Open Web Floor Trusses

open web floor trusses

These are open web floor trusses. Can you see how advantageous it is to use them? Do you see how they save time and money when installing ducts, pipes, and electric cables? Copyright 2023 Tim Carter

Open Web Floor Trusses - They're Superb

I’m sure you’ve driven across or seen large steel truss bridges that are made by combining any number of huge steel beams into right triangles that interconnect. When viewed from the side they look like open boxes with a diagonal piece of steel extending from one corner of each box to the opposite corner. Imagine how strong this design is to be able to hold countless tons of concrete roadways, cars, trucks, and even giant train locomotives!

Did you know this same technology can be used in your home, room addition, light-commercial building, etc? You can have these same trusses built using wood. I had my first experience with open web floor trusses made from standard 2x4s about forty years ago. Ever since that day when we installed these in a room addition, I was sold on the many benefits.

These magnificent trusses spanned almost 24 feet with no bearing walls beneath them. The homeowner wanted a giant basement recreation room with no silly support posts in the middle of the room.

The homeowner got involved in the design early in the planning stage. He was a giant of a man. He insisted that there be no bounce in the floor as he didn’t want to feel like he was walking on a spongy trampoline. The room above the basement recreation room was his master bedroom. He told me he wanted that floor to feel like he was walking on a thick concrete floor.

open web floor trusses home on mdi

These trusses are almost identical to the first ones I used back in the mid-1980s. These trusses form the second floor of my daughter's home in Downeast Maine. Copyright 2023 Tim Carter

The software used by the engineers at the truss manufacturing plant allowed the designer to make the trusses stiffer than an old-fashioned starched shirt collar. To achieve the desired strength with virtually no deflection, the trusses ended up being about 26 inches tall. The homeowner had a huge grin on his face when he walked across the plywood subfloor and there was no bounce whatsoever.

Another advantage floor trusses bring to the table is their flatness. Each one is a clone of the other. Normal dimensional floor joists are not always the exact same dimensions and often they have crowns in them. A crown is a hump in a floor joist. Problems arise when you install one floor joist that is flat next to a floor joist that has a 1/2-inch-tall crown. All of a sudden the floor is not flat once you apply the sub subflooring.

All of the mechanical trades love open-web floor trusses. You never have to drill any holes. HVAC installers and plumbers are able to install pipes and ducts just about anywhere in the trusses since the vast majority of the cross-section of each one is wide open space.

You don’t have this flexibility with other engineered floor joists. I draw plumbing riser diagrams each week for homeowners, architects, builders, and plumbers. Several times in the past year I’ve had to call the customer and tell them that it’s virtually impossible to pipe a bathroom as drawn by the architect. The plan calls for wooden truss joists and these products don’t allow holes to be drilled in specific locations close to where they rest on a bearing wall. You never ever have this problem with floor trusses.

To put some of this in perspective, allow me to share a more recent story. Months ago a woman hired me to be her virtual general contractor for a house that’s being rebuilt in the northern forests of Maine. I was able to get involved in the early stages of planning and recommended using floor trusses for the lower level of the house.

These trusses were very long and rested on the foundation walls and two huge steel i-beams. Because she couldn’t find a plumber she trusted, she talked me into installing all the plumbing in this house. The vast majority of the plumbing is on the first floor and the required pipes are nestled within the trusses.

I can tell you that the trusses have saved many days of labor since I didn’t have to drill through any joists. The open design allows for faster installation of the pipes. What’s more, without the tall trusses, many of the pipes would have had to hang below the ceiling in the garage. Normal dimensional lumber or i-joists wouldn’t have provided enough room to accommodate the pipes and the required pitch to get them to drain.

Using trusses saved this woman thousands of dollars and she gets to have a nice smooth drywall ceiling in the garage with no exposed pipes. The alternative would have been clumsy soffits built at an extra cost to hide the pipes that hung below traditional floor joists or engineered floor joists. The radiant heat installer and electrician are extremely happy. The trusses will allow them to work much faster.

Fire Fighters, Trusses, and Engineered Lumber

Firefighters dislike floor trusses, roof trusses, and just about all engineered lumber. Houses built with any engineered lumber product are frowned upon by firefighters because they fail and collapse much sooner in a fire than traditional dimensional lumber. When these products fail in a fire, firefighters can become one with the fire. The Internet is littered with sad stories of those who have died when floors and roofs have collapsed.

My suggestion to them is to stay outdoors and do their best to fight the fire. Everyone knows just about all firefighters would go into a burning home to save a person still alive even if the house had engineered lumber products. That said, sound judgment needs to be used to risk more loss of life if the fire is roaring and the chance of survival from heat or smoke is minimal or non-existent.

Fire departments can have the building department notify them each time a new house has these products. If it takes longer to extinguish the fire using a defensive posture, it just becomes a greater loss for the insurance company.

Firefighters know they have a moral obligation to rescue someone who is alive and trapped inside a burning building built with engineered lumber products. Should they do this, they do it at great personal risk.

Building departments are aware of all engineered lumber in new houses. They should notify fire departments of what is in each new home. This information can be logged and as a fire crew is in transit to a fire, they can check the database to decide how they're going to fight the fire to ensure the firefighters are as safe as possible.

Column 1537

Hold Down Anchors and Through Bolts

hold-down anchor bolting wood post to concrete pier

Hold-Down Anchor and Through Bolts - This is a hold-down anchor. You can use one to make a secure connection between a deck post and a concrete pier. After the photo was taken, the curved washer under the bolt was removed and turned upside down and sideways. These anchors work well to secure a garden shed preventing it from blowing away. Copyright 2023 Tim Carter

Hold Down Anchors and Through Bolts - Strong Connections

I live in rural New Hampshire. When I drive to town, I pass by a house that has a very tall outdoor shed. Every now and then impressive Nor’easters lash us with high winds and rain. We also get our fair share of powerful gales.

After one of these storms hit, I always wonder if the shed is going to be on its side or maybe in the neighbor’s side yard. I say this because I’ve been blown over before carrying a piece of plywood on a windy day.

Have you ever thought about the best way to secure a deck to a concrete pier? What about securing a large barn to a foundation? Tall barns present a huge face to wind and can blow over in a windstorm.

Vertical Hold-Down Anchors

There are all sorts of metal connectors you can use to ensure things you build don’t blow away. I happen to prefer vertical hold-down anchors that are bolted to a substantial concrete pier with a 5/8-inch diameter anchor bolt. Long galvanized lag bolts pass through the metal anchor and are tightened securely to the wood post leg.

It’s really important to use approved galvanized bolts that are rated for direct contact to treated lumber if you’re using these bolts outdoors. When these bolts get wet and the metal is in contact with treated lumber that contains copper as a preservative, a chemical brew is created that can corrode steel and iron that’s not protected. You studied this in high school chemistry class when galvanic reactions were discussed.

