with that house, really not a whole lot of problems.

Tessa Murry (29:40.941)

you

Tessa Murry (29:55.584)

Thank you.

Mark Cramer (30:05.283)

Sometimes we’ll find the most common issue we find in newer houses is insulation in the attic that’s not as thick as it should be, some roofing materials that are installed incorrectly. Electrical systems are generally pretty trouble-free because the electrical code’s pretty strong and those do get inspected fairly well compared to some other systems.

Tessa Murry (30:17.111)

Mm-hmm.

Tessa Murry (30:21.184)

Mm-hmm.

Tessa Murry (30:33.271)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mark Cramer (30:37.371)

poorly installed tile on the floor sometimes and sometimes in tubs and showers, things like that, but generally not major, major issues. Then the two-story wood frame for a period of time, early 2000s to 2010-12, we had just some really poorly installed

Tessa Murry (30:45.312)

Yeah.

Tessa Murry (30:50.027)

Yeah.

Mark Cramer (31:04.451)

stucco applications where there wasn’t adequate drainage or where the intersection of the stucco and penetrating elements was not sealed properly, no caulk joints like there should be, and that led to water intrusion problems and in some cases pretty severe structural damage. So I made a living for a few years just doing destructive stucco inspections for construction defect claims against builders.

Reuben Saltzman (31:25.067)

Yeah.

Tessa Murry (31:25.314)

Mm-hmm.

Tessa Murry (31:31.21)

really?

Reuben Saltzman (31:34.51)

What did that look like when you were doing those? What was your process?

Mark Cramer (31:38.104)

So visually looking at the stucco, determining how thick it is, documenting all the things that are missing that should be there, and then cutting holes in the stucco to uncover concealed damage to the underlying wood structures.

Reuben Saltzman (31:58.326)

Okay, so you weren’t doing pin probe testing.

Tessa Murry (31:58.616)

Hmm.

Mark Cramer (32:01.643)

Now you can’t in hard-code stucco that doesn’t work.

Reuben Saltzman (32:06.136)

How come?

Mark Cramer (32:07.615)

Well, I take that back. I have done some of that, but you have to drill a hole through the stucco to the wood and then stick your probes in there in the wood.

Reuben Saltzman (32:19.884)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we do a ton of that here in Minnesota. But you never got into that so much. Yours was just cut in bigger holes. OK. All right. I those weren’t so much for real estate transactions then, were they?

Tessa Murry (32:20.673)

Hmm

Mark Cramer (32:29.089)

Yeah. Yeah.

Tessa Murry (32:30.413)

Mm-hmm.

Mark Cramer (32:35.103)

No, they’re construction defect claims. The law here puts the builders on the hook for 10 years for construction defects, which obviously they don’t tell you that. They tell you you have a one-year warranty, but by law you have a 10-year warranty on structural defects.

Reuben Saltzman (32:37.218)

Got it. Okay.

Tessa Murry (32:37.847)

Thank you.

Tessa Murry (32:46.627)

Mm-hmm.

Reuben Saltzman (32:53.23)

Yeah, we got the same thing here in Minnesota. Sure. Did you ever do you have people in your area who would do pin probe testing for real estate transactions? OK.

Tessa Murry (32:54.249)

Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Cramer (33:04.009)

No, no seller would let you do that. No.

Tessa Murry (33:05.912)

Hmm.

Reuben Saltzman (33:08.64)

Okay. Got it.

Tessa Murry (33:09.045)

Really? They don’t want to know. The insurance company would say, you got to fix that. And then, then what do they do?

Mark Cramer (33:12.767)

I and the one.

Reuben Saltzman (33:12.855)

Hahaha

Mark Cramer (33:18.128)

Right, the ones I’ve done have been for relocation companies.

Tessa Murry (33:21.251)

Okay.

Reuben Saltzman (33:22.368)

Okay, sure.

Mark Cramer (33:24.049)

that require it. So in that case the seller doesn’t really have any choice.

Reuben Saltzman (33:29.634)

Yep. Okay. All right. Interesting.

Tessa Murry (33:32.749)

So are there certain types of houses that you just would not buy if you were telling a grandchild or a kid that they’re looking for a house in Tampa? you say steer clear of these 1990s two-story stucco homes?

Mark Cramer (33:48.548)

Absolutely, Today we’re doing a little better. Recently in the past few years we’re definitely doing better because mean, builders have paid out tens of millions of dollars repairing these houses. So obviously they’ve tried to improve the construction process.

Tessa Murry (33:51.113)

Yeah.

Mark Cramer (34:15.969)

Depending on the era and the condition, yeah, I might tell you to walk away from that kind of house just based on past experience. I would not advise you to buy a, you know, older wood frame crawl space house either. They’re basically just, you know, lot of structural issues and mold delivery systems. Yeah.

