One of the major events in my life that drove me into the home inspection industry was learning of thermal imaging/infrared and the benefits of this technology for home inspections.
I was doing a home inspection the other day on a very nice, and newer home here in south Salem today. The home had very few minor issues but one thing popped out when I used the thermal camera to scan the master bedroom.
The circuit did not appear to be hot enough to cause a fire however there was no significant load on this circuit and it should not have been heating-up. As it turns out there was a loose wire in the heated outlet in the picture. The heat was produced because of the looseness/resistance of the connection.
This whole on-line world can be a little overwhelming, especially to someone that has just discovered blogging and the power that it can wield. What is the world is this all about and how does it work are great questions and will help to improve your understanding of on-line marketing and Search Engine Optimization.
I was telling my father about my on-line marketing and how it was effective at driving business and contacts to me for very little money. I was telling him that my blog and FaceBook are serious tools that allow me to be found when I am doing other things (like home inspections!) He mentioned that he really had no idea what I was taking about. So I started to think about my understanding of this on-line world that I have so-far been able to leverage.
I watched the movie, "I love you man," the other day and I got to thinking about billboards. In the movie, the real estate agent's friend puts up all kinds of silly billboards for his friend. The advertising was very visible and really got the agent noticed.
I told my dad that blogging and networking on-line was kind of like that. I put up a billboard in cyberspace every time I write a blog or post a comment. The freeway on and off ramps are controlled by search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN). If you are looking for, say a Home inspection in Salem Oregon, for instance, you would drive your car into cyberspace and ask one of those engines to show you where to go and the applicable billboards.
Now to back track a little; the way a search engines work is by continually cruising around on those freeways. They all have little robots or spiders that are driving around looking at billboards that are being erected in cyberspace. They take note of these billboards and catalog them according to what is on the billboards and where the billboards point. The more entries the spider robots get in their catalogs that point at one place, the higher they rank that location for those terms.
Of course that is a very down and dirty explanation of things and there can be a significant amount of refinement and development. That is a basic idea of how Search Engine Optimization works. The point of this; is that blogging and on-line social networking is very inexpensive compared to real world (as opposed to cyber-world) advertising. For much less than $1000 dollars a year I have easily doubled my business and done my fair share of puttin' my name out there where it is going to be seen.
The computer programs that I have been working with lately have opened my eyes to the world beyond MS. As I struggle to make MS products work correctly I have been realizing that my thriving, thorny garden of irritation for MS can be hacked at by all sorts of free and fantastic products
One of the fantastic little products that I have started using is Google Docs. ...Um, can you say, "suck-it MS-Word?" Not only does G.Docs work every time, it is on-line so that there are no formatting issues when I cut and paste a blog that I have written and to which pictures have been added. Did you read that last part? Yeah, things just cut-and-paste like you think they should, weird huh?
It is important that you take warning from this post. As of today there are about 10 previously written blog posts on my computer that are locked in a bizarre ms Word purgatory. I can only partially open them and I cannot highlight to cut-and-paste. For me, there is little hope. But for all of you that read this, please do something today. Put down that widows pacifier and try the solutions that were created for the people!!
Every inspector is different but I like to get everyone on the same page at the very start of the inspection.
I am not a building inspector. Despite the similar sound of our job titles I do not inspect for code compliance. (although most codes address safety issues that I will educate my clients on) I do not work for the county/city/local municipality. Unlike most government workers I suffer liability for my actions and recommendations. I work for my clients expressly, I only have their interests in mind and I make every effort to produce the highest quality home inspection every time.
I will find stuff on this house. Every house has things that could be improved and adjusted. New homes are just as bad and a lot of the time even worse than a home that has had the benefit of being lived in. I compare your prospective home to a perfect home, and there is no such thing.
My job is to educate you on your how your new home works. You should attend as much of the inspection as possible. You will get more information out of me if you are standing over my shoulder when I find something worth noting. We can quickly talk about what is wrong, what most likely caused it, how you can fix it and how you can prevent it in the future. That kind of comprehensive discussion can be difficult to accomplish in even the best inspection report.
