I do home inspections during the rain. I joke that it is the best time to find a leak, which does happen, but going up to the roof in the rain is not the safest proposition. I do not advise people to go on a roof during the rain, yet I have done so during inspections. The one benefit is that you begin to see what you suspected. Deflections in the roof sheathing do funnel water like a small creek, causing more damage to shingles in the “creek bed” than the surrounding surfaces. You can discover that your assumption about where sealing/caulking needs to be done was correct as you see the water hold on to vents or slight nail depressions. I also had an assumption about a particular type of plumbing vent confirmed.

    A builder thought that I was being too detailed when I made a comment about a plastic flashing on a plumbing vent. “Home inspectors have to find things to justify their cost, so they point out things that are not really problems.” (How many home inspectors have heard that line?) In this case, I had pointed out that the installation of a plumbing vent had been done incorrectly. The fix was not going to be too hard to accomplish, but this builder wanted to create the idea that I make a big deal out of nothing. I am sure that sellers looking at my reports could feel the same way as well. However, I know that small problems left untreated can lead to a big mess. When I do roof inspections, I do have the tendency to be wary of plastic flashing on plumbing vents, because I do find more leaks with them than I do with lead flashing on plumbing vents. Lead flashing is not perfect, but I encounter fewer problems with them. These newer style vents can be effected by bad installation or movement in the house.
    The main problem with the plastic flashing is that it does not last as long as lead flashing. The plastic relies on a tight seal on the vent pipe to stop leaks. This seal can break through exposure to the elements outside faster than the roof covering. The seal can also be damaged through excessive movement in the home. Another problem is that the bell part of the plastic can bend down to form a cup around the vent. This happens with a bad installation job, but I have seen this with movement or objects hitting the flashing. In the above photograph, I was on the roof during a rain. You can see a little pool of water being held in the flashing. This can begin to leak through the roof surface, down the vent pipe. Logically, I knew that this would happen, although I have had others tell me that I am making this up.
    How can I repair these plastic flashing pieces on a plumbing vent? I have seen the broken seals caulked, and this has worked. I have seen people use foam insulation on the interior, but this is a temporary fix. The best repair may be placing a new plastic cover over the older one, gluing the cover on with caulk. As for this cup effect seen in the photograph, I would suggest going into your attic. From below you can push the flashing back up into place. Then you can check for traces of light, which will show you there is a gap (the pvc vent pipes will glow with the sun light). Gaps can be caulked on the roof. Pulling this flashing bowl up form above may lead to more problems. You may not see the gaps, so that is why repairing from the attic would be better.
    I am sticking with lead flashing, but I know the plastic flashing is here to stay. I am sure that this type of flashing will improve over time. I do feel that this something homeowners or home buyers should check. This can happen to these vents at any time, and a small leak left unrepaired could lead to more damage than you may expect.