Roofing Nails are Not Structural Fasteners

I see mistakes made all the time when I view photographs sent to me by homeowners like you. One big one is using roofing nails to attach joist hangers on decks or inside a home. Roofing nails are not structural fasteners. They work well to secure shingles to roofs or tar paper to wall and roof sheathing but that’s about the extent of their usefulness.

It’s far better to use approved galvanized small structural screws to attach joist hangers to beams and ledger boards. A drill/driver can be used to drive these rapidly. If you’re going to use nails on the joist hangers, be sure to use approved heavy-duty structural nails that have the proper coating to prevent corrosion. You don’t want the nails to rust years from now and have the joist fail.

Structural Screws

Three-inch-long coated screws are easy to find at home centers and hardware stores. These are excellent fasteners to attach two pieces of wood that you never want to come apart. Over time, some nails can lose their holding power as lumber shrinks. A screw that’s not overdriven will hold the two pieces of wood together for many decades.

3 inch long timber screw

This is a structural timber screw. Note the bugle-shaped head. It also sports special knerels above the threads that drill a pilot hole for the screw shaft that doesn't have threads. Copyright 2023 Tim Carter

Large-diameter timber screws with large bugle-shaped heads are now mainstream. These can be used much like the lag bolts of old. Some have very aggressive coarse threads and are perfect for securing larger dimensional lumber together.

Lag Bolts

Lag bolts are heavy-duty screws. The usually have a hex head. I feel they're inferior because it's easy to overdrive them. When this happens, they lose a considerable amount of holding power.

lag bolt

This is a standard lag bolt. You'd use a flat washer up against the hex head. These come in a wide variety of diameters and lengths. In a marine environment outdoors, use stainless steel ones! Copyright 2023 Tim Carter

Through Bolts are Best

Through bolts are, in my opinion, the gold standard. A through bolt is different from a lag bolt or large timber screw. The through bolt requires that you drill a hole completely through the two pieces of lumber you want to secure to one another. Lag bolts only require a small-diameter pilot hole. Some timber screws require no pilot hole.

through bolt with washer and nut

This is an example of a through bolt. They come in a wide variety of diameters and lengths. You must use a washer at the nut end! Copyright 2023 Tim Carter

This method of connecting two things together is so good it's what's been used for well over 100 years. Ships, bridges, structural-steel building skeletons are all held together with through bolts. Years ago they were called rivets. Rivets were used to connect massive plates together for the hulls of ships like the Titanic and Lusitania. But for decades now actual high-strength steel bolts and nuts have been used to connect steel beams together.

The hole diameter should match the diameter of the bolt shaft. This requires you to hammer the bolt through the lumber. Once the bolt passes through the pieces of wood, you slide a flat washer over the threads then rotate a nut onto the threads. A wrench or socket on a ratchet is used to tighten the nut and pull the pieces of wood together.

This makes for a stronger connection than you’d achieve using a lag bolt. Lag bolts can be over-tightened by an inexperienced person. When this happens, they lose a significant amount of holding power. For a through bolt to fail, the entire bolt, washer, nut, or bolt head has to be pulled through the lumber. It’s either that or the bolt has to shear off. Through bolts offer great peace of mind and many structural engineers specify them.

Structural Engineer Inspection

I once had to use 1-inch-diameter through bolts to secure rafter ties at the bottom of rafters on a steep 17/12 pitch roof. The architect had specified these. Little did I know that he had arranged for an inspection by a local structural engineer once I had framed the roof.

One day the engineer showed up at the job site unannounced. I knew him and we were friends. He said, “Tim, do you mind if I borrow two of your adjustable wrenches?” I obliged and he proceeded to back off the nuts on a few random connections. He was testing to see if I had taken a shortcut by drilling a larger hole through the lumber. Trust me, it’s no easy chore to install long 1-inch bolts through a 1-inch hole in southern yellow-pine 2x12s!

I had drilled 1-inch holes and after inspecting about four bolts, he gave me an A+ grade on my framing. Make sure you do the same as I did each time you install through bolts. Don’t be tempted to take a shortcut. If you want to talk to me about structural problems or any other conundrum you face, just go to: https://go.askthebuilder.com/coaching

Column 1536

How to Stop Water Flooding Into Your Home

building set too low in ground retaining wall and parking lot

How to Stop Water Flooding - This veterinarian office foundation was built so low into the ground they had to build a retaining wall to keep the fill dirt off the siding. It should have never passed inspection. Copyright 2023 Tim Carter

How to Stop Water Flooding Into Your Home - Set Your Foundation High

Water is both your friend and your foe. You need it to live, your plants and landscaping need a sip, and if your pets are like my stunning American Dirus dog that looks like a dire wolf, they need lots of water. Water is also used to build your home. But once your home is built, you don’t want water coming through your roof, your siding, your windows, or overtopping your foundation or slab. Homeowner insurance agents will tell you water is involved in a vast majority of claims.

Days ago I had to stop by my veterinarian’s office. I’ve been there before several times but I never really thought about how low the building was built into the ground. It’s so low that on the south side of the building, the builder had to erect a 2-foot high retaining wall one foot away from the building. If this wall had not been built, the wood-frame wall would be covered in dirt 20 inches below ground! That’s insanity. What’s more, it’s a distinct building code violation. How this building passed inspection years ago is a mystery.

The problem also exists to a smaller degree on the east wall of the building. the soil is just below the lowest course of cedar-shake siding. Once again, this is a disaster waiting to happen and a code violation. At the bare minimum, six inches of foundation should be visible between the bottom of the siding and the top of the soil against the foundation.

Propane Tank Explosion

This past spring a neighbor on my street had to make an expensive repair that cost over five figures. It was a new house that I saw built over the past eighteen months. When they set the foundation forms, I knew there might be a big problem on the back wall. A large hill extends up behind the house and the soil is very shallow. Rainwater or snowmelt rides across the top of the granite bedrock like an amusement park roller coaster goes down the first big hill.

Sure enough, we had a huge storm one night. Overland water cascaded down the hill aimed straight at the back wall of the house. The builder had the ground sloped ever so slightly towards the house believe it or not. Water from the roof poured onto the ground as gutters are often not used here in New Hampshire.

The water created a river that started to erode the ground as it ran around the house heading towards the nearby lake. It didn’t take long for it to cut a 4-foot-deep channel that was 5-feet wide. It almost exposed the house’s propane tank and it did expose the propane pipe that extended to the house. If a rock had pierced this pipe during the flood event, it might have caused a massive explosion. Three years ago a husband/wife couple I know were killed instantly in a propane explosion caused by a landslide at their home.

I could tell you no less than ten other stories about houses I know of that are built too deep into the ground. I could share tales of how errors like this have caused untold emotional and financial suffering. Instead, I think it’s best to share how to avoid problems like this.

