In this episode, Reuben and Tessa discuss various topics, including their summer experiences, illnesses, and home updates. They also discuss the challenges of finding contractors and the shortage of skilled trade workers. Reuben shares some interesting findings from recent home inspections, including corroded galvanized water pipes and structural issues in a garage. They emphasize the importance of getting a home inspection and preparing for potential repairs. They also discuss various home inspection findings, including problems with additions, bonus rooms, bidets, grow operations, reverse osmosis systems, and bay windows. They also touch on the challenges of dealing with water intrusion and rot. Reuben mentions that StructureTech is currently hiring home inspectors. In the next episode, they will be discussing insurance issues.
Takeaways
Summer goes by quickly, so taking full advantage of it is important.
Finding contractors can be challenging, and there is a need for more skilled workers in the trades.
Home inspections are crucial to uncover potential issues and avoid costly repairs.
Corroded galvanized water pipes can cause reduced water flow and may need to be replaced.
Structural issues in garages, such as sagging headers and soffits, require professional evaluation and repair. Home inspections often uncover a variety of issues, such as problems with additions and bonus rooms.
Improperly installed bidets and reverse osmosis systems can lead to water leaks and damage.
Grow operations can cause humidity and mold issues in homes.
Bay windows without overhangs can lead to water intrusion and rot.
StructureTech is currently hiring home inspectors.
The next episode will focus on insurance issues.
Chapters
00:00 Summer Experiences
05:00 The Challenge of Finding Contractors
11:44 The Importance of Home Inspections
19:52 Dealing with Corroded Pipes
21:20 Structural Issues in Garages
25:41 Uncovering Issues with Additions and Bonus Rooms
29:09 The Challenges of Bidets and Reverse Osmosis Systems
35:14 The Impact of Grow Operations on Homes
37:01 Dealing with Water Intrusion and Rot in Bay Windows
47:48 StructureTech is Hiring for Home Inspectors
48:51 Upcoming Episode: Insurance Issues
TRANSCRIPTION
The following is a transcription from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it may be slightly incomplete or contain minor inaccuracies 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. Welcome back to the show, Tessa. How’s your summer going?
Tessa Murry: Hey, Reuben. It is going by way too fast. It hit me just the other day that it’s the very end of July, it’s almost August. And here in Minnesota, if you blink your eyes, summer is over. So you have to take full advantage of it.
RS: Oh, my gosh. Yes. And by the time this airs, it already will be August. Yes. It goes by so quickly.
TM: Slow down. I know. Yeah. Well, I’ve been battling some bug and actually, we were just talking about this before we started recording, our illnesses this past weekend. But we’ve both survived it. We’re feeling better now.
RS: We’re both feeling much better. Yes. Oh, my gosh. The summer sickness, like, the summer cold, summer flu, whatever, just the worst.
TM: Yeah. Because you want to be outside. You want to be doing all these things but you just can’t.
RS: Yeah. Yeah. I’m not… I did not let it stop me. I was still at it this weekend. We were at the family cabin but it was… Yeah, just feeling it. Feeling it in the nose and all that.
TM: Yeah. Well, that’s impressive that you were able to go up to the cabin and still have fun, sounds like.
RS: Have to. Have to. We got plans. We’re not gonna stop.
TM: So Reuben, what’s going on with your nose?
RS: Oh, yeah. It looks sunburned, doesn’t it? It’s not. Okay, so, Tess, I installed a pull-up bar at the cabin in the garage, so I could work out up there. And there’s this pull-up that people will do for competitions and it’s not your traditional pull-up. It’s a way of doing pull-ups really fast, like to whip through them. And it’s called a butterfly, and it’s where… You almost have to watch a video of it but it’s like you kind of swing in this circle, and you kick your legs up in the air, and you’re whipping through these pull-ups really fast, and your body just kind of goes in this big circle. So your nose gets above the bar… Or your chin goes above the bar, and then you fall down really fast, and you swing back up. Well, I was doing that on Saturday, and I was doing this workout called the Murph, and it’s where you wear a weighted vest for it. And my very first one Saturday morning, I went out, I ran a mile. I’m wearing this weighted vest, I come back…
RS: Well, it’s funny. You start moving your body, and all of a sudden, your nose, it doesn’t feel stuffy anymore when you start breathing hard. Yeah. So it kind of feels good to do it. But then my very first pull-up, I’m coming down, and I smashed my nose on the bar. So it looks sunburned but it’s not. It’s just bruised.
TM: Oh, no. For all of our listeners, you can’t see Reuben’s face right now. It just looks like he’s got a nice little tan across the bridge of his nose. But it turns out…
RS: Across the bridge of my nose.
TM: It’s a bruise.
RS: Yeah. I didn’t hit the bridge, I hit the underside of my nose. I’m leaning my head back to show that the bottom of my nose is all bruised. And so I had a double nosebleed on top of my runny nose. It was awful. Yeah.
TM: You didn’t break it, did you?
RS: I don’t think so.
TM: Did you hear a crack or anything?
RS: No, I heard it crunch, like I heard something, but it didn’t… I don’t think it broke because it’s not really in any pain anymore. It’s just a little tender. And this was like three days ago.
