The Stupid Stick

The Stupid Stick

If you have lived in Middle Georgia for any time you will have heard the term: “he was beat with the stupid stick”. This does not necessarily only apply to men but according to the Marvelous Meggy it does apply predominately to the male animal…namely me!

For example, just this morning I was happily snorting around on my old John Deere tractor who I affectionally call Little Fred. He has this cool front end loader and I was in that state of Zen called the tractor zone. I was excavating the side of a small rise in my yard to make room for a nifty carport for Meg’s new car. As I was backing up, part of the rear hitch somehow hooked itself to the wire garden fence that encloses Meggy’s Elephant Ear grove. I put the tractor into forward, charging toward the hill and in so doing dragged the entire thirty foot section of fence down behind me. I appeared that the stupid stick had struck me unkindly. Meg scowled and jumped into her car to go see her girl friend to compare notes on deficient husbands…

However, there are some other examples of the stupid stick that I have observed over the years as I crawled around under and over thousands of Middle Georgia homes. Perhaps the most egregious of these appeared just a couple of months ago on a “flipper”. A flipper is a home that was purchased at a low price and then fixed up for the sole purpose of reselling it. These often get a quick cosmetic update-new paint, appliances and floor coverings but the more difficult and important things are often overlooked- even concealed. I call it putting lipstick on a pig…

Case in point, take the case of the tied up water heater. The home was equipped with a typical gas 40 gallon water heater but it was unusual- someone had tied it up with a rope! Since we are not in earthquake country there is usually no need to put restraints on a water heater. So on closer examination we found that someone had wrapped the water heater tightly with a type of rope called ripcord- this is a strong slender rope used in parachutes, and they had wrapped it tightly around the water heater tank and also across the pressure and temperature relief valve. This valve is rather important as it can be the last line between life and death if the water heater overheats to the point of explosion. This spring loaded valve is designed to release the pressure and save the day. When they get old, or the water heater is malfunctioning then water will leak from the valve. This is a great time to replace it since it only costs about $20 dollars and a few minutes to install. However, our flipper didn’t want to spend any extra money so he decided to tie that valve closed to stop the leak. The unintended consequence is that it also wouldn’t work as a safety valve resulting in the potential destruction of the house, mom, dad, kids and the dog and the cat. This is an example of the Stupid Stick-on steroids!

There are many examples of people cheaping out leading to their potential destruction. Another one is wrapping your hot furnace flue with duct tape when it becomes rusted out…yep, fire and carbon monoxide. Whap!! The stupid stick strikes again. I have endless stories that I will share as the years go by…

Ned Dominick has been inspecting homes in Macon, Warner Robins, Bryon, Forsyth and Middle Georgia since 1978. He and his qualified inspectors have examined over 30,000 local homes. For more go to his website at www.housetalk.net or email Ned at askned@housetalk.net.