Salem, Oregon Home inspections, pest and dry rot, mold, leaks thermal imaging
If you like what you learned here please consider Perfection Inspection Inc. for your Salem, Oregon Home inspections, pest and dry rot, mold, leaks and thermal imaging
I do love disposable coveralls. The crawlspaces that I frequent seem to be places where critters relieve themselves and where they decide to die. All of that feces, urine and dead carcasses add up to some pretty disgusting crawling and it can be challenging to bring my coveralls in the house after crawling through a litter box.
Overall the disposables are totally sufficient, especially after I belly crawl through one of those litter boxes that people call their crawlspace. All of the disposables however, have one fatal flaw:
The crotch.
I don't know if they mean to build them with a "break-away crotch" but being a home Inspector that is not one of my requirements.
salem, Oregon Home Inspections, Pest and dry rot, NACHI certified, Mold
Home inspectors as a rule do not accept liability. It sounds funny, but in truth it is a defense against what we couldn't see. That means that home inspections are a visual snap shot. We inspectors do our best to not miss anything but depending on the environment (read: boxes piled to the ceiling), the time of the year (hard to look at a roof under snow) or even a lazy or forgetful seller (they cover up stuff due to lack of proper knowledge) some things can be very hard if not impossible to see.
I frequently read about the poor couple that bought the turn-of-the-century home and had an inspection, only to find out later that the walls were full of rot and termites. The media has a neat little way of tilting the story. It is never mentioned that the finishes and accessible areas of the home showed no signs of damage in the walls under the windows. It is never brought up that the window sills had been collecting water for close to a century before being repaired and they forget that the poor home owners learned about the damage only after they actually started destroying the home's walls to do remodeling.
I explain to my clients that I am an inspector, they are paying me to spend 2 1/2 to 3 hours with them and I will do my darnedest to not miss anything significant but I will not buy them a new home even if I do turn out to be a human being. There is always the possibility for things to be going on under the surface but most of the time there will be indications of those things.
When I bought my first home, I was amazed at the home inspection. The dude spent 45 minutes in my 1950's fixer. He did a very poor job and missed some major things. In my previous post I suggested getting out their and shopping inspectors, something that I did not. I let my agent schedule the inspection for me and I came away with a very bad taste in my mouth for the home inspection industry as a whole. A little less than a year after that I heard about thermal imaging and home inspectors that were using it to help with a more in-depth education for their clients. I knew that it would not be hard if my last inspector was the guy that was my competition!
That first home inspection experience ensures that I do my best inspecting every day for every client. Even though my disclaimer says that, "...its not my fault and you agree.." I try to make it a personal goal to not miss significant issues.
Of course everything is negotiable. I had clients recently ask me to adjust my disclaimer. That is just fine but realize what you are getting for around $400. If you expect a home inspector to suffer liability the price of the inspection must change. If you increase liability you increase risk you increase price. I am thinking around $5000 might justify my liability but on second thought I want to be a home inspector not a defendant, please go find yourself another inspector...
So first things first: you just received notice of an accepted offer and you have a certain amount of time to get all of the applicable inspections and make negotiations. If you are working with a good agent they will give you some names of home inspectors that they know do a good job. Check these guys/ladies out. Check their website, read their blog, and give them a call. Learn about their experiences and what makes them better than the other inspectors. Talk to them about your new home. Find out how they communicate. I wish I would have done this when I bought my first home. The guy I hired to do my home inspection gave me a lot of grumbles and, what I now call the "home inspector shrugs." A home inspection is not like a loan. With a loan, the numbers are what you need to focus on. Everyone plays with the same numbers. A home inspection is a very personal thing and for the same number (price) home inspections can range from a gobbledy gook mess of check boxes and confusion to a clear, concise description of the repair and maintenance issues within your new home and can actually be a future owner's manual. Besides the report, how is the inspector at educating you? If the inspector grunts, shrugs a lot but you saved $50....maybe that isn't the best place to save a couple bucks.
