Come up with better hints, would ya? 
J/K. I enjoy your quizzes. But I spent about 30 minutes this morning reading about entrenched meanders and I think you sent me on a wild goose chase, lol.
It’s so hard with hints – too much too little. The item that’s missing that you can still see the effect of is the old cable TV line. Now it’s just a hint,
By the way the SAME building had another section that was 3/4" foam panels attached with glue to the wood siding, then a heavy spray texture to simulate stucco. I give it a 100% chance of leaking and trapping water between the stucco and foam.
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Knob & Tube wires crossing without a tube.
A rare (in my experience) original install error for K&T.
Inspectors foot on K&T wiring!
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Close.
That’s the electrician. I’m taking the photo.
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Painting that k&t wiring is a bad idea. It’s going to make it harder to dissipate heat.
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Foil laying on a possible frayed conductor not good.
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That’s what I saw. Foil duct mechanically supported by knob & tube wiring, where the reliable insulation is the tubes not the wires.
One might complain about heat, not from any paint layer, but from the heating duct directly warming up the K&T. However, that concern does not have any relevance if the circuit is properly fused. The old wire can carry more current than modern wire in practice, yet should be fused the same as modern wire (e.g. 20 amp on 12-gauge wire). Copper did not change since then, and K&T wiring practices don’t result in much voltage drop/heat.
The sellers had a new high efficiency furnace installed last year and a new roof this year. The roofer also installed all new pipe flashings.
Looks like the smaller diameter exhaust pipe and the inlet cap never got installed.
I speculated that the roofers removed the cap to install the boot flashing but didn’t reinstall that and the inner pipe. I inspected the roof first and just assumed at that moment that I was looking at a plumbing vent.
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Then the vent was installed wrong in my opinion. Both the exhaust pipe and cap should be cemented on. Maybe they left it uncemented knowing they were going to do the roof soon?
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I do not even see the inner…was it there?
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I would assume it never got installed. The roofer would have no reason to remove it.
Yeah, the roofer would maybe like to take the inlet cap off, but it should have been glued on, basically making that impossible. I’m thinking the furnace installer never went back up on the roof to install the exhaust pipe and diverter cap.
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Yes, it should have been glued. My thought was the inner pipe was not glued at the bottom and when the roofer removed the cap to install the flashing, the inner pipe came up with it and they couldn’t get it back together.
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So in this configuration did it even work? Did other air leaks make it kind of function?
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