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AMERICAN CONSTRUCTION

SPECIALISTS & INVESTIGATIONS LLC

The hard truth about infrared

I recently had a real estate agent ask me if infrared was a good thing and should she recommend it to her clients, my answer was a definite maybe, here is why.

Every few years a new trend comes along that affects the home industry. These trends include mold, lead, radon, asbestos, moisture meters, microwave leak detectors and now infrared or thermal imaging. These trends come with the homeowners protection in mind, however there are always people there trying to make a quick profit from the latest trend.

Allow me to start by saying I am a home inspector and many of the home inspectors that

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MOISTURE IN CONCRETE SLABS POURED ON GRADE IN ARIZONA

You bought a new home, ordered your options and moved in. A year or two go by and you start rearranging the furniture. That’s when you noticed the odor. You lifted the protective mat under your desk chair and the smell made your eyes water or maybe you smelled it when you opened a closet door or an unvented room. Did you order a light colored vinyl flooring for your kitchen but now the floor has a darker color coming through? Maybe it has a grey or green tint, maybe it has a purple or orange hue or maybe it has bubbled or lifted off of the floor.

These problems and many others are caused by moisture vapor coming up through the concrete slab. This condition is occurring more frequently here

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Defective Construction Dispute Resolution

Your new home has cracks in the walls, the roof leaks and the doors and windows don’t close. You call the builder and they rush out only to look at the property and say, “Well your landscaping caused the problem. We will fix the cracks even though we don’t have too because we pride ourselves on customer service.” They perform repairs to the walls and adjust the window and leave. You call your landscaper and he tells you that there is no way the landscaping could have caused the issues since it is just colored rock. Then 6 months later the cracks start showing up again. You think the sky is falling and the builder says it’s not our fault and the battle begins. Usually the truth is somewhere in the middle.

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Thermal Imaging of Roofs

With all the rains we have been having across the country, roof leaks are not hard to find.
But how should a roof really be repaired. To you simply run to the local hardware store and buy some roof patch? Do you call a roofer and pay them to go on the roof and apply a bucket of mucket? What should a real repair entail?

To answer this question we need to look at what issues are caused by roof leaks.

1. It leaks. Duh, there is water dripping from the ceiling creating a slippery surface below. So a repair must stop the moisture from getting in. But is that all?

2. Insulation looses its R-Value when it is wet. That's right, if the roof leak soaked the insulation before it made it to the ceiling to drip on the heads of unsuspecting people, the insulation might as well not be there at all, in fact, no insulation would be better than wet insulation.

3. Wet insulation
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