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Dr. Eldarion posted:Depending on if it's relevant, basement walls and radon (if they're qualified) as well? Radon testing has to go to a lab and takes a few days to do. I wouldn't expect it of an inspector. The good news is that testing is really easy to do yourself, isn't the sort of thing that you need to freak out about a month or two of potential exposure, and is pretty simple and relatively cheap to mitigate if you have a problem. I wouldn't make any purchasing decisions based on radon myself, nor would I ask for anything. It's one of those things you test yourself as soon as you own it and if there's a problem just call someone and have it fixed. edit: to put some numbers on it, $5k would be utterly, insanely, crazy high end for a mitigation system. Like, a huge house with a loving enormous basement hewn out of solid granite. Realistically you're looking at less than half of that, likely much less than half of that. edit 2: radon isn't great, but it's easy to work around. It's only scary because if you don't test and live in a plume of it for 30 years bad poo poo can happen.
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Apr 2, 2024 20:04
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I've had inspectors offer Radon testing as an add on but it was more expensive than getting the kit and doing it myself.
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Apr 2, 2024 20:06
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Beef Of Ages posted:I've had inspectors offer Radon testing as an add on but it was more expensive than getting the kit and doing it myself. IIRC there's a second tier of testing above the charcoal pack you mail to a lab. I've never had to dick with those but my understanding is that's what you use if the first test comes back oh holy gently caress levels of high and you're going to need a more serious mitigation solution, and that those tests basically involve plopping some kind of device down for a few days and letting it sniff to get a much more refined picture of what's going on. Then again Joe Inspector might be charging $300 to just mail off the Home Depot test and pocketing the difference.
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Apr 2, 2024 20:08
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Cyrano4747 posted:IIRC there's a second tier of testing above the charcoal pack you mail to a lab. I've never had to dick with those but my understanding is that's what you use if the first test comes back oh holy gently caress levels of high and you're going to need a more serious mitigation solution, and that those tests basically involve plopping some kind of device down for a few days and letting it sniff to get a much more refined picture of what's going on. That second test is what the home inspectors offer around here, in a very radon area. They leave the equipment at least overnight if not a couple of days.
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Apr 2, 2024 20:19
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Thats been my experience as well. A radon detection unit gets sat in the basement and runs for a few days. You get back a report that shows the levels, how they rise and fall, and if they ever approach a problematic level.
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Apr 2, 2024 20:39
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Think I paid $100~$150 for my inspector to place equipment on a tripod in my house in 2 places and leave it for a few hours. I think he mentioned that it could need up to a full day to check depending on initial readings? Been a while.
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Apr 2, 2024 20:41
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Motronic posted:That second test is what the home inspectors offer around here, in a very radon area. They leave the equipment at least overnight if not a couple of days. I'm mildly surprised that they're allowed to leave equipment in the house long enough for that, but if it's a regional expectation I could see it. Around here inspectors are very much limited in how much access they get to the property. Then again I'm in the land of homes going under contract the same weekend they list.
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Apr 2, 2024 20:47
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My inspector did both air and water tests for my house. I did pay about $5k for my radon mitigation... but that was because I went with the "forever fixed, and also your hard water and taste problems for your water are fixed too" solution.
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Apr 2, 2024 20:49
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Cyrano4747 posted:edit 2: radon isn't great, but it's easy to work around. It's only scary because if you don't test and live in a plume of it for 30 years bad poo poo can happen. In the heavily regulated EU some people do (controlled) radon treatment for pain therapy. Tom Scott gave a tour of the place maybe a year ago. It's in a cave with naturally occurring radon, but they control the air flow in areas visitors go to Probably not great to do that recreationally all the time, but point is, EU allows voluntary exposure as a business to exist, so some expert somewhere determined that short term exposure wasn't all that bad Hadlock fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Apr 2, 2024 |
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Apr 2, 2024 20:51
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Cyrano4747 posted:I'm mildly surprised that they're allowed to leave equipment in the house long enough for that, but if it's a regional expectation I could see it. Around here inspectors are very much limited in how much access they get to the property. It's absolutely at the discretion of the seller to allow this or not, and when the market isn't what it is now that was normal and customary. And anyone not allowing that would be a red flag. Now....just lol you don't even get bids with inspection contingencies looked at.
