In this episode, Reuben and Tessa share stories about storm damage and water problems in their homes. Reuben talks about door knockers who claimed hail damage on his roof, but he discovered that the damage was not significant enough to warrant an insurance claim. Tessa shares her experience with a leaking on-demand water heater and subsequent water damage in her rental property. Reuben also discusses a water leak in his rental property’s basement caused by a clogged condensate pan. Both hosts highlight the challenges and frustrations of dealing with home maintenance issues.
Takeaways
Be cautious of door knockers claiming storm damage and offering free inspections, as their assessments may not be accurate.
Not all granule loss on shingles indicates hail damage, and it does not necessarily shorten the life of the roof.
Water problems can occur in rental properties, and it is important to promptly address leaks to prevent further damage.
Regular maintenance and inspections are crucial for identifying and resolving issues before they escalate.
Owning a home or rental property requires being prepared for unexpected maintenance and repair issues.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Sponsor Shoutout
03:01 Beware of Door Knockers Claiming Hail Damage
12:04 Dealing with a Leaking On-Demand Water Heater
17:15 Water Problems in Rental and Owned Properties
21:07 The Importance of Promptly Addressing Leaks
23:31 The Joys and Frustrations of Homeownership
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 Murray. 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 Structure Talk podcast. I’m Reuben Saltzman. I’m here with my cohost, Tessa Murray. Tessa and were not planning to do a podcast today. We were just doing a little brainstorming session on future podcast topics, but there was a couple of stories we were about to tell each other and I said, you know what, we’re just going to hit record. We’re going to do a short show. We’re going to tell a few stories and that’s going to be our podcast this week. Is that okay, Tess?
Tessa Murry: You know, we always promise shorter shows, and then they end up going over an hour. So I think we owe it to our listeners. We promise this one’s gonna be under 30 minutes, probably under 20.
RS: Yeah. Probably under 20. We got a couple of quick stories to share. I got to give a shout out to IEB, our show sponsors, Inspector Empire Builder. I was on our open access call the other day. It’s a one hour call where people just bring up anything they want. I always tune into those. I usually just plug in my headphones. I listen in while I’m making and eating my lunch and I’m usually not a super active participant, but right at the end of this, I got a great tip about getting involved in some more insurance inspections. And I was like, that there’s worth my time right there. So helpful. So if you don’t know anything about them, check them out. You just use your Google machine. You type in Inspector Empire Builder. We always have a link to their information in the show notes. Check them out. We love those guys. So Tessa, we were just talking about the big storm. You were asking me if I had any storm damage and I didn’t. I’ve seen pictures of some friends. A lot of people have got big problems at their houses. I luckily went unscathed. However, I did have the door knockers coming to my house. What happened when the door knockers came to your house, Tess?
TM: Well so I actually wasn’t at home. Came home and saw the pamphlet they leave behind on your door and everything like that. Advertising, help with new siding, new roof, new windows, all of that and dealing with insurance companies. So I didn’t have any face to face. But for anyone that’s listening, we just had a big storm go through the Metro and kind of surrounding area of Minnesota. And we had wind gusts that were up to what, 80 miles an hour, Reuben?
RS: I don’t know the numbers, but it was high. It was a lot of wind.
TM: Yeah. Lots of wind. Trees were blown over, knocked over, lots of damage. So, yeah, it’s pretty intense here. But anyways, okay.
RS: And we had a hailstorm too a couple of weeks ago. Yeah.
TM: Yes. And I think there was some hail in that big storm that went through. And this is kind of at the end of August we’re recording this. But I’m curious to hear what your experience was, Reuben, with these door knockers.
RS: Okay. Well, we saw them coming down the street. They’re knocking on every house. My dog is getting all whipped up, of course. Sarge is, oh, who’s out?
TM: Doing his job.
RS: Yep. And Anna answered the door. I was in the middle of something, and I kind of overheard it and she’s telling them, no, no, we’re good. We’re working with somebody, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait, what? Hold on. Anna, let me handle this. And she’s like, ah, she rolls her eyes. She walks away. I’m like, so what do you guys do? What’s your company? How long you’ve been in business? Where are you located? Great. Yeah. So you check for storm now and it’s free? You’ll inspect my roof for free? Okay. Yeah, let’s go. Okay. And so they got out the ladder and he got up on the roof checking for hail damage.