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I am a big fan of insulation, but insulation has to come with some concerns, such as ventilation. Recently, on an inspection of an older home, I suggested insulating below the house. I also discovered that the walls might well not be insulated. You may be thinking to yourself that heat rises, so this is not so bad. Insulating the attic does take priority over walls and below a pier and beam home. There are however those who suggest insulating the walls or under the home is a bad idea. Not long after this inspection, I had two conversations with contractors who had the same idea: you do not want to insulate these spaces because of moisture damage. There are people who would argue that not only should you insulate the walls, but you should encapsulate the attic and foundation crawl space. Some people have a problem with this idea (particularly the foundation crawlspace).
     What does encapsulation mean, and why would you do enclose these spaces? There are a few terms out there describing the same process. The most common would be encapsulate, sealing, and conditioning these spaces. The idea is that your foundation crawl space and your attic would become something like livable spaces of your home would be the basic way of explaining it. For people concerned with energy efficiency, we become aware of where the building envelope is located. Most people would think that building envelope would refer to any space that is part of the structure. This makes sense to some degree. The roof is part of the building envelope, right? Well, the roof does enclose the attic, but to a building professional, especially one studying energy efficiency, the attic is not typically part of your envelope. A better definition would be if you thought of any area of your home that is air conditioned as part of the building envelope, so attached garages, attic, and crawl spaces are not part of the building envelope. By sealing off these spaces from the outside air, I create fewer points where conditioned air and exterior air can mingle, causing heat transfer. Reducing these points where thermal bridging may occur means that my air conditioning system will not have to work so hard. An encapsulated attic or crawlspace becomes a conditioned air space, so the areas are then part of the envelope.
   Why would encapsulation be considered a bad idea if it could reduce air conditioning costs? Turning your attic into a conditioned space is generally viewed as a good thing along the Gulf Coast. More people advising the building industry are making this suggestion, and we generally do not see a downside to this. For the foundation crawlspace, we do have individuals not so convinced of this being a smart move. The problem lies with moisture. Liquid water will travel down, so eventually a leak will leave the attic space. Where will it go in an encapsulated crawlspace?  If you have a leak in the crawlspace, when will you know about it, and how will you get the water out? Sometimes large leaks in this area are not corrected by the homeowners in a timely manner, and this is why there are building professionals who do not like the encapsulated crawlspace. There are solutions though. Moisture detection equipment is readily available. You can buy detectors that sit on your floor near a water heater to detect leaks. This same technology can be used in a crawlspace.  Sump pumps are already commonly used in basements to rid them of water; a similar system can be used for crawlspaces. The methods for dealing with the main issue of an encapsulated crawl space are already commonly available; they simply need to be installed.
   What about using only insulation under a pier and beam? What about insulation in the walls of a home built in the 1920s? Again, the concern of contractors is moisture, and this can be a problem, but I have not seen an issue with homes that have had insulation added. I will not deny that some homes did experience problems, but I think that the issues may be different than what the contractors believed the cause to be. The question revolves around moisture barriers. Insulation is not neccessarily a moisture barrier, but it could have a moisture barrier on it. The general rule is that moisture barriers are placed on the interior of homes built in colder climates, and on the exterior of homes built in warmer, humid areas like my Houston. Some will say that a home should not have a moisture barrier at all. Where the moisture barrier is paced, and if you should even have a moisture barrier is Dependant on the design of the home. A Strawbale house should breathe, or else you will have moisture problems in the walls, so I would not use a moisture barrier. A home built in the 1920s was designed with this same need to breathe concept. Simplifying