TM: Well, you have a nurse for a wife, so you… Did Anna inspect it? Give you the thumbs up? Told you to put some ice on it?
RS: No, she didn’t. She rolled her eyes and laughed at me. Yeah. I don’t get any sympathy. I learned I do not go to her with any bellyaches because I will not get any sympathy. She works in the emergency department, she sees real injuries.
TM: Oh, my God. Unless you’ve got blood pouring out of your nose or you can’t speak, she’s just like, “Yeah, Reuben, what did you do now?”
RS: Yeah. “I told you to be careful. I told you.” Yeah. So that was awesome.
TM: Like a giant child. Oh, my gosh. Well, I’m glad you’re doing okay. Your nose is doing okay. You didn’t break it. Contrary to that, Reuben, when I’m sick, I lay in the fetal position, and I don’t move, and I binge Netflix, and I did absolutely nothing for a day. Yeah. Saturday. Yeah.
RS: Yeah. I just insist I’m not sick, I just have some symptoms of being sick. That’s what I always insist.
TM: I was doing that too. It’s like a mental game until you finally get hit by a fever and you feel terrible. And then I succumb to it, and I just…
RS: Yeah, when you got the chills and it’s 90 degrees, that sucks.
TM: Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, anyways, okay, that was fun. So shall we move on? What is our podcast topic for the day?
RS: Yeah, let’s get into that. And you know what? Actually, even before we get into that, I wanna give a shout out to our sponsors. Inspector Empire Builder, IEB. By the time this airs, we will have just completed our summer mastermind or all-day seminar. And something else I wanted to talk about is that every week in IEB at noon Central time on Wednesdays, we’ve always got this thing called an open access call where anybody’s welcome to join in on a Zoom meeting. You’ve got inspectors from all over the country.
RS: All different sizes of home inspection companies. And the idea is you get on there and you talk about whatever problem you’re facing, whatever challenge you’ve got, whatever questions you have for the team. And it’s usually not technical stuff. In fact, it’s never technical stuff. We’re not talking about tools. We’re talking more about ideas and how to run your business. And people present their stuff and everybody has the opportunity to chime in, give advice, share experiences, similar stuff. And I have gleaned a ton of very valuable information from those calls. Just one of the many things that IEB offers. Just kind of giving a little window into what this community is all about.
TM: That’s nice, especially if you own your own home inspection company and you’re a one-man shop or you’ve got a small team of people, it’s nice to be able to bounce ideas or questions or concerns off of other people that are in the same boat and have been through it before. They can share their experience and wisdom. That’s helpful.
RS: Like, “Hey, I need a new phone system. What has everybody used?” Oh, well, okay, you got 10 ideas. “Don’t use this. Don’t use this, don’t use this.” These guys were great. You get your all the pros and cons, just all those little things as a business owner, it’s extremely helpful to get that stuff.
TM: Very helpful.
RS: So, shout out to IEB. All right, let’s get back to the topic. Today is kind of a grab bag. We’re just going over some summer updates, stuff we’ve been working on, and I’ve been doing a handful of ride-alongs with the home inspectors on our team. And I wanted to just share some fun stuff that we found during some recent home inspections. I thought that might be fun.
TM: Adventures from the field, yeah.
RS: Adventures from the field. That’ll be the title of this podcast. I like it.
TM: Nice. Well, have you been doing some updates on your house too, this summer?
RS: You know what? Always, there’s always updates on the house. I finally got around to putting down some mulch. We weren’t gonna re-mulch our front yard. It was so threadbare. You know the stuff you gotta keep putting down mulch once you have mulch. But we wanted to get it painted and the painters couldn’t come out and redo it until just recently but so we finally got it done. It’s stucco on the front of my house. And I know traditionally we’ve always told people, don’t paint stucco.
TM: Yeah, you painted your stucco.
RS: We had it painted and I will save that for another episode. We had a special product put on. It’s not even called paint. I don’t remember what it’s called. It’s some type of masonry coating, they call it. And I wanna get the manufacturer on and I’ve been in contact with the manufacturer. I wanna get someone from this company out to talk about exactly what it does and how it works with stucco. But it looks fantastic. All the little hairline cracks have completely disappeared. The front of the house looks brand new. And I ended up replacing the light fixtures too because you had to take them all down. And I thought as long as we’re taking them down, I’m gonna put new ones up. That was an adventure in itself because the old fixtures, we had traditional light fixtures with… It’s got this big metal plate that mounts against the wall and they were square. And then when it was all done, it’s like I got this square patch that didn’t match. And so I had to get this stucco patch and kind of feather it all in so you couldn’t see it.
RS: And then I had to take more of this paint product or whatever it was and get it all to match. The painter didn’t do all of this. And then I’ve got these holes for the electrical boxes, the traditional round hole, four-inch hole or whatever. But these new fixtures that I ordered, I had to go with something that was a little bit crazy. It’s like this five foot tall strip essentially.
