Give a guy a hammer and he thinks he's a carpenter, give him a screwdriver and he thinks he's an eletrician. Which is why people should hire things done professionally

There was a time when people built their own homes, construction occurred with the owners own labour and shared knowledge of friends and family. Today we leave construction to the professionals and chose instead to invest our time paying the mortgage on the place.  It's easier to be a lawyer or company executive and buy what you want than it is to go build it yourself,  people no longer know how to build things.

As Henry David Thoreau said "the joy of building has been left to the carpenters."  As much respect as I have for lawyers, I can't imagine being one as the tedium would kill me. Legal briefs are an oxymoron.  I can  get my head around the construction business.

At the end of the work  day, the Carpenter or the Electrician look at  what  wasn't there yesterday and say "fuckin right I built that", and they probably say that out loud that every time they drive by for years after. I don't know many lawyers who say "fuckin right, I nailed that real estate closing" or think "cool, my shit is in there" every time they drive by the land titles office.  Maybe they do think like that, but I kind of doubt it.

My passion of house inspection, particularly in Belize  is all about helping the lawyers, doctors and retired civil servants get a good place where they can live or recreate.  The average Belizean might also use my service, but it'll be a while before that market matures.  

Everyone deserves a safe place to live, not everyone gets  a beachfront condo in San Pedro, but I am not going to discriminate against people just because they have money. The fees the beach front people pay me will help the people on the third street back from the beach, likely your house and grounds keeper, have safe places too.

A safe place might mean not having bad wiring, or the house collapsing from rot. It might mean asking the service and church people to do more than painting on their mission trips.  It will  mean training local people to understand  structures and teach them to inspect their own.

"Give a guy a hammer and he thinks he's a carpenter, give him a screw driver and he thinks he's an electrician"  This is true: most of the bad things that happen to buildings are not done by the pro's,  it's  amateurs who think they are pro's.

I used to cringe at  do it yourself deck construction until I started to see well intentioned people do their own electrical work.  This can kill you, in Belize or at home.

In  Alberta it is still possible for an owner to take out a permit to do alterations to their home. The work is subject to inspection and must be up to code. The problem begins when people do not get permits and don't know what they are doing.  For example: if  I tell you the neutral and the ground can only be bonded in the main disconnect would you be able to show me:

1) the main disconnect (not your grounds for divorce, no)

2) The ground (not at your feet)

3) The neutral (not  the Swiss)

4) The  bus bar  (a great way for public transit to increase ridership)

5) the sub-panel.  (which better NOT be underwater)

If you are standing in the shower and plug your blow dryer into a three prong outlet that has a false ground, what is the likely outcome?
1) Wet hair
2) A weird power surge like in a Frankenstein movie?
3) A paramedic named Igor shouting "He's alive, He's alive" 

Speaking of which, if they shock you with electricity to start your heart, why does getting shocked with electricity stop it?

The hardest thing to kill yourself with at home is the plumbing; that or soft fruit. 

Electricity, structural failure and natural gas all rank higher than a plugged toilet in the likelihood of death department. However, plumbing definitely has the highest ick potential of all the trades, especially when  combined with soft fruit.  Nobody wants to come home to a basement full of floating turds, be they your own or someone else's. Nor does someone want to see the dishwasher spouting a geyser across the kitchen. 

Electric hot water tanks can be quite dangerous if they are empty and the power is on; they can explode and ruin your whole night (ask someone's brother about that), more likely  they just stop working and your shower will be cold in the morning. You will be grumpy and your wife will be mad because she married an idiot who can't fix a hot water heater.

It's  incorrect to call them hot water heaters because what they actually heat is cold water, this is the kind of technical stuff it takes years to master, it's on the final exam.

Off to your law firm you go;  you ask your paralegal, who seems pretty handy, to get someone over to your house to fix the hot water heater so your wife can stop bitching about it.  Your paralegal, you can't call her a secretary anymore as it's against company policy, says the cheapest guy wants $1,800 and can't do it until Thursday. At this point your wife calls to see if you are still incompetent and says that she knows a "guy" who can do it. Now why your wife would know a "guy" is itself curious, but you say ok and make a diary entry that will likely interfere with your 2080 billable hours target, to be at home when her "guy" comes to replaces the hot water heater.

