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It's a great day at Michael Leavitt & Co Home Inspections!!! It's late Monday afternoon and it's great to be back in my own time zone after an exhausting family trip to the AII Annual Meeting in Reno, Nevada. It is cold and currently snowing outside. What a bitter change from early last week when our plane left Salt Lake City for Reno. Today's MMM will be rather brief (and also should be renamed MAM--Monday Afternoon Marketer!). I look forward to receiving your feedback on the Annual Meeting trainings so that I can include them in future MMM's.
AII™
ANNUAL
MEETINGReno, Nevada, is still recovering from the invasion of AII™ Home Inspectors. Participants came from Nevada, California, Washington, Oregon, Utah, Arizona, Wisconsin, Idaho and Montana. What a great gathering of inspecting minds. Newcomers and old sages rubbed shoulders and learned from well-prepared instructors. We had presentations from Simpson Strong Ties, Vanguard, and Louisianna Pacific siding. Talk about learning right from the horses mouths. It was great to be able to ask the horse directly.
We had some great presentations put on by our own members in marketing, basements, electrical and mobile homes. Bill Schwan came from Montana and enjoyed both technical and marketing information. He felt his trip was extremely beneficial to attaining his goals for the coming year. He contributed to the sessions and socials and left the event with a trunk load of ideas.
It was great to see all of the new and seasoned members step up to the plate to run for leadership positions. A new ballot will be arriving in your mailboxes with a full selection of candidates. Along with the names will be information about the candidates and their reasons and goals for wanting to fill a leadership position. Please disregard the previous ballot. Our membership is full of talents and abilities and a strong spirit of fellowship and helping prevails. I respect greatly those men and women who are willing to give of their time and energies for the Association's membership.
If you missed this year's meeting, we are planning a mid-year meeting and the dates will be soon forthcoming.
"TACKIEST DRESSED INSPECTOR"The "Cuss Can" social at the Annual Meeting went very well this year. As a new addition to the social, we held a special judging for different visual categories. Everybody attended and shared inspection war stories. We had hoped everybody would bring their gear and participate. Instead, most opted to be judges of the event. The winner of this years "1998 Tackiest Dressed Home Inspector" is Sylvan Stenge. Sylvan, from the Sacramento area, came to the social sporting his inspection attire. His tool belt looked good, but the uniform consisted of a cheap t-shirt, levi's and sandles. He was mocking other inspectors and doesn't normally dress in that fashion, but for one hour he truly was AII's "Tackiest Dressed Inspector."
REPORTING
STANDARDS
A highlight for me at the Annual
Meeting
was the Standards and Report Writing session. This was
held in lieu of
the Friday night Leadership meeting. I will devote
more information later
on the actual details in future MMM's.
I was really impressed with our
group of Home Inspectors. Never
have I seen a group of Home Inspectors
agree on anything the way
that AII Home Inspector's do. Usually it is
bickering and one-up-manship
instead of what we witnessed. We witnessed
solidarity and great
information sharing.
At our hour long Standards meeting, we discussed the reason why we report on items. We also searched to see if our motivation to report items was from our Standards of Practice requiring us too, or whether it was because our Rules of Thumb recommended we do so. It was fun to see both the well-seasoned inspectors and the newer inspectors search for the answers. For those who attended it was an information-packed hour. Those who attended will also be able to answer the following AII ™ Standards of Practice challenge.....
AII™
Standards of Practice
Brain TeaserIf a home has interior laundry hook-ups but no washing machine is present during the inspection, do our AII ™ Standards of Practice require us to test the washing machine water hook-ups or washer drain line?
If you think that you know the answer, please send along you response via e-mail. Please quote the proper section and verse in the AII ™ Standards of Practice along with your reasoning. If you weren't at the Standards meeting, this may be a difficult AII ™ Standards of Practice brain teaser.
Please Send Your Feedback. E-MAIL ME NOW!