RS: And there’s three guys. They got a team. They got the dude going on the roof. They got the supervisor. They got the other dude. And the guy on the roof comes down and he’s like, yeah, he’s got pictures on his phone. He shows me, he’s like, these are, hail marks, definite hail marks. And he’s showing me… I have no idea what he’s showing me. There’s just shingles, but it’s nothing that I would identify as hail. I’m looking at it. I’m like, I would never ever say anything about any of this during a home inspection. I would gloss right over this. And I started digging into a little bit, and before I finished the story, let me interrupt the story. I thought I gotta do a blog post about this.
RS: So I’m in the middle of writing it. It’ll surely have been posted by the time this podcast airs, but there’s an engineering firm that I’ve heard roofers reference for the last 20 years. It’s Haag engineering. You’ve probably heard that term before, Tess.
TM: Sure.
RS: H-A-A-G, Haag engineering. So I took the time to read through a few of their engineering reports and just a couple of takeaways from these reports that are kind of, as far as I know, now, I’m not a roofing expert. This is not my area of expertise. My expertise is home inspections, but I’m under the impression that this is what all the experts use is Haag engineering. This is what they say, ’cause they’ve done a lot of research on the effects of hail on roofs and three key points I wanna share with you out of their big report. Number one, it takes 1.5 inch ice stones. Now they tested it, showing a bunch of stones takes 1.5 inch ice stones to damage thicker laminated type shingles half the time.
TM: Like an architectural shingle?
RS: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
TM: 1.5 inch half the time. That’s really large hail.
RS: That’s big hail.
TM: And that’s only 50% of the time.
RS: Yeah. The term I always hear quoted is like 1.25 or one inch, but not according to their engineering report. Number two. Now, this one kind of rocked my world Tess. When you lose granules on shingles from hail, you do not shorten the life of the roof.
TM: What?
RS: Simply having granules knocked off does not shorten the life of the roof. Okay, let that sink in. All right?
TM: That’s usually the kind of hail damage you see when you’re inspecting. It’s like Pachmayr, or it’s like just areas where there’s missing granules, or it looks like maybe a piece of hail at it.
RS: Yeah, now for something to actually be hail damage, you need an actual bruise, or a hole, or a tear. And now to have a bruise, this is what people usually say is you got bruising. I’m gonna read verbatim from what the report says. It says, shingle bruises are an indentation with fracture in the mat, that feels soft like that of an apple bruise. The bruise is usually obvious, as granules are also dislodged from the impact area.
TM: Wow.
RS: So it can’t be this thing where I’m looking at it and I’m going, huh, is that hail? Is it not? You need to be able to see it. It’s probably gonna be obvious. Put your thumb on there, and it’s gonna feel soft. There’s no way.
TM: Yeah, torn, you said? It has to be torn too?
RS: Yeah. Or have holes in it. Now, before anyone gets mad and writes into us saying, well, in truth, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, I’m just reading what the engineering report says. This is what the report says. I’m just the messenger. Don’t get mad at me.
TM: So is this Haag Engineering Company? This is a national organization that in your experience with a lot of roofers you’ve run into, they always reference this company.
RS: They always reference this, yes. We use the Haag Engineering Standards. As far as I know, as far as I know, I’m qualifying this. They’ve got the Bible on hail damage for roofs. This is what people follow. Now, if I’m wrong, if there’s another more authoritative document, I would love for our listeners to write in, but this is what my understanding of the world is. Okay, so I had to take a quick break and explain a little bit of that.
TM: Thank you, back to your story, yeah.
RS: Well, now, back to the story though. So the dude showed me these pictures and I’m just going, I have no idea what this is. This looks nothing like hail. And they said, yeah, it’s definitely hail. And they showed me like spatter marks on my roof fence. My roof fence have no damage, but they’re showing me things they’re calling them spatter marks and spatter marks in the valleys.