the design of a 1920s house, you can imagine a box. This box has framing from the foundation to the attic. For each story, you can imagine that you have another box. You have a two story house? One big box covering two small boxes inside the larger one. (This description is not exactly correct, but the general concept is). During this time period, we did not have air conditioning as we do in the modern sense. They had a whole house fan. The fan was in the attic, and it pulled air through a central shaft in the home. Air would be pulled from all of the rooms, being expelled out of the top of the home. You were not conditioning the air (making the air cooler), but you did create an air flow that dealt with moisture, while making you feel cooler (much like a ceiling fan will make you feel cooler). When air conditioning came into the picture, we left the whole house fans to rust, and in Houston we added forced air cooling systems. We did not quite understand the value of insulation, so we added little to our attics (maybe three inches), and we may have added it to our walls.
    When you change how a house functions, you need to make design changes that help this new function method. You may have heard of making buildings tight, or maybe you have heard of sealing/caulking cracks. Our current thinking is to prevent conditioned air by not allowing the exterior temperature effecting the interior. A home built in the 1920s deals with its environment by being leaky. This may sound bad when you are familiar with a contemporary home, but the home will function well, if you live in it as intended. Once we introduce a central forced air system to condition the internal environment, we change the function, so we need to address a design change. This fact negates the argument that you should not insulate the walls and crawlspace of an older home. Yes, they were not designed to be insulated, but they were also not designed for air conditioning. Changing to air conditioning means changes to the design should be made to ensure the home functions better.
    How do we deal with the moisture question when insulating an older home? A builder in the 1920s had to deal with moisture as much as a contemporary builder. They had a different method, so we have to examine how our ideas can work in these older homes. We can install insulation which is not a moisture barrier. We can create air passages to allow air flow to deal with moisture. Take spray foam insulation as an example. We want air flow under the roof sheathing to deal with moisture. Spray foam directly onto the sheathing eliminates the air flow. If we place baffles under the sheathing, and then add spray foam, we have a solution. We even could create the air flow above the sheathing under the roof covering (a metal roof may be better at creating this air gap). My point is that we do have solutions; you need a professional who can examine the home to provide you with the best advice.
    Insulation is great, but insulating alone will cause moisture issues. Coming back to the argument that insulation is bad for an older home, such contractors do have one valid point (but not for the reason they all realize). When we insulate, we usually also work at stopping thermal bridging by making the home tighter. In a contemporary home, we have means of venting moisture: range hood vent for cooking, and mechanical vents in bathrooms.  In the 1920s, we opened windows to vent moisture. In fact, this idea is still used, even if homeowners will not open the windows. The solution is that we need to add ventilators to rid the home of moisture as we begin to seal and insulate. We think about insulating, but talk of insulation is not coupled with talk of ventilation and good design choices. This is where maybe we fail the public at large when discussing energy efficiency. “Cash for caulkers” and “tax rebates for insulating your home” are common enough phrases, but what about ventilation? We forget to discuss the idea. If you are insulating a home, start thinking about ventilation (even if the home is newer than 1920).
    The building industry is going through a change. Building science is on the rise, and we are understanding how to build better. We are not quite there yet when understanding on how to deal with an older home. I mentioned that there are homes where we may want the walls to breathe (allow movement of air and moisture through the walls). Suggesting insulation or sealing may not be the best advice, but we may make those changes if we consider other design elements. Unfortunately, we all are not on the same page yet when it comes to the information, mainly because all of this is new, and the building industry is slow to accept certain changes. All we can do is seek out different opinions to make informed decisions.