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Apr 2, 2024 20:56
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Cyrano4747 posted:I wouldn't make any purchasing decisions based on radon myself, nor would I ask for anything. It's one of those things you test yourself as soon as you own it and if there's a problem just call someone and have it fixed. Around here it is extremely common to get a concession at purchase time for the cost of a radon mitigation system install if the house does not already have one. I would not sleep on a radon test during inspection and potentially miss out on a couple thousand bucks.
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Apr 2, 2024 20:57
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Unless you’re in area where high radon levels are common enough that it’s likely you can shake a radon mitigation concession out of the seller, for the cost of an inspection add-on radon test, you can get a long-term radon monitor like this one https://a.co/d/gnAVMRh Radon levels can vary over the year and fluctuate by a lot with spikes in rainy/windy weather, so a short duration test from an inspection can give only a general picture of the situation.
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Apr 2, 2024 21:34
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Porfiriato posted:Unless you’re in area where high radon levels are common enough that it’s likely you can shake a radon mitigation concession out of the seller, for the cost of an inspection add-on radon test, you can get a long-term radon monitor like this one Should be doing both, ideally. I guess I don't see spending ~$200 to get a general idea of what your radon levels are like prior to purchase as a waste of money at all. Seasonal swings are mitigation during these tests by keeping doors and windows closed and not disturbing the air near the testing machines. Best case scenario you learn your levels are super low and you can retest in the future with some cheapo carbon test. Worst case it is super high, and you go into the purchase knowing that you need to install a mitigation system, or ask the seller to pay for one.
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Apr 2, 2024 21:56
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Sirotan posted:Around here it is extremely common to get a concession at purchase time for the cost of a radon mitigation system install if the house does not already have one. I would not sleep on a radon test during inspection and potentially miss out on a couple thousand bucks. A couple thousand bucks is piss all of a concession to be asking. Would I ask for it? Probably, if it was a dead market. But it's not something that I'd care about if they didn't accept it, and frankly in a hot market I'd rather have a clean offer than be the one in the stack asking for the annoying concession. Keep in mind the mitigation is going to have to come out of your pocket post-sale anyways, while the concession is coming off of a 30y mortgage. Yes, mortgage money is real money, but it can be a lot harder to cough up $2k cash right now than it is to pay the extra couple of bucks a month that it's going to cost on a mortgage. Something like a roof or a foundation problem where it's a profound issue that is going to cost $$$ and you're willing to walk if they don't agree? Yeah, absolutely ask for a concession. But $1k-2k really isn't worth the hassle unless, again, you're in the kind of market where houses sit around for months between offers.
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Apr 2, 2024 23:03
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Cyrano4747 posted:A couple thousand bucks is piss all of a concession to be asking. Would I ask for it? Probably, if it was a dead market. But it's not something that I'd care about if they didn't accept it, and frankly in a hot market I'd rather have a clean offer than be the one in the stack asking for the annoying concession. I don't think it's typical for post-inspection concession requests to come before a seller has already accepted your offer, so you're not still "in the stack" of offers and you're not really going to be putting yourself at a disadvantage by asking for it. Worst case, they refuse, and you can then just move forward with the original deal. I don't disagree that it's not a huge amount to worry about, but, especially if there are a few things that come up in inspections, it can help to make your concession request look reasonable - e.g., list out a bunch of things that add up to 10k but just ask for 5k. Even if it's the only thing you're asking for, again, doesn't really hurt to try and it's a reason for getting an inspection contingency in the first place.
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Apr 2, 2024 23:46
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I'm not sure if this is state dependent, but I believe at least here if the radon test comes back above the limit, the seller then has to disclose that to all potential buyers. So if everyone then has to be told about it, they may just suck it up and give you the concession.
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Apr 2, 2024 23:50
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Dr. Eldarion posted:I'm not sure if this is state dependent, but I believe at least here if the radon test comes back above the limit, the seller then has to disclose that to all potential buyers. So if everyone then has to be told about it, they may just suck it up and give you the concession. I don't know if it's state dependent either, but in PA that's absolutely something you would have to put on the disclosure once you were made aware. Which is also why sellers routinely refuse to accept a copy of inspection reports.
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Apr 2, 2024 23:52
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When I sold my last house I actually included the previous inspection report I had paid for along with a timeline and report on all the stuff I had fixed or replaced. Given that the market was bonkers at the time and I got 40+ offers waiving inspection as it was it felt like the right thing to do. Of course that curtesy was not extended to me about the house I purchased and they absolutely lied about things like basement flooding....