Reuben Saltzman (34:32.024)

Okay.

Tessa Murry (34:32.099)

Mm-hmm.

Tessa Murry (34:39.605)

Okay. Yeah, delivery systems. Is that because you see a ton of mold in the crawl space and the crawl space is really connected to the house and so it’s just mixing, all the air is mixing?

Mark Cramer (34:52.312)

Well, yeah, the crawl spaces and you never go into a crawl space and come out and say, gee, it looked great in there. But yeah, obviously there’s a lot of mold grown in crawl spaces. I mean, there’s a lot of mold here everywhere. I this is a hot, humid climate. it’s a constant battle. But those houses have

Tessa Murry (35:01.411)

She’s she.

Reuben Saltzman (35:03.927)

Yeah.

Tessa Murry (35:12.653)

Yeah.

Mark Cramer (35:22.787)

small penetrations and sometimes large penetrations in the floor system between the crawl space and the living space. Holes around piping, holes around wiring, holes underneath the bathtub that all allow the passage of air from the crawl space into the house. And then when you heat up the attic, the hot air is rising in the attic, it pulls air out of the house, which then pulls more air out of the crawl space. So you

Tessa Murry (35:31.415)

Okay.

Tessa Murry (35:42.882)

Yeah.

Tessa Murry (35:50.701)

Yeah.

Mark Cramer (35:51.32)

get that chimney effect so you are constantly breathing crawlspace air in those houses. people in North Carolina have done some studies on this and houses with crawlspaces tend to have much higher levels of mold inside the house based on testing than non-crawlspace houses. So yeah, absolutely.

Reuben Saltzman (35:59.854)

Sure.

Tessa Murry (36:00.386)

Yeah.

Reuben Saltzman (36:18.286)

I believe it.

Tessa Murry (36:19.681)

Yeah, me too. Yeah, that is a problem. And I appreciate you talking about that. Because that’s, in my mind, that’s something that, you know, if you’re an inspector down there, you should be thinking about that aware of that. So you can educate your clients on that, hopefully, if they don’t already know. But that’s all about I mean, that’s building science, it’s understanding how the house works as a system. And if, if you’ve got, you know, air conditioning running, and it’s hot outside and cold inside that warm air wants to move from hot to cold.

Mark Cramer (36:21.29)

Absolutely.

Tessa Murry (36:48.125)

and it’s being pulled in through all those little gaps and holes in the building envelope, those little holes in the floors. And then when it gets inside that warm, moist air condenses on cold surfaces, and then you get condensation and mold and all these things affect indoor air quality and people’s health. And they don’t think about that. But I mean, who wants to be breathing in swampy crawlspace air? You know, it doesn’t matter what kind of myrrh filter you have, if you’ve got these little holes that are allowing, you know, this air movement to happen.

Reuben Saltzman (37:16.599)

Yeah.

Mark Cramer (37:17.611)

Yeah, and I’ve seen so many mold and air quality problems caused by those holes and also caused by poorly installed air conditioning systems. Our primary heating and cooling here is air conditioning. We go, even this time of year, we go from air conditioning one day, we turn on the heat the next day, and then we turn the air conditioning on the next day.

Tessa Murry (37:30.819)

Hmm.

Tessa Murry (37:38.273)

That’s me.

Mark Cramer (37:47.588)

So, but we’re mostly air conditioning. we’re, and if you set that air conditioner down in that old crawl space house in a closet with no return duct work, which is very common. So, you know, these houses didn’t have air conditioning to begin with. Then, you know, you are pretty much sucking air right out of the crawl space into that air conditioning system and distributing it throughout the house. Yeah. Yeah.

Reuben Saltzman (37:47.704)

Sure.

Tessa Murry (37:47.715)

Thank

Tessa Murry (38:04.577)

Yeah.

Reuben Saltzman (38:12.084)

No. gross. OK. Well, that that’s part of my question. I wanted to ask what what does an improperly installed air conditioning system look like? So you definitely talked about something that’s just nasty. I don’t see that stuff like that here in Minnesota. What else goes wrong with your AC systems?

Tessa Murry (38:13.217)

Yuck.

Yuck.

Tessa Murry (38:28.035)

Yeah.

Mark Cramer (38:33.059)

Pressure imbalances between the supply and the return. If you have leaking ductwork in your attic.

So if we think of the house, the living space as a box, and we have duct work outside of that box and it’s leaking, well, if that return system is trying to suck in 1,500 cubic feet per minute and it’s pumping out 1,500 cubic feet per minute, but 200 cubic feet of that pumping out is leaking into the attic air, then

it’s still going to pump in 1,500 cubic feet, but that extra 200 cubic feet is going to come from somewhere else because you’ve depressurized the house now. So it’s going to come in through little gaps and cracks, regardless of whether it’s a crawl space house or not, it’s coming in from outside. So yeah.