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I enjoy walking through a home with my clients, explaining what I am seeing. This may be due to my educator tendencies. I want people to be able to see the signs that there is a problem with the function of their home, so they can act upon what the home is telling them. During one inspection, I pointed a tube coming out of the soffit above a window. There was a constant water dripping down. I said here is a problem. My client looked at me and asked what problem. The dripping water, I replied. He said this happens on his current home, and he did not know that it was an issue. I explained that the cooling system for his air conditioner consisted of a device called an evaporator. This cooled the air by letting the air pass by tubes carrying the refrigerant from the compressor. This caused moisture in the air to condense on the tubes. This water would fall down to drain off in the primary drain line. The line over the window is the secondary drain line. When water is coming out of the secondary line, then something is not working properly. The tube is placed over a window, so you can see the dripping water to know that there is a problem. I told him that the air conditioning system was not running well, and that this was the sign.  Some homes do not have this secondary line, and this is where a homeowner can become confused as to why his air conditioning stopped working.

    If you live in a town home or a condominium, you may see a device with a lever on your pan under your evaporator. This one was found in a home. The picture shows the evaporator with three lines. The top line looks bigger, and it is insulated. This is the return line with the cooled refrigerant. The next tube is a small copper tube. This line has the heated refrigerant going to your compressor. The next line down, which is partially insulated, is the primary drain line. This can go to a sink in the home, or it could drain to the exterior. On the exterior, the primary drain line will go to the ground, not over a window. Then we see a rusty pan with water in the pan. On the pan is a white box with a metal lever on it. This is a sensor, which is taking place of the secondary drain line.
   If the secondary drain line tells me that there is a problem with my air conditioning, is it not better than this sensor? The sensor is another method for indicating to you that something is wrong with the system, and the sensor accomplishes this in a more dramatic way by turning off your air conditioner. The device is a simple pressure sensor. Water rising in your safety pan causes the lever to rise. The rising lever pushes down on the switch. Once the switch is engage (the lever pushing on the switch to its fullest when the water is at its highest), the sensor sends a signal to the AC to turn off. If the sensor fails to turn off your unit, the safety pan will overflow causing moisture damage below. The secondary drain line allows your system to keep working while the problem persists, and the sensor will cause the unit to suddenly stop working without warning. This sudden stop catches homeowners off guard, so many prefer the secondary drain line, but that does not mean that it is better.
    A dripping line or a unit shutting off means you need to call your HVAC technician. You could empty the pan to restart the unit, but you will have the problem again. In the case of this photograph, you can see that the pan has rust stains all over. This would only happen if water has been in the pan quite a bit. One thing to note is if your air conditioning system uses this type of  a sensor shutting off the unit, there should be a note indicating that this sensor is present.  If your air conditioning suddenly stopped working, look at the safety pan. Is the pan filled with water? Then you may have a sensor turning the system off.

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If you have decided to buy a kit home you also need to think about whether you have the right skills to build it yourself. Building kit homes is not as difficult as you first might think and with even a little help you may find it possible to do yourself. There are kit homes in Victoria and all over Australia being built by owner builders and many are finding they have skills they never knew they had. Building your kit home yourself will save you a lot of money and if you want you could get the whole family involved.

Following plans

Your kit home will be delivered as a whole and will just require you to assemble it. The kit will come with a comprehensive instruction manual as to how to put your new home together. It is important that you follow these steps exactly otherwise you might void the warranty as well as risk your home not being stable enough. Don’t take any short cuts even if you think it will be alright. If you have any problems make sure you contact the supplier and they will be able to either talk you through the problem or might suggest a qualified builder to handle that specific section for you.

Construction

Having some building skills is of great benefit when building your own kit home. Knowing how to handle power tools and being good with your hands is a necessary skill to have. You also may find that you need a bit of strength when it comes to erecting framework, roofing and other parts of the building. Being physically fit enough will also make it a lot easier.

Plastering

It is likely that your kit home will come with enough parts to build it to lock up stage. Generally this means that the inside of your home is not complete and you still need to do the plastering, install the kitchen and bathroom, do any tiling, install the wiring and the plumbing. You will need to hire a professional electrician to do the wiring and hiring a fully qualified plumber is also a good idea. You may find that you should be able to handle the plastering. You may be able to find out what the best methods are and avoid hiring a plasterer.

Tiling

It is possible to do the tiling yourself, again saving a significant amount of money. There are a few specific things you will need, such as a tile cutter, a spirit level and the right tools to spread the grout. A good tip is when doing a room that has both floor and wall tiles, such as the bathroom, do the floor tiles first which will then hide the cuts on the floor tiles.

Knowing when to get help

When building your kit home properly one of the best skills you can have is knowing when to get help when you need it. Don’t be stubborn and think that you have to do it all yourself if you are struggling. Even if it is going to cost you a bit more it is better to have the job done right the first time around rather than having to hire someone later to correct any mistakes, which could end up costing more than if you just hired a professional in the first place.

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For homeowners with older furnaces, each winter seems to bring higher energy bills. Instead of continuing to struggle with an older furnace, it makes sense to switch to an energy efficient furnace.

Older furnaces incur costly energy bills and can be frustrating to repair. For homeowners willing to upgrade, energy efficient furnaces provide needed warmth at comfortable prices.

