Charles Buell, Seattle, WA, Home Inspector

     The other day, Bob Gentile’s post, First ever "triple-certified" green residence really struck a nerve with me.  I am working very hard to wrap my brain around the concept of this house.  In his post, he talks about “Aqua Liana,” which is one of Frank McKinney’s projects that is meant to provide evidence that the American Dream is not dead.  Please take a look at his website and especially the video clip of the tour of the home and then ask yourself if this house is part of the solution or symptomatic of the problem.

     In the sense that, as long as there are people in the world that have more money than they know what to do with, I guess it is better that they build houses that are triple-certified green.  However, to me it would seem that “Green,” when it is just a final number on a spreadsheet that can be arrived at regardless of the cost, seems a little “Dark-green” to me.  Can’t it be argued that in terms of utilization of the world’s resources there must always be a relationship between the square footage of the home and the number of occupants?  Take my home for example----which is easily suitable for 5 people----Aqua Liana would need to be home for at least 50 people----even more due to efficiencies of scale.

     I will never REALLY know what I would do with this kind of money, but I would like to think---at least intellectually----that I would not choose to spend it this way.  I would like to think that my “American Dream” was in some ways bigger than this----more philosophically “opulent” than materialistically opulent.

     What say you?

     I have had a spate of tight crawl spaces lately----an earlier one I blogged about was in a Seattle Houseboat.

     When my buyer called to book this inspection we discussed that the craw space was going to be difficult to get into.  I recommended that necessary permissions be gotten to do whatever it took to get into the space.  This is what the access opening looked like.

     While I like to think of myself as “Gumby,” there was no way I was going to deform myself enough to get through this opening.  So, while the opening was made larger by removing some of the deck boards, I concerned myself with other parts of the inspection.  I anticipated the worst, given that this opening had been just like you see it----open----for who knows how long.  I knew that although I couldn’t fit through this opening, there was any number of other critters that could.  This post is not about the condition of the crawl space, but about the process of getting into it.

     I would like to share with you a series of photos taken (by the agent with my camera) of me getting into the crawl space.  The time between the first and last picture-----12 seconds! (I know----I couldn’t believe it myself)

     As Kermit the frog might have said, “I was green before it was popular to be green.”

     The “Green” movement has its roots in the late 60’s with the “back-to-the land” movement----when people really started to think not just about alternative life styles but different methods of building----including sustainability.  It could easily be argued that the father and mother of the back-to-the-land movement were Helen and Scott Nearing.  They started “Living the Good Life” in 1932---a logical reaction to the Great Depression.  (Is this starting to sound like déjà vu all over again?)  Prior to Helen and Scott there were various other societal breakaways from the Shakers & Quakers to the Pilgrims----but these were more religious than geo-political----but nonetheless some of the early “green roots”----if only in attitude.

     By the time an idea becomes mainstream, trendy, or common, it has usually had its roots planted at another time----growing, mutating and blossoming into its current form.

     My own roots as a builder began in 1971, living off the land in rural upstate NY, in a Ferro-cement dome----and I was a huge fan of Helen and Scott.

     There is an old article in a 1978 issue of Mother Earth News  that talks about the prototype for a much larger one that my first wife Jill and I built.  (My oldest daughter was born in the dome.) At the time, I was really into building with very simple readily available materials----I quickly learned that this desire had to be balanced with the ability to heat the dang thing efficiently.  It would have made a better chicken coop.

     Eventually my house designs evolved into what became commonly known as “Passive Solar”----where passive (non mechanical) construction techniques were used to improve the energy efficiency of the home.  These approaches, among other things, included more insulation, and orientation of the home to take advantage of the sun----which would result in increasing the amount of windows in the path of the sun, while decreasing them elsewhere.

     The “mature” theory of my houses is simple. 

     Think of the house as an extremely well insulated bubble sunk into the ground far enough to be in contact with the point where ground temperature is constant.  In rural upstate NY, by the time you dug out your basement, a constant ground temperature of 45-50° F would be reached.  In other areas of the country, like in the South, this constant ground temperature would likely be reached much quicker.