Reuben Saltzman (39:21.816)

Sure.

Tessa Murry (39:22.893)

Mm-hmm.

Reuben Saltzman (39:30.722)

Yeah. Okay. All right. That makes sense.

Tessa Murry (39:31.335)

huh.

Are you measuring supplies and returns and that sort of thing when you’re inspecting these systems? How do you know if you’ve got leaks on the supply side or leaks on the return side or how do you identify that being an issue?

Mark Cramer (39:48.42)

It’s tough to identify. Sometimes I will kind of demonstrate that using a smoke pencil and opening the door, just a little crack. And if we can see that smoke’s getting sucked in from the outside, then you know the house is under negative pressure. Or I’ll use the other scientific method is you lick one finger and you hold it up next to the crack and see if…

Tessa Murry (40:00.002)

you

Mark Cramer (40:17.641)

air is leaking in. And you can actually detect pretty low airflow doing that. So when I suspect that, yeah, that’s something that I’ll do.

Reuben Saltzman (40:20.334)

Sure.

Tessa Murry (40:20.579)

Mm-hmm.

Tessa Murry (40:25.335)

Mm-hmm.

Tessa Murry (40:29.677)

Hmm.

Mark Cramer (40:29.795)

But I’m not measuring airflow because I don’t know what the airflow should be. So there’s no point in measuring it.

Tessa Murry (40:36.733)

Yeah. That’s yeah.

Reuben Saltzman (40:38.154)

I you talk about this. I’ll share one of my go ahead.

Mark Cramer (40:40.405)

And that’s.

And that’s way beyond the scope of what we can do as home inspectors in the limited time we have there.

Tessa Murry (40:48.515)

Thank

Reuben Saltzman (40:50.934)

Yeah. We see a lot of imbalance in Minnesota homes, and usually it’s the basement that ends up sucking air and then the upper levels get pressurized. And what I’ll frequently do is I’ll take the door to the basement and I’ll just close it. So it’s about an inch away from being closed and you let it go and then conk and then shuts by itself. And you turn off the HVAC system, you close it about an inch and it just sits there. It’s like, all right, here’s a great visual evidence right here.

Tessa Murry (40:51.202)

Yeah.

Mark Cramer (41:09.931)

Right, right, yeah.

Tessa Murry (41:20.652)

you

Reuben Saltzman (41:21.004)

Your basement is sucking a ton. You got a very imbalanced system.

Mark Cramer (41:23.831)

Yeah. Yeah, and there’s no mold in basements, right?

Reuben Saltzman (41:29.358)

They’re not as bad as crawlspace. I mean at least our basements are thought of as part of the box Yeah, we’re we can see the basement for crawl spaces people usually don’t get underneath there do they?

Tessa Murry (41:29.857)

Hehehehehe

Mark Cramer (41:36.907)

Right.

Tessa Murry (41:38.815)

They are, but.

Mark Cramer (41:46.155)

No, never.

Tessa Murry (41:46.983)

A lot of sight out of mind. Yeah. Yeah.

Reuben Saltzman (41:47.266)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Cramer (41:50.925)

although i have had clients crawl in there with me i’ve had women clients crawl in there with me

Reuben Saltzman (41:53.623)

Have you?

Tessa Murry (41:54.273)

ooooh, wee.

Reuben Saltzman (41:57.037)

Huh.

I’d, if I’m hiring you, I’d be like, dude, I’m paying you to do this, Mark. No thanks. I don’t need to come in there with you. I trust you. You tell me what you see. I’m paying you good money to do this.

Tessa Murry (42:05.28)

you

Mark Cramer (42:05.43)

you

Tessa Murry (42:10.947)

Oh my gosh.

Mark Cramer (42:11.075)

Well, you know, your customers vary. Some of them are very interested in what’s going on. Others can’t change a light bulb. So I had actually had a guy call me yesterday. He said, I’ve got this mole on the ceiling in my bathroom around this vent. And he sent me a picture of it. wanted me to come look at it. And I said, well, look, dude, this is just.

Tessa Murry (42:16.138)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. my goodness.

Reuben Saltzman (42:19.191)

Yeah.

Mark Cramer (42:37.176)

there’s a gap around that vent and hot humid air from your attic is coming in around that vent. It’s one of those light vent fixtures. And it’s condensing on that ceiling. The water vapor is condensing as moisture and there’s dust there that has particles in it that are food for mold and there’s mold spores everywhere and you’re getting some mold growing on there. All you need to do is just clean that off, seal around that vent and

Tessa Murry (42:45.033)

Mm-hmm.

