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Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector

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Speaking of Photos -- Whatcom County Museum, Bellingham, WA

10-27-11
Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector

I am often posting photos at Active Rain that I shot in Italy, Mexico or Canada. For a promotional piece that I am working on, I have taken photos of four or five of the best known buildings in Bellingham. I think that the most distinctive of those has to be the Whatcom County Museum. This building goes back to 1892 and was, for many years, the Bellingham City Hall.

Ever since I was a kid, 1950's, it has been the Whatcom County Museum and a main cultural meeting point for the county. Some people think the building is lovely. There are others, reviews I have read, who describe it as a garish, but historically interesting, monstrosity. You can see what you think -- now if the cars were only Model-A's.

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Bellingham WA Home Inspector (King of the House) Multi-layer Roofs

10-25-11
Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector

At an older home, it is quite common to find multi-layer roofs, composition material over old comp or even over wood shingles (a real no no). Despite the popularity of shingling over a worn out roofing surface, the practice is marginal at best. In the photo below, the rust colored shingles are the old roof below.

bellingham home inspector king of the house, roof problems

The psychology of the consumer is such that clients tell me they plan to put yet another layer over a roof that already has two layers. And somewhere in folklore, they have been told that it is okay to have three layers.

There are many problems with the theory. For one, if you have ever carried roofing materials up a ladder, you know that it is heavy. You start adding too many layers of the stuff and you are putting way more weight on the roof structure than it was designed to carry.

bellingham wa home inspector king of the house, roof problems

Now that is one thick roof I am kneeling on. I wonder how much it weighs. Other problems include the shingles not sealing well, so they tend to blow off in wind in blustery Bellingham and Whatcom County; the shingles not lasting as long as the warranty would indicate they should. A multi-layer roof will have maybe 80 percent of the estimated design life. The extra thickness often puts the surface of the roof in direct contact with siding or trim at dormers and that promotes rot. Speaking aesthetics, such roofs look funny, all wavy and unattractive. That is part of the reason the shingles blow off -- wind can get under them.

bellingham wa home inspector king of the house, roof problems

It is my advice that, when the roof requires replacement, the old roof should be torn off and a new roof, including felts and flashings in most cases, should be installed.

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Washington State Home Inspector Training, February 2012

10-23-11
Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector

It is amazing how fast time flies. The schedule for the next home inspector training course, to be offered at Bellingham Technical College, has been released. The first course of 2012 will begin on February 6.

The Bellingham Technical College course, the first course to be state approved, includes 40 hours of field training and 120 hours of the basics or fundamentals training.

Classes tend to be smaller, so students receive lots of attention and classes are informal. For additional information on the upcoming course, please click on the video link below. For specific information, call 360-752-8796 or 360-676-6908.

 

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Whatcom County Home Inspector (King of the House) Deck Building

10-23-11
Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector

When I inspect decks in Bellingham and Whatcom County, not unlike at other areas of the country based on what I am told by other inspectors, I find a multitude of problems with decks.  The average homeowner, hyped by being told how easy it is to build a deck on a weekend, often ends up constructing a monstrosity that is unsafe or will degrade the quality of the house. Some of the most common problems involve improperly flashing the deck, so rot might develop at the junction of the ledger board and the exterior wall; failing to anchor the deck to the house, making it prone to pull-away and collapse; improperly installed or missing rails that make the deck unsafe; building the deck so that there is wood to soil contact which will, over time, cause decay. The photo below is a good example of that problem. Wood to earth contact, over time, causes rot.

And, in a small effort to encourage people to build better decks, I am including this link to a video that I produced on the topic of installing proper deck flashings.

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Bellingham WA Home Inspector (King of the House) Bugs by the Number

10-23-11
Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector

We have many problems with rot and wood destroying insects in this region. A few months back, I was inspecting an older house that had a number of issues with wood destroying organisms. Since many of the insect pests are attracted to wet and decayed wood, it is common to find wood destroying insects living in rotten and wet wood.

At this particular crawl space, the first thing that I noticed, when opening the hatch, was frass or shavings from carpenter ants.

Honestly, that was no big surprise, since I had previously seen the little devils crawling around at the perimeter of the house.

In addition to the carpenter ants, once down inside the crawl space, there was an ongoing infestation of wood boring beetles -- the anobiid beetle that is so common here in the northwest. The pest leaves tiny shot-sized exit holes and causes massive damage to the afflicted lumber.

The problems at this home were, in part, caused by high moisture levels in the crawl space, the result of a missing vapor barrier over the earthen floor. The solution to the infestation, which can be expensive to repair, is to have a contractor come in and locate all of the structurally damaged wood. Rebuild the substructure in a professional manner and eliminate the conditions that were conducive to creating the problem in the first place. Finally, have a licensed pest control operator apply a chemical treatment that will control the wood destroying insects.

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