Purchase a Great Lot

The first piece of advice is to think long and hard about purchasing a lot or land where a steep hillside is close to the location of the house. Ideally, you’d like to purchase a lot where the house can be built on a very small rise or high spot on the land where all of the ground around the house slopes away. Get my checklist that helps you buy the best lot.

The model building code used across the USA stipulates that the ground on all sides of your home should slope down at least six inches in the first ten horizontal feet away from the house. More slope is better and more foundation exposed is better. The first two houses I owned were built in the early 1900s and had 30 inches of foundation exposed above grade!

If your foundation is too low, you can sometimes adjust the grade to meet the code’s minimum standard. This assumes your lot has enough natural slope to your property lines. Swales or shallow ditches with a slight amount of slope are created that transport overland water to the lowest spot on your lot.

You have the best chance of success when building a new home. I urge you to get involved early in the process. Create a simple illustration showing how the top of your foundation or slab should be at least 18 inches higher than the highest point of land within ten feet of the foundation. Doing this you’ll discover if you have 8 inches of foundation exposed after the house is built that the fill dirt around the foundation will drop 10 inches when it is feathered out to that high spot.

foundation height above grade sketch

I’m also available by phone or video call to assist you with water problems or any other conundrum you face. The link opens in a new window.

Column 1535

How to Unclog Drains in Minutes

pipe wrench, drain cleaning snake and gloves

A pipe wrench, an inexpensive 50-foot metal drain-cleaning snake, and some gloves might save your bacon and $500.00. Copyright 2023 Tim Carter

How to Unclog Drains in Minutes - Save Hundreds of Dollars

I’ve been a master plumber for over four decades in addition to building and remodeling homes. I was attracted to plumbing because it’s a fascinating three-dimensional puzzle of interconnected drain, waste, and vent pipes. Most are invisible behind the walls and ceilings in your home. I also love drawing riser diagrams that show all these pipes. You need one of these to obtain a plumbing permit. Go here - opens in a new window -  if you need me to draw your riser diagram.

riser diagram gray water

Here's a riser isometric drawing showing the separation of gray water from black water in a home. CLICK or TAP HERE to have me draw your riser diagram.

Poor Pipe Layout Creates Clogs

Drain pipes of all sizes in your home can clog for many reasons. It’s vital the layout of the pipes have as few changes of direction as possible so the wastewater gets out of your home with minimal friction loss. One hopes your plumber installed the pipes with sufficient slope so the water and solids make it to the city sewer or your septic tank with no issues.

If the pipes are not at fault for clogs, then it’s often human error or oversight that creates a clog. For example, your kitchen drain and even the primary building drain may be clogged with grease. I’ve seen grease clogs that run for twenty feet. The pipe is choked off with a disgusting semi-solid mass that resembles a shortening you might use for baking.

Grease is a Major Clog Cause

You can prevent grease clogs with just a small amount of effort. Start saving paper towels that you might use to dry your hands or use to clean a countertop. Once dry, store them in a box under your sink. Use these towels to sop up grease from plates, pans, skillets, bowls, etc. Toss these grease-soaked towels in the garbage.

After you wash grease-covered items, run hot water in your sink for one minute. Better yet, fill your sink with hot water and then pull out the stopper. This massive amount of hot water fills the entire horizontal branch arm pipe that drains your sink. As the water cascades down the vertical stack it creates a turbulent whirlpool that rinses any liquid grease off the sides of the pipes. Just as the sink drains out, flush a nearby toilet to try to force all the water into the city sewer or your septic tank.

Cosmetics & Hair in Bathroom Sinks

Bathroom sinks commonly get clogged with hair and cosmetic ingredients. Quite often the clog is located in the short pipe between the bottom of the sink and the p-trap below in the cabinet. The sink stopper and the control rod that makes the stopper go up and down are choke points within the tailpiece pipe just under the sink.

It’s easy to remove the control rod by turning a nut on the tailpiece pipe. Once you have the rod pulled out, you can pull the stopper up. Be prepared to be grossed out. The black biofilm goop needs to be cleaned off the stopper mechanism as well as the inside of the pipe between the sink and the p-trap. Use a long bottle brush that’s just slightly larger in diameter than the drain pipe.

Put a piece of duct tape over the hole where the control rod entered the tailpiece. This will prevent water from entering your cabinet as you run water in the sink while you make the bottle brush go up and down. Check your progress with a flashlight until the drain pipe is nice and clean.

High-Quality Toilet Paper & Low-Flush Toilets Create Clogs

High-quality toilet paper mixed with low-flush toilets is another common source of clogs. Drain pipes in older homes were designed decades ago knowing that toilets of old would send 3.5 gallons of water into the system to transport the waste. Now you have less than 50 percent of that. Remember your high school physics? Force equals mass time acceleration. The water mass has been reduced by half so the force of the water moving down the pipes has, by default, been reduced as well.

Low-flush toilets, in my opinion, should have never been thrust upon all of us. A vast majority of the USA doesn’t have a water shortage. Cities with municipal sewage treatment plants put back into the river the same amount of water each day as is being taken out upstream for drinking water. If you choose to live in a place where it rarely rains, then you can use a low-flush toilet. As for me, I’d give my eye teeth to have back my old toilets.

DIY Drain Cleaning

Should you have a substantial clog in the 4-inch primary building drain in your crawlspace or under a concrete slab, you can often remove the blockage in the pipe. You just need a pipe wrench, a 50 or 100-foot drain-cleaning snake, and a great pair of gloves. There are plenty of videos on YouTube that show you how to use a manual drain-cleaning snake. If you have no luck, then call in the pros who have power drain augers.

If tree roots are causing your clogs, read my past columns that show you how to stop the tree roots from entering your pipes. It’s a DIY trick that I’ve used for years that works every time. Here are the columns. They all open in new windows:

How to Stop Tree Roots

Tree Root Removal in Sewer Lines

Magic Small Pipes Kill Tree Roots

tree roots sewer line sketch

The red vertical lines are small 1.5-inch PVC pipes. Fill them with copper sulfate crystals and hot water and no more tree roots sewer line problems! Copyright 2018 Tim Carter

Column 1534

All Wars are Bankers Wars

All Wars are Bankers Wars

Publisher Note: All that follows was copied and pasted from a PDF file I received from Ric, one of my newsletter subscribers. I do NOT own the copyright and hope the original author is pleased that I'm sharing far and wide what he wrote.


The above is an old video from 2013, but it contains some excellent information. History is not what we have been told.

Important truths have been withheld from you and millions of others. Half-truths are WHOLE LIES.

The video above features a 2013 documentary, "All Wars Are Bankers Wars," written and narrated by Michael Rivero.

As explained by Rivero, all wars can be traced back to the private central bankers.

"The more you study this, the more you’ll realize that ALL wars are wars for the private central bankers," he says. American soldiers have fought and died in wars initiated for no other purpose than to force private central banking on nations that didn’t want them."