    What this “Insulated Bubble” approach does, is create a scenario where when it comes time to heat your home, your starting-point temperature is never going to be below 45° F----the constant ground temperature.  Most houses in Syracuse, NY, at some point in the winter, will frequently have to be heated from a starting point of -23° F----the outdoor (ambient) temperature.  The amount of energy required to heat a home from -23° F to +72° F (a 100° difference) is MUCH, MUCH more than from +45° F to +72° F (a 27° difference).

     This access to the constant ground temperature also allows the home to stay naturally cooler in the summer reducing the need (and associated costs) of mechanical cooling (air conditioning).  By balancing the amount of thermal mass in the home, fluctuations of temperatures within the home can be seasonally moderated.

     In my opinion the “Green” movement has not paid enough attention to the energy saving aspects of homes and yet part of its mission is to lower the use of fossil fuels.  While changing your light bulbs to CFL’s is a good thing to do, it is nothing like what a revolution in the way homes are designed and built would do.  Every day, homes that meet the “highest certifications” of the green movement are being built completely disconnected from the earth----vented crawl spaces with insulated floors.  Metaphorically speaking, it is usually a good idea to stay connected to Mother Earth.  No matter how well insulated these homes are, the low end starting-point temperature and the desired indoor temperature difference, is never going to approach 25-30 degrees.

     It is easy to get caught up in the “hype” and “smoke-and-mirrors” of Carbon Credits; or, taking farm land out of food production to support bio-diesel.  Since the early 70’s there have been simpler more cost effective ways to actually reduce the use of fossil fuels and ease our guilty conscience at the same time.  While, as a transition, Carbon Credits may be necessary to encourage business to do the right thing, is it the right thing to give Carbon Credits to companies that make things we don’t REALLY need?  You know the things I am talking about----the things that recycle from yard sale to yard sale?  How much oil could be saved annually if businesses were not allowed to run the signs on their buildings when they aren’t open?

     This leads me to conclude that there are many different colors of frogs----and that not all green is green----but it is getting there.

For all our discussions of late about Inspectors walking on roofs or not, I have had a flurry of roofs that I would not walk on.

One of the most popular battles that weekend warriors like to wage is building decks. The next thing they realize, when they are sitting out on the deck enjoying a nice cold “Moose Drool” beer and it either starts to rain or it is too sunny, is that they need a roof. While it is not often the case in Seattle that there is too much sun----the drizzle is real.

To put a roof over a deck is WAY more complicated than building a deck. One must answer questions like how it is going to be attached to the house so that there is still enough head room under it to walk on the deck surface. In this picture we see one solution.

Well not really so much a “solution” as a “problem”-----unless you count that all of the roofing structural materials are “in solution” being saturated with water. With this solution, having enough headroom and having enough slope were not compatible.

These three tab type shingles should never be installed on a roof this flat. Water can easily back up under the shingles where it will fill the roof structure up with water----as is evidenced by the dripping water seen in the next picture.

A wood roof saturated with water can get VERY HEAVY. We then must consider how it is attached to the house.

Wimpy 2x4’s attached to an even wimpier 1x6 fascia----all with no metal brackets or hangers.

All we need now is 6” of heavy wet snow to top it all off----well at least for a while----till it ends the Moose Drool party.

ps: This was a "Listing Feature"

     Yesterday I did a post about a roof that was “toast.”  

     Today’s “toast” goes to the deck at the same house.

     The entire deck structure goes way beyond the realm of “unsafe” and into the realm of “compost.”  It is interesting to note that it was never built to be safe even when it was brand new (ledger not bolted, ledger not flashed, undersized joists and beams, no joist hangers, improper surface etc).  There was extensive rot in most structural components and the plywood deck surface was badly rotten and covered with moss.  It was pretty obvious that this deck had been unsafe for a long time and yet there were no barriers from the house preventing anyone from walking out onto it.  Of course getting to the deck from the ground was made “challenging” by the fact that the stairs had completely rotted away.

     Anyone walking out on this deck in the dark would certainly have rotten luck.