Is your inspector a "code" inspector?

     Another way of wording this is:  does your inspector inspect to "minimum" standards?

     Does your inspector inspect to the NACHI and/or ASHI Standards of Practice?

     Another way of wording this is:  does your inspector inspect to "minimum" standards?

     I hope you can see from these questions that the questions themselves can be misleading and not very helpful in gaining any understanding of the kind of inspection you are going to get.  The reality is that your inspector better be doing more than the "minimum"----and most do----or you will be at risk of not being fully informed about the home. 

     One huge glaring omission from most Association's Standards of Practice is any "specific" mention of fire-stopping.   I have to hope that most inspectors would mention missing fire-stopping, but if they are not being trained to identify missing fire-stopping, it is an area that may be getting overlooked and not reported on.

     The basic idea with fire-stopping is that you want to slow the spread of fire from one building area to another.  For example holes from the basement space into walls above and then into the attic or floor system above the walls can promote the spread of fire by chimney effect.  This would greatly decrease the amount of time before the whole home becomes engulfed in flames----and before the wife and kids can get out.  These "chimneys" can be as seemingly insignificant as wiring holes or as blatant as the spaces around ducts and plumbing pipes.

     On a recent inspection the main heating distribution duct ran though a space where a chimney used to be----all the way to the attic of the two story house.  Current requirements call for there to be fire-stopping around such duct work at every floor level and where the duct goes into the attic.  This installation had none.  You can see the space around the duct in this view from the basement.

     Even to the un-initiated, this is an obvious large opening all the way to the attic-----still a very effective chimney.   This to me is at least as important as reporting on the electrical service size---an item that is specifically required by most Standards of Practice.

Charles Buell

     PS, for those of you that are new to my blog (or for some other "unexplained" reason have never noticed)all  pictures and smiley-face inserts (emoticons) (when I use them) have messages that show up when you point at them with your cursor.