Tessa Murry (42:57.539)

Mm-hmm.

Mark Cramer (43:05.941)

he’s not capable of doing that. He said, well, I, you know, I’m the least handy person you’ll ever meet. If, if my wife heard you say that, she’d say, no, do not do that. You know, don’t, cause you’ll mess it up somehow. So people, you know, people, some people can fix things. Some people can’t fix anything.

Tessa Murry (43:10.467)

Hmm.

Reuben Saltzman (43:21.716)

Sorry.

Tessa Murry (43:22.795)

All through the ceiling, yeah.

Reuben Saltzman (43:26.668)

Yeah, true.

Tessa Murry (43:27.069)

Yeah, we have the same problem, but the opposite mark where we have, know, if a bath fan is in a ceiling and there’s air leakage around it, we’ve got warm humid air in the bathroom that’s leaking up through that penetration in the ceiling and then all that moisture is condensing on the underside of the roof deck that’s really cold in the wintertime. And then you get frost in the attic and all sorts of problems with that.

Mark Cramer (43:39.009)

Right.

Mark Cramer (43:43.264)

Right. Right.

Mark Cramer (43:48.676)

So that’s a big difference here. we can, we’re required, it’s same code, we’re required to vent that bathroom to the exterior. But when you don’t, nothing bad happens in this climate. I mean, it’s more, it’s more humid in the attic than it is in the house typically. So it’s not really a big deal here.

Tessa Murry (43:58.477)

Mm-hmm.

Reuben Saltzman (44:03.235)

Yeah.

Tessa Murry (44:03.619)

You’re venting cold air into the air, cooler air, guess, into the attic. Yeah. Are you seeing a lot of houses these days where they are moving that insulation up to the underside of the roof deck to bring that ductwork and air handler into the conditioned living space? They’re making it a…

Reuben Saltzman (44:10.232)

Sure. Yeah. Yeah, your addicts are a little more forgiving than ours.

Mark Cramer (44:16.706)

Yeah.

Mark Cramer (44:29.845)

Yeah, a lot of higher end custom houses were seeing spray foam insulation, which is a whole nother problematic issue.

Tessa Murry (44:34.614)

Okay.

Tessa Murry (44:40.259)

You see a lot of issues with the installation of it, improper installation, improper mixing, or say more about that.

Mark Cramer (44:46.819)

90 % that I check are not thick enough. And I’ve got a knife, it’s actually a duct knife that I’ve marked off three, four, five inches on, and I just poke that through the insulation so I can take a picture and show how thin it is. Those typically have to be five and a half inches around that to get to R19, which is as thick as you can spray that foam.

Tessa Murry (44:52.131)

Mm.

Tessa Murry (45:05.165)

Yeah.

Yep.

Tessa Murry (45:11.875)

and calm.

Mark Cramer (45:16.899)

And then the second problem that we see is humidity control. If you don’t get a really good seal around the perimeter, then you are allowing humid air from the outside to come in there and you are creating a nice mold farm in there. In spray fomatics, the temperature typically is going to be

Tessa Murry (45:24.545)

Yeah.

Mark Cramer (45:44.228)

In the summer here where it’s 85, 90 degrees outside, we’re going to air condition to 75 degrees or so and it’s going to be 85 in the attic, but the humidity should be exactly the same as the humidity of the house. When it’s not, and this is really common, then you’re going to have mold issues. Now, there are some people that will say,

Tessa Murry (45:59.863)

Hmm.

Tessa Murry (46:08.419)

you

Mark Cramer (46:13.207)

that you have to dehumidify every one of those attics. But most of them that we’ve ended up testing, we can find air leakage and fix that air leakage and get the humidity under control. But it’s another interesting building science problem.

Tessa Murry (46:30.413)

Hmm.

Tessa Murry (46:35.861)

Yeah. Yeah. You know, as we make houses that are lot more airtight and better insulated, especially in your climate zone, dehumidification, like you said, is a problem already and will become more of a problem, I think. So are you seeing a lot of whole house dehumidification systems installed, like on the air handler or tied into the ductwork somehow in the newer construction houses?

Mark Cramer (47:01.417)

No, almost never. Almost never. Because your air conditioner is a great dehumidifier. And when we’re air conditioning, we don’t have humidity control problems. We have more mold problems here in the wintertime than we do in the summertime. Because we’re not air conditioning, so we’re not dehumidifying. But the humidity outside is still pretty high here.

Tessa Murry (47:04.66)

Really?

Reuben Saltzman (47:14.337)

Okay.

Tessa Murry (47:14.528)

Thank you.

Tessa Murry (47:21.187)

you

Okay, yeah.

Reuben Saltzman (47:25.56)

Sure.

Sure, okay.

