Charlie:
Pat in Sugar Land says we have a great show.
Tom:
Okay.
Charlie:
Thank you Pat for lowering your standards.
Tom:
Yes.
Charlie:
She said she’s listened for 20 years. Pat [crosstalk 00:00:11].
Tom:
She’s a rookie.
Charlie:
Take a weekend off. All right, anyway, it’s good as now as ever. Oh, well there it is. There’s the comment right there. It’s as good now as ever. I’m not getting any better. Can you refer … She says, “Can you refer me to a structural engineer?” She says, “I live in Sugar Land and need to get an opinion on lousy sizing for a repair.”
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Tom:
Sizing?
Charlie:
Yeah, for a structural engineer?
Tom:
No, no structural engineer. Sizing goes behind wallpaper. Maybe she means siding.
Charlie:
It could be a typo. She says sizing here, but if you substitute the Z with a D, it would be siding.
Tom:
Yeah, I have a feeling she’s probably thinking siding. Still, my answer is the same. No, there’s no structural engineer that’s going to look at siding. Sizing does go behind wallpaper. I think …
Charlie:
It’s really the only other … I’m sitting here thinking, it’s the only other letter you can substitute.
Tom:
Yeah, I think … Yeah, and Charlie, I read some of these questions we get and spelling is not an art anymore.
Charlie:
Point is, what about structural engineering?
Tom:
Yes. No, not for siding no.
Charlie:
Let’s once and for all just slay this beast. When would you call a structural engineer?
Tom:
When you have problems with your structure. Now, some foundation repair companies will have structural engineers on staff that do the, oh they kind of figure out what’s going on before they start to fix it. If you have a big building that’s got all kinds of structural problems, ceilings falling in, racking out of shape, things of that nature, but not for a house with siding or something minor, a little cracking in the walls or something.
Charlie:
What’s the engineer going to tell us Tom?
Tom:
Tell us exactly what they see. This is the thing about an engineer Charlie.
Charlie:
This is what I was trying to get to.
Tom:
Okay, well you should have just asked. Here’s the thing about an engineer. They can only tell you what they see at the time they see it. They can’t tell you what’s going to happen tomorrow, the next week, or the week after. They can’t tell you what was there before because they weren’t there from beginning to building the project. They have limits, even though they’re engineers, they have a PE behind their name, they still are very limited on what they can do and what they can tell you and what’s going to happen. They’re not soothsayers. They’re not fortune tellers. They’re just going to tell you exactly what they see. “I see that crack there. I see this movement here. What’s happened is, is the building’s racked to the right.” Okay, so they can tell you that. Then they can tell you you’ve got to tear down the wall and fix it, but they can’t tell you tomorrow what’s going to happen to the rest of the building.
Charlie:
They’re not Rasputin. They can’t tell you the future, the past or what have you.
Tom:
No they’re not.