Her "guy"  shows up the next morning with a couple of wrenches, but no truck or hot water heater.  The first step he says is to take out the old hot water heater, you realize that the "guy" isn't that bright after he asks you to help him carry it up the stairs and forgets to drain it. (ask someone's brother in law about that)  Now with a hernia because a full tank weights 400 pounds, he asks if the seats fold down in your Audi A6 because we need to run to Home Depot and grab the new tank and some fittings.  He picks a new water heater, a nice white one, and 300 dollars worth of greasy black iron fittings that burst from the bag all over your beige leather the minute he slams the back door.  As you drive away from Home Depot the heater shifts and squeezes the tubes of pipe dope  onto the carpet.
 
Eventually you get home and six billable hours later he still has not got it hooked up, after three more trips to different Home Depots to find a 5/8"  frammis nozzle, you realize the "guy" might not have a  clue and you feel much better about your life because if your wife is dumb enough to sleep with him, you are going to get a divorce and buy  a condo on the beach in Belize, which you will have professionally maintained by others.

As you enjoy the first shower with your new tank, you wife hollers  that the down stairs toilet is overflowing.

24 billable hours later, you get up to go to work, realizing you could have showered at the gym and had the water heater replaced professionally, and with that the basement rumbles and  goes boom because the "guy" neglected to install a T&P valve. Or so said the real plumber you hired to fix the other "guys" work.

Total cost, including lost wages, car detailing and minor surgery: $8,000.00.  Actual cost after the dust settles on the divorce: priceless.

It is said  a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client. It should also be said that just because you own a screw driver does not make you an  electrician. Hire a pro, it's way cheaper in the long run, divorce can be expensive. 

Tomorrows topic:  Why YouTube videos are not the best place to learn to fix things.

Your brand new house needs to be impartially inspected.

Yes I know it's a brand new house, what could possibly go wrong? Get an impartial professional opinion, I cannot stress this enough.

Home warranties and builder punch lists are frankly, ok, but too late when it comes to making sure you have acquired a good quality product.  House builders do not like their customers to wander around the job site, some even prohibit the practice entirely and generally it's not because they are hiding something, it's because of their liability if you get hurt wandering around, they also don't want you directing the tradespeople to do different things than are called for in the contract.

A professional inspection is worth the money, especially If you cannot identify proper backing material for the shower stall,  which way a joist hanger is to be installed or why concrete walls should not be honeycombed. An  inspection is a quality control measure on your part  and should be stipulated in the offer to purchase. There are several critical times in house construction:

1) Pre back fill: this lets the inspector examine the waterproof membrane, drainage tiles, the connections to the sump outlet and that gravel is present where it is supposed to be.

2) Framing: this is a very important step as any defects found at the framing stage can be fixed easily.

3) Pre-drywall:  This step lets the inspector check the rough in electrical, the rough in plumbing and  insulation, it is also the step that allows any last minute changes you want to be negotiated and incorporated into the building.

4) Punch list or pre final occupancy: Normally as a home owner this is when you will be invited in to check for deficiencies. Most owners are concerned with cabinets, flooring, doors and basically the stuff you can see. The inspector is more concerned with the quality of the installation and much less so with the actual choice of materials used. You may  have a beautiful tile job in your roman bathtub if the tile is installed over ordinary drywall and not cement board, it's going to be a head ache later on.

Builders aren't trying to rip you off, but it's still your money and your house. Making sure your investment is protected is a good idea.  It doesn't cost a lot, maybe $2,000.00 for the four inspections listed, but it could save you thousands of dollars over the life of the home. 

Simply put, all houses have defects, drywall screws will pop, floors will squeak, hand rails will loosen, all very normal and if attended to in a timely fashion not a big deal. What is a big deal however is the quality of the work people are doing.

Home inspection is NOT a trade, we aren't carpenters or plumbers or electricians and a good inspector will not hold himself out to be, even if he is.  An inspection is a systematic examination of the property to comparable and consistent construction standards. Building codes are the bare minimum and while few homes  are not up to code, reliance on the code compliance inspector is not enough to ensure you get a good product.  Home inspection is a quality control activity and you, as the buyer of the property, have the right to ensure you are getting the best quality job.

Horror stories abound about bad construction projects, and with some empathy for the builder, it's tough to assemble and keep the best workers in the industry, mostly because they are already busy because they are the best.