Tessa Murry (47:28.587)

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that makes sense. mean, if you’re running your AC all the time, then it’s in theory, if it’s working properly sized correctly, it’s going to be dehumidifying. But as our house has become better insulated and a lot more airtight and they’re way more energy efficient, so you don’t have to run the AC as long to cool it down. You don’t have the air leakage happening through the building envelope that’s allowing that warm, humid air to come in.

then you won’t have to run the AC as much. And then you still have all the internal loads for humidity. And so at some point I would think houses, you know, as we make them more energy efficient, more airtight, would need some sort of serious dehumidification system installed in them, especially in Tampa.

Mark Cramer (48:15.061)

No, because you’re putting in a smaller air conditioning system. So, and you have to size that system not only for the sensible load, but also for the latent load, which is humidity. So you have to size that system to handle that latent heat in addition to the sensible heat. So, you know, we’re putting systems in houses today that are almost half of the size that they would have been.

Tessa Murry (48:19.0)

Yeah.

Tessa Murry (48:26.743)

Thank

Tessa Murry (48:31.49)

Hmm.

Mark Cramer (48:44.927)

you know, 10 years ago. So they run, they still run, you know, enough to control the humidity.

Reuben Saltzman (48:45.518)

Okay.

Tessa Murry (48:47.158)

Wow.

Tessa Murry (48:52.479)

Okay. Well that’s good to hear that, yeah.

Reuben Saltzman (48:52.662)

Okay, that’s good.

Mark Cramer (48:53.988)

So that’s all part of the design process. We’re designing for 75 degrees, 50 % humidity at a 92 degree outdoor temperature here. And then we’ve got more variable speed systems today, which also help with that issue.

Tessa Murry (48:58.178)

Yeah.

Tessa Murry (49:05.848)

Nah.

Tessa Murry (49:13.965)

Yeah. Wow.

Mark Cramer (49:15.427)

The other place where I do see humidity control problems are mini splits.

Tessa Murry (49:21.891)

Oh, say more. Say more about that. Because we see we’re starting to see more mini splits up here in Minnesota, and especially in older homes that don’t have duct work, and they just had like a boiler for heat. They want air conditioning, they’re installing more and more mini splits.

Mark Cramer (49:30.655)

Right, right.

Mark Cramer (49:37.262)

So in many cases, those end up being oversized. And the AC guy thinks that, well, these are variable speed, so that’ll handle that humidity problem. But it doesn’t. And so we end up with really high humidity and mold problems with some of those systems. I mean, they can work fine, but it’s just something you’ve got to keep an eye on.

Tessa Murry (49:56.866)

Hmm.

Reuben Saltzman (49:58.894)

Good job.

Tessa Murry (50:05.655)

And as a, you’re probably educating the home buyer to just let them know you’ve got this mini split and it’s likely oversized or, you know, are you, is that part of the inspection process? Do you look at the size of a mini split and look at the age and the construction of the house and say, I think this, this might be too big and this could lead to comfort issues and humidity problems.

Mark Cramer (50:25.899)

Yeah, and absolutely. And, you know, those mostly get retrofitted into older houses. So, you know, we’ve got a good idea of how much capacity you need for that size house, that type of construction of that era. Where it gets more difficult is actually today in these newer houses, I can’t really tell you what size AC system you need there because we’re putting so much more

Tessa Murry (50:28.663)

Okay.

Tessa Murry (50:36.066)

Yeah.

Tessa Murry (50:44.919)

Mm-hmm.

Mark Cramer (50:54.691)

insulation in, we’re putting much better windows in, we’re air sealing that we never did before, so our loads are going way, way down and you can’t really tell without doing a, you know, full load calculation. But if you take me back to 1990s, 80s, 70s, yeah, I know what size system that house needs, just using pretty much rough rules of thumb. So

Tessa Murry (50:58.323)

Yeah.

Tessa Murry (51:07.415)

No.

Reuben Saltzman (51:11.63)

Sure.

Tessa Murry (51:11.649)

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.

Tessa Murry (51:20.983)

Yeah.

Mark Cramer (51:23.351)

You can look at that mini split and say, you got a one ton mini split here for this 500 square foot room. This is going to be way oversized. You’re going to have humidity control problems here.

Tessa Murry (51:23.565)

Yeah.

Tessa Murry (51:34.335)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay, I know we need to wrap this show up, but I have one more question for Mark. Do we have time for me to ask it? Okay.

Reuben Saltzman (51:43.767)

We do. And then I have one more when you’re done, Tess.