RS: I don’t know what that means. The roof fence and the valleys are in perfectly good shape. There’s no dents in any of the gutters, anything, anywhere. Nothing is dented. So I don’t know what they’re talking about. And I said, yeah, this really doesn’t look like that big a deal to me. They’re like, yeah, it’s hail. So who’s your insurance carrier? I tell them who it is. And it’s like, you could see them start to salivate. They’re like, oh yeah, they’re good, they’re good. All right, let’s get them on the phone. And I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa. No, I don’t wanna file a hail claim. And they’re like, well, why not? This is hail damage. I said, I don’t feel good about this. This doesn’t feel like hail damage to me. My roof is six years old, and I don’t wanna do anything with this. These shingles look really good to me.
RS: And then they started explaining to me, how when you have granules come off, it significantly shortens the life of the roof. And I said, yeah, look, I know a thing or two about it. And they’re like, oh, why are you in the trades? Oh, well, I’m a home inspector. And then, they were pushing hard.
TM: [0:10:52.9] ____.
RS: Oh, stop that. No, I said, yeah, I’m a home inspector. So I look at a few of them and they had been pushing hard for like five minutes. And as soon as I said that, they were gone. It was like, well, thanks for having us out. They shook hands. All right, and then that was about it. So I didn’t need to push them any harder. But that whole experience just made me think, this is why we have insurance rates going through the roof in Minnesota.
TM: Yeah.
RS: It’s all this nonsense. And then I got up on the roof and I checked the areas that they were showing me. And it’s like, I would never in a million years say anything about this during a home inspection. So there’s a big divide between what home inspectors look at, and what roofers are calling hail damage.
TM: Roofers, I guess, or storm chasers we might call them. So was this… I’m curious, was this company, when you’re asking them questions initially, were they local? Were they out of state?
RS: They are. And while they’re on the roof, I went inside and pulled up their website and I did a little history search on their website to see how long their website has been established and all that. They are an established Minnesota company. It wasn’t just making that up. So that was good.
TM: So they’re from Minnesota. They’ve been in business for a while, several years?
RS: Yeah. So just had to share that story. Fun time.
TM: Well, yeah. Yeah, the marketing left behind for me too in Red Wing was from a company in the North Metro, a Minnesota-based company too. So they were coming all the way down to Red Wing. Yeah, very interesting.
RS: Yeah, I had to share that. And then we’re also talking about water problems. You said you’ve had fans going at your house for a few days. What’s going on, Tess?
TM: Well, you remember, I think this was the last podcast I mentioned that our on-demand water heater underneath the kitchen sink started leaking. As yours has, or several of yours have in the past…
RS: As they do. Yes.
TM: Yes, as they do. And so anyways, the landlord sent someone out eventually, and they came out and they disconnected it, pulled it out. And we’re gonna get back to us on getting a replacement. And meanwhile, I’m thinking, I am so surprised a landlord would wanna put an on-demand water heater back in a rental property. A, more maintenance, B, more cost, and C, more liability, ’cause these things leak. But anyways, later that night, looked back underneath the kitchen sink and there was just like an inch of standing water in this cabinet base. There was a ton of water under there. And the sink has a bunch of fancy things going on. There’s a reverse osmosis system. There’s a faucet that has a sensor on it that has like electric eye. So there’s like all these things happening underneath this sink. So I was like trying to figure out where the leak was happening from. And on the supply line, going to the faucet, there was like all these different junction connection points and stuff and it wasn’t copper or CPBC. It was something else. It was black material.
TM: And anyways, long story short, we let the landlord know that there was another leak happening and they needed to send someone out. And this is Friday night. And they’re like, okay, we’ll get someone out to you as soon as we can. In the meantime, I couldn’t figure out where it’s coming from or stop all of it. So we just like put some towels underneath there and kept an eye on it and tried to keep cleaning it out and whatnot. Fast forward to Sunday, and it’s like it’s my… Discover that the carpet in the basement, that’s kind of not directly below the kitchen sink, but maybe about 10 to 15 feet away is wet. And so go into the utility room or go into this unfinished section of basement that we don’t go into that often, and pull the boxes away from the wall and see that the concrete floor is wet underneath where the kitchen sink is.
RS: Oh no.