RS: Yeah. It’s a weird looking fixture. It’s not typical but I wanted something a little bit unusual, but there is no electrical box or thing that covers your box. All it is is this strip and it’s about two to three inches wide so it doesn’t cover the hole. So that was another adventure I had to get these metal plates and drill holes in them and put rubber grommets in for the wires to feed through and then figure out some type of weather stripping to go behind it to prevent water from coming into the hole. ‘Cause you don’t want water leaking into your stucco and then had to do these special mounting brackets, drilling all these holes in the stucco. It was a pain in the butt. Tessa, I must have spent five hours installing five lights on the front of my house. And normally you replace a light fixture and it’s just wham bam. Thank you, ma’am. You’re done. This was a project, so.
TM: Five hours, Reuben and you did five lights, in my book that’s pretty impressive. But Reuben, I think that you are a sucker for punishment. I think that’s the theme of this podcast so far is I think you like a challenge and you enjoy punishing yourself.
RS: You know what, I had no idea it was gonna be this challenging.
TM: Whether it be weighted vests and pull-ups while you’re sick, or installing crazy light fixtures on a stucco home.
RS: You know what, now that I reflect on it, I think you’re right. Sometimes you just need to have somebody hold up a mirror.
TM: Can’t wait to see how you punish yourself next week. Stay tuned.
RS: I know. I know, it’ll be great. It’ll be great.
TM: Well, I’m looking forward to talking more about the painted stucco ’cause I have lots of questions about that. And so it’d be good to have an expert on to answer all that.
RS: I have a lot of questions too. Yeah, I wanna hear more about this stuff, so hopefully we can get an expert on to talk about this product. What about you?
TM: Yeah, well, I’m kind of in the middle right now of helping my parents kind of do a house hunt actually and looking at a bunch of different properties. And I’ll tell you what though, it is… This is a common theme with lots of the house coach clients I’m working with but also my own personal experience now trying to find just a general contractor remodeler, do a walkthrough with us on a property. ‘Cause my parents wanna do various updates that would involve plumbing, relocation of washer and dryer, kitchen, bath, all that. And it is really hard to get callbacks from any contractor. Yes. Either they’re super busy or they just don’t even return your call. They’ll call you back and be like, “Sorry, I’m totally booked out maybe I could look at it in December.” Or they don’t even return a call. So that’s a challenge. And a lot of the house coach clients I work with too, that is their number one kind of question. It’s like, “We can’t get anyone to call us back on this project. Do you have any recommendations?”
TM: And just for example, a couple of people that have older houses in Minneapolis I’ve worked with recently that need some kind of reframing to some of their floor joists and repair work to crack beams and posts that are rotted at the bottom, and they just need someone to come in there and kind of just beef everything up and replace rotted wood and stuff. And they can’t find anyone to do it. Or it’s just, it’s a challenge. And that’s just one thing. I mean, the list goes on and on. So it’s a problem. There’s a shortage of contractors out there or people that are skilled in the trades and the ones that are skilled are super busy.
RS: Yes. Yes. And it’s not just a thing here in the Twin Cities. It’s everywhere. And I know this because I get emails from people all over the country. They read my blog and I’ll write about a topic. Just this morning, I’ve been trading emails with somebody who wants someone to come out to their house or not in Minnesota. They want someone to come fix their sub-slab duct work. And there’s water in there. And it’s like they’ve been trying to deal with all these different contractors and nobody knows what they’re talking about. And they wanna know who do I know in their state who can come to us? Like, I have no idea. I would love to help you but I couldn’t be more… I couldn’t be less helpful, I feel like because I don’t have any… I don’t know who’s there. But people ask me this constantly.
TM: We need a national database and all of our listeners out there, we would love to have your feedback and input on great contractors you’ve worked with and what state you’re in. And anyone that listens to the podcast can subscribe and share that info.
RS: Yeah. And someone else who would volunteer to maintain this database because it ain’t gonna be me.
TM: If anyone listening has a good idea, let us know.
RS: Yeah, I have a tough enough time maintaining our own internal database of people who do good work right around here. You can’t even find people here.
TM: I know. I know. It’s true. And also you can have a company that maybe you had a good experience with one year and then… Or even one month, and then a few months later, you get the new person that comes out, and you have a completely different experience.
RS: Yeah, there was an insulation contractor. They did awesome work. They were so knowledgeable. They came out and spoke at our events. I would bounce ideas off them all the time. They were great. And all of a sudden one day, they just stopped calling people back. We gave their name out dozens of times and they just stopped calling people. And I finally, I started calling them, like. “Why aren’t you calling people back?” And they would not call me back. Finally, they got back to me after weeks, and like, “Yeah, we’re just too busy. We can’t handle it.” It’s like, “Alright, great. I’ll take your name off the list. I will not give your name out anymore. Good to know.”
TM: Oh, my goodness.
RS: How does it happen? I mean, they’re fantastic one day…
TM: Oh, man.
RS: Something changes and they don’t call people.