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Apr 3, 2024 01:16
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Yeah, there's a difference between honestly good sellers who are selling a good product and most sellers who don't even know how to evaluate the product they bought or are now selling and it's in a ton of maintenance debt. It's not even intentional all the time. People are just real bad at knowing about and maintaining the most expenive thing they are likely to buy. This is a mystery to me, but it's very obviously true.
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Apr 3, 2024 01:34
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Lawnie posted:I guess the PO could have turned off the A/C at the condenser sometime after the inspection for reasons??? Anyway the point still stands, even if the PO did flip the switch, your inspection report should offer a fixed point in time when the unit did work, which saves tons of time troubleshooting. Home inspectors also won't generally run it if the outside air temp is below 60ish, because they take zero risks and don't want to be blamed for any damage.
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Apr 3, 2024 02:04
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GlyphGryph posted:My inspector did both air and water tests for my house.
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Apr 3, 2024 02:10
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Lawnie posted:Your home inspector should have turned the A/C on full blast and measured the temp of the air coming out of your vents after a few minutes to check for efficacy. Not saying your inspector did a bad job, but if anything else comes up that seems like it could have been caught, it might be worth getting someone out for a second look. I’m pretty sure he did this, and lien, I think he might have even shown us the button , but I can’t tell at this point if I do remember that properly or if my brain is now making it up. Either way, I will take it just being the button. We had a radon test as a part of the inspection, it was like $100.
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Apr 3, 2024 02:44
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Motronic posted:Yeah, there's a difference between honestly good sellers who are selling a good product and most sellers who don't even know how to evaluate the product they bought or are now selling and it's in a ton of maintenance debt. It's not even intentional all the time. People are just real bad at knowing about and maintaining the most expenive thing they are likely to buy. This is a mystery to me, but it's very obviously true. The thing that kills me about this is that most of this poo poo isn't hard to learn. Basic homeowner stuff might lead to a certain amount of Gary-ing, but at the end of the day it's to to watch a few youtubes and just do your best fixing that cracked tile or the gross spot that collects water next to the shower. Plus there's just a ton of dumb chore poo poo that you just need to suck it up and do. Clear the gutters. Paint exterior wood once every few years. Re-caulk the shower if it's getting grody. Just the basic simple poo poo that you do to keep entropy at bay. I'm not saying that everyone needs to teach themselves how to re-wire their kitchen or service their HVAC, but at the very least just keep your eyes open and if something looks like a problem bite the bullet and call someone who can fix that poo poo. Or, you know, ride that poo poo into the ground and make a surprised pikachu face when you find out the sub floor is rotten because you ignored that leaky toilet for five years.
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Apr 3, 2024 03:35
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Cyrano4747 posted:Kind of surprised I hadn't thought of taping off. Still a bit uneasy, but then I think I might just be paranoid from the last room I did and what a nightmare patching small fuckups in the paint was. For anyone reading this in the future this didn't work out and I'm now going to have to repaint the whole loving bathroom. The grout very much did not wipe off the paint, and where I scrubbed hard enough to get it up I took enough of the top layer of paint off to change the color. It worked its way up under the tape a lot easier than the paint does, probably because of the directionality of how I had to wipe in the grout. And then, to add insult to injury, the tape took off huge swaths of paint. gently caress. edit: quality tape, not cheap poo poo. On the next bathroom I'm tiling first and masking the tile. I can scrape paint blotches that leak under off tiles way easier and cheaper than re-painting the bathroom yet again. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Apr 4, 2024 |
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Apr 3, 2024 18:05
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FFFFFFFF………
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Apr 4, 2024 00:25
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Cyrano4747 posted:For anyone reading this in the future this didn't work out and I'm now going to have to repaint the whole loving bathroom. Rubbing alcohol dissolves most paint fwiw, and tiles generally don't give a poo poo about it. Try that + paper towels rather then doing anything aggressive like scraping. I would also not bother taping stuff while grouting, it's way easier to just sponge it off.
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Apr 4, 2024 00:54
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Cyrano4747 posted:FFFFFFFF……… Sorry but I laughed. That fuckin sucks. Also that tile is crooked.
