10 Easy Ways to Save Money & Energy in Your Home

  According to  InterNACHI's Home Inspection Standards of Practice , home inspectors are required to inspect the gutters and downspouts as part of the roof portion of the home inspection.   www.HomeBossInspection.com www.FLBoss.com Some important factors a home inspector should consider include: that the guttering system is adequately sized to prevent runoff; that the gutters are free of rust, cracks and holes in order to prevent leaking; and that the downspouts divert water 4 to 6 feet away from the home's foundation.             A few inches of rain falling on the roof of a house can produce several thousand gallons of water runoff. This runoff must be channeled away from the home's foundation. Otherwise, the excess water can quickly saturate the soil surrounding the building and wick through the foundation to the interior. (See Figure 1 below.) Once inside, this moisture can lead to a variety of problems, incl...

Whether you're facing rising floodwaters or a wildfire that’s too close for comfort, many homeowners confront seasonal threats to their safety that force them to flee their properties, at least temporarily.  In the last three years alone, damage created by severe weather and natural disasters in the U.S. has reached the tens of billions of dollars, as well as caused hundreds of deaths. www.HomeBossInspection.com www.FLBOSS.com      In the fall of 2010, Boulder County, Colorado, experienced its worst wildfire in history with the Fourmile Canyon fire, which incinerated 135 homes in just three days after forcing 3,500 people to evacuate.  In the spring of 2011, a record 165 tornadoes were recorded in a 24-hour period in the South, killing more than 300 people across six states.  In April and May, the Mississippi River breached its banks in areas across six states that are home to many battles and graves of the Civil War, reaching levels not seen in 84...

Once you’ve made the decision to move your home office into a commercial space (and have already secured a location – see our other article on  Renting Versus Buying ), you’ll need to make a to-do and to-buy list in order to make your new office functional, with little lost time for productivity.  It will take two weeks to a month for packing and planning before you’re ready to move into your new space and open your doors for business.  To help ease that transition, consider the following checklist:  www.HomeBossInspection.com Utilities :   Make sure the power is turned on before you move in.  Commercial accounts may take more lead-time for service providers to get you up and running.    These may include: Phones:     Many small businesses are transitioning from landlines to exclusively cell phones for their obvious portability, but you may want to maintain a no-frills landline to make other local calls in orde...

What is a GFCI? www.HomeBossInspection.com A ground-fault circuit interrupter, or GFCI, is a device used in electrical wiring to disconnect a circuit when unbalanced current is detected between an energized conductor and a neutral return conductor.  Such an imbalance is sometimes caused by current "leaking" through a person who is simultaneously in contact with a ground and an energized part of the circuit, which could result in lethal shock.   GFCIs are designed to provide protection in such a situation, unlike standard circuit breakers, which guard against overloads, short circuits and ground faults.   It is estimated that about 300 deaths by electrocution occur every year, so the use of GFCIs has been adopted in new construction, and recommended as an upgrade in older construction, in order to mitigate the possibility of injury or fatality from electric shock. History The first high-sensitivity system for dete...