TM: Yeah, I guess some of these companies too, if they’re smaller companies and then they get their name on a list like Structure Tech’s recommended provider list, then they just cannot handle the volume. And even for some of the clients I’m working with they have projects that need an insulation contractor, but maybe there’s not an attic access made already or it’s a pretty small space and they can’t find a contractor that’ll come out because it’s not worth their time. It’s like, well, we can take all these easier jobs at higher volume and they’re faster and easier, and so we don’t even wanna touch yours. So it’s a real challenge out there.
RS: Yeah. Yeah. It’s not even worth our time.
TM: No. No, it’s not. There’s a real need for people in the trades. If you’re listening to this and you’ve got kids that are growing up and kids aren’t sure what they wanna do but they’re really good working with their hands, or they like having a job where they’re building things or solving problems like that, I think there’s an… I think there’s great job security going into any of the trades. There’ll be a need for that. There already is.
RS: Tessa, I was just meeting with a guy. He’s gonna come on the podcast in another month or so. But we played hockey together all growing up. We went to the same high school and he’s running a bunch of education for a plumbing company. He just knows his stuff and he just loves what he does. But that’s what he started doing right out of high school. And then we were chatting about another friend of ours who had a similar path, got into electrical, extremely successful electrician, and couldn’t be happier doing what he’s doing. It’s like there is such a need for people in the trades and people are so satisfied working in the trades. They enjoy what they do.
TM: Yeah. Yeah. I think for the most part, you’re right. There’s a certain amount of freedom that comes with being able to create your own schedule. If you… Yes, there’s headaches with owning your own business and all of that, but at the same time, you don’t have to answer to anyone. You can take what job you want. You can take off when you want. You can work as much as you want to work. And I think a lot of people this day and age are sick of being owned by someone and being told what to do and when to do it and not being able to take time off that they want to spend with their family and just that work-life balance. So it’s another great opportunity to be able to have a little bit more freedom, too, and make good money.
RS: Yeah.
TM: And not have a bunch of college debt.
RS: Yes. Yes, exactly.
TM: College is so expensive these days. So, yeah, I think there’s a lot to be said for having respect for the trades and the great job opportunities that there are out there for these younger generations.
RS: Totally. All right, we need Mike Rowe on the show.
TM: Yeah. Yeah.
RS: All right. So let’s share a couple of home inspection stories. Just fun stuff that I’ve run into ’cause I’ve been doing a bunch of ride-alongs with inspectors.
TM: I can’t wait to hear. Yeah.
RS: Just want to share some fun stuff we found.
TM: Yeah. Yeah. So what do you got?
RS: We’re just gonna power through them. I’m not gonna get into a ton of detail here, but one of the things that we talked about when I think we did our whole series on how we inspect houses, one of them is anytime you got an older house where, you know, there is or you think there might be galvanized water distribution pipes, those things corrode on the inside. You get less and less water flow. There was one I was just doing in St. Louis Park with somebody, and we go down in the basement, we turn on the laundry faucet. You go upstairs, you go to the kitchen faucet, and you get just not even a pencil width of water coming out of there, coming out of the hot side. What’s the fix, Tess?
TM: You got to replace that galvanized water distribution piping.
RS: That’s exactly it. That’s exactly it. We’re perfect.
TM: Yeah, that’s rough. Especially if you’ve got a finished basement or that piping is going all the way up to the second floor. And it can be expensive.
RS: Yep. Yep. So, that was a good find we found. Another one, and this one, it’s almost like, I want to share the photos, but it just, there’s no way to do it. But we looked at this garage, and you know how sometimes on soffits, you’ll have the soffit follows the roof line, where it’s like the trusses or the rafters, I should say, just come straight down and the soffit is gonna be out of…
TM: Like, where you can see the rafter, you look up at the soffit, you can see the rafters.
RS: Yeah. And it would be like you could see the rafter, but then they covered the rafters with plywood or something. So it’s like an angled soffit. It was an angled soffit on one end of the garage, but as you sight down, it transitions from an angled soffit into a square soffit. And…
TM: What? That’s weird.
RS: And you know why?
TM: Why were they… What were they hiding in there?
RS: It wasn’t built that way. It had sagged to the point of being an angled soffit. Tessa’s jaw is on the floor now, she can’t speak.
TM: Oh, no.
RS: Yes. It was so bad.
TM: Okay. Were the rafters rotted, too? Like, was the roof framing rotted, or was it just the soffit part was slipping down?
RS: Yes. We were able to lift up the shingles there, and you could just stick your hand in there. I mean, it was nasty. And not only that, but the garage header had sag… There was probably about a four-inch sag in the middle. From the middle going to the edge, there was about a four-inch difference. So, major sagging in the header, too. And…
TM: Sounds like the garage was kind of beyond repair. It’s when you got all that structural damage going on.
RS: It could be repaired, but it’s gonna cost somebody some money.
TM: I see.
RS: You’re gonna have to remove the roof covering and open it up and figure out exactly what’s wrong. It’s gonna be a project. And then at that same house, they had the world’s largest tree, about 3ft from the foundation of this crawl space. And there was a portion…
TM: Oh, no.
RS: Of the basement that was accessible. You couldn’t… There was no access to the crawl space. We couldn’t get in there. It was totally blocked off.
TM: Of course.