Tessa Murry (51:46.775)

Well, okay, we might go a little long this time. Mark, okay. Thank you for coming on our show and thank you for entertaining all of our questions. My last question is on houses that are concrete block, and let’s just say they’ve got stucco on the exterior, you’ve got a hot, humid climate. So predominantly you’re cooling. So as we’ve already mentioned that kind of, you know, flow of heat and moisture and air is moving from the outside to the inside, the warm air is being pulled in.

any moisture that’s in the stucco from rain, all the rain you guys get just the humid air. Does that work its way through the stucco into the concrete block? And does it ever create problems on the inside of the walls in the houses that you know that you see down there in Florida? Because you just use basic sheetrock. And I think don’t you just attach that to furring strips against the block? And maybe you’ve got some fiberglass back there too. Is that a moldy mess?

Mark Cramer (52:46.467)

That’s an interesting question. So first of all, flows from downhill. Water vapor flows downhill. So hot and humid outside, that water vapor is constantly flowing through that block wall where it’s removed by the air conditioning system. If you interfere with that process,

Tessa Murry (53:00.662)

It’s a

Tessa Murry (53:11.095)

Mm-hmm.

Mark Cramer (53:15.565)

then you’re gonna get that water vapor condensing somewhere either inside the wall or the big, really big no-no here is putting a vinyl wallpaper on an exterior wall that’s guaranteed to grow mold underneath that vinyl wallpaper because there’s a vapor barrier. So you’re stopping the vapor there, it condenses. Same thing if you put a big glass mirror on an exterior wall, you’re pretty much gonna get mold growing behind that glass mirror unless there’s good air circulation behind it.

Tessa Murry (53:30.387)

Right. Yeah. Put it… Yeah. Right.

Reuben Saltzman (53:31.662)

Yeah.

Tessa Murry (53:37.624)

Yeah.

Tessa Murry (53:43.971)

Yeah.

Mark Cramer (53:45.956)

So, and then water that leaks in, even if they’re cracks, a block just sucks it up like a giant sponge. And unless it gets saturated, which rarely, rarely happens, it just holds it and it dries out to the interior. So it’s really pretty trouble free unless you…

Reuben Saltzman (54:06.253)

Okay.

Tessa Murry (54:06.343)

Sounds like you want your walls breathe on both sides. Obviously, you don’t want that moisture to get trapped. Putting vinyl wallpaper, huge no-no. But does that moisture ever create problems on the back of the sheetrock ever? mean, all these houses that you used to flip before you were home inspectoring, would you open things up and find a bunch of mold behind the sheetrock between the concrete block and the…

Mark Cramer (54:26.241)

Now, sheet rocks vapor permeable. Those water vapor molecules will pass right through the sheet rock. If you put something in there that restricts it, like we don’t use vapor retarders here on insulation like you do. We just use unfaced bats or loose fiberglass. In those walls, they typically use an insulation that’s called five foil that goes between the

Tessa Murry (54:29.932)

Yeah.

Tessa Murry (54:41.677)

Yeah.

Mark Cramer (54:55.907)

furring strips between the block and the drywall, and it’s a foil face paper product that’s got little holes punched in it to allow vapor to pass through it. I have seen some mold issues with some of that sometimes, but generally that doesn’t seem to be a problem.

Tessa Murry (55:13.123)

Mm-hmm.

Tessa Murry (55:16.867)

Hmph.

Mark Cramer (55:19.131)

And if you put a foil-faced foam board on the inside of the block, which some people do, then you can get some problems.

Reuben Saltzman (55:27.575)

Okay.

Tessa Murry (55:27.885)

Cheers.

Reuben Saltzman (55:30.338)

Okay.

Tessa Murry (55:30.999)

Hmm. Interesting. Well, thanks. Yeah, thanks for answering my questions. I’ve been thinking about that for a long time that I would just think that the stucco on the concrete block would just be a giant sponge. And, you know, you want that. As long as it can dry out, right? As long as it can dry out and you don’t. Yeah.

Mark Cramer (55:42.019)

sponge is good. A sponge is good. What you don’t want is… Yeah, but it does. You have a giant drying machine inside your house. called an air conditioner.

Tessa Murry (55:53.123)

As long as you don’t have a vapor barrier or vapor retarder in the wall, you said, or foil-based insulation or something else going on behind there. Yeah, that’s restricting the drying. Okay. All right. That’s helpful. Thanks.

Mark Cramer (55:56.426)

Right. Right.

Mark Cramer (56:01.604)

Right.

Reuben Saltzman (56:06.682)

Okay. Now mine has nothing to do with building science or home inspections. Really? It’s more kind of my ears perked up when you said you spent 15 years on the ASHI standards committee. And if you don’t want to answer this question, we can just end the show. But. Okay, well. All right. Okay, good. Well, what do you think about the new proposed standards?

Tessa Murry (56:20.493)

Yeah.

