Ed Newman

I can just imagine the installer asking "which wall do you want your TV mounted?"

Then out comes the hole saws and drills and in less than an hour you are enjoying your flat panel TV. The growing problem is the the plastic PEX, ABS and PVC plumbing lines in the wall behind the TV are damaged. If you drill into a water line it becomes very obvious, real quick, but drain lines may take weeks or months or years to become apparent. We inspect 20-30 homes per week, and every home is thoroughly scanned from top to bottom with Infrared Cameras. every week we discover 3 to 4 homes with wet sheet rock (see photo) behind and below a wall mounted TV. This condition is totally invisible to the naked eye using a flashlight during a typical visual home inspection. There will almost always be mold inside these walls.

When we inspect a home we always run hot water in every sink, shower and bathtub. Doing this makes all of the drain and supply lines very visible (see photo) and then we mark the wall with blue painters tape and photograph these areas so the buyer knows where not to drill. This has turned out to be a real hit with the buyers.

Last week we found a situation that made me shudder: The house was vacant and the TV and mount were gone, but inside the wall right behind all of the holes was a natural gas line going to a second furnace in the attic. I can only imagine the hole saw cutting into that gas line and sparks igniting the gas. That would have been disastrous.

First Photo: The drain line (red line) was drilled into and a flat panel was mounted. The screws/bolts penetrated a drain line.

Over the next few months the wall and carpet padding grew wetter and wetter. You would have never found this with a flashlight!

SECOND PHOTO: Some installer or homeowner almost blew up the house. Barely missed the natural gas line behind the sheetrock.

THIRD PHOTO: We run hot water out of all the faucets and locate the drain lines in the walls.

LAST PHOTO: We use blue painters tape to mark the locations of hidden plumbing inside the walls.

Check for wet sheetrock around those flat panels | Look out where you drill!

Ed Newman | Alamo Infrared

We finished another large federal building infrared blower door energy audit in Wyoming. When you get to 50,000 plus square feet this is a challenge. The new high volume Tempest Blower Door is the only way to go. Check out the latest on our energy audit page at www.umrt.com . Amazing how we are wasting our federal energy money.

Ed Newman

Alamo Infrared Energy Ratings

801=651-5484

Mark your calendars! October 8th & 9th

Visit our booth at the Salt Lake Board of Realtors 2009 Technology Trade Show - we will have plenty of give-aways and will be demonstrating our powerful high resolution infrared fusion cameras and answering your questions about infrared home inspections.

We will also have a calibrated blower door system on display. These are the same blower doors that we use on our infrared energy audits.

Ed Newman | Alamo Infrared Home Inspections | 801-651-5484

www.umrt.com

I'm cleaning out the office and found an almost new Samsung A560 for the Sprint network. It works great, perfect shape, has a belt holster, and a wall charger. If you want to know more about this phone google: Samsung A560 or look at one on eBay. If you are interested drop me an email at ed@umrt.com.

Alamo Infrared Home Inspections & Energy Audits

801-651-5484

www.umrt.com

The best way to explain it is: Imagine your business depended on your "Direct TV" service. Then one day it went down, so you called and waited forever on the phone, they acted "unaware" of any problem and promised to get it fixed. Hours go by, then days. Repeated calls brought no results but broken promises. You can't just cut away from DirecTVand go with Cable TV, because it will take a week to rebuild your site. So you wait and wait and they just keep telling you any minute they will fix it.

I have 4 sites with AA. (Had 4) One has been built elsewhere, so down to 3 for now, and the rest are being being hand built (step by step) which is slow, but a simple basic site is better than nothing at all.

This total incompetence has become the ridicule of sales meeting at local real estate office. There are now 4 office with "pools" or "pots" where agents bet when Advanced Access gets things fixed. AA told me they about have things fixed, yet most all of the agents I deal with are still down.

I'm betting it will be the first week of May before service gets restored.

Agents - if you are shopping for website and you like the old fashioned customer service we grew up with, check out:

www.theagenthouse.com

They had me up and running with a new site - lickety split.