To watch a video version of this podcast, click here: https://youtu.be/c9hch5yyc-U
In this episode, Reuben Saltzman and Tessa Murry are joined by Structure Tech’s Services Manager, Eric Houseman, for a wild home‑inspection story that starts with a simple missing bath‑fan termination and snowballs into a major discovery. What begins as routine training turns into a dramatic game of telephone between inspectors, agents, sellers, and contractors—and ends with one of the most shocking ventilation mistakes the team has ever seen: a bathroom exhaust fan tied directly into a power‑vent water heater exhaust.
Along the way, the trio talked about communication pitfalls, the importance of clear reporting, the routine inspection steps that prevent safety issues, and the unexpected discoveries that even seasoned inspectors don’t see coming. It’s an episode filled with lessons, surprises, and plenty of inspector banter.
Here’s the link to Inspector Empire Builder: https://www.iebcoaching.com/events
Check out this link to our new favorite Combustible Gas Detector, the TPI 720b:
https://amzn.to/3NgZtv7
Takeaways
Clear communication during inspections is essential—verbal explanations can easily be distorted.
Always wait for the published report, which is the most accurate representation of the findings.
Words matter: “exhaust gas leak” is not the same as “gas leak.”
Inspectors should avoid paraphrasing defects; copy the exact language from the report when relaying information.
Even “routine” findings require careful verification—small details prevent major hazards.
A bath fan must exhaust to the exterior, and improper venting can create serious safety risks.
Creativity in home projects isn’t always a good thing—especially when it involves exhaust systems and combustion appliances.
When something seems off, dig deeper; sometimes the truth is hidden behind drywall.
A well‑written report, complete with photos and precise language, is a home inspector’s best protection.
Even experienced inspectors learn new things—sometimes in the most unexpected ways.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Minnesota’s heavy current events
01:07 Shifting to lighter topics and home‑inspection talk
02:35 Combustible gas detectors: retiring the TIFF 8900
05:00 The new winner: TPI 270B
07:21 Show sponsor shout‑out: IEB
08:35 Reuben’s reverse osmosis saga (and user error)
11:35 Tessa’s stinky well‑water updates
13:31 Introduction to Eric’s “thrown under the bus” story
14:25 The inspection setup and counting exhaust points
16:45 The missing basement bath‑fan termination
18:14 The telephone game between clients, agents, and sellers
19:37 HVAC contractor conflicts with the findings
20:55 Re‑inspection and detective work
22:17 The shocking discovery: bath fan tied into water‑heater exhaust
23:59 Why this is dangerous: carbon monoxide risk
25:11 No apology, but valuable lessons
27:33 How communication gaps amplify issues
28:44 Importance of clear reporting and avoiding paraphrasing
30:33 Wrapping the episode; preview of next topic
31:48 Closing remarks
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 (00:01.12)
Welcome to the show. We are back. It’s been a little bit Tessa. Nobody has heard from you for a little while now. Good to see you again. How you doing?
Tessa Murry (00:11.366)
Good to see you too. I’m still alive. Hang in in there.
Reuben Saltzman (00:15.776)
Excellent. And we’ve got a repeat guest on the show today. got Eric Houseman, our services manager, the greatest home inspector last name ever. House man. Come on. It’s pronounced just how it sounds. Eric, how you doing?
Tessa Murry (00:30.062)
You were born for this.
Eric Houseman (00:34.819)
I’m doing well, Ruben. Thanks for
Reuben Saltzman (00:36.952)
Good. Yeah. Well, I wanted to start the show off just acknowledging what is going on in Minnesota right now. It feels like it would be tone deaf if I didn’t at least say something about how it feels like Minnesota is melting down right now. I mean, it is so heavy.
Tessa Murry (01:07.09)
I’m feeling it here at Rubin, you’re tearing up, but it has been emotional for me as well. And it has been a hard few weeks and I’m not even in it. I’m way down across the country, 1,500 miles away in Florida, and I feel it here too. You’re not alone.