TM: And when you look closely, then you could see a bit of water maybe kind of at the top of the sheetrock, at the top of the wall and then the floor on the concrete. So you had to look very closely to see this. So it’s such a bummer. So let the landlord know again, and they’re like, yeah, we’ll get someone out tomorrow. So here we are. And meanwhile, there’s no shutoff valve for the kitchen sink. The leaks are happening and there’s no shutoffs. I’ve searched everywhere I can and so the only solution would be to shut off the water for the whole house for the entire weekend. So I’m like, I don’t wanna do that. So we’re just trying to mop things up and keep it going. Anyways, landlord comes out and they sent out a plumber, I guess. The plumber comes out, and after a little bit of time underneath the sink, find the leaks, fix it. And he says, yeah, I think when I pulled out the on-demand water heater, I probably bumped some stuff. But in the meantime, they set up three industrial fans, one blowing at the kitchen cabinet, and then one in the unfinished room that had the wet concrete at the sheetrock, and then another one in the room without the carpet, just blowing air. And we had those fans on for three days.
RS: Oh my.
TM: And then someone came by today and picked them up and removed them, and I think that’s going to be the end of it. They also said they’re not putting in another on-demand water heater, which surprise, actually smart choice. Now we just have to wait like 10 minutes to get hot water, but…
RS: Exactly. That’s the trade-off.
TM: But anyways, here I am. It’s like, yeah, being a home inspector and still dealing with these issues and feeling a little bit helpless. And also now I’m like, okay, well, is their mold going to grow behind the sheetrock? I don’t know. And it’s not my property, so I’m not going to be tearing things open. But what a nightmare, what a headache.
RS: Halt where there’s not mold.
TM: Yeah. Yeah. We did actually end up shutting the water off on Sunday and Saturday night, ’cause it was just so bad. So we were coordinating when we were going to use the water and trying to limit the water usage, so that we could have the water off. So it’s just a pain in the butt. But yeah, no more leaking, and hopefully things are dry enough, I guess, now. I don’t even wanna know.
RS: Yeah. Oh, man.
TM: If I was a homeowner, though, this was my house, I definitely would not have… I would have reacted much quicker and done a lot more digging when I first saw some of the drips happening. I would have been on that. But anyways, a little adventure over the weekend.
RS: Yeah, fun. Well, I’m in the middle of dealing with something kind of similar to us. So Anna and I, we got this rental property, it’s a duplex. And my wife was over there yesterday during the day and she said, Reuben, oh, gosh, we got a bunch of water in the basement. And I’m thinking, oh, great.
TM: Oh, no.
RS: So get me on a video call and I have her check the sump basket ’cause it’s got drain going all the way around. I’m like, how did it fail? Sump basket is pretty low. It’s functional. There’s just a little bit of water in there like you’d expect to find. And she’s like, it just seems to be coming up from the ground. So she cleaned it all up, but then like an hour later, she said, there seems to be more water. I was like, great. Okay. This is the fun part of owning a rental property. So I said, all right, we’re going back over there together. So I went back over there with her last night, and there’s a lot more water than there was when she left, and figured out it’s right in the middle of the basement. There’s a furnace room with the furnace, water softener, water heater. There’s not a floor drain in that room though.
TM: The furnace, the condensate pan was clogged and the air conditioner has been running. We’ve had some hot weather lately, and the condensate is just leaking right down through the middle of the furnace, and then leaking all over into that utility closet or whatever and then kind of leaking out a little bit into the furnace spaces. Luckily, there’s no carpet in the basement. It’s all hard surfaces, thankfully.
TM: Oh man.
RS: It’s just what a mess. And when you don’t live there, it sucks. And I thought, okay, if this was my house, I saw a great video on what to do. You get a shop vac, and you make all these fittings on the end of your hose, and you get it totally airtight. And you connect that to the condensate drain on your air conditioner, and you flip on your shop vac, and you let it run for like, 5 minutes. And there’s a good chance you’re gonna be able to suck all that goop and water and all that other crud out of your condensate pan to unclog it. Good chance it’ll work.
TM: Wow.
