I know it's a bit of a strange question but here goes... Trying to sell my house and working through the list left by the home inspector.
It's built on a crawl space and the floor joists rest on cement block piers topped with pressure treated lumber and finally a sheet of OSB/Plywood as a final spacers/shims between the PT and floor joists.
The inspector claims that OSB and Plywood aren't allowed to be used as spacers on piers like this. He originally said they had to be metal, but has now fallen back to "material consistent with customary building standards".
We called the Mecklenburg Inspectors office and spoke with a building inspector. Explained the situation and were referred to the code where it says shim material must be like kind to the floor joists. When asked if OSB or Plywood would be considered "like kind" for wood floor joists, he said "yes".
Problem is, even with that, the home inspector claims that anyone at the county or engineers office will say no due to the risk of compression of OSB. The Mecklenburg office won't give their opinion backing us up in writing without us having a project permit pulled. Since we don't need one we're at a stand still with the buyers on the side of the home inspector, and me not wanting to have to replace all the shims.
House was built in 1997 so I don't know if the code would have changed since then, but obviously this passed inspection when being built.. Measuring today with a micrometer showed that the OSB was 12mm under load of the floor joist and 12mm at the end of the shim which wasn't under load.
Any one with ideas, opinions, or suggestions would be welcome.
It's built on a crawl space and the floor joists rest on cement block piers topped with pressure treated lumber and finally a sheet of OSB/Plywood as a final spacers/shims between the PT and floor joists.
The inspector claims that OSB and Plywood aren't allowed to be used as spacers on piers like this. He originally said they had to be metal, but has now fallen back to "material consistent with customary building standards".
We called the Mecklenburg Inspectors office and spoke with a building inspector. Explained the situation and were referred to the code where it says shim material must be like kind to the floor joists. When asked if OSB or Plywood would be considered "like kind" for wood floor joists, he said "yes".
Problem is, even with that, the home inspector claims that anyone at the county or engineers office will say no due to the risk of compression of OSB. The Mecklenburg office won't give their opinion backing us up in writing without us having a project permit pulled. Since we don't need one we're at a stand still with the buyers on the side of the home inspector, and me not wanting to have to replace all the shims.
House was built in 1997 so I don't know if the code would have changed since then, but obviously this passed inspection when being built.. Measuring today with a micrometer showed that the OSB was 12mm under load of the floor joist and 12mm at the end of the shim which wasn't under load.
Any one with ideas, opinions, or suggestions would be welcome.