Brett and Barb Lewis's Blog

Charge of the Light Brigade aka Making the Inspection Go Smoother

Brett and Barb Lewis (Pillar to Post) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:53:06 -0800

We would like to offer a few suggestions for listing agents on making the inspection go more smoothly. These are things you can relay to the seller, or, if the seller has already moved on, take care of yourself. Some of them are minor things, but left undone, indicate to the inspector and the buyer that things have been neglected.

1. Charge the Light Brigade - Get the seller to make sure the fixtures have working bulbs. It's a good idea to check out the bulb situation a day or two ahead of the home inspection and replace any that are burned out. That way there's no question that the circuit is working and the house doesn't seem as neglected. It's really bad when you have multiple lights in a fixture such as in a dining room or over a bathroom vanity and none of them come on. And don't forget to check the exterior and garage lights.

2. Make sure access is adequate for a good inspection. The inspector will require access to the attic, crawlspace, electric panel, furnace or other heating appliance, and the water heater. If those places are not accessible, it makes it harder for everyone. Many inspectors and buyers will ask for separate inspections of things they weren't able to see the first time, and generally it is an additional expense to someone.

3. One thing commonly overlooked is access to reset the GFCI circuits, which can be tripped numerous times in the course of a home inspection. We have encountered quite a few houses where the reset is located on an outlet behind a wall of boxes or other stored items, usually in a garage.

4. Please take care of Fido and Fluffy. As inspectors we do our best not to let pets out unless we've told that's OK, but in the course of an inspection, we go through the doors many times as does the buyer, the buyer's agent, and sometimes a whole army of the buyer's friends and family who have been told that this is their opportunity to see the new house. It's hard to keep track of everything and everyone, and no one likes chasing a strange animal around the neighborhood. Also, some animals don't handle the stress of strangers in the house very well. It's best to remove pets or put them in kennels while the inspection is happening. And while you know Bruno is 200 lbs of pure teddy bear, no one else does, so his presence may hinder the inspection process.

We hope this helps. We would welcome any feedback on this or other inspection topics.

Geohazards

Brett and Barb Lewis (Pillar to Post) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:41:25 -0700

One thing about living in Colorado is that we have some interesting geology. After all, mountains do eventually erode into molehills and here on the Front Range, we are on top of all that mountain destruction and molehill building. It can make dealing in real estate downright scary at times.

For example, we inspected a house in Colorado Springs a while back that was up in the foothills in an area we know to have a history of geological issues. The first thing we noticed was that half of the driveway was newer than the other half. We noticed in doing the inspection that there had been some significant drywall cracks that had been patched. Some of them were several feet long and almost all were diagonal cracks coming off the tops of doors and windows. The patching was pretty good, but was still apparent to someone looking closely. There were quite a few windows that did not work well and doors that didn't latch or had repairs that were obviously done to get the door to latch.

We suggested that to be on the safe side, the buyer should contact a geohazards expert. The buyer's agent called the engineering geologist we recommended and his response was, "Yes, I know that house quite well. It is on the edge of a landslice zone and it is being pushed down the hill." Turns out that the house had undergone major structural repairs not long before we inspected it that the seller had not disclosed. The really bad news from the geologist was that he expected it to continue and there was nothing that could be done to stop it that was economically feasible. So we most likely saved our client a lot of money and heartache, not to mention probably saving a couple of agents a lawsuit. Last we looked, however, the house was still on the market at full price with the same listing agent. We know the buyer's agent communicated with the listing agent about the issues, so we wonder if the seller (and his agent) are now disclosing the structural issues. We hope so; this listing agent has a decent reputation and we hate to think he is really that unethical.

Permits

Brett and Barb Lewis (Pillar to Post) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:00:20 -0700

Someone recently asked why we look up the permits for houses we inspect. One of the best reasons is that it gives us an idea of what to expect walking in to the house. If there are no permits for a house, then either nothing has been replaced or everything that has been done since it was built has been done without oversight. In the Pikes Peak region permits are required for, among other things, building a raised deck, reroofing, and replacing a water heater or furnace as well as for basement finishes and additions. Not may houses over 20 years old are still on the same water heater.

Another reason is that it helps the buyer to better understand what he is buying and can save him/her future problems. We have seen quite a few deals go bad because the buyer was concerned about the quality of work that went into the homeowner basement finish. With no permit, and therefore no oversight to insure that minimum standards were met, who knows what is inside the walls. And while the current buyer may be OK with what's there, what about the next buyer? A lot of home inspectors in Colorado Springs routinely check the permit status. Not having a permit for something that clearly should have had one is what we call the Old Maid card game. Someone gets stuck dealing with the lack of permit even though they may have bought the house after the work was done.

There are some issues specific to El Paso County that people are caught unawares on. The biggest one we see is the floating slab construction in which interior basement walls are suspended from the floor joists above with a gap at the bottom to allow for movement of the floor slab. This has been a requirement for the area since the early 90's due to the highly expansive clay soil found along the Front Range of Colorado. If we don't see that in a house built in the last 15-20 years, it says that the person who finished it probably didn't get a permit. Other common mistakes that would be caught if a permit were obtained are lack of venting in a bathroom, lack of electric outlets in a room, lack of proper fire egress in a basement bedroom. And then there are the really dumb ones, like the contractor who installed a pedestal sink in the new basement bathroom with no trap in the drain line. The homeowner was going crazy trying to keep the cat box clean when what she was really smelling was sewer gases entering the house through the sink drain.

People are often shocked to find out that they needed a permit for a water heater replacement. A water heater is either fueled by a natural gas line or a 220 electric line, both of which could be dangerous for someone who has no clue of what he is doing. And if things really go bad, you have the potential to contaminate the water supply as in the water heater installation we saw where the discharge tube for the pressure relief valve was hard-plumbed into the sewer line. It's unlikely that sewage would be drawn back in there, but would you really want to take that risk?

By the way, the web site doing a permit search on an address in the Pikes Peak region is http://www.pprbd.org/PublicAccess/AddressSearch.aspx