Building material itself is seldom an issue so long as it is used the way it was designed.

Your new house is a big and very personal purchase, no new house is perfect and emotion tends to magnify the scale of issues you can see. The home inspector will ensure that the fundamentals are as they should be providing you with some assurance that you have a good home for your family.

Energy conservation, we are far too concerned about Jason Kenney, much more interesting is the dramatic decrease in the cost of LED light bulbs

I hate to rain on the parade of the Jason Kenney fan club, (actually that's a lie, I kind of enjoy it) but his decision to run for the leadership of the Alberta Progressive Conservatives is not really all that new, invigorating or, frankly interesting. Being endorsed by your old boss, Steven Harper, is kind of like getting a good reference letter as part of a severance deal.

I'd be more interested if Harper himself were running for the leadership, but  that is kind of a step backward, sort of like going from being James T. Kirk captain of the Enterprise to being Scotty, in charge of the engine room; so I doubt there is any hope Mr. Harper himself will reemerge as the savior of Alberta.

What's wrong with Kenney? Bad suits aside, not much really; he is affable and certainly committed to his cause, a level of which we can only hope exceeds that of Jim Prentice, another guy Harper recommended for the job.

Maybe the problem here is Harper, he keeps whispering in the ears of guys, who clearly would never replace him, about a "rock solid opportunity out west". And off they go, either back to their home town, in the case of Kenney, or a tourist, as in Prentice.

All of which leads me to want to talk about LED light bulbs. The cost of LED's is now so cheap that indoor farming is going to be come a seriously viable proposition and all those vacant safeway stores that blot our city and are rented out to sell RV's or as flea markets, might actually have a valuable use as a place to grow food for places that sell food.

This should appeal to everyone: cheap very efficient light bulbs mean we can kill all the coal generators that much quicker and food can be delivered by bicycle instead of truck, which should make Edmonton's mayor happy. 

"Farm Fresh" might mean your lettuce is grown at an address instead of a legal land description.  LED's use less than 1/10th of the power of grow op lighting equipment; indeed in BC the police say that extreme power consumption is no longer the tip off of a grow op and less drug growers are being electrocuded trying to bypass pwer meters. (A task so simple any moron could do it, and a lot of them try) 

LED's take all the risk out of this, growing things and being able to pay the power bill is a dream come true. Green houses will be obsolete as crops, yes crops, can be grown in completely controlled conditions without huge energy costs for light or heat.

Think about this:  Imagine eating tomatoes in January that do not taste like they were driven 3,000 miles in a truck, or having to pick through 200 heads of romain lettuce to find one less than 50 percent wilted, thanks to LED light bulbs, this will become the reality.

It already is the reality in many US cities; Goldman Sach's the investment bankers have invested heavily in several start ups and John Deere has reportedly been developing a hydrophonics equipment line, that does not require 300 horsepower diesel engines.

The issues this will lay to waste: hydroponics do not cause soil depletion, herbicides will be non existent, which means the RoundUp haters will need to find a new enemy, and food production will become a local industry again.

Naturally any vegetable operation opens the door to composting and a great form of fertilizer for hydrophonics happens to be fish poo,  an often troubling problem in gold fish bowls everywhere. My dream hydrophonic operation would certainly include Tilapia tanks, raise fish and vegetables in a symbiotic way, the plants are fertilized by the fish poo and the fish poo mostly comes from plant waste. 

Now, if only a politician had thought of this; If only a politician had said "the best way to meet energy demand and deal with carbon emissions is through conservation" there might be some real progress on a number of files but as long as they are more concerned with their ideological masters nothing really innovative is going to happen.

There is no appetite in any camp to conserve:  conservation itself runs counter to the growth demands we have been led to think matter so much, there is only one good number and this is growth. Anything that does not support growth is deemed as bad. This is not a unique conservative concept, the NDP are even worse  at it, because they want  the state to help business fail instead of letting business fail all by itself.  

Since I am a "Super Delegate" for the PC leadership race, (being a former MLA, gives me the right), I'm going to look for a candidate who is not a retread, I want to see some fresh rubber on the old truck that is Alberta.  I want a candidate who says "hell yes, let's grow all our own food, right here" A candidate who understands that burning coal to generate electricity is a hell of a lot better for the environment than installing a wood stove in your basement. A candidate who understands that trucks are only efficient when they are moving and who, (oh though I dream lustfully), sets standards for roads to ensure traffic moves instead of sitting there idling. 