Mark Cramer (56:25.591)

well i’ll answer it i already know what the question is

Mark Cramer (56:35.107)

I am not at all in favor of them. Just two things, and there are many others, like the term material defect. The average person doesn’t know what that even means. And I’m completely opposed to sticking words in there that people don’t really understand.

one of the things that we always did was try and simplify the language to the point that the consumer could understand it. The second thing I don’t like is adding a whole bunch of individual components that need to be inspected, like the whole section on decks. Well, that’s already there because we’re required to inspect

structural components. those structural components of the deck are structural components, whether they’re on a deck or they’re in your attic or in your basement, wherever, they’re all structural components. So the problem with adding specific things like that is that then newer inspectors especially, they tend to focus only on those specific things and they think that other things don’t matter because they’re not listed individually.

Tessa Murry (58:00.077)

Mm-hmm.

Mark Cramer (58:01.324)

the case, often that’s not the case, which is a good example. That is the four point insurance form that has a bunch of defects listed on it. It also says you’re required to report all defects. But a lot of people looking at it to say, well, the form only lists these things. So these are the only things that I have to report.

Tessa Murry (58:05.363)

Yeah.

Tessa Murry (58:10.817)

Mm-hmm.

Reuben Saltzman (58:27.15)

Sure.

Tessa Murry (58:27.851)

Yeah.

Mark Cramer (58:29.443)

So one of the things that we did when we were doing some revisions was we took some specific things out of the standards that were in there like a specific requirement to inspect aluminum wiring. We took that out. We took out testing garage door reversing, which was in there at one point. Yeah, you’re required to do that, but that’s part of inspecting the garage door and the operation of it.

Tessa Murry (58:44.931)

Hmm.

Tessa Murry (58:52.429)

Wow.

Mark Cramer (58:58.659)

you’re required to determine whether there’s aluminum wiring and report that if that’s a defect. But when you put those specific things in there, then you put the focus on those things to the detriment of the other things that you don’t put in there.

Tessa Murry (59:13.513)

Yeah. Yeah. And then when do you, where do you stop at that point? It’s just.

Mark Cramer (59:17.397)

Right. You can never. So that’s why we kind of made things a little bit more general than they were because that’s actually more inclusive than listing a whole bunch of individual things because you’re never going to list everything and then something new comes along and it’s not listed well then what does that mean?

Reuben Saltzman (59:17.42)

Yes, there’s no end.

Tessa Murry (59:32.344)

Yeah.

Tessa Murry (59:39.436)

Yeah.

Reuben Saltzman (59:40.27)

So is there any saving the existing proposed standard or do we need to go back to the drawing board and start over?

Mark Cramer (59:49.796)

I don’t think there’s any way that the members are going to vote that through. I’m not either. That’s my opinion. And from the comments that I’ve seen about it, there aren’t a lot of people that seem to be really happy about that. And I think that’s understood, especially if you consider the fact that we’ve gone through

Reuben Saltzman (59:54.542)

Okay. Okay. Yeah, I’m not. All right.

Reuben Saltzman (01:00:11.192)

Okay.

Mark Cramer (01:00:17.955)

two separate comment periods now because I think the first comment period was so negative. So, you know, there are people that kind of understand that I think. Not knowing anything about it, I don’t know anything more than any other member does. Because, you know, once you become a past president, you’re a has-been and nobody tells you anything. you know.

Tessa Murry (01:00:40.419)

For anybody that’s listening, that’s a home inspector, maybe he’s a member of Ashy. This is juicy gossip that we’re talking about right now. But for anybody that’s listening and has no clue, Ruben, can you give just a quick 30,000 foot view recap on what’s happening right now, what you’re talking about?

Tessa Murry (01:01:00.311)

the ASHI standards of practice is up for renewal. And there’s been a board of people that have been trying to figure out ways to update it and, you know, update language, right. And so they came up with a new standards of practice, which is a big deal for our industry, and didn’t go so well. sounds like it’s not going well. Okay, so that did not pass. And it looks like it probably won’t pass is what you’re saying.

Reuben Saltzman (01:01:20.522)

It is not going well at all. Yeah.

Reuben Saltzman (01:01:27.0)

Well, it didn’t even get put up for vote. That’s where we’re at right now. Yeah, it got put up for comment. And actually, yeah, it got put up for comment and there were a lot of comments. It got put up for comments again. There were a lot more comments and they said, we’re going back. They’re not gonna put it up for vote. There’s going to be a third comment period at least. And yeah, I don’t know how it’s gonna get re-boomed. We’re on our third round, yeah.

Tessa Murry (01:01:30.719)

didn’t even get put up for vote. Okay. Okay.

Tessa Murry (01:01:48.643)

Okay, so it’s been through three rounds of revisions, okay.