Reuben Saltzman (01:23.768)
Yeah, yes. So we’re not gonna get political on the show. We’re not gonna get into religion and all that. We’re not gonna do a deep dive into what’s going on. I just wanna say we’re all feeling it. I’ve had people from all over the country reaching out saying, how are you guys doing? I mean, to the people who pray, I tell them, please pray for us. It’s really tough, but we’re gonna…
We’re going to try to keep it a little bit lighter today. And we’re going to focus on home inspection stuff and house problems. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (01:59.794)
There’s enough heaviness out in the world, right? We’ll try and focus on something that we always do, week to week. That’s why we’re here.
Reuben Saltzman (02:09.016)
Yeah. Yeah. If you want to, if you want to hear about what’s going on in Minnesota, you should have no trouble finding a gazillion outlets and they are divisive and they it’s, it’s seen from two different sides and either it’s all completely black or it’s all completely white and the other side is completely wrong. And that’s just how I’m feeling today. It feels very divisive, but we’re not going down that path. We’re going to talk about some fun stuff, right?
High five, all right. Sorry, didn’t expect to get misty here. So let’s start out with something very light. I had a complaint from one of the inspectors on my team talking about, hey, I’m not too crazy about these combustible gas detectors, also known as gas sniffers that we’ve been using forever. We’ve been using the TIFF 8900 for…
Tessa Murry (02:39.195)
Here we go, switching gears.
Hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (03:07.992)
quite a long time that has been our workhorse. And just in case you don’t know a gas sniffer, it’s this thing that makes the sound when you hold it close to a gas leak. That’s one thing we use is to kind of figure out the general location for a gas leak. And then we always follow it up using a leak detection solution. That’s a gas sniffer, but we also use it to find exhaust gas leaks, things like leaking exhaust gas around the jacket of a boiler or something like that. So.
All the inspectors on our team have them. We use them regularly. We’ve been using the TIFF 8900, but it does have some drawbacks. It’s got these super old batteries. They’re nickel cadmium batteries. Can you believe it? What runs on nickel cadmium today? Nothing other than the TIFF 8900.
Eric Houseman (03:59.699)
Well, most of the expired smoke alarms that we see in houses.
Reuben Saltzman (04:03.086)
Maybe, So it’s, yeah, it’s really old battery technology. They develop a memory. When it’s charging, you plug it into the charger and it doesn’t even have a light that turns on telling you that it’s charging. It’s just, you got to have faith.
Tessa Murry (04:04.593)
How toxic is that?
Tessa Murry (04:19.855)
I always had problems charging mine. I remember getting it to charge was a battle.
Reuben Saltzman (04:24.578)
Yeah. Yeah. People have had, you know, constant issues with that. And so they said, can you, can you look into something else? And I tested eight of them head to head. got a whole slew of these and I’m not going to talk about the pros and cons of every one. If you want to see my 32 minute video, I mean, it’s long and I’m testing everyone and you can see how it responds to gas leaks and exhaust gas leaks and all the pros and cons of everyone. But I’ll just
I’ll just announce the winner, which was, gosh. And I don’t have it in front in front of me. Eric, what was the winner? I forget. No.
Eric Houseman (05:00.125)
It was the TPI.
Reuben Saltzman (05:02.84)
The TPI 270B, was that the model? Okay, all right.
Eric Houseman (05:07.167)
Believe you’re correct, yes. Which I affectionately named Kermit because it’s bright green.
Reuben Saltzman (05:13.108)
It’s bright green. Yeah, it is. It’s the TPI 270B and it goes on, you can find them on Amazon for about $160. It runs on, what is it? Two C cell batteries. Is that it? Yeah. It runs on two C cell batteries and it’s ready to start sniffing gas leaks the second you turn it on and it performed.
Tessa Murry (05:15.121)
Real take.
