A home made bidet?

Sick and Wrong

Sometimes when doing home inspections I come across the most insane, macabre, or just plain sick and wrong sort of issues. I generally just groan and keep on moving, but later I go back and realize just how wrong they are. That happened today.

How to Bidet, White Trash Style

Now, bidets generally are something I don't see often, and they still amuse me. Bidets are like twitter. I don't get them. The whole "why" thing makes me scratch my bald head like a teenager playing scratch and sniff on a $5 lottery ticket.

Cleanliness is Next to, um, Insanity? 

So why someone would hook up a tee to the plumbing and run a hose over the floor, to a spray head located near the toilet? Here's my question for these folks: if you're that committed to "clean", what about all the contaminated water that doesn't find its way back into the toilet? You gonna use the sprayer to spray that somewhere?

So I passed it through my home inspection filter. It's a fixture. It's there and apparently functional. But it's not cool. I wrote it up as a potential leak. Bidets are not cool, but fake bidets? Kinda like fake cancer - nobody should have one.

Big O Adoration

So this isn't about home inspections, but many of you know that I hold customer service as near to my heart as well managed roof drainage and clean window wells.

I was talking to a friend of mine. Chet at Big O in Lehi. What a guy - but I digress. He has been advised to write his own book on customer service - a move I wholeheartedly support. Nobody gets it like this guy. He's trying to avoid stepping on my toes because he knows I wrote "Creating Passionate Customers", but I know that his book can only improve the quality of literature in the field, and I'd love to work with him toward success. So I tried to reassure him to move forward and remain completely unconcerned about stepping on any toes that may belong to me.

Taking from a Giver

I told him that I often feel like a taker around him, because I'm always going in to ask favors, or discounts, or pick his brain. He always gives. And I always get from him. No one else does this - just him.

I told him that. As a humble way of trying to beg his way out of being complimented, he went into a paragraph on the phone about how he is a taker in another way. He takes people's wisdom, their experiences, their character, their thoughts, and incorporates what he can learn from everyone he serves into his life. Sorry Chet, but that's not being a taker. That's being a very cool guy. I told him that his attempt to ditch my praise was only one of the most powerful paragraphs I had heard in my life.

Giving Until You Have Everything

From my taker's perspective though, I suspect that he's right. He does take more in all his giving than anything taken by the takers. His soul is full, and he's a pure pleasure to be around. I hope to learn more and take from this giver in a new way - the way he takes. It will improve my home inspection business as well as my life.

www.crossroads engineers.com is my web site. If you read this, and after I do an inspection for you. Please let me know how well I have served you. Oh, and go check out Chet and his pals. Great customer service can be a hinge point on your life. He does it well.

Raccoon Ramifications

So I need to unload my raccoon stories here. There are a number of them but here's one: I was doing a home in Alpine, not far from my own home. The client had a few specific questions for me on this home because there were some obvious issues. One of them was the apparent water damage at two of the outer corners on the home. It looked like water was leaking from the roof onto the corner of the bedroom, where the water expanded along the corner of the sheetrock.

So, Like, Is That Water?

The damage took a pyramid shape on the sheetrock, and the obvious question was "where is the water coming from?" So I got on the roof. Much of the rest of the home was trash, but the roof was in great condition. No leaks. Not even any areas where leaks could potentially occur. The water wasn't coming from the roof.

Now this is more than a bit odd because plumbing doesn't go in the attic - it's too cold up there in the winter. Plumbing would burst and cause heavy water problems. Nonetheless, that was one of few remaining possible sources for the water damage.

Insulation Hallways

I got into the attic later, and found that there was no plumbing. I did notice however, that the insulation was tracked down in areas, and toward the center of the attic there were large feces - the size that a larger dog would make. It was then that I realized what was happening. The attic had raccoons. They were making their solid donations in the center, but like other animals, would go to the corner to do their water damage. Apparently urine smells worse than poop if you're a raccoon.

Maybe it's Water with Some Flavoring

So I learned to be even more careful about watching for methods for raccoons to get into the attic, and I learned that pathways in the attic insulation are dead giveaways for raccoons. I also learned one other thing: sometimes water damage isn't water damage. Sometimes it's something else.

Garth Haslem

www.crossroadsengineers.com