Usury — The Birth of Money from Money

The philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC) once said:
"The most hated sort of moneymaking, and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural use of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest.

And this term ‘usury,’ which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money, because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of making money, this is the most unnatural."

What Aristotle described, is the business model of all central banks. They make money out of thin air by lending money at interest, and in the process, they drain a nation of its wealth. The first bankers war example illustrated in the film is that of the American Revolution, fought between 1775 and 1783.

Thirteen of Great Britain’s North American colonies revolted against British rule and established the sovereign United States of America, founded with the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

The American Revolution was fought to prevent Central Banking

However, as explained by Rivero, the American Revolution was instigated by the King George III Currency Act, which forced the North American colonists to conduct business using Bank of England banknotes borrowed at interest:

"If you go back to the writings of Ben Franklin ... here’s a direct quote: ‘The refusal of King George III to allow the colonies to operate an honest money system, which freed the ordinary man from the clutches of the money manipulators, was probably the prime cause of the revolution.’

That's Ben Franklin. Our public schools don't teach that because you're not supposed to know that the bankers were really behind the American Revolution.

After the revolution, the United States adopted a revolutionary radically different economic system in which the government issued its own value-based currency, so that private banks couldn't skim the wealth of the people through interest-bearing banknotes. So the American Revolution was fought primarily to free the American people from King George the 3rd's Currency Act ..."

When Corruption Fails, Threats are Made

Unfortunately, it’s easy to corrupt people, and the central bankers know that better than most. Just 1 year after Mayer Amschel Rothschild uttered the now-infamous quote, "Let me issue and control the nation's money and I care not who makes the laws," private bankers succeeded in setting up a private central bank, called The First Bank of the United States.

This bank was founded in 1791, and within 20 years, it had gutted the U.S. economy while enriching the bank owners. As a result of its obvious failures, Congress refused to renew the bank’s charter. The intention was to return to a state-issued, value-based currency, for which Americans would not have to pay any interest. In response, Nathan Mayer Rothschild issued the following threat:

"Either the application for renewal of the charter is granted, or the United States will find itself involved in a most disastrous war."

Despite that threat, Congress held firm and refused to renew the bank’s charter. Nathan Mayer Rothschild railed against the decision, stating:

"Teach those impudent Americans a lesson! Bring them back to colonial status!"

And that’s exactly what Great Britain did — or tried to do. The Rothschild-controlled Bank of England financed Britain’s War of 1812, the aim of which was to either a) recolonize the United States and force Americans to use Bank of England banknotes, or b) plunge the nation into so much debt, they’d have no choice but to accept a new private central bank.

"And the plan worked," Rivero says. "Even though the United States won the war of 1812, Congress was forced to grant a new charter for yet another private bank, issuing the public currency as loans at interest.

Once again, private bankers were in control of the nation's money supply and cared not who made the laws or how many British or American soldiers had to die for it. And once again, the nation was plunged into debt, unemployment and poverty by the predations of the private central bank.

In 1832, Andrew Jackson successfully campaigned for his 2nd term as President under the slogan, ‘Jackson and No Bank.’ True to his word, Jackson succeeded in blocking the renewal of the charter for the Second Bank of the United States of America ...
Shortly after the charter for the Second Bank of the United States expired, there was an assassination attempt on Andrew Jackson. It failed when both pistols used by the assassin, Richard Lawrence, failed to fire.

Later on, Lawrence explained the motive for the assassination by saying that, with President Jackson dead, money would be more plenty. So, it was an assassination motivated by the interests of the bankers."

Debt Is an Enslavement System

The reason you never learned this in school is because the public school system is subservient to the bankers, who want certain history to remain hidden. When the

Confederacy seceded from the United States, the bankers offered to fund Lincoln's efforts to bring them back into the union — at 30% interest.

Lincoln replied that he would "not free the black man by enslaving the white man to the bankers," and instead issued a new government currency, the greenback. The following quote from the London Times is a telling one:

"If this mischievous financial policy, which has its origin in North America, shall become endurated down to a fixture, then that government will furnish its own money without cost.

It will pay off debts and be without debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous without precedent in the history of the world. The brains and wealth of all countries will go to North America. That country must be destroyed, or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe."

France and Britain considered invading the United States in support of the Confederacy, but were held at bay by Russia, which came to the aid of Lincoln’s Union. 4 The Union won the war, but Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. The interest-free greenbacks were pulled from circulation, and America was again forced into banknotes borrowed at interest from private central bankers.

In 1913, the private central bankers of Europe met with their American collaborators on Jekyll Island, Georgia, where they formed a new American banking cartel. Rivero explains:

"Owing to hostility over the previous banks of the United States, the name of this 3rd bank was changed to the Federal Reserve, in order to grant the new bank a quasi governmental image. But in fact, it is a privately owned bank. It's no more federal than Federal Express ...

So 1913 proved to be a transformative year for the nation's economy. First with Congress’ passage of the 16th income tax amendment, and the false claim it had been ratified. Here's another direct quote [from U.S. District Court Judge James C. Fox, in Sullivan v. United States 2003]:

‘I think if you were to go back and try and find and review the ratification for the 16th amendment, which was the Internal Revenue, the income tax ... you would find that a sufficient number of states never ratified that amendment.’"
Later that year (1913), President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act, in exchange for campaign contributions — a decision he later regretted.

In 1919, Wilson wrote:

"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country, a great industrial nation is now controlled by a system of credit. We are no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."

World War I and II were Bankers' Wars

According to Rivero, the real reason behind World War I — which began as a squabble between Austria, Hungary and Serbia and only later shifted to focus on Germany — was Germany’s industrial capacity, which posed an economic threat to Great Britain, the currency of which was in decline due to its lack of focus on industrial development.
After Germany’s defeat, the private bankers seized control of Germany’s economy, which resulted in hyperinflation. After the collapse of the Weimar Republic, the National Socialist party came into power and issued a new state currency not borrowed from central banks.

"It was based on a unit of value, not a unit of debt. Freed from having to pay interest on the money in circulation, Germany blossomed and quickly began to rebuild its industry. It was an amazing transformation to see. The media called it the German Miracle.

Time Magazine lionized Hitler for the amazing improvement of life for the German people and the explosion of German industry. They even named him Time Magazine's Man of the Year in 1938.

And then, once again, Germany's prosperity and freedom from a private Central Bank loaning the public currency at interest became a threat to other nations and other powers.

Germany's state-issued value-based currency was also a direct threat to the wealth and power of the private central banks around the world, and as early as 1933, they started to organize a global boycott against Germany to strangle this upstart ruler who thought he could run his nation without a private central bank."

