My furnace is 17 years old and it's starting to give me problems. I've had my furnace stop working about once a year for the past few years, but thankfully every issue I've had has been quite simple to fix, mostly because I know a few basic troubleshooting steps.
I was going to write a blog post describing some of these troubleshooting steps for furnaces, but I decided that a video might be a little easier to follow along with. This video is by no means a complete troubleshooting guide to furnaces, but it's a nice introduction to furnace troubleshooting. I cover the most basic things to check, and I discuss some common error codes that furnaces may give. For detailed troubleshooting and repair steps for furnaces, check out http://www.grayfurnaceman.com/ . This is the best web site I've found that deals with furnace troubleshooting and repairs.
I'm no heating contractor so I don't know the exact numbers, but I'd guess that a large percentage of "no heat" service calls could be addressed by homeowners if they just knew where to start. That's what this video is all about. Oh, and while watching the video, please ignore the part where the camera goes out of focus. I don't know why that happened, but you're not missing anything. Without further ado, here's the video:
Reuben Saltzman is a second-generation home inspector with a passion for his work. Naturally, this blog is all about home inspections and home-related topics in the Twin Cities metro area. In addition to working at Structure Tech, he is also a licensed Truth-In-Sale of Housing Evaluator in Minneapolis, Saint Paul and several other cities.
FLIR has a relatively new pocket-sized infrared camera with all of the bells and whistles of the much larger and expensive E6. It boasts the same resolution as the E6 but it's a fraction of the price at only $699. With these features and benefits, this camera ought to put the E6 out to pasture.
I recently had an informative email exchange with a past client that highlighted the discovery of some especially nasty water damage behind the stone siding at her townhome. I was curious about the events that led up to the discovery, and it all came down to one person being very curious and very persistent. I thought she had such a great story to share that I invited her onto our podcast, which you can listen to below.
Stone siding might be the most problematic siding that we come across as home inspectors. This stuff is failing left and right all over the country, and most of time the homeowner has no idea when their wall is a rotted mess behind the siding.
Take a look around any room full of home inspectors, and you'll notice we look a lot alike. We are almost all white men with a lot of gray hair. It's as if there's an unwritten rule that you have to be an old white guy to be a home inspector.
