It's a great day here in Orem, Utah! Well actually I'm hoping that it will be a great day in Orem, Utah, as the Leavitt family returns home after another one of their now famous FFT's. You must remember the FFT... This stands for Fun Family Trip. We had to remind ourselves that we were having a Fun Family Trip several times during the process.
It was time for Shelly to return to the land of her youth in Southern California and attend her 20 year high school reunion. Claremont High School's Wolfpack Class of 1981 was to reunite at the Pomona Sheraton for an evening of reminiscing. Sounds like fun on paper, but wait until you load 4 kids under 11, 1 nanny, 1 mother and 1 father inside a mini-van and travel 625 miles across the 107 degree desert....... Here is what we learned:
Shelly was apprehensive about visiting with old friends while in her current medical condition, but she had a wonderful time.
Please include your name so that proper credit can be given.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is announcing a recall of about 30,000 furnaces sold in California. Seven firms are offering to repair or replace certain furnaces, which were sold under their own labels, but were manufactured by Consolidated Industries Inc. The units involved are gas-fired horizontal furnaces equipped with steel "NOx" rods installed above the burners and are commonly called NOx rod furnaces. These furnaces pose a substantial risk of fire. CPSC has received 50 reports of fires associated with the 140,000 horizontal furnaces manufactured by Consolidated Industries Inc. No injuries have been reported. All the furnaces can be identified by the steel rods installed above the burners. The firms participating in this recall are Amana Company, L.P., of Amana, Iowa; Bard Manufacturing, of Bryan, Ohio; Carrier Corporation, of Syracuse, N.Y.; Goettl Air Conditioning Inc., of Phoenix, Ariz.; Goodman Manufacturing Company L.P., of Houston, Texas; Heat Controller Inc., of Jackson, Mich.; and The Trane Company, a division of American Standard Inc., of Tyler, Texas.
Private labelers sold these furnaces in California under the following brand names and model numbers, which are written on a label on an outside panel of the furnace.
Home, hardware and specialty stores, and independent contractors sold these furnaces in California from January 1983 through December 1992 for about $2,000. Consumers should check to see if their furnace is part of this recall immediately. If so, or for more information, consumers should call toll-free at (877) 347-6456 anytime, or contact the recall web site at www.furnaceinspect.com. Consumers should have the brand name, model number and serial number of their furnace available when they call or contact the web site. The recall program offers free inspection and repair of the furnaces. Consumers can elect to receive a new furnace, free of charge, except for installation costs. CPSC issued a safety alert warning about these furnaces in September 2000. Consolidated Industries (formerly Premier Furnace Co.), which is being liquidated under Chapter 7 bankruptcy laws, manufactured approximately 140,000 of these furnaces for sale in California between 1983 and 1994 under many different brand names. About 110,000 of these furnaces were manufactured and distributed under the Premier/Consolidated labels. They are not covered by this recall program. However, there is on-going private litigation which could enable consumers to recover at least some of their out-of-pocket expenses for replacement or repair of the Premier/Consolidated brand furnaces. For more information about the private litigation, call (408) 808-1410 or visit the web site at www.white-macdonald.com.
When the call comes from an attorney representing their client wanting you to inspect a house for structural defects, warped siding, roof deflections and interior wall deflections, will you be ready to accept the challenge?
I wasn't, but accepted the inspection anyway, knowing there is help out their amongst our AII™ membership! I then began the challenge of educating myself about what procedures to follow.
Like many A.I.I.™ Inspectors, I, too, had had many conversations "around the campfire" about the subject of Expert Witness Testimony. So, having the tools to ask others about their experiences (A.I.I.'s™ Hotline and Roster), I began to make calls. Then in April of 2001, A.I.I.™ had a great seminar on "How to Be an Expert Witness", after the fact, but never the less very helpful.
Jim Corbin in Washington had just gone through the experience and had great information to share.
Here are just a few of the important points to start you on your way to your "First Experience as an Expert Witness!"