Might as well dream big, if we are going to dream at all.  This, is all I am ever going to say about Jason Kenney, he does not meet my defintion of fresh rubber....

Things someone who has owned their house for a long time needs to know about home inspection

Home inspection is a very personal activity to the home owner, not unlike the first prostate exam if you are a guy in your 40's.  Subjecting your house and all your stuff  to an impartial detailed examination by someone who won't even tell you what's he's writing down can be intimidating, frustrating and annoying. Here are a few things to remember  to make things easier for you:

1) The inspection is not judging your lifestyle or hygiene;  unless your house is a grow-op, or a meth lab.

2) Your taxidermy elephant is not interesting.

3) Don't follow the inspector around so you can rebut what they say about your house, they will  tell your realtor to drag you away.

4) If you did not pay for the report, don't expect to see a copy of it. Inspectors give this information only to the person paying for their service.

5) The buyer is going to use the inspection as a negotiating tool, inspectors don't usually offer cost estimates and most buyers will estimate the cost of repairs at 3-5 times more than they really are.

6) Hiring an inspector before you  sell  your house is a good idea;  we get more work and you get an impartial opinion about what an inspector is going to find when they look at your house,  you can then either fix the stuff  or set a realistic price.

7) Inspectors don't care about décor: décor is  the wooden elephant collection of construction, your love of red paint is not a concern.

8) Unless you are prepared to warranty your basement until the end of time, don't say it can't possibly leak.

9) Inspectors have seen some weird shite;  houses that defy gravity or the laws of physics, we know the truth from fiction and for most things there is only one right way.

10) Spray leak sealers do not work.

11) It's not about you, it's about selling your house. Do everything you can to make someone want to buy it.

12 When your realtor tells you to hide all your wooden elephants to stage the home, don't pile them up in the utility room, please.

13) Inspectors will probably dribble a little insulation on the floor under the attic hatch, this is not a reason to demand the whole house get new carpets.

14) The inspector is the messenger.

Some stuff you can do that doesn't cost much and makes a positive impression:

1) Have a supply of clean furnace filters by the furnace.

2) Make sure there is a drip tube on the hot water tank.

3) Fix the humidifier.

4) Fix the dryer vent.

5) Check the attic hatch, make sure it can be removed without spilling insulation all over everywhere, put down a matt if it can't.

6) Label your circuit breakers, block any open slots in the panel.

7) Make sure your exterior plugs are in good working order, ground fault protected and have weather proof covers.

8) Don't repaint the basement floor or the concrete walls. You can't hide water leaks with paint or spray sealer.  Fresh paint is a give away.

9) Test all your shut off valves and have them fixed, while the plumber is at it, install flexible stainless steel supply tubes at every device.

10) If the roof needs to be replaced, either replace it or know how much it will actually cost to have it done. Don't reshingle just the worn part.

11) Clean under all the sinks, repair the drain leaks.

12) If someone died in your house, ask your realtor or lawyer if you need to disclose this;  as long as the body isn't still there, the house inspector is not concerned.

13) Kilz makes a great stain coverup paint  that will match, sort of, the colour of your ceiling, inspectors however, look for this as an indication of a leak and will want to get insulation on the floor and double check the attic.

14) The main concern with the garage will be that you have a safety sensor on the door opener, if you don't, upgrade the opener because yours is over 20 years old and should have been upgraded anyway.

15) Have good leaders on your downspouts, if you don't know what a leader is, ask. If you ran over it with the lawn mower, replace it.

16) A "pet friendly" home inspector has milk bones in his pocket, if your dog is vegan or has an allergy to milk bones, don't leave it in the house during the inspection.

17) If you smoke dope in your house, deduct $10,000.00 from the price, incense stinks.

18) Hide your guns.

Home inspection is a non-invasive examination of the physical property with the specific intent of establishing the overall condition of the subject.  A good inspector will find the flaws so the buyer knows what they are getting into. A professional inspector will never say "don't buy this house, or this house is way over priced" that is not our job.

Doug

Has Atlas Shrugged?