Once you have found your favorite inspector and you have confirmation on your deal you should get on the internet and book yourself an inspection. Most of the time buyers negotiate a 10 business day window, however, if you find yourself dealing with the bank you might only get 5 calendar days to get your inspections. If you are hoping for a really great inspector during the summer months and you only have 5 days.......good luck. 10 business days gives you two calendar weeks and should be enough time to get your all of your inspections done but you need to start immediately if not before your offer is accepted. I have been at least a calendar week out since April and I have had to do my share of referrals to other good, but not quite as good, home inspectors in the Salem, Oregon area.
So you need to make a choice, really good in-demand inspector or mister inspector guy that can fit me in tomorrow. It is up to you and who knows, that short notice guy might just do a good job for you.
Alright, time for me to jump on the band wagon. I am doing some trials on adding videos to my inspection reports so that may be in the future as well. Thanks for watching. This video will soon be on the welcome page of my little Salem, Oregon home inspection website:
Most home maintenance items are very simple. In fact most are so simple it is easy to underestimate the importance. If home owners would do these routine maintenance items my job might be severely limited. One item in particular I often say gets done when people move in to the home and when they move out: it's the furnace filter.
How great it feels to take a deep breath. To feel the stretch of the lungs as they fill with air. It is refreshing and satisfying.
Now imagine a restriction in your airway, never being able to take a full breath. Imagine needing twice the breaths for the same amount of air. Picture yourself trying to survive with just the minimum air for respiration.
A little dramatic, I admit but it is very similar to how your furnace feels. Most forced air systems use a big fan to suck air in and push that air over a heat exchanging device and then blow that newly conditioned air throughout the home. The thermostat, usually located centrally in the home, calls for heat the furnace starts heating up. When the brains of the furnace decide the heat exchanging area has heated up enough the fan turns on. It is now the fan's job to pass air over the heated area and blow that heated air throughout the home.
It is my job to look at furnaces and filters every day and as a general rule: people change their furnace filter when they move in and when they move out. When the filter is dirty the fan is forced to work much harder. Less air is moving over the heat exchanger so more energy is used. This also shortens the life of the entire unit.
Change your filters at least every 30 days in the cooling cycle and 60 days in the heating cycle at least. It will save you money on energy, extend the life of your system and give your poor furnace a welcome breath of fresh air.
I do love my job. I was chatting with another home inspector the other day and we chuckled that if it wasn't for creative home owners and contractors not doing their jobs properly we would be out of work. On a recent home inspection here in Salem, Oregon I popped my head into the attic space of a vintage 1950 home and discovered a very creative, green aspiring tenant. At first glance the attic felt unusually warm and moist. From the outside the gable vents appeared to be large enough and should have kept this attic effectively ventilated however the current renter had some other ideas. He told me that he had been in construction for years and was currently unemployed.
This vintage home had a minimum amount of insulation and the gable vents were covered with plastic!! All of the warm moist air coming up out of the home was being trapped in this unheated, unvented, ideal mold growing limbo. The roof sheathing was covered with a soft and fuzzy patina, very artistic but not very pleasing for home maintenance or air quality.
The moral of the story is those openings in your attic and there for a reason and very important. They are not there to make you suffer when it is time to pay the heating bill. Insulation should be used on HEATED surfaces. Your attic is not a heated space. The floor of the attic is next to a heated space and this is the only surface that should be insulated. The rest of the attic should have enough vents to keep the attic as close to the exterior temperature as possible. This will vent excess moisture, cool the roof system and provide a good environment for maintenance of the structure of the roof.
Disclaimer: ActiveRain Corp. does not necessarily endorse the real estate agents, loan officers and brokers listed on this site. These real estate profiles, blogs and blog entries are provided here as a courtesy to our visitors to help them make an informed decision when buying or selling a house. ActiveRain Corp. takes no responsibility for the content in these profiles, that are written by the members of this community.
ecide the heat exchanging area has heated up enough the fan turns on. It is now the fan's job to pass air over the heated area and blow that heated air throughout the home.
r had some other ideas. He told me that he had been in construction for years and was currently unemployed.
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