It Takes More Than Technical Expertise to Connect With Customers
You can be at the top of your profession technically, yet be of little use to your customers because they can’t understand what you’re telling them. Whether writing an inspection report for a client or a newspaper column for the general public, the first rule is to write for your audience. Jim Rooney is an ASHI Member who serves on the Board of Directors and operates Freestate Home Inspections in Annapolis, Md. In addition, he writes “On The Level,” a Q&A column for the local newspaper. Although the two columns reprinted here are not in an inspection report format, they do illustrate how a home inspector can have a
jargon-free conversation with consumers.
Patching plaster
Q: I live in an old house with plaster walls and ceilings. Every day, it seems that I find a new crack. Recently while browsing through a catalog, I found a product called Krack-kote that declares that this product will bridge over cracks, but will not loosen and fall out later. It seems that you brush on one solution, apply fabric, then brush on another solution, and you can paint in less than two hours. Are you familiar with this product and would you recommend it? I’ve been told that plasterers are a vanishing breed, and I will be lucky to locate one. Will these products really do the job or are they stopgap solutions?
A: Yes, I’ve heard of Krack-kote and its genre. Nuwall® is another. Have you tried Durham’s Water Putty? Krack-kote’s Web site is www.tkcoatings.com—it’s certainly worth a try.
Whether or not they really will do the job for you would depend upon the condition of the plaster. Plaster, though touted as such a superior wall covering by those who own it and tend to look down their noses at more modern, albeit pedestrian, wall coverings like gypsum drywall, is in reality a very delicate wall covering system that depends upon the performances of individually applied components, from the lowly lath strips upon which the succeeding coats of wet, plastic plaster material are applied, to the quality of that mix, right down to the skill of the applicator.
Then, the life of the plaster job starts to be affected by its environment. Years of loud, nearby road traffic or trains rumbling by, overhead plane noise, thunder, humidity, expansion and contraction of frame lumber, leaks, children running around barefoot—yes, barefoot—stress the bond between plaster and lath. The result is cracking and even wholesale clumps of plaster breaking bond and falling away from the wall or ceiling. I have no basis in the historical record to which I can point, but I’m almost certain the problems with such deteriorating wall surfaces begat the use of wallpaper as a preventative. Somebody drew pictures on it and an industry was born.
Examine bits of broken plaster very carefully, holding them up to the light, even using a magnifying glass if you need, and you will see small strands of hair in the plaster. It’s pig or horsehair that was used in the mix to act as a bonding and anti-cracking agent. It works until it doesn’t anymore and then you’ve got problems. It’s when the plaster that was squeezed between the openings of the lath material—called the keys—breaks that real trouble starts. Thin cracks that run parallel to the lath and perpendicular to the studs or joists are a bit easier to spot-repair, but tend to return.
Products have been developed over the years to forestall the day when a failing plaster job has to be removed and either completely redone or replaced with a more workable wall covering. Restoration manuals list approaches such as the one you’ve asked about, but even include such devices as large, round washer-like fasteners—ceiling buttons—that are attached to the surface via a screw to pull larger, loose areas of plaster back into position.
You’re right about plasterers being a vanishing breed. Like blacksmiths, we still need their services from time to time, but not nearly enough to support any sort of thriving population of them. It took drywall a long time to wait out the lives of plasterers who resisted it. Drywall was patented in the 1890s, and plasterers were still skim-coating whole walls of drywall well into the 1960s. They still do it on high-end jobs, and finding the artists to do it is getting harder and harder. Some drywall finishers will touch plaster, but most won’t.
The artistry in plaster patching is making the patch blend with the rest of the wall or ceiling being repaired. It’s a skill that is developed only through practice—I’ve never known a natural. The patch may look passable to you in the raw, but as soon as a coat of paint gets on it, it’ll jump out at you. Do-it-yourselfers tend to become frustrated and just leave the patch the way it is, and it is ugly. I suggest a couple of tricks that will help the cosmetics.
