Solving Jigsaw Puzzles in Four Dimensions

by C. Blaine Illingworth III September 1, 2011

Excessive and improper use of flexible insulated plastic HVAC duct tubing quickly is becoming pandemic in the home-building industry. I regularly see HVAC systems that look like they were patterned after the villainous “Doctor Octopus” of the Spiderman movie.

For example, I have measured single 6-inch duct runs over 75 feet long. Often, the ducts are pinched in half by hanger straps, clustered from undersized feed plena and just totally inadequate for the spaces allotted. Add to that the lack of individual room return ducts and under-sized return plena even in an expensive house, and the sum works out to an uncomfortable and expensive house to heat and cool.

The accompanying photo illustrates the many ways an incompetent HVAC installer put the lives of the occupants of one home in danger.

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Photo: How many ways did an incompetent HVAC installer put the lives of the occupants in danger?

The box hanging from the ceiling is a humidifier with an open return. It is pulling air (nearly 1,200 cfm) from the basement directly above the naturally vented water heater, which showed tremendous signs of backdrafting.

The non-direct vent furnace has been flaring back inside as well. The 2″ PVC vent pipe is over 45′ long with a 2″ belly in it that is full of water.

Yes, the family has been sick a lot recently, headaches and such and, no, the CO detector has not gone off although it showed transient high readings approaching 200 ppm.
The water heater’s metal B-vent is tight against truss joist flanges on both sides and has a PVC drain line paralleling it in its chase ¼” away.

Those are only what can be seen in the photo. There’s more.
The 14″ flexible duct supply and return support only half of the blower’s rated output.

The single return duct in the dining room runs through a single joist bay even smaller than the flexible-duct plenum. The reduced airflow has caused two compressor failures and one heat exchanger failure in the first six years of the home’s existence.

Are we responsible as home inspectors for issues like these? For the obvious ones, sure we are. But you can’t see the rotted sheathing and moldy insulation inside a wall. You don’t have the time to run a duct balometer to determine the HVAC flow rates in each room. You don’t carry a draft gauge on every inspection. Even if you had the time and the special tools, the whole idea falls well outside the ASHI SoP, so we’re off the hook, right?

 Wrong. There are obvious symptoms of each, and a home inspector could and should point them out and show his client the potential underlying problems. In my opinion, issues like these and the inspectors’ attitudes toward them are what separate mediocre inspectors from great ones. The difference boils down to two things: curiosity and education.

If you see something out of place, do you just write it up, write it off and move on? Do you stand on the “It’s not in the SoP” soapbox or do you find out more, dig deeper and get to the root of the problem? If you’re not qualified to make some of these judgments, do you punt to a “qualified professional,” or do you get qualified yourself? Are you regularly researching and consulting with colleagues?

This profession could be described as continually solving jigsaw puzzles in four dimensions. It requires an open and curious mind. Continual innovation in construction materials and techniques demands continuous education. Part of that education can come from you. You, the home inspector, need to educate yourself and then the public, not just one client at a time, but with articles and appearances on local TV.

Years ago, as a second-year inspector, I inspected a home and found a rotted rim joist, rotted joist ends and a rotted subfloor above one corner of the basement. The floor above that area was a small piece of a 2,000-square foot oak floor that eventually was replaced entirely by the owners at a cost of over $15,000 so there wouldn’t be any repair lines showing. I traced the source of that deterioration back up the outside wall to a single missing kickout flashing, at that time a $2 item.

That home was the first in a long series of homes that I’ve found with bad stucco or adhered-masonry veneer (around here, commonly called ‘lickum-stickum-stone’). It also was the start of a 17-year crusade to bring the home inspection, real estate and building construction communities in my region to a collective realization of the expensive and potentially dangerous issues lurking inside the walls of many otherwise beautiful stuccoed homes. In the end, I’ve been somewhat successful. Almost all the realty agents here know they can expect issues with stucco. Builders slowly are getting better, many by simply not using stucco any more. Others actually are trying to get it right. I feel as if I actually have made a lasting contribution. You can do the same.

Learn all you can about the issues you face daily. Most of you already do that. Then, apply that knowledge in the public sphere. Get in front of builders’ and remodelers’ organizations, realty groups, lawyers and appraisers and let them know what really is happening in the construction industry and what they can do about it. You’ll make valuable contacts, further your own business and even end up feeling as if you made a lasting contribution to the industry as well as your own profession. You can be better. All it takes is work.

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Going Beyond the ASHI Standards of Practice

Some of the old guard on the Technical Review Committee have expressed the concern that unless the inspector is qualified, he should not attempt to define the source of a problem, but rather should recommend further evaluation by a qualified professional in the particular area.

Also, the ASHI Standards of Practice do not require members to go as far as the author advocates in their exploration of the root causes of problems. Just to be clear, the Technical Review Committee is not saying the author should temper his advice about digging deeper, it’s just saying that he should clarify that such digging is not an ASHI requirement. It would be helpful to make the distinction between the minimum requirements of the ASHI Standards and solving jigsaw puzzles in four dimensions.

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