Yeah. Okay. All right. Is there anything for members of ASHI that they should be aware of? Like is there an upcoming meeting or is there a date for vote or anything? No, just so stay tuned. Okay. Okay. Stay tuned.

Reuben Saltzman (01:01:56.972)

So who knows?

Reuben Saltzman (01:02:07.032)

There’s no dates on the calendar right now. Yeah. Stay tuned. you know, Mark being on that for 15 years, I had to ask him about that. I know it doesn’t apply to a lot of our listenership, but had to ask. So thank you. Thank you for being candid, Mark. I appreciate it.

Tessa Murry (01:02:21.867)

We appreciate your honesty and your insights on that. And I think that’s how, I mean, we were talking about earlier with the training stuff, it’s like there’s just so much you have to know as a home inspector. If we were going to try and put a checklist together for all the potential defects out of just like the things that we look at, the report would be ridiculous. You would lose, the reader would lose what’s really important. And that’s why we’re there. We’re there to find these bigger problems and also note the smaller ones.

Mark Cramer (01:02:24.035)

Sure.

Tessa Murry (01:02:52.095)

But yeah.

Mark Cramer (01:02:52.195)

Well, that’s one of the reasons that I never really liked checklist reports or most computer generated reports is because they gave you a list of whatever, 15, 115, whatever things. So that’s all the inspector focuses on because that’s the only thing that’s easy to get into the report, especially if you’re doing a report on your phone. So those type of reporting systems are really kind of limiting.

Tessa Murry (01:03:15.127)

Yeah. Yeah.

Reuben Saltzman (01:03:16.674)

Yeah.

Mark Cramer (01:03:22.403)

in a subtle way where I’d rather see you as an inspector go out with nothing and tell me what the defects are rather than check things off because you’re just focused on those things you got to check off and it’s too hard to get other information into your report so you don’t do it you don’t put it in.

Tessa Murry (01:03:25.859)

Yeah.

Tessa Murry (01:03:33.111)

Yeah.

Tessa Murry (01:03:46.563)

No, no. Soul circle, think, you know, with the training for new home inspectors, anyone that’s, you know, newer to this industry, it is so important to be able to take a step back when you’re inspecting a house and think about the big picture, like what’s really going on here. When was the house built? What types of materials are there? And, you know, how you were giving us a 30,000 foot view of all the problems with these different vintage homes, different age homes. It’s taking a step back and

and really trying to focus on those areas that are going to fail first or be the bigger problems. And you could fill in the blanks with all the other little things and all the little doors that, you know, don’t close all the way and the doorstops that are missing and the, you know, the scuffs on the wall if you want to. But what really matters is these bigger things that you’re talking about, we’re talking about today. And so to not lose sight on that, and hopefully our SOP won’t lose sight on that either.

Reuben Saltzman (01:04:39.392)

Amen.

Mark Cramer (01:04:40.717)

Well, one of the things I enjoyed teaching is process and inspection. We could do a whole other podcast on that, is how you focus on certain things, pay more attention to this thing and less attention to this thing, because the first thing is much more likely to be problematic than the second thing. And you got to…

Tessa Murry (01:04:50.935)

Yeah.

Tessa Murry (01:04:56.642)

Yeah.

Tessa Murry (01:05:00.791)

Mm-hmm.

Mark Cramer (01:05:04.023)

give unequal attention, let’s say, certain aspects of the house based on how old the house is, what the problems are likely to be.

Reuben Saltzman (01:05:10.414)

Yes.

Tessa Murry (01:05:10.968)

to.

Reuben Saltzman (01:05:13.75)

Yes, totally agree. Well, that might be a fun follow up, Mark. We might have to get you on to come back and talk about that. Yeah, we’ll try to we’ll try to keep it under an hour next time. I know we kept you over today, but I appreciate your time. If people want to get a hold of you, how can they reach you, Mark?

Tessa Murry (01:05:14.837)

Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Cramer (01:05:18.764)

Okay.

Tessa Murry (01:05:18.903)

Yeah.

Mark Cramer (01:05:21.603)

Sure, love to.

Tessa Murry (01:05:21.899)

Yeah. Yeah.

you

Tessa Murry (01:05:30.028)

Yeah.

Mark Cramer (01:05:32.675)

My website is besttampainspector.com

Reuben Saltzman (01:05:38.88)

Okay. Best Tampa inspector.com.

Tessa Murry (01:05:40.129)

That’s an easy one to remember. Best Tampa inspector.com. like that.

Mark Cramer (01:05:43.701)

Right, right.

Reuben Saltzman (01:05:44.632)

Love it. All right. Well, thanks for coming on and for the listeners, if you got any thoughts for me or Tessa, feel free to email us. We are at podcast at StructureTech.com and we will catch you next week. Have a good one. Take care.

Mark Cramer (01:05:59.15)

So long.