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After I had finished giving a lecture, many attendees came up to ask me questions about their windows. For most people concerned with energy efficiency, we obsess about how inefficient they are. We are told to leave window replacement to the end of our green renovations, since they have a lower return on investment than other renovation items. What did surprise me is that people did not understand the design/function of the parts of the window. I guess this is a case of this is my job, so I should know, but on a normal basis, why should a homeowner think about it? I had a homeowner tell me that thought windows made with vinyl were inferior, because they associated vinyl with cheap. I explained that vinyl clad windows had the strength in the frame that they desired, but the vinyl helped with the problem of thermal bridging. Aluminum frames allow heat to transfer quickly, where vinyl takes longer. This is part of the U-factor. The U-factor is a description that places a value on the rate of heat transferring through materials (in this case a window). We want a low U-factor, since this will indicate better efficiencies.
    Another aspect of windows is that they control aspects of climate in the house, which we forget to control. They allow light to flood a space. They can be opened to allow in a breeze. This is why home inspectors check the quality of the screen. If you open the window for a breeze, you do not want insects or other pests coming into the home.  We keep the weather out of the home when we close them. As windows advance in design, they can provide these functions better. Keeping the rain out, while allowing light is one function. This may not seem important to you, but windows do play their part in moisture control, which is essential in maintaining the home. Opening windows to allow moisture to flow out may not be a common practice anymore, but this used to be the main method of dealing with bathroom moisture. Closing the window to prevent rain from entering is another form of moisture control. During my home inspections, I do find water damage on the interior portions of the home due to open windows. With the old window design, we did not have to worry water staying by the window frame. Modern window design has one problem: the frame can hold water. The resolution to this is a simple fix: a slit (or hole) at the base of the frame allows water to escape. I mention this, because a few homeowners did not understand why those holes were there. After one inspection, I realized that maybe some builders did not know either.

    I was a manager for some years. I noticed that the best managers observed the work of their employees, and then reacted to those observations. Some managers made assumptions, and they pontificated on those beliefs. They were frequently wrong. I wonder if the construction managers know what to observe. In the case of the home in the photograph, There were a few careless mistakes, and one was at the base of the window frame. These windows have the slits, because water could be held inside the frame. The person responsible for caulking the wall joints smeared the caulk along the base of the frame, covering the hole. To correct this situation, they should clear the caulk away from the hole.
    Is caulking over the window frame slit a real issue? A perrennial question to home inspectors is asking about the importance of our findings. A common complaint is that we should not list some issues, since they are too minor of a concern. The problem becomes that minor concerns left untended can become major. Continual water damage at the frame leads to a situation where major damage can occur ( a rusted frame leads to a hole, which leads to water damage in the framing).Little things matter.

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Many building innovations begin in the commercial environment. When they are established, we find them moving over to the residential structures. Sometimes this is due to cost. Sometimes this is due to the slow pace of change in residential architecture. When we do take the innovations from commercial buildings to the residential, we do find problems with the learning curve connected with installation. There are buildings built with the common techniques of an apartment complex or office building, but they are meant for residential use. Some of these techniques become more noticeable when we look at the plumbing and air conditioning. A toilet that I found fit into this example.
    What is the difference between commercial and residential plumbing? An office building will be focused on saving energy. Facility managers will see this as their main expense. The water bill can be quite high
as well, so you do see low flush toilets and automatic toilets. You will see recirculating water systems to keep hot water hot and cold water cold. Automatic sinks also save water. In older structures you will see something else that is different, and that is how the plumbing lines may run. Taking the water lines through cabinets instead of the walls is found in older buildings. Hot water systems can often be centralized. One innovation for toilets was to hang them on the wall, instead of having a base. These units typically do not have a tank of water, so they do not experience the problems associated with the float valves. Another benefit is that the cleaning crew can quickly sweep and mop underneath the toilet. Trust me, when you have 15,000 people go through a facility in one day, you want to be able to clean quickly.
    One home inspection led to the discovery of a hanging toilet installed in the home. One step in checking a toilet is to see if the toilet is secure. Toilets which are not securely attached can leak. I noticed that this toilet was slightly loose. Looking down, I saw the gap between the toilet and the wall. These toilets are installed by having the a lip on the unit hook onto a matching rail on the wall. Depending upon the model, there might be bolts underneath the unit. The framing in the wall has to be sized appropriately to handle this weight. The mounting bracket has to be installed securely. Now we are moving into a touch area: what weight was that bracket and framing designed to handle? Listening to the news, you may be aware that the average weight of an individual has been going up. This can weaken the mounting bracket. The other problem may be that the framing and bracket were never truly installed/made properly in the first place.
   If I see the gap between the wall and toilet, is there a problem? The size of the gap is an indicator. Once we go over an eighth of an inch, we do need to be concerned. The movement places stress on the plumbing connections, so we need to look for leaks (these leaks can be on the supply and input sides). Leaks can be in the wall. In tiled bathrooms, this can be harder to discern. Tiles can hold moisture, but this is not as easy to see as in sheetrock. If tiles are loose, you may have a leak. Next check to see if the toilet is secure (how much does it wiggle?). If the movement is quite noticeable, your concern should rise. There is no way to know when the mounting bracket will fail, so if you notice the wiggle, you should contact a plumber.
   An entire post about a toilet? I do enjoy the cleaning aspect of hanging toilets, but I think that I prefer a toilet with a base. At home, my younger children use the toilet as a stepping stool to a sink. There is the old joke: Confucius says that he who stands on toilet is high on pot. Still, I hear of accidents which happened because people were standing on a toilet.   