Rub the patch lightly with a damp, wide and flat sponge just before it dries to get the texture to blend with the surroundings, and when it’s dry, prime-coat it with a latex primer that will show you the blemishes, giving you one more shot at making it better. I’ve never seen perfect. Good luck.
Finding a way out of the fog
Q: How about leveling with your readers on the facts about thermal pane windows? About 11 years ago, I had my wooden frame single-pane windows replaced with vinyl thermal pane windows purchased from a reliable dealer. These windows had E-film, argon gas and a 10-year warranty. After eight years, moisture entered one of the sashes. I was lucky the manufacturer was still in business. The manufacturer replaced the window, and the dealer charged $60 for installation. Currently, two more windows have gone bad. What is the life expectancy of thermal panes (in the good old days, a pane of glass lasted generations)? What happened to the argon gas? How did the moisture get in? Can a retail glass dealer replace a thermal pane in a vinyl sash?
A: Unfortunately, you can’t reseal insulated glass that has lost its seal and has formed a condensation fog between the panes. I have seen people try to do it, but it’s a doomed effort. The whole glass assembly has to be replaced, as you have learned. I frequently walk into houses as old as yours and see a number of windows on the sunny side of the house in some state of seal failure or another. It’s a common problem.
The space between the glass uses air as an insulator. The less expensive insulating glass technology is not really sealed completely tight, and that has to do with the thickness and the strength of the glass. Fancy, high-priced insulated glass windows–like the ones you bought–are completely sealed using a stronger grade of glass and inert gasses placed between the panes such as argon. They also anneal a micron or so of metal to the inside face of the inside pane as a reflector for those heat-radiating sun rays, and the whole package is quite remarkable from an energy standpoint. Those are called low-E windows, for low-emissivity, and they are the minimal quality that I would install for both room comfort and energy savings during both heating and cooling seasons.
The less-tightly sealed spacers have a semi-permeable membrane to allow pressure equalization between the outside air and the air between the panes. It has a dryer in it called a dessicant, and when that fails, the windows fog. Those windows usually have a five-year warranty, and last just about that long if they get direct sunlight sometime during the day. Insulated glass windows in the shade tend to last and last. It’s the cyclic temperature changes from the sun that do in the spaces between the glass. When the dryer fails over time, the air entering the space between the panes of glass will drag whatever moisture is in the outside air along with it. When temperatures change, the moisture in the air now trapped between the panes condenses and you get the “fog” that signals that the seal has failed. Once begun, the fog will worsen over time, both from additional moisture getting in, even creating drips, and from a photo-chemical reaction that sunlight sets up that will etch the inside surfaces of the glass.
Your seals, as air-tight as they were designed to be, are failing and the action of the sun has driven the argon out and allowed moist air in that condenses between the panes. They mostly made it past warranty. That doesn’t do you much good.
The longest seal warranty in the window business of which I am aware is from Andersen and is longer than 20 years.
It’s quite confusing when you see all that’s available these days in the window market, especially comparing quality against price. You can contact the National Fenestration Rating Council (NFRC) in Silver Spring at 301-589-1776 or visit their Web site at www.nfrc.org for information on how to compare one window to another.
Local glass companies can and do replace insulated glass. They do it every day, but I can’t vouch for any warranty periods. You’d have to ask.
Generally, you’d be better off replacing the entire window rather than just an upper or lower pane that’s fogged up. It’s a pretty safe bet that the other pane will soon lose its seal. After all, it’s 11 years old, too, and it experiences the same environment. Why fork out a fistful of cash to fix the upper sash only to have to do the same for the lower one sometime in the not-too-distant future?
In the old days, we had single-pane glass windows and maybe storm windows over that. The windows were leaky at the edges and taking the storms on and off was work. Windows have gotten better and better over the years, and old windows are like Model T cars compared to what we have now. I like looking at them, but wouldn’t want to rely on one.
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