RS: But then for part of the foundation wall that butted up to the crawl space, you had offsets in the block, like half-inch offsets, where it’s just pushing way in. And we said, yeah, that’s a thing, like, you’re gonna need an engineer to come out and design a repair. We don’t know what it’s gonna be. Our guess would be you’re gonna have to do something with this massive tree and you’re gonna need to get somebody in that crawl space.
TM: Oh, my gosh.
RS: And I don’t know what ended up happening, but they didn’t end up buying the house. And this was the tip of the iceberg. They had a bunch of stuff going on with that house, but they didn’t end up buying it.
TM: I know.
RS: And, you know, I hate when that happens. It’s like people get so invested in a house, you know, they’ve mentally moved in but after seeing the stuff, the buyers just said, “No, we don’t want it.” And it turns out we weren’t the first company that inspected it. Somebody else had already inspected it. That deal fell apart.
TM: Really?
RS: Yeah. So, very unfortunate.
TM: I mean, that’s a perfect example, though, of why it’s so important to get a home inspection. I mean, a lot of times it’s the stuff you can’t see or you don’t even realize. It’s like, okay, you might see a little crack somewhere, but really it’s gonna entail removing a giant tree, digging out a crawl space, supporting the crawl space, and then redoing the entire foundation potentially. I mean, are people prepared for that? I’d say most people aren’t financially or emotionally or whatever. So it’s so important to get that home inspection.
RS: And, you know, the sad part, it’s like you could tell from the stuff in the house, photos and kids’ stuff and whatever, it was like, it was clearly a young couple. I mean, so they couldn’t have had the house for that long. It’s not like they’ve been in this house for 20 years and this stuff has slowly happened. This stuff had to have been going on when they bought the house. And it just makes you think, was this one of those purchases where people skip the home inspection?
TM: Oh, man.
RS: So unfortunate.
TM: Well, and that… It’s very likely, I mean, that was happening a lot when the pandemic hit and around the pandemic a few years ago, so it’s… I mean, that would be my guess, like you said. I mean, the house doesn’t get in that condition, have those issues overnight, so.
RS: No, no, no.
TM: That’s rough. That’s rough.
RS: Yep. Very rough. Another one I did, this was… This house had all these different additions. One of the additions, this is the classic one for you, Tess, they put this big addition, big master suite, over the garage. And I know that’s your favorite thing from a building science perspective, where you put all this living space over the garage, kind of like a bonus room, but this was the master suite. And to top it off, they didn’t add any ductwork. They added nothing.
TM: What?
RS: No, nothing. There was one register in the floor of the bathroom, and there was no air coming out of it. So we took the cover off, and there’s just insulation stuffed in there. There’s nothing. It’s not connected to anything. There’s no ductwork. It’s just building materials in there. So there’s no ductwork on the whole side. And they ended up installing a few electric wall heaters, but there’s no AC.
TM: Oh, no. What a mess. What a mess. Yeah. Bonus rooms…
RS: What do you do with that?
TM: Bonus rooms are so difficult. I mean, even when you do have ductwork running to them, they still have issues with comfort and being hot in the summer and cold in the winter. And you’ve got to worry about air quality, too if you’ve got a garage beneath you and you don’t have a perfect, you know, pressure boundary. Just lots of things to think about. But, man. And then you hate seeing the electric… I mean, if you’re inspecting and you don’t see any supply registers, okay, obviously that’s an issue. But then you see all these added, you know, heat sources through resistance heat, electric heat, and you’re like, man, this has got to be expensive, too.
RS: It’s gonna be expensive. Yeah. The good news was that there was a big trunk nearby in the garage, and it was all open web trusses in the garage. So it seemed as though you get a good contractor out there, they should be able to run ductwork underneath.
TM: Run ductwork.
RS: It was still all accessible. So that was kind of the one thing where I was like, well, maybe it’s not gonna be the end of the world.
TM: You just got to open up your entire garage ceiling, and then you’ve got to add on a bunch of ductwork, and then you’ve got to replace your furnace so that it can handle the additional square footage that you just added on. Oh, yeah.
RS: You’re making it sound…
TM: Then you gotta insulate it and seal it all back up. No problem.
RS: You’re making it sound terrible. Yeah. Oh, also just a fun one we found at that house. They had a toilet with a bidet, and the bidet was like an analog one. You know, you get those modern ones where they got the plug in and they got a heater and a dryer and all this electronic stuff. This was just basically a dial that’s attached to the seat. So you turn it, water comes out of the pipe. That’s all it is. And you think, oh, boy, that’s going to be cold. No. They ran hot water to the toilet.
TM: What? For the bidet?
RS: For the bidet, I’m assuming.
TM: They did this on purpose, they ran hot water to the toilet tank on purpose?
RS: Yes.
TM: Have you ever seen that before? I know we’ve come across that before where the lines have gotten crossed and it’s accidentally hot water filling up a toilet, but never seen it on purpose.
RS: And I’ve seen… I’ve heard of people doing it on purpose. Like in my parents’ cabin. There’s no way… See, at the cabin, when you got a bunch of people and people keep flushing the toilet, eventually it’s just, it’s sweating like crazy and there’s water dripping on the floor all around the toilet. And I’ve heard of people running hot water to help prevent that or at least reduce it. Okay, I get that, you’re not… I mean, it might not necessarily always be hot.