Reuben Saltzman (05:40.862)
Almost as well as the tiff 8900. I still think the tiff 8900 performs a little bit better But that particular model is no longer being made and the next closest is the tiff 8800x Which also has its drawbacks that i’m not going to get into Battery issues all that kind of stuff and that one retails for 400 So i’d say it’s very close in performance to the 400 dollar one for 160
Tessa Murry (06:06.085)
Thanks
Reuben Saltzman (06:10.722)
This is my new favorite combustible gas detector.
Tessa Murry (06:14.885)
Did you test it against bad breath?
Reuben Saltzman (06:18.158)
Of course I did. And Tessa, I mean, I know you think I’m kidding. Like you didn’t really check your breath. Yes. Yes. I think all of us on the team do that on a regular basis. When you first turn it on, you get a calibrate, you breathe into it and then it goes, and it makes this sound and you go, okay, it’s calibrated. It picked up my bad breath. So yes, absolutely. did test Eric and we’re wrong.
Tessa Murry (06:45.455)
Good.
Eric Houseman (06:46.845)
No, you’re not wrong. That’s how I was taught to test them. And that’s how I teach all of our new inspectors to test them as well.
Reuben Saltzman (06:48.15)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (06:49.967)
Yep.
Reuben Saltzman (06:53.102)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. All right. So there there is our new clear winner and they did not send me a free one or do anything. I just found it online. I bought it. If you want to give some love to the show, I just thought of this off the top of my head. I’ll put an Amazon link in this podcast and I will get like 25 cents for everyone that people buy or something.
Tessa Murry (07:20.635)
Hey!
Reuben Saltzman (07:21.902)
I don’t know what it is. It’s a very small small link, but I’ll put a link if you want to buy it through my My advertiser link you could do that, but don’t don’t fill in the obligation
Tessa Murry (07:32.177)
Which for anybody listening, Ruben, you do this show without any sort of, you don’t make anything doing this show, do you?
Reuben Saltzman (07:39.47)
No, we don’t. Although we do have sponsors tests. I got all wrapped up and I forgot about our show sponsors, IEB, Inspector Empire Builder. So there is that. I’ve been a member of IEB for quite a long time. Just had a meeting yesterday and I got the world’s greatest idea. I’m not gonna share it on the air, but we…
We get all these wonderful ideas for new services and product offerings and new ways of doing our business in addition to everything else. And their big conference coming up is IEBU night. It’s coming up this spring. And I’m going to have a link to that in our show notes as well. If you’d like to learn more about the big annual, well, the biggest annual conference that they have. And then let’s see here. So that that’s combustible gas detectors. want to go back.
Tessa Murry (08:28.827)
Thanks.
Reuben Saltzman (08:35.352)
to what you and I were talking about on a previous show test. We were talking about stinky water for you. And I was talking about my reverse osmosis system not working properly. So let’s start with mine. I ended up emailing the manufacturer saying it was APEC, A-P-E-C, emailed them said, hey.
Tessa Murry (08:43.215)
Yes.
Reuben Saltzman (09:01.166)
My thing’s not working right after I replaced all the filters I used. And I, so I started with the aftermarket filters. So I bought your brand name filters. still, it’s just my water tastes gross. I don’t know what the issue is. And I went through the AI response and that was kind of worthless. But then I got to a human and they said, yeah, just, you know, kind of move, take it out of your sink and do this test for us and take a picture of it and let us see how you got everything connected.
I did all that, sent it to them and they sent me a photo saying, please verify you got all the hoses connected right. There’s like 10 different hose connections. Each one’s gotta be perfect or it’s not gonna work right. And I looked at their thing and I compared it to mine. I checked everyone. I’m like, yep, it all looks good. I sent it over to them. They emailed me back the next day saying, yeah, you got it hooked up wrong. These two hoses are reversed. And I’m like, no, no, I double checked it.
Tessa Murry (09:57.604)
What?
Reuben Saltzman (09:59.318)
And I stared at it and I stared at it and I realized I do have it wrong. So yes, after I, cause you got to disconnect a bunch of these hoses to replace the filters. After I put it back together, I swapped to the right next to each other and I didn’t realize it. And it’s not like, it’s not like they’re color coded or any of that. You don’t know where you’re putting it back in unless you look at the diagram. And I did look at the diagram. I thought I had it right. And I had, I had two of them wrong. So.