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How often should one caulk? I have been asked this on other occasions, and my response involves the fact that you never can tell. I often advise that you should take the time to examine your home every so often. My preference is once a month that a homeowner should look around the home for problems to remedy. When I thought about it, there are some trends that I have noticed, so I will share those with you.

New Construction- a year after the home is built, I find that the caulking of joints has to be redone. During the first year, quite a bit of settling happens, and this leads to separation of the caulk from the wall joint. This is a normal process.

Established homes- under normal conditions, I suggest that caulk should be redone after five years. Normal conditions means that the home experiences the same conditions year after year. Why five years? This may be random, but I noticed that homes which were built six years ago, and had the caulk taken care of after the first year, tend to need new caulking after five years. This also happened on my own home. After five years, I had to do touch-up caulking. Five years keeps coming up.

What if you do not have normal conditions? If you have been in a long drought, and then a large amount of rain floods your property, you can have a situation where your home could be moving more rapidly than normal. Or let us say, that the last homeowner did not keep consistent moisture around the foundation, and then a new homeowner began regular watering, you may find your home moving. In these case, the joints can separate, so caulking is needed.

You will notice that I wrote ” could be moving” and “may find you home moving”. Those terms sound like I am covering myself. Each home is different though. My neighborhood may flood, but how much water stays in my yard? Is it the same as the amount of water in my neighbors yard? Did it flood evenly around the house, or did one side have more standing water? If your house is moving all together, then there will be less separation. I guess that this leads me to my original statement: check your house every so often.

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If you read the legal description of a home inspection, you will find the phrase “visual inspection” or some variant incorporating the word visual. A home inspection may be more accurately described as involving all of the senses. Sure, our clients would love us to carry around fancy equipment which analyzes the home to give a detailed technical report; however, there is no piece of equipment that can go through the home to perform an analysis like you. The real problem comes in understanding what you are seeing or hearing. Certain plumbing problems can be heard, like the gurgling sound coming from a sink.
    Here is the path that I took to discover why I heard a gulping noise from a sink in a house that I was inspecting. We first start on the roof. I climbed up on the roof to examine the roof covering and anything else that I may find up there. This included the plumbing vents. These are the pipes that stick out of the roof. I did see some seals from the flashing breaking around these vents, but no other issue. I go up into the attic later, where I find stains on the air conditioning equipment. Those little black mold spots that occur with condensation were the stains. In the attic, this happens when conditioned air of one temperature comes into contact with the attic air at another temperature, so I looked for air leaks in the system, since I was running the air conditioning to check the cooling. I did not feel any leaks. As I moved out of the attic, I walked around the second floor, where I came upon a sink with a strong gulping sound. I had filled the tub near this sink earlier, so I checked the the other sink to hear if a sound came from that location. No gulping here. Then I had a revelation, so I opened the cabinet to find a tube connected to the drain line.