World War II was a repeat of World War I, in that quashing Germany’s economic and industrial power was the chief goal. In a March 1946 note from Winston Churchill to Harry Truman, the reason for World War II was made clear:
"The war wasn't only about abolishing fascism, but to conquer sales markets. We could have, if we had intended so, prevented this war from breaking out without doing one shot, but we didn't want to."

According to Rivero, Churchill also made the following statement in his book series "The Second World War":
"Germany's unforgivable crime before World War II was its attempt to loosen its economy out of the world trade system and to build up an independent exchange system from which the world finance couldn't profit anymore.
We butchered the wrong pig."

Our Military is the ‘Muscle’ for the Bankers

Rivero goes on to tell the story of how, in 1933, Wall Street bankers recruited Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler to lead a coup against the U.S. government, with the intent of installing a a fascist dictatorship. At the time, President Roosevelt’s "New Deal" threatened to redistribute wealth to the working middle class, which they were intent on preventing.

The idea was to get rid of the U.S. government in its entirety, and install a Secretary of General Affairs who would answer to Wall Street alone, and not the people. Butler pretended to go along with the plot and then exposed it to Congress before it could be carried out.

Roosevelt tried to have the plotters arrested but was told that if any of the central bankers were sent to prison, their remaining Wall Street buddies would deliberately collapse the economy and blame Roosevelt for it.

Butler, in his 1935 book "War Is a Racket" also confessed the following:

"I spent 33 years and 4 months in active military service as a member of our country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major General, and during that period, I spent more of my time being a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street, and for the bankers.

In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I'm sure of it. Like all members of the military profession, I never had an original thought until after I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups.

This is typical with everyone in the military service. Thus, I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in.

I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909 through 1912.

I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China in 1927, I helped see to it that Standard Oil wound its way unmolested.

During those years I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals and promotions. Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate his racket in 3 city districts. I operated on 3 continents."

The Why Behind the Kennedy Assassination

In 1963, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who understood the predatory nature of private central banking, signed Executive Order 11110, which ordered the U.S. Treasury to issue a new public currency called the United States note. These banknotes would not be borrowed from the Federal Reserve but rather created by the U.S. government and backed by silver.

This represented a return to the system of economics the United States had been founded on. "All told, some $4.5 billion went into the public circulation, which eroded interest payments to the Federal Reserve and loosened their control over the nation," Rivero says. 5 months later, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, and the United States notes were pulled from circulation and destroyed. Rivero continues:

"Following Kennedy's assassination, John J. McCloy, president of the Chase Manhattan Bank and president of the World Bank, was named to the Warren Commission. Now, I don't care how good a banker he is, he's not qualified to be investigating a murder, which is what we were told the Warren Commission was all about ...

We all know that the Warren Commission was there to cover up what was going on. And we can safely presume that John J. McCloy's presence on the Warren Commission was to make sure the American public never got even a hint of the financial dimensions behind the assassination."

The Rise and Fall of Bretton Woods

In July 1944, at the end of World War II, once it became obvious that the Allied forces were winning and would be able to dictate the post-war political environment, the world economic powers met at Bretton Woods in New Hampshire to hammer out what became known as the Bretton Woods agreement for international finance, which was ratified the following year.

Under this new agreement, the U.S. dollar replaced the British pound as the global trade and reserve currency, and signatory nations were obligated to tie their national currencies to the dollar. As explained by Rivero:

"The nations that ratified Bretton Woods did so on 2 conditions. The 1st was that the Federal Reserve would refrain from over-printing the dollar as a means to loot real products ... from other nations, in exchange for ink and paper.

It was an imperial tax imposed by the U.S. economic system on the rest of the world. That assurance of no over-printing was supposedly backed up by the 2nd requirement, which was that the U.S. dollar would always be convertible back to gold by the U.S. government at $35 an ounce.

Now, of course, the Federal Reserve, being a private bank and not answerable to the U.S. government did start over-printing paper dollars, which were sent to other nations around the world, and under Bretton Woods, they had to send back products and produce and raw materials at full value.

Much of the perceived American prosperity in the 1950s and ‘60s was the result of these foreign nations having to send real raw materials, goods, and produce back to the United States in exchange for these little pieces of paper ... because they were forced to accept these paper notes as being worth $35 per ounce of gold.

Then, in 1970, France started looking at this huge pile of printed paper notes sitting in their bank vaults, for which real French products like wine and cheese had been traded, and it notified the United States government that they would exercise their option under Bretton Woods to return all those paper notes for gold at the agreed upon $35 per ounce exchange rate.

The problem was that the United States had nowhere near the gold to redeem all those paper notes. So, on August 15, 1971, Richard Nixon temporarily — nudge, nudge, wink, wink — suspended gold convertibility of the U.S. Federal Reserve notes. This ... effectively ended Bretton Woods and many global currencies started to delink from the U.S. dollar."

Land Grabs and the Birth of the Petro Dollar

Nixon’s suspension of Bretton Woods also created another problem. Rivero explains :

"The United States had been collateralizing their loans — money borrowed from other governments and foreign investors — with the American nation's gold reserves, and with the awareness that there wasn't enough gold to redeem all the Federal Reserve notes, lenders to the U.S. were starting to wonder: Did the U.S. government have enough gold to cover ... their outstanding debts?

Foreign nations began to get very nervous about the loans to the United States and they were understandably reluctant to loan any additional money without some form of collateral.

So what Richard Nixon did, is he founded the environmental movement, with the EPA and its various programs, like wilderness zones and roadless areas, inherited rivers, wetlands, and all these other programs, which all took vast areas of public lands and made them off limits to the American people who are technically the owners of all those lands.

But Nixon had no concern for the environment. The real purpose of this land grab under the guise of the environment was to pledge those pristine lands and their vast mineral resources as collateral on the outstanding national debt.

The multitude of all these different programs was simply to conceal the scale of the land grabbing, the collateralization of the American people's heritage ... Almost 25% of the entire nation is now locked up by these EPA programs and pledged as collateral on government borrowing.

Now, with available lands for collateralization already in short supply, the U.S. government embarked on a new program to shore up sagging international demand for the dollar. The United States approached the world's oil-producing nations, mostly in the Middle East, and offered them a deal in exchange for only selling their oil for dollars.

The United States would guarantee the military safety of those oil-rich nations, and the oil-rich nations would agree to spend and invest their U.S. paper dollars inside the United States, particularly in U.S. Treasury bonds, which would be redeemable through future generations of US taxpayers.

The concept was labeled the Petro Dollar. In effect, the United States, no longer able to back the dollar with gold, was now backing it with other people's oil, and that necessity to keep control over those oil nations to prop up the dollar has dominated America's foreign policy in the region ever since."

Wars and Murders to Prop up the Petro Dollar

Over time, America’s focus on finance over manufacturing led to a situation in which oil-producing countries were flush with U.S. cash, but the U.S. wasn’t manufacturing or selling anything that these nations wanted to buy. Europe made better cars and aircraft and didn’t allow genetically engineered foods.