Tessa Murry (10:04.954)
User error.
Tessa Murry (10:17.262)
on this.
Reuben Saltzman (10:29.442)
This whole saga with my reverse osmosis giving us nasty water for the past two months was totally user error. All my fault. I flipped the hoses around, I drained the tank, I refilled it, I did all this, and my water tastes great again. So there.
Tessa Murry (10:46.213)
Well, you know, that’s a happy ending, Ruben. I just have to say, though, it is a bit discouraging. If you can’t even do it right, how does that give us hope for the rest of us average Joes out here?
Reuben Saltzman (10:54.958)
I’m clearly a bonehead, that’s all. And my wife, I told her, I said, I got it working again. She’s like, that’s great news. I’m so happy. What’d you do? And I said, none of your business.
Tessa Murry (10:59.813)
Mmm… no.
Reuben Saltzman (11:10.603)
Hahaha
Tessa Murry (11:12.475)
Leave me alone.
Reuben Saltzman (11:13.454)
Yep, yep. It’s none of your business. It’s working again. That’s all you need to know. Okay. I fixed it. Now shut up.
Tessa Murry (11:23.706)
that’s good.
Reuben Saltzman (11:24.149)
yep, good stuff.
Now, so that was my problem. And now for your problem, Tess, you got stinky water at your house. You’re on a well, right?
Tessa Murry (11:35.318)
Yeah, yeah. Yes. And you know what? It happened again yesterday and I had gone like it had been like a week since this happened. yesterday, for some reason, turn on the water and it’s it reeks. It smells like rotten eggs, you know, and I’m just like, disgusting. But I, you know, I appreciate we we heard back from a few people, actually. And one of the one of these listeners, Joe, from from Minnesota gave me a very
detailed description of what he thought was happening and how to fix it. He does believe it is a bacteria issue and the system needs to be flushed out and treated.
Reuben Saltzman (12:14.446)
Yes, yes. Is it cool if I read what he wrote here? Yeah, he said it’s a bacteria, he said more than likely it’s a bacteria issue. And he said, you should shock the well with some chlorine. Use plain bleach, nothing else. I don’t know if you remember, I had suggested maybe pouring bleach, but I’m like, I’m sure it’s not bleach, but I wanna say bleach. Yeah, he said you pour plain bleach and nothing else. You disable the well, you empty the bladder tank and…
Tessa Murry (12:17.935)
Please do, please do.
Tessa Murry (12:34.743)
Yeah. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (12:42.81)
It’s a good time to do this that and the other but pour bleach in let it soak for an hour and then run water at all the points Until you smell the chlorine or use a test strip Once you did once you do that let it soak as long as possible. Maybe overnight and then rinse So you don’t have any residual bleach on a test strip So there that’s how you kill it
Tessa Murry (13:04.345)
Yeah. I guess my question is how do you do that when you have one well servicing like 10 houses?
Reuben Saltzman (13:13.966)
yeah. You get a professional?
Tessa Murry (13:15.835)
How do you test? Yes, this is beyond my pay grade. But very helpful advice, and thank you for taking the time to the people who wrote in and said that they could help or they had ideas. We appreciate all of you. I appreciate all of you.
Reuben Saltzman (13:21.39)
Okay. All right. Good stuff.
Reuben Saltzman (13:31.906)
Yep. Yep. so yeah, Joe, that’s fantastic. Okay. Next I wanted to address, this is, this is something I brought Eric on because I wanted him to share this story. He, he’s got a good story of getting thrown way the heck under the bus for absolutely no reason at all. He shared it with the team at structure tech. And I thought, this is just, this is too good to share. You got to share this on the podcast. So Eric, please.
It’s story time. Pull up a chair, get comfortable, get your smoking jacket. Yeah. Let’s hear Eric.
Eric Houseman (14:07.861)
Ugh.
Gather round, children.
Tessa Murry (14:12.785)
That’s the first.