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Apr 4, 2024 01:05
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MarcusSA posted:Sorry but I laughed. The floor is crooked. The tile is there to replace some really lovely wooden trim (you know the pre-painted stuff at Home Depot? That. Exactly that) that was sponging up any water that got on the floor and rotting. It just needs to be reasonably water resistant, not water tight. But yeah, PO's put down tile without bothering to do any leveling what so ever, and left some giant (like 1/2 inch in places) gaps on the edges that they covered with the above mentioned lovely trim. Lots of filling gaps with tile fragments and trying to get poo poo as level as I could, but it was never going to be perfect. devicenull posted:Rubbing alcohol dissolves most paint fwiw, and tiles generally don't give a poo poo about it. Try that + paper towels rather then doing anything aggressive like scraping. The problem wasn't paint on the grout, the problem was grout on the paint.
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Apr 4, 2024 01:23
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Cyrano4747 posted:The floor is crooked. The tile is there to replace some really lovely wooden trim (you know the pre-painted stuff at Home Depot? That. Exactly that) that was sponging up any water that got on the floor and rotting. It just needs to be reasonably water resistant, not water tight. The grout pulled the paint off? Did you grout immediately after painting (like same day)?
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Apr 4, 2024 01:31
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Cyrano4747 posted:FFFFFFFF……… It looks like you missed a spot
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Apr 4, 2024 01:33
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devicenull posted:The grout pulled the paint off? Did you grout immediately after painting (like same day)? Nope. Paint's been up about a week. The grout wasn't coming off the paint, hence trying masking. When I would scrub enough to get the grout up I'd end up leaving a lighter/shiny spot in the paint. The tape is what took the paint right off which is baffling as it's good tape that I've used before. The frog stuff. Probably the last time I use Sherwin Williams after this poo poo. I did a bedroom in a different color and was unimpressed with how the paint didn't blend when I'd patch a small gently caress up. Hence me having to repaint the whole loving bathroom after this if I don't want a visible patch. (edit: patch as in within a week of painting, not trying to match paint that had been on a wall for years) edit: sorry if this is all a little disjointed, mostly I'm just loving pissed and angry posting. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Apr 4, 2024 |
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Apr 4, 2024 01:38
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I love painting with sherwin, I love how it lasts and how you can clean it. It does. not. blend. I've never had it work well for that at all.
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Apr 4, 2024 01:44
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Cyrano4747 posted:The floor is crooked. The tile is there to replace some really lovely wooden trim (you know the pre-painted stuff at Home Depot? That. Exactly that) that was sponging up any water that got on the floor and rotting. It just needs to be reasonably water resistant, not water tight. Sounds like the only fix is to go down to the studs
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Apr 4, 2024 02:15
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brugroffil posted:Sounds like the only fix is to go down to the
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Apr 4, 2024 02:18
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I like the shade of blue, it is quite nice.
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Apr 4, 2024 02:28
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Cyrano4747 posted:And then, to add insult to injury, the tape took off huge swaths of paint. gently caress. edit: quality tape, not cheap poo poo. you should have learned from me! you gotta use the pink tape if you're putting it in top of paint!
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Apr 4, 2024 16:11
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Cyrano4747 posted:The thing that kills me about this is that most of this poo poo isn't hard to learn. Basic homeowner stuff might lead to a certain amount of Gary-ing, but at the end of the day it's to to watch a few youtubes and just do your best fixing that cracked tile or the gross spot that collects water next to the shower. Plus there's just a ton of dumb chore poo poo that you just need to suck it up and do. Clear the gutters. Paint exterior wood once every few years. Re-caulk the shower if it's getting grody. Just the basic simple poo poo that you do to keep entropy at bay. Nobody has time to learn all that poo poo when we're all working and commuting for 60 hours a week and driving the kids around all evening. Like yeah it's not that hard to caulk and sew and cook blah blah blah but when you add it all up it's way more than most people can handle unless you live the cushiest of lives.