In 2000, Iraq demanded the right to sell its oil for euros, and in 2002, the United Nations agreed they could do so under the oil-for-food program. A year later, the United States re-invaded Iraq, Saddam Hussein was publicly lynched and Iraq's oil could once again only be sold for U.S. dollars.

A similar scenario took place in Libya. In 2000, Muammar Gadhafi proposed the adoption of a new gold-backed currency, the gold dinar. He then announced that Libya’s oil would only be sold for gold dinars. As noted by Rivero:

"This move had the potential to seriously undermine the global hegemony of the dollar. French President Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly went so far as to call Libya a threat to the financial security of the world. So, the United States invaded Libya under the guise of supporting a popular rebellion.

They brutally murdered Gadhafi — apparently, because the object lesson of Saddam's lynching had not been enough of a message — imposed a private central bank and returned Libya's oil output to dollars.

According to General Wesley Clark, the master plan for the dollarization of the world's oil nations included 7 targets: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Iran, and Venezuela ...

What is notable about those original 7 nations targeted by the U.S. is that none of them are members of the Bank of International Settlements. This is the private central bankers' private central bank located in Switzerland.

That meant that those 7 targeted nations were deciding for themselves how to run their nation's economies, rather than submitting to the international private central bankers.

Now ... the bankers' gunsights are on Iran, which dares to have a government central bank and sell its oil for whatever currency they choose. The war agenda for Iran is ... to force Iran's oil to be sold only for dollars and to force them to accept a privately owned central bank.

You have been raised by a public school system and a media that constantly assures you that the reasons for all these wars and assassinations are many and varied. ‘We're bringing democracy to the conquered lands.’ We hear that a lot when actually the U.S. hasn't. The usual result of a U.S. overthrow is the imposition of a pro-business, pro-Wall Street, pro-U.S.-dictatorship."

The Real Agenda of the Bankers

In closing, the real agenda of the central bankers is a simple one. It’s to rob people of their wealth and enslave them to this predatory system by creating a false sense of obligation.

"That obligation is false because the private central banking system, by design, creates more debt than money with which to pay the debt," Rivero explains. "There is no way out, the way it's set up. It's impossible to escape as long as you're playing by their rules. And you need to understand that private central banking is not science. It is a religion."

It's a set of arbitrary rules created to benefit the priesthood, meaning the bankers, and is supported only because people believe this is the way it's supposed to be. The fraud persists with often lethal results only because the people are brainwashed into believing that this is the way life is supposed to be and no alternative exists or should even be dreamt of."

The Path to Freedom — Abolish Central Banks

The reality is, we do not "need" central banks. Not in the slightest. A country, or even individual states, can create their own currency and run their own banks, either without usury, or with very low interest rates. That’s the path to freedom, and all that is required is the decision to do so, and the guts to carry it through.

Ideally, captured nations around the world would break free all at once, as this would best guarantee everyone’s safety. As noted by Rivero:

"Private central banks do not exist to serve the people, the community, or the nation. Private central banks exist to serve their owners to make them rich beyond the dreams of Midas, and all for the cost of ink, paper, the right bribe to the right official, and the occasional assassination.

Behind all these wars and all these assassinations ... lies a single policy of financial dictatorship. The private central bankers only allow rulers to rule on the promise that the people of a nation be enslaved to the private central banks.

Rulers who do not go along with that will be killed and their nation invaded by those other nations still enslaved to the private central banks. The bankers themselves don't fight these wars. Their children are not in these wars.

This so-called ‘clash of civilizations’ you are being told about by the corporate media, is really a war between banking systems, with the private central bankers forcing themselves on to the rest of the world, no matter how many millions must die for it ...
Now we're going into the third world war in the nuclear, bioweapon age. That is very dangerous. We have to ask ourselves. Are the private central bankers willing to risk incinerating the whole planet to feed their greed? Apparently.

So, you, as parents, as siblings, as spouses, need to ask yourself, ‘Do you really want to see your loved ones in uniform killed and crippled, all for a bank balance sheet? ...

As long as private central banks are allowed to exist ... there will be poverty, hopelessness, and millions of deaths in endless world wars ... The path to true world peace lies in the abolition of all private central banking everywhere, and to return to state-issued, value-based currencies that allow nations and people to become prosperous through their own labor and development and efforts."

How to Plan an Outdoor Firepit

firepit created using granite blocks

This is my daughter’s brand new never-used firepit. She didn’t ask for my advice and I think her plastic chairs might melt if the fire gets too big. Copyright 2023 Tim Carter

Outdoor Firepit Planning Tips - Don't Get Too Close!

Autumn is my favorite time of year. I love the eye candy Mother Nature hands out here in the great Northeast USA. Add the fragrant aroma of a crackling outdoor fire feeding on seasoned oak and you have, in my opinion, the perfect outdoor setting. Breathing in a light wisp of this aromatic elixir takes me on a time-travel trip to my Boy Scout campouts, cooking on an open fire, and roasting marshmallows.

Two Kids Only One Asks For Advice

This past year two of my children built new firepits. My son’s was part of a new clay paving brick patio project. My oldest daughter was finally able to get her entire yard landscaped. She incorporated a stunning granite firepit on one of the uppermost tiers of the backyard. I know this is hard to believe, but I’ve yet to sit around either one to enjoy a late-afternoon fire.

You may not think you have to do much planning for a firepit. If so, you might make the mistake my daughter made. While the firepit is the correct diameter, 4 feet, the outer circle of gravel where you sit is too small. There’s less than 2 feet between her composite plastic chairs and the edge of the granite stones that surround the pit. She didn’t ask for my input in the planning phase.

My son did ask for my advice. Having built quite a few firepits for clients and having three firepits of my own, I know a thing or two about how hot fires can get and how close you should be so that your clothes don’t ignite or the soles of your shoes become softened globs of rubber!

One day while we were finished laying patio brick, my son asked, “Dad, can you give me a few ideas about my firepit? How big does the gravel pad need to be so the chairs don’t end up in the grass?”

I took a pencil and a piece of cardboard and started to make a quick sketch. The first thing we decided on was the diameter of the firepit. It’s my opinion that a 4-foot-diameter one is ideal. This measurement should be the outside of the fire-containment border no matter what material you use.

Beware of Thermal Shock

There are quite a few ways to create a fireproof ring. You can use a steel collar, simple small boulders, or precast concrete brick you might get at a home center. Be aware that real rocks and precast concrete will almost always crack over time. They don’t do well with the rapid and repeated thermal shock should you build a roaring fire on a cool or cold afternoon. For this reason, if you use those materials and cement them together, there’s a very good chance you’ll be tearing your firepit apart and starting over in a few years.