Eric Houseman (14:14.335)
time to hear the story of Uncle Eric’s escapades. So, all right. Well, this happened very, very recently.
Reuben Saltzman (14:25.548)
and all names are being withheld.
Eric Houseman (14:27.197)
Yes, all names are being withheld. I’m going to be as diplomatic as I possibly can. And I want to preface this by saying the contractor that will remain nameless that is going to come into the story later has been fantastic to deal with after the fact. They have been nothing but responsive. The manager and I are on first name basis going out for lunch next week.
to get to know each other better because of this situation. So they’ve been great, nothing but love for them. happy ending. So last week, we’re in the middle of training a couple of home inspectors right now. And I go out to a property, I’m meeting the primary inspector out of the property. I’ve got one of the trainees that’s coming.
Reuben Saltzman (14:59.746)
Happy ending. Yeah.
Eric Houseman (15:17.085)
and he’s going to be writing a report to compare to the primary inspector’s report. From time to time, I will go out and I will take a look at the house just to get an idea of what’s going on so that I have a better idea of what I’m reviewing when the reports come across, right? I’m getting eyes on. So I go out there, I’m walking around. This is only a three-year-old house. Thinking it’s gonna be relatively clean.
I’m walking around, kind of doing my initial walkthrough, going to the basement. This is a mass builder home and going to the basement. And you can just tell by the basement finishes that this basement was not finished by the builder. The layout, the finishings, it was definitely done after the fact. So this was a blank slate when the house was originally purchased. And part of what we do as…
our team does as a part of a home inspection, part of our process and procedure, our PMP, is to go around the house and count the total number of point source exhaust systems that are in the home. So bath fans, dryers, kitchen exhaust, air exchanger, all of these things. So I’m going through the house and I’m taking inventory. Five at the upper level, four bath fan, one dryer, main level, kitchen, bathroom, hallway, bathroom, basement.
Got a rough-in for a future dryer. Kind of weird, but okay, like that’s fine. Air exchanger and a basement bath fan. I’m going around the outside of the house. I went around the house both directions twice. Not finding the exhaust point for the basement bathroom at all. Can’t find it anywhere. I go grab the primary inspector. He and I start looking around.
We can’t find anything. It doesn’t make any sense. We’re going around counting, verifying exhaust points, and we’re like, OK, it doesn’t exhaust to the exterior. How many times, Tessa, do you think that you found a bath fan exhausting to a ceiling cavity? It happens all the time. Right. Yeah, very common, right? Have it exhausted to the exterior. It’s a fairly harmless comment. Put a hole in the side of the house. Put a damper terminal. Call it good.
Tessa Murry (17:14.905)
It does. It does a lot. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (17:16.408)
Yeah, yeah, common, very common.
Eric Houseman (17:30.293)
client arrives, we have a conversation with the client, I overheard the conversation with the client, and it was verbally expressed during the wrap up, hey, there’s no termination point for this bath fan at the exterior of the home.
This is where we take a gigantic right hand turn. Before the report was published and after the wrap up, the client gets on the phone with his agent, who then gets on the phone with the listing agent and then gets on the listing or on the phone with the seller. So we’ve got this game of telephone. Everybody my age played that in elementary school. We know what happens.
Tessa Murry (18:13.393)
you
Eric Houseman (18:14.641)
And ultimately what makes it back to the seller is, that there’s no bath fan in the basement bathroom. Never said that, never reported on it. So of course the sellers come back and say, yes, there is. There’s a bathroom in the basement bath fan. It exhausts to the exterior, et cetera, et cetera. Now we’re in the next day, report gets published, client calls the office. This is when I get involved. And I’m like, great, this, I can handle this. No problem. I was there. I’m the one that found this. Like,
This should be easy. This is five minutes worth of work Get on the phone with the client He expressed that he was upset. He felt like we had mis Reported on this that there is a bath fan and we kind of went through the diagnosis process and found out that you know There was some stuff that was passed along verbally and that’s not what the report says and the report verbiage didn’t change it was Just miscommunication is what it boils down to and I said look
Tessa Murry (18:44.411)
Thank
Eric Houseman (19:12.213)
I got the entire afternoon free. It’s Friday. I’m happy to meet anybody out there. I’ll meet the buyer or the seller out there, the listing agent out there, a contractor, whoever you want. I’ll meet somebody out there. We’ll walk through this. I can assure you that this is right. If by some minute chance I’m wrong, I’ll be the first one to admit it. I’ll change the report. I’ll apologize to everybody. No problem with that. Hours go by.
