Jay Markanich Real Estate Inspections

04/04/2025

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03/23/2024

A 1923 custom-built house, made entirely of stone, with an original boiler to circulate water (unreal it is still working great!), and a slate roof. The house was comfortably heated with radiators, just like the ones in my grandmother's 1910 house in Chevy Chase. One radiator fact - every fall they should be bled of air. There's a little port with a square valve that looks just like an old roller skate key would fit (you see, I'm old...) which needs to be opened every fall to allow any accumulated air out of the radiator. This allows the water to flow through the entirety of the radiator. This is what a radiator full of air looks like, and one that was partially bled. Every radiator should be bled every fall.

03/21/2024

This was a fun inspection. The house was custom built in 1923 as an artist cottage for someone's wife. The floors were hand-made hardwood, and nailed to the sub-floor structure. Some of the nails had come out, and had been replaced by screws. However, many of the plugs sealing the openings for the connectors had also come out and could not be replaced. So they used pennies to fill the gaps, which fit perfectly!

10/31/2023

Game POA 50

10/28/2023

I am one who will live very near to the noise. Do we want noise in our home 24/7? No. "They" are planning as many as 9 data centers in the photo below. My neighborhood is immediately to the right side. We all will live with electrical disruptions in our homes, and possibly damage to our electrical equipment due to power surges. I cannot speak for you, but I am one who does not want that either. (See my business website about how to protect your home from data centers (http://www.jaymarinspect.com/whole-house-surge-protection...). And I am one who likes to bath and cook and water shortages are something "they" cannot guarantee against and we will certainly experience. So, think about your priorities as I have thought about mine. I'm against the data centers, period.

https://www.change.org/p/prohibit-data-centers-near-residential-areas-in-prince-william-county-va?recruiter=1253839388&utm_campaign=signature_receipt&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=share_petition

Prohibit Data Centers Near Residential Areas in Prince William County, VA

04/29/2023

This is why I don't drink public water. Our house has public water and for a long time I have had a whole-house filter installed. We get the one that has the carbon layer to try to remove the bad taste. But under the kitchen sink, for water we drink and use to cook, I have a double filter to get out the really small stuff. The filter pictured here is three months old. Enough said. Holy Crapoly! You sure you want to drink that stuff? Hopefully some of the chlorine is removed by the whole-house filter so we aren't showering in it, but I don't know. However, I hope this post makes the point!

02/04/2023

Let's make some assumptions and calculate data center electrical usage in Prince William County VA.

"They" want 120 centers (follow the money - will "they" will get them no matter how much constituent complaint?). Let's assume 80% are 2MW centers. That may be a low assumption. A 2MW data center takes as much electrical power as about 16,000 homes.

A 1MW center would therefore use about 8,000 homes of electricity.

According to the 2021 US Census, there are 160,000 "housing units" in PWC.

96 x 16,000 = 1,536,000 homes worth of electricity
24 x 8,000 = 192,000 homes worth of electricity
Add the two and that would equal 1,728,000 homes worth of electrical usage.

But there are only about 160,000 housing units in PWC. So the 120 data centers collectively, and assuming the percentages above, would demand 11 times as much electrical energy as all the housing units in the county. If my assumptions are wrong, of course, and more than 80% are 2MW centers, they would demand more electricity than 11 times the number of housing units.

Now, I'm old and cynical. Let's get sarcastic. According to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, they have determined that there are 18 "Critical Infrastructure Sectors." One of those is the Information Technology Sector.

Does this mean that in the event of a power shortage, or outage, the data centers are considered "Critical Infrastructure" and not my house? So if not as much power can be provided to PWC the data centers get what's there and residential housing does not?

THIS IS A QUESTION WE MIGHT WANT TO KNOW THE ANSWER TO.

And, perhaps, BEFORE all these centers are shoved down our throats?

Here comes the sarcasm - so, Aunt Millie's Facebook vacation photos are more important than my house? Never mind that if I don't have electricity I can't see her photos, but that's irrelevant. Someone in an area where there is power wants to so those photos must, MUST, be available! There are people who want to see what she had for lunch!!