How To Size the Firepit Area

While my son and I were enjoying a lemonade, I completed my sketch. I started with a 4-foot circle then created a concentric ring around the firepit with a 30-inch space. Next, I drew a 4-foot-wide concentric circle that would be the area where chairs would be placed. I finished with a smaller 18-inch-wide circle of space behind the chairs.

When you add up all those numbers, you discover you need a circle that has a 10-foot radius. While you may scoff at this, I urge you to take one of your lawn chairs out onto your lawn and re-create the above dimensions I shared with my son.

You may not need 4 feet for your chairs because you’ll use a different style than the Adirondack chairs my son intends to use. But trust me on the 30-inch space between the chair and the outer edge of the firepit. Get too close to a roaring fire and you’ll soon be backing up.

Smoke, Embers, and Permits

Put some thought into the location of your firepit. Think about the wind. Do you have a prevailing wind direction in your yard? If so, embers and smoke can bother you or your guests that are downwind of the firepit.

Think about nearby combustibles. The last thing you want is to start a neighborhood grass or wildfire. Trust me, the Internet is littered with stories about fires caused by popping embers that ignite dry grass, low bushes, dry leaves, and mulch on fire.

Use common sense, lots of it, when you do have a fire. Have a pre-charged garden hose just feet away from the firepit. If something goes wrong, all you have to do is squeeze the handle and put out the spreading fire. If a hose is not practical, then have several 5-gallon buckets of water nearby. Be responsible and enjoy the warmth and aroma of a magical outdoor fire.

Finally, check with your local government. You may have to get a fire permit each year. I have to do this here in New Hampshire. In some locations, you’re not able to have a fire in the middle of the day. Volunteer fire department resources can be stretched very thin during the primary daylight hours.

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How to Lose Money With a Builder

excavated earth in back yard tree stump removal

This mess was created months after signing the contract. A lack of communication and poor plans led to a huge expensive change order. Copyright 2023 Tim Carter

How to Lose Money With a Builder - It's so Easy!

What you’re about to read might be life-changing for you. It doesn’t matter if you’re building a new home, adding a room addition, remodeling a kitchen or bath, or even building a deck. I shared the following with my 25,000 free newsletters subscribers a day ago and many responded saying I need to share it in my national column that you read. My subscribers told me that it might collectively save tens of millions of dollars. Let me know if you feel the same.

Two weeks ago a husband and wife who live in Saratoga Springs, NY hired me to come to their home. Weeks before that I had done a video conference call with them to help them light a fire under their contractor. Six months ago they had signed a contract with him to build a retaining wall and an exterior detached garage. New house siding and windows were also part of the project.

Months went by with no work happening even though they had given the contractor a huge five-figure deposit. Had I been involved back in April, I would have made sure that there would not be a deposit since no special-ordered materials were required for this job. Instead, the contract would have had a bi-weekly or monthly payment schedule tied to an itemized bid. The homeowners would pay for completed satisfactory work as it progressed.

When I arrived at the house, I discovered the homeowners weren’t sure about a number of things. They didn’t know exactly what type of pavement was going to be put down between the house and the retaining wall. They weren’t sure about stairs from the pavement up to the lawn above the retaining wall. They weren’t sure about positive drainage in the rear of the house but were very concerned about it.

The wife showed me some video of water flowing down the hill behind the house causing a waterfall over a small wall in their front yard. My college degree is in geology with a focus on hydrogeology. Hydrogeology is all about surface and subsurface water. Believe me, I know how to ensure a house or basement stays as dry as an old bone.

After a brief meeting with the homeowner, I set up my optical transit. This tool allows me to shoot extremely accurate grade marks. I transferred these marks to the house siding as a roadmap for the workers to follow. An hour later the builder, his project manager, and the excavator showed up.

We had a productive meeting of the minds and the project manager told me I was the first person to come up with a great plan on how to handle all the water coming off the hillside. Other experts before me wanted to install all sorts of field drains and complex underground piping. Field drains tend to clog in a storm when you most need them.

My plan was to install a large linear French drain behind the new retaining wall. This hidden gutter in the ground would capture all subsurface and overland water flow that was aimed directly at the house. Piping would route this water to the edge of the property and then send it into Lake Saratoga just across the roadway.

I also drew up a plan while there to show how the paving behind the house had to be slanted with enough slope so all overland water flowed by gravity to the walkway between the house and the new detached garage.

It’s important to realize all of this should have been done back in April by the contractor. It would have taken but an hour or two of his time. This planning should have been crystal clear to the homeowners. But alas, it wasn’t.

Days after I left, the contractor dropped a $30,000 change order on the homeowners to do all that I said above. They were astonished and stunned because all of this work should have been included in the original six-figure contract sum.

They negotiated with the contractor and reduced the change order to just under $20,000.00. I feel there should have been no change order. All that I saw there was plain to see back in the early spring. There were no latent defects hiding behind the grass on the hillside.

What is the teaching moment here? Each week I do autopsies on failed projects like this. It’s disheartening to me. There are several common causes of financial and emotional disasters like this.

For starters, you may be one that places too much trust in contractors. STOP DOING THIS. You need to make sure early in the planning process that you understand everything that’s going to happen. Stop hoping things will happen. Make sure the plans show every item that’s going to happen.

If you don’t understand the plans, many homeowners don’t - ask for clarification. There is no shame in admitting you don’t understand. If you advance into the contract phase with a foggy vision of what you think might happen, you could lose tens of thousands of dollars.

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Plumbing Drains and Vents Tutorial

pvc drain pipes double vanity rough in

These are the drain pipes for two side-by-side sinks in a bathroom. The vertical pipe centered above the two horizontal pipes is a mysterious vent pipe. Copyright 2023 Tim Carter

Plumbing Drains and Vents Tutorial

Yesterday we had a plumbing emergency in my own home. The main drain pipe under the basement floor got clogged with toilet paper. The culprit is a newer low-flush toilet in a basement bathroom. I’ve been a master plumber since 1981 and I used my flexible drain-cleaning snake to clear the clog. While I shoved the snake into the cleanout, I chastised myself for not buying fifty or one hundred old-fashioned toilets made before the 1.6-gallon toilets became the new nasty normal.

Let’s talk about water before we go any further. In particular, let’s talk about Mother Nature’s plumbing system. It just so happens my college degree is in geology with a focus on both geomorphology and hydrogeology.

Cities are Near Rivers For a Reason

Study a map and you’ll discover that most big cities are located on major rivers. You’ll almost always discover that most small towns are on smaller tributaries. Water is the most basic need for life after all.

You may live in a city where you get your water from a public water system. That water almost always comes from a nearby river, large lake, or deep wells that tap into the massive hidden underground rivers that flow slowly through thick beds of sand and gravel.

If you’re a city dweller, your drain pipes connect to the city sewage system. Have you ever thought about what happens when you flush a toilet in your home? The instant the water starts to swirl in the toilet bowl, an equal amount of water enters the toilet tank. I call it the circle of water.