RS: I know Melinda ended up doing that at his house. I had a friend who had that same problem at their cabin. I helped him do it. It seems to be pretty effective but the problem is without living there, I’d have to get all the fittings and all the parts. It’s 8 o’clock at night. I don’t have anything there. And then I’d have to do it. And then I’d have to run the AC for another couple of hours and make sure it’s not leaking. And with the rental property, you just you don’t have that luxury, so I had to call up my HVAC guys, send them over there. They took care of it quickly. I have not yet had time to give them a call and figure out what they did, but well, I’d like to share what they did. I’ll let you know on the next podcast.
TM: Yeah, I’d like to know.
RS: But in the meantime, we just got fans going and they would towel up everything we could and shut the furnace down until it starts working again.
TM: Man, so I was gonna ask you, did it cause any damage to the furnace, that water leak? Is it rusted anything in the furnace?
RS: Yeah. Probably. I would imagine. I don’t know. The one thing it did do is, you open up the blower compartment of the furnace. And on so many of those blower compartments, you’ve got, like, this fiberglass pad that goes around the inside. Well, the pad is soaked, going up about 6 inches. And I just said, this will not do. So I reached all up in there, all throughout the back, reached my arm behind the blower, and I ripped all of it out. It is all gone now. And on the backside, sure enough, it’s moldy. So, who knows how many times this has happened in the past, but all of that’s gone now. And I thought, I should take pictures for Tessa.
TM: Oh my goodness.
RS: But I was just… I was in too much of a rush, so I didn’t take the time to take pictures.
TM: So do those fiberglass pads, they don’t air seal the furnace? Air can move through them. But they’re not a filtration system, so why are they there?
RS: I think they’re sound dampening.
TM: Okay. Okay.
RS: I’m sure some HVAC contractor could tell us in a heartbeat what it’s there for. Like you, I’ve never asked. I just always assumed it was there for sound dampening.
TM: Yeah. No. That makes sense. That makes sense ’cause they’re on the blower compartment. Yeah.
RS: Yeah.
TM: Well, what a what a nightmare, but it’s a good thing that Anna was there checking it and…
RS: Oh, yeah.
TM: That you have an HVAC contractor that you could get ahold of and they could come out quickly and fix it. And it’s also a good thing that the basement wasn’t finished or you didn’t have carpet.
RS: It’s finished. Yeah.
TM: But you didn’t have carpet.
RS: No carpet, yeah.
TM: Yeah. No carpet.
RS: Exactly.
TM: But, yeah, I hear you. Man, houses require maintenance, don’t they?
RS: The joys of being a homeowner. Yep. All right. Well, Tessa, we’re overtime. We were shooting for 20 minutes. Look. 23 minutes went by quickly.
TM: Not bad. Just a episode of us ranting about our…
RS: All right.
TM: Our renter and homeowner experiences.
RS: Fun times. Yeah. All right. Well, Tess, thanks for chatting. Always fun. It was good to see you in person last week.
TM: It’s good to see you. Yeah. Yeah. Your parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. How amazing is that? Shout out to Neil and Patty.
RS: Yes. Happy anniversary to my parents.
TM: Amazing people. Yeah.
RS: 50 years.
TM: Just wonderful people, and I forgot that they met when they were teenagers.
RS: It’s crazy. Right?
TM: That’s amazing.
RS: Yeah, they’ve known each other a long time.
TM: They’ve been together since they were, what, 15 or 16?
RS: Not together, but they were… That’s when they started dating.
TM: Right. Right. Right. Yeah. No, that was that was great to celebrate that with them and and see everyone there too. So.
RS: Yeah. Yeah. Great to see you.
TM: Yeah.
RS: All right.
TM: Well, thank you. Thanks, Reuben, and thank you listeners for anyone that’s listening to this podcast and made it through this episode with us. Feel free to write in if you have any ideas on topics you’d like to hear. Reuben and I are brainstorming topics that we haven’t discussed yet on the show, which is hard to do when we’ve been podcasting every week for what, 5 years?
RS: We’re on our yeah. Yeah. We’re on our 6th season now. Yeah. It’s been a long time.
TM: Crazy. So how do people get ahold of us, Reuben?
RS: Email us at podcast@structuretech.com.
TM: Perfect.
RS: All right. That’s a show. Thanks, Tess.
TM: Thanks, Reuben. See you next time.
RS: See you next week.