Google "Atlas Shrugged"and you will find an extremely interesting book about  what happens when all the smart people leave and let the dumb ones run things.

It reminds me a lot of Venezuela. Looting, shortages of toilet paper and gasoline, rampant printing of worthless ideology leaflets, distracting people with things like climate change and carbon taxes. Golf balls wacked at effigies, oh wait, that's not just Venezuela, it's Wild Rose country. 

I'm not suggesting that our current government has not done some good things, building schools makes sense, matching donations in Fort Mac makes sense, but leaving a bunch of Mars water bombers stranded  in Yellowknife during "The Beast"  because the fire started before the contract commencement date of June 1st  does not. 

Pretending that some solar panels are going to make your constituency office green, or spending a million dollars to break a contract with a private  lab company to keep a bunch of  civil service union hacks happy does not. Introducing a carbon tax, that should have  been called a tax on all carbon based things, does not.  Hiring your husband as your press secretary does not. Interfering in a community process as the cabinet minister responsible does not.

The only logical conclusion: Atlas Shrugged. 

The conservative people in Alberta, be they social, fiscal, reformers or libertarians need to get their shite together and fix this experiment in social engineering, especially before the NDP start to reform the education curriculum and get my grandsons more worried about carbon footprints and tofu consumption than long division and spelling.

I can appreciate how spending your entire political career in opposition might make being in government a heady exercise.  Since the coffers were drained by the last government, the new government, in the absence of huge amounts of cash to blow,  has no choice but to create new taxes and start to reform the most basic of public institutions, to make them over in their image.

Conservatives are full of piss and vinegar about all this and are guaranteed to get this socialist regime reelected if they don't ditch their two party  vote split. The PC's and the Wild Rose are making a Preston Manning size mistake here. Preston being Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's arguable best friend.

Federally we learned the lesson and merged the right, provincially we are caught up in a vortex of grumpy old party insiders  with massive egos.  The bicycle riding union leaders, especially the one who pled guilty to a DUI, must be salivating and the opportunity they have to unionize everything and make sure that everything is reduced to it's lowest common denominator. I see no one to stop this, because anyone running for either the PC's or WRP who talks about it won't get elected leader.

The grumpy old party insiders, did it to Ralph Klein, Ed Stelmach, Allison Redford, Danielle Smith and are soon to do it to Brian Jean and Rick McIvor.  The NDP on the other hand, have a charismatic woman the loyalists loves leading the party, she is competent and more balanced than we suspected.  Still a socialist and with a socialist bent to all things: more taxes, more government.

A footnote to this is the recent forced departure of Stephen Lougheed (son of Peter, yes) as the CEO of Alberta Innovates, Technology Futures. The agency, the commercialization arm for new tech development in Alberta, did phenomenal work. The NDP solution to this was punt the leader. This can only be explained that successful commercialized technology  posed a threat to the socialists model of success: The success of past governments has to be made to look like a failure.

The old buys in golf pants need to get their egos out of their butts and admit at the NDP are a terrible government but there is nobody  better than the government we have today.

Unite the right or die, and stop doing stupid crap like the making Rachel Notley a golf target.  Really, that was just stupid.

Things the virtgin home owner needs to know:

Some may be aware that my next big adventure is the formation of my home inspection company BestHomes Inspection Ltd. so from now on, instead of talking about such interesting stuff as politics, I am going to talk about funny homeownership things like:

Tips for the virgin homeowner:

1) Buy a toilet plunger before you need it.

2) Befriend a plumber in case point one isn't enough.

3) You will turn off the water when you brush your teeth, right after you get your first water bill.

4) That matt Grandma had in front of her toilet was there for a reason, you will soon realize what that reason is.

5) There is a direct correlation between temperature and the gas bill.

6) You will learn that "municipal franchise fees" as yet another tax on the gas bill.

7) Trash day will be special six days after you miss it.

8) Composting is easier said than done.

9) It will annoy you when the neighbor parks in front of your house.

10) Your lawn will never look as good as the lawn of the retired old guy two door down.

11) If stuff was on pallets in the basement when  you bought the place, your stuff should be too.

12) It's all your problem now.

13) Ikea furniture will do.

14) You are officially house poor.

15) The neighbor has new stuff because they have more debt.

16) Store it don't pour it, really.