TM: Interesting.
RS: But at least you’re not taking 45-degree well water and dumping it into the toilet. At least it’s gonna be somewhat warmer coming out of the pipes. But for this one, yeah, they ran hot water, I’m presuming because they had a bidet. And I guess if you get the water at the right time before it gets too hot, it could be effective, but…
TM: I was gonna say you’re at the mercy of whoever set the temperature of the water heater and however long it takes for that water to actually get hot, too.
RS: Yeah. Yeah. There’s a very narrow window where the water would be just at the right temperature and then it’s super painful on your bum.
TM: Oh, my gosh. What actually… Okay, so what is the solution to that problem, though, Reuben? Like, if you want to have lukewarm water, but you don’t want to have to wait and run the water a lot for it to get hot, and you don’t want it too hot, what do you do?
RS: Well, here’s the super easy one. You buy one of those electric bidets for $200. And it’s got a little heater in there. And it’ll get it exactly the perfect temperature that you want. There’s the super easy solution. The super complicated solution would be to install a tempering valve that mixes cold water in with it. But I think that would just be insane. I’ve never seen anybody do that for a bidet.
TM: Maybe if the house is owned by a plumber, potentially it could be a weekend project for them.
RS: Maybe. But even to get there, you’d have to run all of the water out of the pipes to get it so that you’re at 120-degree water coming from the water heater and cold water coming in from the street, you’d have to run all that out. And that’s a lot of water. So I can’t imagine anybody doing that.
TM: That doesn’t make sense. Yeah.
RS: Yeah. But just a fun, interesting find.
TM: That is fun.
RS: There was another house where it had, like, a secret room. It looked like it was just a wall, but then there was this string that you’d pull, and it would release a lock, a hidden lock. And then you could swing a door out. And then you go inside, and all the walls are covered in black poly. And there’s all these signs of moisture on the floor.
TM: What? I’m picturing, like, a room covered in plastic like a Dexter scene.
RS: Yeah, kind of like that. Yeah.
TM: No, you’re kidding.
RS: Well, like a Dexter scene but that’s not what it was for. You can guess what it was for ’cause…
TM: Let’s hope not. Is this a storage room in the basement?
RS: Yeah. Yeah.
TM: So it’s below grade, and it’s got concrete foundation on the perimeter?
RS: But they’ve got black poly on the inside walls and outside walls.
TM: Okay.
RS: They got it covering everything. I’m thinking it was a grow room.
TM: Oh, okay. Okay.
RS: Yeah.
TM: You know, did they… Okay, so many questions right now. My first one. Did they… Did the sellers tell you, an inspector, about this secret room, or did you find it on your own?
RS: The door was open when we arrived.
TM: Okay. Okay. So they weren’t tying to hide it.
RS: And we accidentally closed the door, and then it latched. And for the life of us, we couldn’t figure out how to open it again.
TM: How to open it.
RS: Yeah. We eventually got there, but.
TM: Oh, my gosh. Wow. Okay, second question. Now that… Gosh, I don’t even know. I cannot stay up to date with, like, what the laws are in Minnesota around marijuana and legalization of it. I just know that federally, it’s not allowed. But you see it all over the place in Minnesota now and certain places you can… Well, you can buy it, I think, from reservations now, but I don’t know. The whole thing’s confusing. But my main question is, are you seeing more and more people growing their own marijuana? ‘Cause I know that it’s legal to do that now. So I’m wondering if you’re seeing a lot of that out there.
RS: I would have to ask the inspectors. I haven’t heard about it. And something I can say is that people think that we, as inspectors, are, like, the law or something, and…
TM: Wait, you don’t carry around a badge and handcuffs?
RS: I don’t care. I don’t care what people do, but they want to hide it, and they don’t want anybody seeing any of this. And we can see evidence of where you had a grow room. We know what they look like, but they don’t leave it out for us. Although I can say, there was one time when… Boy, it was when I was in training with my pops, probably 20 years ago or something. We came to this house. It was for a truth in housing evaluation, and the basement was all cleared out. It’s like they were… Clearly looked like they had a grow operation, but there was nothing in there. And then they wanted us to come back and reinspect some repairs, and the landlord was like, “Well, yeah, we need it done soon, but, oh, well, it’d be nice if you could get there today, but today’s not a good day. Well… ” And he kind of hemmed and hawed on the phone, and finally he’s like, “All right, well just… Yeah, just go over there. Just don’t mind the pot plants. Take some if you want. I don’t care.” And we go in there, and it’s like, it was a full-on grow operation. Like, they had pot plants throughout the whole basement. Like…
TM: Oh, my gosh.
RS: It had to be so much work for them to clear all of that out for us to come through for our initial inspections. And I just thought, for what? I don’t care. This is none of our business. But, yeah, they… It was pretty funny to see it all filled with weed the second time we went through.