Tessa Murry (19:27.259)
That’s Above and Beyond.
Eric Houseman (19:37.693)
I’m doing stuff, taking care of things, get a call back from the client. Client tells me that they hire an HVAC contractor. HVAC contractor went out there. HVAC contractor says, we’re wrong. There is a bath fan in the bathroom and it does exhaust to the exterior. And they specifically noted in their report that it exhausts to a damper terminal at the outside near the AC unit labeled exhaust.
I’m on the phone with the client. I’m scouring inspection, report photos. The only thing that I remember seeing in that area that said exhaust was the air exchanger exhaust. And I told the client this, said, look, I said, I’m very, certain that this is a mistake, that this is exhausting. This is the air exchanger. It’s not the basement bath fan. It’s a different size damper. It’s a different size terminal.
I guess there’s always the off chance that maybe they put in a combo terminal. So there’s two dampers underneath. I don’t know, but I’m like, I can go out and take a look at it. I’ll pick up the radon tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, I try and call the technician from the HVAC company. It’s Friday at 3.30. I didn’t get a phone call back, right? Okay. Next morning I go out and I bring with me my ferret camera, which we use for chimney inspections.
Tessa Murry (20:55.729)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Houseman (21:04.315)
I’ve got a pole with me. Keep in mind this basement is the ceiling is 98 % finished. There’s no way to look in the ceiling cavity. yeah, all drywall even in the utility room. Yes. So I’m like maybe I’ll find a way that I can verify this. So I go back through the house and I’m going in and out of the house. I verify the kitchen exhaust there. I go back in turn it off verify the bath. So I’m doing this with every single point source.
Tessa Murry (21:12.887)
Drywall not drop ceiling tiles that you can lift it drywall. Okay
Eric Houseman (21:32.179)
turn on the air exchanger, sure enough, there’s one damper, there’s one terminal, it’s for the air exchanger. All right, I know I’m right. Now the question is, is how do I prove it? So in the utility room, I’m able to get my ladder, I put my favorite camera on the end of a pole, and I weasel my way up into the ceiling through probably a hole that most people would not be able to fit through. And about six feet away from me, I can see
the bath fan duct going through the ceiling cavity. I get my ferret camera over there and I’m able to snap a photo and they ducted it into the water heater exhaust.
Tessa Murry (22:14.611)
What?
Eric Houseman (22:17.843)
They put a Y on the PVC for the power vent water heater exhaust and tied the bath fan into the Y.
Reuben Saltzman (22:29.23)
That’s legal, right? What’s the problem, Eric? You’re so picky.
Tessa Murry (22:33.521)
What? my gosh.
Eric Houseman (22:36.469)
To answer Ruben’s question, for those of you that can’t figure it out, a power vent water heater is a fuel burning combustion appliance that off puts exhaust gas. Those exhaust gases contain carbon monoxide. You could have carbon monoxide that back drafts through that duct into the bathroom, into the home.
Tessa Murry (22:55.515)
That’s wild.
Reuben Saltzman (22:57.182)
So picky. Okay, fine. This is is laughably terrible. Okay.
Tessa Murry (22:59.397)
Ugh.
You
You know what, I’m almost glad that all of this, I’m sorry that you had to go through all this drama, Eric, of the telephone game and the miscommunication and the upset seller and the HVAC contractor misdiagnosing it. However, it led to this discovery of something that I have never heard of or seen before. That could be disastrous for the occupants. So congratulations.