    Where did the gulping noise from the sink originate? All of the clues are in the last paragraph, but you need to understand how your plumbing system works. We turn on the water, and the water flows down the drain. If you have a two year old daughter like me, you may be taking apart your pipes because she decided to stuff toilet paper down the sink. (I had a lot of fun this weekend clearing that out). You will notice that the stuffed drain probably did not make a noise; you just had water that would not drain or drain slowly. For the water to flow smoothly down the drain, you need air in the line. My favorite example is the straw, and the discovery of a vacuum by children. They suck the drink into the straw, then they hold the top of the straw, keeping the liquid in place. Let the top go, and the liquid flows down. This is the purpose of the vents for the plumbing system. The gurgling sound is the water going down the pipe, and then stopping to let air into the pipe.
    In this inspected home, I mentioned that the vents on the roof had no problems. One cause for the sound in your sink can be a blockage of a vent by a bird. Birds will build nests in any convenient place, and I have found them on the top of plumbing vents. Maybe warm air rises during winter? Cool air during the summer? I am not sure why, but this does happen on larger vents. The vent being blocked was not a typical plumbing vent. There is another blockage that can occur that is not easily found. The drains from one part of the house usually share a vent. If the tub draining was causing the gurgling, because a shared vent with the sink was blocked, then I would have seen a problem with the water draining from the tub. I did not witness this situation.
    The oddball clue was in the attic. Remember the stains from condensation that I found? There was no air leak though. When I realized that the sound came from one particular sink, I checked underneath to see a pipe coming into the drain line above the P-trap. In older homes, this line may drain to the exterior of the home closer to the ground. The pipe is the primary drain line for your cooling system for your air conditioner. Your evaporator coil produces water when the air conditioning is cooling the home. This water drains through the primary, but it can drain through a secondary drain attached to a pan underneath the evaporator coil (this happens when there is a problem). In newer homes, the primary drain is often attached to an existing drain line. This is often the bathroom sink.  This is the scenario found under the sink. The primary drain from the air conditioning system was causing the gurgling sound.
   Going back into the attic, I located the vent pipe for the evaporator coil, discovering that it had been taped over. On older systems, there is enough air coming into the evaporator coil from the attic to allow the water to freely flow outdoors. On newer systems, a vent pipe is attached to the primary drain line. This is just an open pipe sticking up shortly after the primary drain exists the evaporator coil. When running the air conditioning for cooling, you can feel cold air coming out of this pipe. The cold air from this particular vent was lowing onto the air conditioning equipment, hence the condensation leading to the stains that I saw.  I have seen some of these vents installed at an angle to force the air away from the unit. Noticing the condensation, someone taped over the vent, forgetting that the vent was needed for the smooth flow of water in the primary drain. By poking a hole in the tape covering the vent opening, the gurgling sound stops.
    If you hear that gulp coming from your drain, then you can be sure that water is not flowing smoothly due to lack of air. Check your plumbing vents. This may require you to go up on the roof. A bird’s nest can be obvious from the ground, but there are other things that can block this vent. If water is draining slowly from another fixture, you may have a problem in the line. With the home mentioned above, we saw that the air conditioning could be the root cause. One last scenario to mention could be how the home’s drainage pipes were installed. A wet vent is where the drainage line from one fixture is the plumbing vent for another fixture. For example, you have a sink in a downstairs bathroom. In the same area directly above this sink, you have another bathroom sink on the second floor. The second floor sink drains down to the main drain on the same line used by the first floor sink. The pipe leading up from the drain is the vent. For the first floor sink, the vent portion is also the drain for the second floor, so we have a wet vent. If for some reason, there is a horizontal section of pipe for this drain/vent, we may have a situation where the pipe allows water to stay in one section like a trap. This would cause gurgling for the sink below this water stoppage, but allow water from the above sink to drain without issue. Once these situations are resolved, you will hear no gulps.