TIF 7900
THERMOMETERThe highlight tool shared at the AII™ Annual Meeting was the TIF 7900 Low Temperature Infrared Thermometer with Laser Sighting. This newest, expensive Home Inspector gadget is not for everybody. Neither your inspection method or your inspection bank account will benefit from this tool and it certainly does put a hit to the pocketbook.
The
TIFF 7900 sells for $345 from
the Professional Equipment catalog
(www.ProfessionalEquipment.com). It
can be purchased directly
from TIFF for $299. I continued to search the
web and discovered
a car mechanics tool supplier site
(www.virtualautoparts.com/quiktemp.html)
that sold it for $249. This is
the Car Quest site and they sell
it to mechanics to test coolant in the
car's radiator, etc.
For those of us that took the "Mechanical Inspection" certification training at the AII™ Annual Meeting, this tool is a must have. The beauty of the instrument is it's ability to take accurate temperature readings within just one second. In a Mechanical Inspection, the inspector is required to take the following temperature readings.....
From my perspective, I cannot afford the time or the price of the left behind mechanical thermometers when doing mechanical inspections. I asked Bill Ball how many he had left behind over the years and he said at least 10 to 20. At $6 a piece he has already left up to $120 in el cheapo units behind. Now the real question is whether you actually need the laser version. The answer is flatly NO.
The drawback of this model thermometer is the 3 to 1 testing zone. At 3" away from an object the unit will measure the temperature in a 1" circle. At the same time, if you shot a beam 10' away from a heat register you will be testing a 3.33 feet radius circle. This is many times larger than the 12" x 6" heat register. Hence, your reading will be way off. This will require you to walk over to the register and place the thermometer close to the desired testing object. At that range, the laser beam is not needed.
The best news is that the already good deal of $249 for the laser unit is only $149 without the laser. So if you can't justify the $249, maybe you can with the extra $100 savings. I have to admit that the laser is cool. It comes in real handy on client walkthroughs and during AII™ marketing presentations. Keep in mind that the laser pointer can be purchased much cheaper as a single tool.
Now for those of you with bigger pocketbooks (much bigger), there are better thermometers. Most are gun looking contraption, but there is the T220. It runs $545 and has a remarkable 33 to 1 ratio. It's two big drawbacks are it's high dollar ticket and it's slow reading time. At $296 more than the laser unit I own and $396 more than the non-laser unit, I think I can walk over to a register. It is 50% slower than my TIFF 7900. It takes 1 1/2 seconds to finally get a reading. This may slow me down too much so I'll stick with my current unit (LOL). They also have a non-laser unit that runs $199, but it only has a 10 to 1 ratio.
Now let me say again that this is not a must-have tool. The infrared thermometer is a really cool tool. It does speed me up and saves me the waiting time to get a reading. It takes at least 2 minutes per reading with a mechanical thermometer. The same reading takes 1 second with the infrared thermometer. This is quite a time savings. You also never leave it behind on the inspection site because it never leaves your hand. You simply point and shoot. 1 second later it gives a reading and ten seconds after that the unit automatically shuts off. It is about the size of a mid- sized TV remote control.
It has also been asked how the unit reads the air. It does not. It reads the surface temperature of what is being heated by the air. In most cases that will be the heat register. Mechanical thermometers read the temperature of the metal that is being heated or cooled by the passing air. This heats or cools the fluid inside and the mechanical needle moves. The infrared thermometer reads the temperature of the solid surface. I can also quickly take temperature readings of flowing water from a hose bib, sink or tub spout. This is much more accurate than the "Ouch.... I burned my hand" test. I encourage you to consider this tool on your Christmas shopping list.
Next week's MMM will share more Annual Meeting info and post the minutes from the AII™ Board Meeting.
QUOTABLE
QUOTE: "It's
currently snowing like crazy and I don't even
want to go outside."
-- Michael Leavitt[Return to the Current Issue of the Monday Morning Marketer]
copyright 1998 Michael Leavitt & Co