Reuben Saltzman (23:26.744)
Yeah, me neither.
Reuben Saltzman (23:30.476)
Yeah. Yes.
Eric Houseman (23:30.953)
Thank you. I had never seen this before. The thought never even crossed my mind. It would not have crossed anybody’s mind. Even the most senior inspector that thinks that they’ve seen everything, they never would have thought that this was the case. And they would have turned off the water heater with the bath fan running to see if it was exhausting out there. It just doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t make any sense.
Tessa Murry (23:38.545)
Someone was being creative.
Reuben Saltzman (23:38.604)
No, no, I’m here.
Tessa Murry (23:47.471)
No.
Reuben Saltzman (23:58.786)
now.
Tessa Murry (23:59.25)
man.
Tessa Murry (24:02.735)
Wow, what year was this house built?
Eric Houseman (24:04.853)
2022.
Tessa Murry (24:06.575)
Okay, so this is probably not a DIY homeowner project, you think? Or was it because they finished the basement later? Okay.
Eric Houseman (24:13.269)
My guess is that it was, let’s be honest, if an actual contractor was hired to do this work, this would not have been the case. This would not have happened. They would have put a whole, yeah, you hope not, right? I’m speculating. If somebody is a licensed contractor who pulls permits and does the right thing, they know the potential consequences of doing something like this. This seems to me,
Tessa Murry (24:26.767)
We hope not. We hope not.
Eric Houseman (24:41.873)
I don’t want to drill another hole in the side of my house. I don’t know how to do that. hey, Home Depot sells these adult Legos called PVC fittings. I’m just going to do this and hope that there’s no consequences.
Reuben Saltzman (24:53.443)
hehe
Tessa Murry (24:58.801)
This pipe’s going outside, why don’t I just combine it with this pipe? Yeah. Wow. That’s well. So did you get an apology? Or did you get a thank you? How about that?
Reuben Saltzman (25:05.582)
crazy.
Eric Houseman (25:11.879)
Try neither.
Tessa Murry (25:13.773)
Okay, that sounds about right.
Eric Houseman (25:14.985)
Yeah. Yeah.
But I’m vindicated. The team is educated. We’ve seen something now that none of us have ever seen. And it’s a good reminder, as trivial as it may seem, to go around and count these exhaust points and make sure that they exhaust to the exterior. It’s such a routine part of our job that we do at every single house.
not catching it, the consequences could be very bad.
Tessa Murry (25:56.528)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (25:57.528)
Yeah, and you know, maybe, I mean, maybe a learning point here, I don’t know, is just to slow down with our explanations and just appreciate the fact that when we say there’s no terminal for the basement bath fan, it doesn’t vent to the exterior. Maybe back up and just really explain this like you would to a child, because to me, it just clear as day, got it.
but maybe people don’t know what a bath fan is. And maybe we need to take a step back. I mean, maybe I’m just speculating here, but maybe we need to take a step back and say, look, you got this thing in your bathroom, it’s called a fan and its job is to take air out of the bathroom. So it lowers humidity and lowers a bunch of stinkiness. it’s got this tube, this thing that takes the air to the outside. You got a fan.
The fan’s there, it’s blowing, it’s sucking air. We’re good. But I couldn’t find a tube for it. So I don’t, and I don’t know where it’s going. It’s supposed to go to the outside. We counted and you know, maybe, I don’t know, maybe we need to over explain things. And I’m not trying to say that we did anything wrong. I’m just trying to say what could we do in the future to help prevent this from happening. I don’t know. But then what,
Tessa Murry (27:08.849)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (27:17.105)
Bye.
Reuben Saltzman (27:23.982)
Do you take that time to do it with every finding that you have at the house? You go to that level, you’re be explaining everything for three hours. I don’t know.
Tessa Murry (27:33.201)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and you might explain it to the client that you have really well and they get it, but then when it goes through another person and another person and another person, you can’t, yeah.
Eric Houseman (27:34.107)
it and to think like
Reuben Saltzman (27:42.894)
The game of telephone. Yeah.