Wait until you hear how much water these data center puppies use! The words HOLY MOLY KINGFISH!* come to mind. And remember, it's not creek water data centers need. Does their "critical need" for water supersede my less-important needs at home? Remember those photos!

* You have to be really old to understand that one... I'm talking about the TV show.

02/03/2023

So many data centers are planned for our county (as many as 120) I have wondered lately about power outages and subsequent power surges. While these centers are said to have their "own" power stations, they take huge, huge amounts of electricity (a 2MW center uses as much power as 16,000 houses), and their efficiency varies from center to center. Their PUE (Power Use Effectiveness) is based on how much of their total electrical use goes to the servers.

Ideally the PUE is 1, but a good center has a PUE of 1.5 to 1.85. What will the PUEs be of the centers in our area? Who knows. But power outages and surges are common among data centers. Electrical companies can change grids from time to time to gain more power. This can cause surge disruptions.

Surges are really the presence of an over-voltage traveling through a line. A lightning strike on a power line, or data center, can cause such transient power surges. Homes can experience power surges, small ones, multiple times a day. But a large surge can be devastating to a home's electrical equipment and appliances.

May I recommend that you protect your home with a good, and I mean GOOD, whole-house surge protector? I did so in 2020. For my house I chose the Eaton CHSPT2ULTRA. My electrician agreed it is the best. With it you will need a dedicated 50amp breaker. The breaker you buy should be the same brand as your electric panel box.

If you investigate the pros and cons of whole-house surge protectors the cons include that the devices can be expensive and you "may" need professional help to install it. Um, duh? A good device costs money. And always get a professional! To paraphrase Red Adair, if you think hiring a professional is expensive, wait until you hire an amateur.

Be smart. Get one online, and not in the electric supply store or from your electrician. Online you can get the Eaton for about $160 and the breaker $25. My electrician charged me $195 to install it.

That's cheap considering the potential electrical problems your home could have. And when you deal with electricity of course you want to do the best thing.

In the photo the red arrows point to the protector and the dedicated breaker in my panel box.

One more thing - do it now.

05/21/2022

I have to say, it wasn't terribly difficult. And I scored a 10. Anyone my age should have known them all...

General Knowledge Quiz

02/17/2022

There are efforts to only allow licensed electricians to inspect electric panel boxes. While certainly they are competent to do so, inspecting the electrical system has been a part of the home inspector's procedure and training for over 40 years. We know what we're doing! Believe me, we are trained and competent to inspect the box in every regard. The panel box, breakers, and wiring in the photo below are dangerous and should be evaluated for future action. That is what we inspectors would say on our reports. If you wish to join this petition to continue to allow home inspectors to do our jobs please feel free to do so!

12/01/2021

Is stainless steel really stainless? Well, no! It should probably be called stain less, with two words. Various things can stain it, from acids to chemicals and even cleaning products.

The photo attached is the kitchen sink in new construction, and we were making a final walk through. It had been stained, perhaps by a contractor or the cleaning crew. But the little brown stains would not come out, even with steel wool. And they were not rust.

One has to be informed. There are cleaners made especially for stainless steel products. Don't use just anything. I use dishwasher soap on our kitchen sink and it works fine!

Feel free to read my blog for more information.

http://www.jaymarinspect.com/staining.stainless.steel.html

11/11/2021

Finders Keepers. When I was a kid, if we found something that we could see belonged to nobody, it was ours! Years ago, during an inspection of a long-abandoned farm, I thought to walk the grounds and went behind the barn to see its condition. More than half buried in the soil was a license plate. Digging it out, I found it to be a Virginia plate from 1953! That was Karma! So I found it, I kept it! Showing it to the realtor and my clients they were happy that I was happy, and nobody had a problem with my keeping it. So now it's in my garage! You can come to my garage and look, but no toucho! I'm not sure why the year 1953 was so attractive, but you might be able to guess...