My first and second experiences as an Expert Witness were both before the same Court/Arbitrator. I learned a great deal from both and enjoyed the opportunity to be a witness. It is a great feeling working with other professionals. A.I.I.'s training and educational seminars have been such a great experience for me both socially and professionally. I can't tell you how important it is to belong to the American Institute of Inspectors. We have such a really great group of people and so much expertise amongst our group. Everyone is always out there to help others.
Thanks to all of you that are participating in A.I.I.™ efforts to grow our organization and make it the very best Association in the industry!
As a side note - The first case was on a Manufactured Home and I still haven't heard about the outcome of the case, however, I was paid by the client/homeowner. The second case was last week and I will soon hear about the results as the lawyer lives across the street from me and assured me that I will know the outcome. I also got a really good debrief on my testimony and on his strategy for the case.
Both cases were completely different. I was hired to perform an inspection and then gave testimony about the inspection. In the second case, I had performed an inspection over a year ago and now was hired by my client and her attorney to give testimony about the report and the interpretation of my report.
As a result of the second case, I feel that it might be necessary for A.I.I.™ to add a clause to the Service Agreement or Inspection Report, stating, "that all recommendations made for further inspection/repairs by a licensed contractor be taken seriously." My client's attorney felt that if this clause were in the Report or Service Agreement, then the complainant would not have had even the slightest chance at winning the case.
I'll let you know about the outcome for this case!
Hello, Michael! As you are aware, for the last couple months, we have been trying to get Adobe to address a problem with intermittent missing text that occurs only with their new Acrobat version 5.0. We've established that this is a bug in their software and not 3D related. However, due to Adobe's lack of timely response on the missing text issue, we have in the meantime researched and found a development package that will let us include a non-Adobe third-party PDF writer with our software. It works well and we have already purchased it for re-distribution and integration into our software. This will be included as a new feature in version 3.1.1, due for release to subscribers shortly. This means ALL 3D users who upgrade will have this feature and users will no longer need to purchase Adobe Acrobat or another PDF writer to be able to produce emailable PDF files from 3D software. Also, there is an append option when printing, so users will be able to add report documents, covers, etc., to the PDF file when printing to it and don't have to do it separately afterward like they do in Acrobat.
We will also be letting Adobe know that their incompetent response is going to result in the loss of thousands of sales and upgrades for them. If you recently purchased Acrobat 5.0 primarily for use with 3D, you may want to see if Adobe will refund your purchase price. According to them, they usually do not refund 30 days past the purchase date. If beyond 30 days, it may be difficult to get the Sales Dept to make a special exception. So if you want to return Acrobat, I recommend you pursue this as soon as possible.
Additionally, we addressed a problem where printing to Adobe Acrobat causes the current folder to change so that 3D sometimes can not subsequently locate database information or the index document when printing again. This will no longer occur in the next program update, as we are making the 3D software manually reset the current folder again to the proper start-in location. This probably won't be an issue if not using Adobe, but we made the change anyway.
Wishing you the best, ====================== Donna Tarkowski 3D Inspection Systems donna@3dinspection.com 941-277-5853
I'm seeing very little if it in my area. I have some friends, however, who just built a new high quality custom house, and wanted to design it for flexibility in terms of future upgrading of high tech wiring, some of which may not even be on the market yet. They decided to run flexible plastic electrical conduit from a central point in the house to outlet boxes in each of the rooms. They made sure there were no sharp bends in the conduit so any kind of wire of cable could be easily pulled through it (this house happens to be on a slab). They also had a piece of heavy fishing line run through the conduits to use for pulling wire through. With the conduit in place, they can easily upgrade to whatever type of wire or cable they will need in the future with out having to install any that they may never use. Outmoded wires can easily be removed and replaced. Gary Holzbauer - Junction City, Oregon
Presence of frost on refrigerant suction line indicates a loss of refrigerant within system. Call a licensed air conditioning contractor for further evaluation and repair or replacement as needed. Carl Fowler the Dealkiller - Fort Myers, FL
Thermostat may be turned down to too low a temperature. This causes the freon gas to more easily turn to a liquid in the return (suction) line on its way back to the compressor. The compressor can only compress a gas. Freon in the liquid state cannot be compressed and the pistons in the compressor will be damaged attempting to force a liquid into a smaller volume! Richard Grisham - Las Vegas, NV
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