Eric Houseman (27:47.733)
I think the biggest thing that I learned, because again, the point in publishing all of these to the team with names redacted and anonymity and all these other things is I want everybody to be able to take something away from this. And the thing that I took away was the report does a better job because you can take the report and you can pass it along to someone else.
and you can read the verbiage in the report. And the verbiage in the report clearly states there’s no termination point at the exterior. It’s really, really important to explain it well. Yes, I agree with you, Ruben. And ask clarifying questions. Do you understand what this means? But then it’s also equally important to say, wait until the report is published before you move forward with everything, with anything.
Tessa Murry (28:38.491)
Thank
Eric Houseman (28:44.425)
because the report is the thing that does the best at speaking to what was actually seen at the inspection. There’s photos, there’s words, there’s possibly video, there’s links to the copious number of blog posts that Rubin has written. There’s no mistaking what is written in that report versus what is just verbally communicated.
Reuben Saltzman (29:07.734)
Yes, and don’t paraphrase, just copy and paste the language out of the report. The best example I ever had, it was such a simple one, because it was only one word. Tessa, you’ve heard me talk about this at CE classes countless times, is where on the report, I had reported an exhaust gas leak at the boiler. But then when they went back to the cellar, they said there was a gas leak at the boiler.
Tessa Murry (29:08.325)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (29:35.028)
Exhaust gas leak and gas leak are two totally different things. So they had a contractor come out. Yeah, your home inspector doesn’t know what they’re talking about. There’s no gas leaks. I checked everything for a gas leak. I never said gas leak. I said exhaust gas leak. Words matter. Don’t paraphrase what’s in the report. You’re changing the meaning.
Tessa Murry (29:35.269)
very different.
Tessa Murry (29:52.07)
Yeah. Yeah. I think, yeah, I think to reduce our liability as home inspectors, best in Rubin, I don’t disagree with you, your point about, you know, trying to use language that everybody and anybody can understand when we’re explaining defects to people. But on top of that, it is so important for to reduce liability to have a well-written report with pictures.
and making sure that you’re choosing your words wisely so that that is upheld through the line of telephone of all the people that will touch that and see that and try and figure out what you’re talking about. That’s your protection.
Reuben Saltzman (30:33.548)
Yes.
Thanks for sharing that story, Eric, and a nice job. Yeah, Yeah, very well done. Appreciate you. Okay, so we wanted to talk about that story. And then the last thing we want to talk about, and this is kind of longer. mean, we’re a half hour into this podcast. I wonder if we should cut it off and talk about it another time, or if we should make this a mega episode. Tessa?
Eric Houseman (30:38.293)
You’re welcome.
Tessa Murry (30:40.697)
Yeah, great job. Great job. Congratulations.
Eric Houseman (30:40.906)
Thanks.
Tessa Murry (30:47.824)
Hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (31:05.526)
I’m let you make the call. What do we do?
Tessa Murry (31:08.367)
Ruben, this feels like a full podcast to me and the next topic we could really get into and sink our teeth into and I think we could make a full episode out of it.
Reuben Saltzman (31:18.742)
Okay. All right. Well then we’re gonna, we’re gonna cut off this episode and Eric, maybe you can join us for that one. I already teased it, Eric. I kind of shared with you all these questions. This is, this is one that, one of our listeners, Chris had written to us about, he had a whole bunch of questions about how we report on stuff and maybe, maybe we’ll just come back. We’ll do another episode. Eric, will you join us for that one? Okay.
Tessa Murry (31:41.193)
Okay.
Eric Houseman (31:46.165)
I would love to.
Tessa Murry (31:48.036)
Awesome.
Reuben Saltzman (31:48.354)
All right, good. Well then we’re gonna bring today’s show to a close and we’ll do that on a follow up on another day. To all the listeners, thank you for supporting us. Thank you for listening. If you have questions, comments, whatever you wanna reach out to us, you can email us. It’s podcast at structuretech.com and we will catch you next time. Take care.
Tessa Murry (32:09.778)
Thanks everybody.