It’s Monday morning and the snow is falling. The news says that this week the temperatures will fall to below zero. I know some of the western burbs already got hit with some really cold weather. If you haven’t done so already, please get your house ready and call on family and friends to make …
When I started in this profession, every furnace was a natural draft furnace. We used mirrors and a flashlight to look for holes and cracks in the heat exchangers. Nowadays we cannot see inside the heat exchangers because of their designs. This is why we use the equipment that we use.
The most important item with any exterior drain is to keep it clean. This includes window wells, bottoms of driveways, patios, and also these walkout basement stair that we are talking about here.
Another construction gone bad. The opening was enlarged to fit this window in this photo. The studs that supported the head on the left side was removed. The header was not replaced. Heck it wasn’t even removed so it could be replace. I removed some of the duct tape to expose above the window. As …
During my tenure in the fireman business (1980 to 2018) I have been on multiple house fires caused by fireplaces that were not in safe condition. Two of those fires burned enough to make the houses inhabitable for almost a year before the houses were able to be repaired
In the last few days, the inspections that we have been doing we found frozen spigots.
Head flashing is sometimes referred to as Z flashing. The purpose of this type of flashing is to direct water away from the house. When windows are installed, part of the window protrudes from the siding. When water flows down the wall, it hits this protrusion and flashing is needed to keep water from flowing into the house
There are two types of garage door springs. Expansion (extension) and torsion. All springs are under tremendous pressure and are considered dangerous. Only professionals should work on these springs. Torsion Springs First I will talk about the torsion springs and how we inspect them. Torsion springs come in many different sizes. They twist to help support …
We do many home inspections in Chicago. There are many times we run into poor installations. Heck, never have we found something perfect. Sometimes we find things that are appalling. This porch was built in such a way that is just out-right dangerous. I included a few photos of the porch and put some comments …