TM: That’s crazy, he even told you to take a plant. Did you take a plant? No, you don’t have to say anything. No, it’s legal now, I think, in Minnesota to grow it, isn’t it?
RS: I have no idea.
TM: I’m pretty sure it is legal to grow it. It’s legal to smoke it, I think. Although, in some places you can’t. I don’t know. But anyways, it’s just, it’s messy.
RS: I know that everywhere you go there’s THC drinks. I mean, every bar, every liquor store, everywhere has the THC…
TM: Every brewery. Yeah.
RS: Yeah, everybody’s making THC.
TM: Every brewery is making their own line with THC in it and CBD. So I think we’re just gonna see more and more of that. You know, my building science brain is thinking in these houses that have massive grow operations too and they’re… You know, they’re… Obviously the humidity indoors is gonna be elevated and so do you see any other issues with mold and rotten… Other issues when you’re inspecting these houses is… You know, is that… A lot of… I’m assuming some of these houses are older too and there’s a lot of air leakage happening. And so if you’ve got higher humidity in the house or, you know, coming from the basement, eventually that stack effect, that warm, humid air rises, it gets into the attic spaces too. And these houses might have more issues with frost and rot and mold in the attics. Just curious.
RS: It sure could. It sure could. Although I haven’t seen that.
TM: Okay.
RS: It totally makes sense that you would. There was another house… Alright, just, you know, we’re going down a rabbit hole here. But there was another one I inspected where this house, it was one of those houses where the entire house was being used as a grow operation.
TM: What?
RS: So there was nobody living there. It was just, you know, a nice house in the burbs and they had just cut right through the middle of the house to run their ventilation system and they had like a… I think it was like a twelve inch flex duct that just went right up the middle of the house and it went right up into the attic. So they were venting all of that heat from the basement up and out of the house so that the house wouldn’t rot apart. So they did know a little something about building science.
TM: Wow, that’s fascinating.
RS: I thought so.
TM: So that vent went all through the roof?
RS: Yeah.
TM: It exhausted the air from the basement out through the roof?
RS: Exactly. Yeah, I thought that was…
TM: Was it just like…
RS: That was novel.
TM: That’s very interesting, yeah, they retrofitted that residential property for commercial growing.
RS: Yeah. Yeah, they did. And then I guess the way that people typically get busted is with their energy usage, because you’ve got all these lights… And then that’s where people end up bypass… Now I’m giving people tips. I don’t… You know what? I’m not giving people tips.
TM: It’s legal now, I think.
RS: We always have honest listeners. But what people end up doing is they bypass the electric meter so that people… The energy companies don’t know that they’re using so much.
TM: Wait, Reuben, you can bypass the energy meter?
RS: I’ve seen it done. Yeah.
TM: Stay tuned for podcast episode part two on how to bypass your electric meter.
RS: I’m sure it’s a great way to kill yourself. But there’s a photo we had the other day where the meter cover had been removed, and someone was using literal jumper cables, and they had it clamped on to the meter socket. And then they went around and they went down to something else to provide power to this other panel below it. But we just kind of laughed. We said, rookie mistake, because they clamped on before the meter, not after the meter. You’re still getting billed for that. Don’t you know it’s free on the other side?
TM: Nice try.
RS: Yeah. Yeah. Or, yeah, they clamped after to the beat or not before it. Whatever it is, they did it backwards is what I’m getting at. I think I said that wrong.
TM: You know, I think I recall seeing that picture as a post that Structure Tech made on Facebook a little while ago.
RS: Yeah.
TM: Featured picture.
RS: Yep. Yep. And then, of course, I’m sure we got some hatred, like, oh, you’re trying to tell people how to steal energy. No, that’s not the point. Okay. Alright. Couple other stories. Okay. There was one I was doing with George recently where… This is just an odd find. They had a reverse osmosis system underneath the kitchen sink and looked around down there. I got my flashlight. I’m looking at everything. Everything looks good, but I didn’t look hard enough, I guess, because then the next test we always do at the kitchen sink is to fill the sink up with water, which took a long time. Pull the stopper. Turn on the disposer. Force a big slug of water through there. And then when I look down water is leaking out of the drain after the trap. Turns out the old connection for the RO it used to be connected to the sewer side of the trap. And it was on the top of the pipe. So when you’re just running water nothing really leaks out. But then when you run that big slug of water it forced water out of the pipe. So now the pipe is leaking and we realized oh, there’s a hole in the drain and normally doesn’t leak, normally all that happens is you have sewer gas coming in.
TM: Oh, my gosh.
RS: But when we did this test, it revealed the hole. So that was nice that we found it.
TM: Very good find. The only way you would have found that is by running a bunch of water down that drain at one time.
RS: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Easy to miss.
TM: Wow.
RS: So, that was a fun find with George. Oh, and…
TM: So, was the RO draining in? It’s not… It was still functioning that way? Like, the RO system was draining into that?
RS: No. It used to drain into the wrong side. They had since fixed it. They just never repaired the hole in the piping.
TM: Got it. Okay. Huh. Wow.
RS: It was easy to mess. I mean, unless you’re looking right at it, you didn’t notice it.