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Apr 4, 2024 16:27
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PerniciousKnid posted:Nobody has time to learn all that poo poo when we're all working and commuting for 60 hours a week and driving the kids around all evening. Like yeah it's not that hard to caulk and sew and cook blah blah blah but when you add it all up it's way more than most people can handle unless you live the cushiest of lives. Uh, no, it's really not. Like, yeah, we can construct a situation where someone is working two jobs and has a three hour commute each day and needs to do a poo poo ton of childcare because they're a single parent etc. But people outside of those extremes aren't living "the cushiest of lives." The key for your average person who has one job, doesn't have some hell commute where they're spending many hours on the road each day, etc. is to just accept that poo poo poo poo has to happen in your free time. Nothing I described is some insane skill that takes many hours of practice to master, most of it boils down to simple technical chores that you just have to bite the bullet and spend a couple hours figuring out and executing. Caulking your bathroom is an obnoxious chore, but that's what it is. A kind of lovely Saturday afternoon spent doing that instead of whatever you'd prefer to do in your limited leisure time. You also have to have a certain acceptance that you're going to have jobs that take multiple days because of that limited time, and you're going to be living in a minor construction zone if all you're able to devote to it is an hour or two a day. But that's only big things. The vast, vast majority of the kind of thing I'm talking about is doable in under three hours of work, usually an hour or so.
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Apr 4, 2024 16:43
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Cyrano4747 posted:
Good example of this: I've had the shitter from one bathroom on a tarp in the living room for the last three weeks because I'm having to re-do a bunch of poo poo in there due to plumbers ripping it apart. I'm taking the opportunity of having to pull all the fixtures out anyway to generally refresh some poo poo and fix a bunch of annoying crap that has been bugging me since we moved in. And then, once this bathroom is functional, I'm going to do it all over in the other bathroom which currently has plastic sheeting stapled over holes in the dry wall. See the paint job up above that I'm still pissed about. It's been ongoing for probably a month now, and it will probably be another month before I get the second bathroom done. The whole thing beginning to end is going to involve dry wall repair, re-caulking a shower, repairing a sink drain that's been hosed for a while, removing lovely wooden trim, putting in a tile border, light repair to the tiles in the floor (mostly due to Gary doing a piss poor job of installing them in the first place), priming and painting the walls, refurbing the toilet with new internals, fixing the toilet flange, reinstalling the toilet and sink, caulking the toilet and sink, taking down the door so I can sand and re-paint it, and finally installing some new bathroom hardware like towel racks. None of that is particularly skilled labor at your basic homeowner level. My tile work, for example, is fine but I'm not going to install expensive poo poo to make a mosaic or do something where I need to rely in it being watertight or anything like that. I'm an idiot, a white collar office drone who wasn't taught any of this poo poo growing up. I also don't have oodles of free time after work, and between commutes and work I've got a 50 hour hole out of my week and other family caregiver type responsibilities that eat up a bit more. But for the last month I've been grabbing an hour or two where I can, knocking out one of those steps, and pushing the project forward. If someone is truly so hosed by life that they don't have a single spare hour in the day to watch a youtube on how to lay a bead of caulk and fix their shower they have my deepest sympathies, because they are in a lovely position that has likely been made far, far worse by the innumerable failings of our society. But that's not most people, and the people who can handle basic homeowner tasks aren't living the cushiest of lives.
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Apr 4, 2024 16:56
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PerniciousKnid posted:Nobody has time to learn all that poo poo when we're all working and commuting for 60 hours a week and driving the kids around all evening. Like yeah it's not that hard to caulk and sew and cook blah blah blah but when you add it all up it's way more than most people can handle unless you live the cushiest of lives. Agree I make somewhere in the top 50th percentile, so does my wife, we WFH and we only have one kid, and she doesn't have any disabilities or stuff to make our life exponentially harder. By parenting standards I've got it very very easy. The only thing we argume about is like, who is going to drive the kid 3 minutes to daycare, and who's turn it is to do the dishes. Pretty good I spent like six hours putting together one of those kallax cube storage systems plus 25 of those cubes that go in it. That's my whole Saturday night. I left the house to go pick it up around 6pm and when I got it unloaded and fully assembled and mounted to the wall with the boxes in it it was almost 1am. Each of those flat pack boxes has between 4 and 6 bolts holding them together. If I had to do it again I'd just pay a task rabbit or an IKEA approved installer to do it. I also paid some guy $400 to replumb the kitchen sink because the drain looked like Gary had been drinking when he "I can do it for cheaper" and I just don't have the energy to become a plumber with best practices, finding out what pipe glue is the best, and then refixing it when it starts leaking Between being sick 30% of the time from daycare, and giving my kid attention every waking hour, I'm just loving shot. When I see handyman trucks parked outside of my neighbors houses I slow down and take pictures of the phone number painted on the side of the truck Kids are exhausting
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Apr 4, 2024 17:46
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