17) Renovations take twice as long and cost twice as much as you planned.

18) You will really appreciate your dad and his ability to fix things.

19) You will finally realize how much stuff your dad knows how to fix.

20) An evening out will be a trip to Home Depot.

21) It will take you four hours to install your first new light fixture.

22) You will learn that just because the light switch is off to the light it does not mean the power is too.

23) Words like, Mitre, Crown Moulding and thermocouple will be become pillow talk.

24 Learn what a thermocouple is and how to change it.

25) Ask Dad how to show you how to change a thermocouple.

26) Google thermocouple now, while it's warm.

27) If the door sticks, lift up on the knob.

28) If you experience a thing called "truss lift" in cold weather, it's normal and can be fixed with a crown moulding nailed to the wall.

29) In order for heat to get into a room, cold air has to be able to get out, leave the interior doors open.

30)  To open a privacy lock, stick a #2 knitting needle in the little hole in the middle.

31) If you don't knit, home ownership is a good reason to start.

32) Knit socks, you will need them with the new NDP carbon tax.

33) If you voted NDP in the last provincial election, use natural fibres for the socks you knit, your feet might be itchy but you will be saving the planet.

34) Things like solar power and wind turbines are not economical, unless you have a lot of money to spend or friends in the NDP who are subsidizing it for you.

35) Be it ever so humble, there is no place like home.

Good luck new home owners, don't scrimp out on the $500.00 the house inspector charges.

The passing of two old ladies, both of whom I will miss a lot.

Old people die, this is the completion of the circle of life, yet somehow it is remarkable how the heart remembers long past the time.  My Mom passed in February, her best and likely only remaining life long friend, my Aunt passed away in April. They each raised five kids, lived with husbands who were best described as "dreamers"  stayed in touch as close as they needed to, and watched each other as the years took their toll.  My Aunt, who isn't technically my aunt, but always will be, had the most beautiful blue eyes, my cousin got the same beautiful eyes from her Mom.

I don't know enough about my Aunt:  she was a British war bride, hooking up with my uncle sometime in the 1940's and leaving her family to settle in an old airplane packing crate in Edmonton, in an area now occupied by the traffic circle on 87 avenue and 142 street.  My parents lived across the street.

Maybe it was proximity, but both my Mom and my Aunt had five kids in equal succession, this made for some great family gatherings and some of us remain close to this day, indeed as the two youngest, my cousin and I have kept the family connection alive with our own daughters.

Not to slag any of my blood relatives, but Aunts youngest daughter  is my best cousin, love her to death and she has the same eyes as her mom; looks like her and has many of the mannerisms  too, which is a real complement.

I think of the minor inconveniences that occur in my life and I realize that my own ways are easier and more prosperous than theirs ever were. Mom and my Aunt, held families together during alcoholism, real poverty and despair, my Aunt, who was separated from her family by a country and an ocean probably felt pretty alone a lot and must have questioned her decisions to leave England more than once. I do not recall her ever complaining about it.

When we take a generation of young men and have them fly complex machines, dropping bombs on other young men, or put them on crappy boats dodging torpedo's in the North Atlantic, when the war ends, then what? Once you have defeated Hitler, what do you do for an encore?

Coming back to Canada, you get a job as a salesman, auctioneer or a bus driver, because war does not teach a lot of skill that translates well to peace time. It does however teach optimism and ingenuity.  My  Mom and my Aunt were married to very ingenious men, not well educated, not very good at business, terrible communicators who repressed most of their feelings, My Dad and Uncle  tried and failed more often than they succeeded, but they tried, they had optimism when most people would not.

My Aunt and my Mom, watched all this with  reserved amusement I guess, worrying more about feeding five kids each their lives were often less adventuresome and more practical matters such as the paying of bills often fell to the women.

Both ladies outlived their husbands and in my Moms case  was heart broken that her best friend was suffering from Alzheimer's and would soon forget the friendship of her life. My cousin though, when she told my Aunt that Mom had passed away, said her Mom cried, striking a chord and remembering what she did, we shall never know.

I learned a lot from my Aunt Laurel and Uncle Barry, the life lessons and the times they were there when I didn't even know I needed them are what I will always remember. Today is my Aunts memorial, I saw her recently because I have begun to understand how important it is to make sure people know how you feel about them while they are still around.