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Like many homes, my house has two hose bibs. One is placed on the rear of the home towards the right side, and the other is on the left side of the home towards the front. This configuration does allow for good coverage, but I do need some long hoses. Fences block access to one area from a particular hose bib (the exterior faucet), so pretty much everything is handled behind the fence by the backyard hose bib. I am slowly creating an outdoor cooking area, and I would love to have water right in that part of the yard, but this is the rear left of the home. A fence blocks this spot off from the front, and the rear is a bit far. If I wanted to add another faucet, I could run a pipe along the left side of the home. My problem is not enough space with two drainage pipes already running in that area. This is when I wish we had basements in Houston.

    A basement would allow me to run the pipe under the home to the needed position. This would be optimal. With few basements in Houston, and many of our homes having a slab foundation, we are faced wit finding another means for an additional hose bib. In my case, I do have bathrooms inside the house near my new outdoor cooking area. I could take water from the pipes in that part of the house. Here is what I would encounter: having a new pipe go through the framing an wall or walls to deliver the water to the new faucet. This can be a big project, involving the removal of wall coverings. The solution that some homeowners have developed is running pipe from an existing hose bib to their desired spot along the exterior, and this is where, as a home inspector, I find problems.


   There are a few issues that can be seen in this photograph, but we are looking at the white PVC pipes at the base of the home. This homeowner faced a problem similar to mine; a fence blocks the path to one hose bib, and it would be easier to have one by his patio. Have you ever tried to dig down in yard with trees and Houston soil? To do this task by hand is daunting (and I have done this by hand). Machines can make life easier, but even they have to deal with thick roots. On this home, the water delivery pipe from the meter had been replaced. The trench for the pipe fell short, so the installer went above ground. Two problems come to my mind: the pipe is exposed to freezing weather which could burst the pipe; and the pipe can be damaged by yard work. Granted, we do not have the truly cold days of other parts of the country, but plumbers and lawn sprinkler firms deal with burst pipes each year. You could say that you will be careful with yard work, but accidents happen.  From the evidence I had seen, the homeowner decided to add the hose bib near his patio at the time of the new water service pipe.
    To add the pipe underground would have been hard. Considering that the water service had stopped to go above ground at one point, I think they realized what a difficult dig this could be. The installer removed the hose bib from that side of the house to add pipe to deliver water to the new faucet, while adding an extension for the original hose bib. The installer then ran the pipe along the foundation of the home. The pipe was brought up for a hose bib by the patio. We have a line full of water that can freeze during winter (this is about twenty feet of pipe). The faucet sits on a pipe that sticks up with no support. This pipe can be knocked down by a lawnmower or children playing. I would have at least found a way to stabilize it (preferably securing the pipe to a wall).
    Take the time to do the job right. My impression was that the homeowner or a handy man did this installation. There are bad contractors out there, but most of them know better. A plumber can be expensive on a job like this one, but they would do the job correctly. This home did have the hose bibs in odd locations when you consider the fence, so maybe the owner was correct to go after this new bib, but he could have made due. That is what I am going to do on my own home. My outdoor cooking area is not an affixed feature, so if I sell the home, I would have an extra hose bib without a purpose. That is a factor to mull over. I plan to be in my home a long time, but eventually, this home will be sold. If you are running pipe outside, you do want it to be underground. Two feet may be a good depth for the Houston area. Then you will want the pipe to be secure to a wall when it comes up above ground. However, before you start this job, ask if it is necessary. Digging down, even with a trench digger, can be a hard task. I guess that a rule for home project such as this one is “does this add value?” If you feel that it does, then go ahead with your plans.

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