No Water Shortage - Don't Live in Deserts!

On a large scale, for every gallon of water taken from the river, lake, or aquifer in your city, a gallon of water almost always is put back into the body of water where your huge sewage treatment plant disgorges treated sewage back into the river. If this didn’t happen, the sewage treatment plant would flood from having too much sewage and no place to put it.

The same thing happens at my house in rural New Hampshire. Each time I flush my toilet, I get 1.6 gallons of water from my well and an equal 1.6 gallons of water flows back into the ground via my septic system. This is why we should still have 3.5-gallon flush toilets. There is no water shortage. Water is constantly put back into the system. But I digress.

Pipes Get Bigger Like Rivers

The drain pipes in your home should mimic what Mother Nature does. Lazy rivers have a current as the water travels towards the sea or ocean. While it might not seem like the water can move objects at this speed, it can with great efficiency. The drain pipes in your home should slope at least 1/8th inch per foot of run. For even better flow, shoot for 3/16ths of an inch.

But beware, don’t put too much slope on a pipe. If a drain pipe or sewer has too much slope, the liquids in the pipe can outrun the solids.

The plumbing drain pipes in your home mimic Mother Nature with respect to sizing. Think of how smaller streams connect to larger ones. This happens because the accumulating water needs a channel with more capacity. Sinks in your home use a small 1-5-inch-diameter pipe, while toilets require a 3-inch pipe. All of the fixtures in your home typically connect to a large 4-inch pipe under your basement floor, house slab, or in your crawlspace. This large pipe runs to your septic tank or connects to an even larger 6-inch pipe that runs under your property to a city sewer.

Vent Pipes Let Air In

What about that pipe that pops out through your roof? That’s a vital part of your plumbing system. It’s a vent pipe. You may have more than one that protrudes up through your roof.

Many homeowners think plumbing vent pipes are like smokestacks in factories. They think the purpose of the vent pipe is to expel sewer gas outside. While that does happen each time the wind blows across the top of the vent pipes, the real purpose is to provide replacement air back into the plumbing system each time you send water to the septic tank or sewer system.

When no water is running in your home, the plumbing drain pipes are just filled with air. As soon as you flush a toilet, you introduce 1.6 gallons of water into the pipes. This water displaces the air and often pushes it ahead of the rushing water just like an elevator pushes air in an elevator shaft. Surely you’ve felt this air pouring through the closed doors standing down in the lobby of a high-rise building.

If you don’t have air enter the system via the vent pipes, your plumbing system goes hunting for the air. The weight of the water from a flushed toilet is so powerful it can suction the water from a nearby shower, tub, or sink trap to get the needed air. Perhaps you’ve heard this slurping sound before and not connected the dots. If you hear that sound, it means your vent pipes are clogged or your plumbing pipes were not installed correctly.

While I can’t come to your home to unclog your pipes, I can offer you help with your plumbing dilemmas. Just schedule a consult call with me. link opens in a new tab I can be your virtual plumber.

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How to Avoid Construction Delays and Arguments

stone retaining wall

Showing a contractor a photo like this allows you to communicate exactly how you want your retaining wall to be. Think of all the photos you could put in a PDF document that would prevent arguments! Copyright 2023 Tim Carter

How to Avoid Construction Delays and Arguments - It's So Easy

Just before writing this column, I did a phone coaching call with a man who lives in northwest Ohio. He wanted me to tell him if it was possible to build a room addition to his son’s home. The dealbreaker was the addition had to match the existing house so it would appear as if the addition was part of the original house.

My answer was, “Yes, it’s possible to achieve this goal, at least when one looks at the house from the street. You may have trouble sourcing the exact brick and the siding on the second story.”

As the call progressed, I shared the things he had to do before he even thought of signing a contract with a remodeling contractor. The biggest obstacle was to discover if any local zoning laws would prohibit the addition. The man was unaware this could be an issue.

I explained to him what setback lines are. These invisible lines on most parcels of ground create a border around your house. Think of this part of your lot as green space or a moat around a medieval castle. I informed him he must go to the local zoning office to determine if there was enough space between his son’s house and the side yard setback line to build the addition.

Dick Bruder - Mr. Organized

Next up I shared the story about Dick Bruder. Years ago I picked up my phone and Dick was on the other end. “Tim, it’s Dick Bruder. I want you to build my pool house. Can you come over for a pre-build meeting this weekend?”

I thanked Dick for his trust and of course agreed to stop by his home. I had attended countless meetings like this in the past and I felt this one would be much of the same. Dick would have lots of questions and I’d have lots of answers. It turns out Dick had but one question.

Dick met me at the door and showed me into his dining room. There on the table were two large binders. I didn’t think much of it at the time. He sat down and said, “Tim, I’m excited to work with you and can’t wait to get this project started. I asked you to come to the meeting so we could get on the same page.”

He then added, “I work at a large company and do lots of international travel. If you have any questions about this project, I’m not going to be able to take your calls during the day. That’s why I created these binders. Please open yours and look at it.”

I did as Dick instructed and lo and behold I was dumbstruck. As I turned each page, I discovered everything that was missing from the architect’s drawings was in the binder. Every single product that was to be used in the project was already selected. Every paint color was specified. The actual paint chips were glued into the binder.

It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. My first thought was, “Holy tomato, this is going to be the most profitable job I’ve ever done.” Why? I’d not have to waste any time waiting for a homeowner to make a decision and there were going to be no change orders! What’s more, I knew exactly what the customer wanted down to the exact hardware to use and even the color of the tile grout!

Dick finally asked me after a pregnant pause, “Tim, what do you think? Do you have any questions?” I think I said something about how he was the first customer to ever have thought everything out. He loved that answer, and it was true.

“Well, Tim, then all I need to know is how you get paid.” I told him my policy was to just give him a bill at the end of each month for the work completed and for all material that was on site. I just asked that he pay the bill within five days. “That’s not an issue. You’ll always have your money on the fifth day.”

The job took about three months from start to finish. I only talked to Dick one time and he called me. The topic of the discussion was about parking arrangements at the top of his driveway. His wife was upset that she had to sometimes wait for us to move our trucks if she was in a hurry to leave.

It turns out the job was my most profitable one ever and Dick and his wife were very happy with the finished product. There was no drama, and happiness ruled the day.

You don’t have to create an old-fashioned binder with today’s technology. You can create a stunning PDF file using a word-processing program. Create a page for each room. On that page drop in screenshots of the exact look you want. You can get these photos from manufacturer’s websites, Pinterest, or search engine image searches.

You can put links in the document to the specification pages of all the products. This way all the rough-in dimensions will be known. You can put in close-up photographs to show the level of craftsmanship you expect. This PDF file should be created at the same time you draw plans. Each bidding contractor should get a copy of both. Both of these should also be an addendum to your contract with the remodeler/builder you choose to work with.

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