Reuben's Home Inspection Blog

Unfortunately, the easiest way to add insulation to just about any place in your home is to install fiberglass batts.  Fiberglass batts are typically the worst insulation for any job, as I complained about in a recent blog.  I mentioned at that time that I would follow up with a blog about the o...

Fiberglass batts are a poor choice of insulation for most applications, yet this still seems to be the insulation of choice for most handy homeowners.  I'm been complaining about fiberglass batts for a while now, and for good reason. Fiberglass batts are more expensive.  I stopped by the Maple G...

  Are super expensive furnace filters really worth the extra money? The main job of a furnace filter is to keep big stuff from getting in to the furnace's heat exchanger or the air conditioner's air coil and clogging things up with dust, pet hair, and other big stuff.  They're not intended to pur...

I recently had a featured post here on AR about invasive testing vs infrared scanning on stucco homes, where I concluded that invasive moisture testing is the only reliable test method for stucco homes in Minnesota.  Russel Ray, a San Diego home inspector, wrote an opposing post which was also f...

  I’ve heard of home inspectors in Minnesota offering infrared scans on stucco homes as an attractive non-invasive alternative to standard invasive moisture testing.  Here at Structure Tech, we recently started offering infrared inspections, but stucco scans are something we will never offer. Fir...

If you're tired of dealing with ice dams and you've decided to finally get your attic re-insulated, please read this first.  You might save yourself a lot of time and money. Over the past two months, a large portion of my business has been ice dam inspections in Minnesota.   For most of these in...

After the recent collapse of the Metrodome roof, the collapse of a hardware store roof in Glenwood, and a recent Super bowl commercial from Allstate, some Minnesota homeowners are starting to wonder if they should be worried about their own roofs.  In December, I even received a question on the S...

I love recessed lights, but even the best ones create a ridiculous amount of heat in attics, which can lead to ice dams.  Until I started performing infrared inspections in attics, I never quite grasped how much heat recessed lights contributed to attics, but now my eyes are wide open.  The main...

    We've been using an infrared camera at random home inspections for the past several months, and we've decided that this is by far the coolest home inspection tool in the world.  Thankfully, we've also figured out how to add real value to our home inspections with the use of this camera.  Toda...

A few times each year, I have a friend or family member ask me about Chinese drywall.  Drywall imported from China during the big building boom after hurricane Katrina had high levels of elemental sulfur, which caused problematic hydrogen sulfide emissions. What?  You don't know what that stuff ...