TM: Do you need to have an air gap between, like, an RO system that drains into a drain, or does it just tie in directly? Because I’m just thinking, like, that sink backs up, it could go right into that RO system, and that’s pretty nasty.
RS: No. No, I’m sure there’s something internal that prevents it from actually going into the RO system. And I only know this because I recently installed my own system, and there was no requirements for any type of loops or air gaps or any of that on the discharge line.
TM: Huh. Interesting.
RS: And it does… It is supposed to connect before the trap, not after the trap.
TM: Yes. We don’t want sewer gases coming in.
RS: Yep. Yep, exactly.
TM: Interesting.
RS: All right. And then just the last one we’ll share. And you know where this is going. House with… Right at the front of the house, we got a big bay window, sticks way out. There’s no overhang. You know what we found there, right, Tess?
TM: So much rot and water intrusion.
RS: That’s exactly it. It’s always what you find on those.
TM: Surprise, surprise. Yeah, always. Yeah, yeah. Actually, I was just out at a client’s house that had that exact same detail, and they had stone veneer on the front of their house.
RS: Okay.
TM: And the water coming off of that little bump-out roof had just been, you know, decade after decade hitting that stone ledge and bouncing back, and all the windows were rotted out, the wood windows. And then the stone itself had degraded, too. So they actually had to have a mason come, Structure Tech did the inspection on this house when they bought it, and they did a great inspection. Actually, this was Bill Ulrich, shout out to Bill Ulrich. He did the inspection on this house. He did a great job. And so he identified all of this. And so the clients had already repaired the masonry when I went out there, but it was already starting to show signs again because there’s just so much water coming off and splashing against that stone cell and splashing back against the windows and rotting them all out again and getting behind the stone veneer into the wall. And so I don’t know. Do you have a good solution to that, Reuben? Because either I mean, trying to get a gutter on that, which is going to look ugly and be difficult, or changing the roof line and trying to reframe it and extend it so it has an overhang but.
RS: No, I’ve got nothing that you haven’t come up with. No, no. Maybe a different type of wall covering. I don’t know what else to say, maybe vinyl.
TM: Then you can easily pop it off and replace the rotted one every couple of years.
RS: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
TM: Easy access.
RS: That’s all I got.
TM: I don’t know, I mean it looks cute. The house looks cute with that little bump-out bay window and the little metal roof and all of that, but it’s just a nightmare to try and deal with the effects of the water.
RS: Yeah. Yeah. As home inspectors, we have always got laser focus when it comes to those things, like that’s what gets our attention.
TM: Usually it’s just the layers of paint holding that window frame together. And you touch it very lightly because your fingers gonna go right through it.
RS: Yep. Yep. And then someone’s gonna say, you put a hole in my siding. Yeah. Yeah. What were you doing?
TM: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. If you’re listening to this, and you’re a young listener, home inspection industry does have liabilities. Maybe you should be a plumber or electrician instead.
RS: Just get a lot of training. Go around with people who know what they’re doing and learn what to look for. That’s what I say.
TM: Yep. Speaking of that, Reuben, is Structure Tech hiring?
RS: We are. Good call, Tess. Yes. If you know of anybody who’s looking for a career in home inspection, someone who’s been in the trades, who knows their way around the house, we’re in the mode of hiring right now. We’re interviewing people. If you go to our website, you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the homepage. There’s a link that says employment. You can read a little bit more about who we are and what we do, and you can fill out an application right there. We would love to hear from you definitely.
TM: That’s very exciting. Very exciting. Well, Structure Tech is a great company to work for. And, Reuben, I learned so much from you and the team. And whoever you hire, they’ve got some great teachers that will definitely help them get up to speed.
RS: Thank you. Thank you. And I might even be able to twist your arm to come in and teach for a day or two when it comes time for the home inspector training because you were our trainer for a long time, and I know you still got some chops. You can still do it.
TM: Have to dust off the cobwebs, but I would be honored.
RS: That’d be awesome. Cool. Well…
TM: Thanks, Reuben.
RS: If anybody’s got any questions for us, any thoughts, whatever, you’re welcome to email us. Our email address is podcast@structuretech.com. We want to thank you all for listening. And our next show, we’re going to be talking about insurance, and I can’t wait for this one. I have been wanting to talk about this for so long because there are insurance companies leaving Minnesota, and insurance is going through the roof, and there’s a lot to talk about here. So I got an expert coming on. My insurance guy, Tim Molgren, is going to be joining us for our next episode. Looking forward to it. Don’t miss that episode.
TM: A lot of juicy stuff to talk about there.
RS: Yeah.
TM: And it’s not just Minnesota. If you’re listening to this, I’m sure you’re dealing with the same things. I know, like, Florida is having the same problems, too, with insurance companies trying to leave. And I think it’s just becoming more and more of an issue with climate change and then all of the crazy weather that we’re experiencing.
RS: Yes, yes. That’s it. You hit the nail on the head, Tess.
TM: Okay.
RS: All right, cool.
TM: Well, good to see you, Reuben. Thanks for listening, everybody. We’ll catch you next time.
RS: Catch you next time. Take care.
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