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Watched a guy inspect a fixer-upper with just a golf ball and a level
I thought he was messing around until he rolled the ball across the floor to spot a dip I missed entirely. He found three foundation issues in ten minutes, which saved me from a bad offer on that house near Elm Street. Anybody else run into old-school tricks that actually worked?
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the_tara5mo ago
The marble story is wild, I read somewhere that old school builders used to set their tiles with levels and marbles because it was faster than waiting for the laser stuff to warm up. That tapping with a wooden spoon thing your grandad did reminds me of this article I saw about how plasterers could tell if a ceiling was sound just by listening to the thump, no joke. It's crazy how those basic tools catch stuff that a thermal camera might miss because of insulation or whatever. That golf ball trick is definitely going in my back pocket for the next time I look at a place.
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rosek735mo ago
That golf ball trick is honestly GENIUS and I love it. I hired a guy once who used a marble to check if my bathroom sink was draining level and I thought he was playing with toys until he found the whole thing was tilted. These old school inspectors always have the weirdest tricks up their sleeves, but they WORK. My grandad used to tap walls with a wooden spoon to find hollow spots behind the drywall and he was never wrong. I bet that guy with the golf ball also carries around a plumb bob and a can of wd40 for everything else he checks. Fixer uppers are basically a minefield of hidden problems and those simple tools catch stuff the high tech gadgets miss every single time.
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