by Shawn Chesney | Feb 22, 2017 | Shawn Chesney Home Inspections Blog
Test Your Sump Pump or Risk a Flood Test Your Sump Pump or Risk a Flood. Spring thaw, April showers on their way, you can easily forget about something as important as your sump pump.Shawn Chesney Home Inspections wants to remind you how important it is to make sure your sump pump is in good working order. You should never Forget to check your sump pump! You could end up just like the homeowner who returned from a weekend trip to discover his entire basement floor covered in three feet of water. Once he safely shut down the power, he waded over to the sump pump and noticed it hadn’t and wasn’t working. Upon closer inspection, he realized that the cable attached to the float must have gotten tangled somehow. He took merely two seconds to untangle the cable, and then he spent the next 15 hours dragging out waterlogged carpet, running the wet/dry vac and moving fans around before beginning to calculate how many thousands of dollars damage had been caused and what ordeal he would have to face with his Insurance Company. To avoid a similar disaster, We recommend that you be sure that your pump has a vertical float switch. You will also want to check your pump at least a couple times a year by dumping water into the basin to make sure everything is working properly. Make sure your plugs have not been disconnected to temporarily plug in another device and then forgotten about. Recommendations Sump Pumps are expected to last anywhere from 3 to 7 years on average. We also recommend the installation of a sump pump system to...
by Shawn Chesney | Feb 7, 2017 | Shawn Chesney Home Inspections Blog
The Safe Room The Safe Room, also known as a panic room, is a fortified room that is installed in a private residence (or business) to provide a safe hiding place for inhabitants in the event of an emergency. Why are safe rooms used? Some reasons include: to hide from intruders. The protection of a safe room will afford residents extra time to contact police; to hide from would-be kidnappers. Many professional athletes, actors and politicians have installed safe rooms in their homes; for protection against natural disasters, such as tornadoes and hurricanes. Underground tornado bunkers are common in certain tornado-prone regions of the United States; for protection against a nuclear attack. While safe rooms near the blast may be incinerated, those far away may be shielded from radioactive fallout; and to provide social distancing in the event of a serious disease outbreak. Location The safe room’s location must be chosen carefully. You should plan multiple routes to avoid detection by an intruder who may be blocking the main route. Design Designs vary with budget and intended use. Even a closet can be converted into a rudimentary safe room, although it should have a solid-core door with a deadbolt lock. High-end custom models costing hundreds of thousands of dollars can have a tamper-proof and bulletproof door, concrete floor, thick steel, soundproof walls, video monitors, computers, an air-cleaning system and protection against bacterial and chemical infiltration, and a self-contained power-generating system. Items to keep in a safe room: bottled water and non-perishable foods; communication devices independent of the safe room’s video-monitoring system, including a cell phone and charger, a landline, and...
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