A Home Inspection Overview with Greg Bell

hello I'm Greg Bell with best home inspections we're here today to show you a little bit of what we do on a home inspection so you'll have a better idea when you hire your inspector the first thing we'll do is check the exterior all the structure and up on the roof so let me get my ladder and we'll go from there all right with this ladder when I first set it up I always like to slam it to make sure that all everything's locked so that nothing comes down when I'm climbing the ladder a couple guys have had that experience and that's something I don't want to do this type of roof is an architectural shingle in Florida we usually get about 20 years life on average I know from checking the building permit that's rough let's put on in 2001 so that makes it 15 years old and for 15 years old it looks to be in really good shape so I have no doubt that they'll get more than 20 years out of this roof well for insurance purposes I need to take two pictures for the four-point report and I also take pictures of the valleys the flashing the ridge vent the gas vents the best thing about this roof is the geometry it's a hip roof so that's the best type of roof to have in Florida because the winds deflect right off of the roof instead of being a gable where slams against the side here on this stack you can see where the boots been eaten away by the squirrels and someone tried to do a repair where they just put blackjack all around to try and seal it so no moisture would get inside unfortunately over time that cracks and then whenever it rains moisture gets inside and goes down to the roof deck and the other important thing with this ladder is where where you place your hands when you're letting it come down if you place it too high you're going to get them pinched and I know from personal experience that's only going to happen a couple times with all home inspections you have to take a picture of the elevation on each side of the house and we need that for the wind mitigation inspection and I walked around check out the soffit the fascia stucco the windows here on this bay window you can see looking at the stucco you've got different types of textures that tells me that somebody's done a repair there and I can look at all the water that would come off this roof during a rain and the way this cement slopes back towards the house that there's probably been a moisture intrusion there looks like the homeowner just installed a brand new garage door now here on the side of this wall you can see where the paint's starting to wear through in Florida it's important to keep your house well sealed so that no moisture intrusion occurs so I'd recommend to this home buyer that they repaint their exterior with an elastomeric paint and that'll seal all these cracks that are common in masonry construction well this is common with bank owned homes in Florida the previous owners usually take all the systems in the house to try and recoup some of their investment this was where the a/c condenser used to be fortunately he left the wiring here so the a/c just system just needs to be replaced hmm I would run new copper because you don't know if that's been contaminated over here is the pump where it used to sit and this is the well for the sprinkler system here again they left the electrical in so it's just putting in a new pump right here we have the water shut-off so if you ever have an emergency in the house and need to shut off the water you turn this valve right here now we're coming into the back of the house the house has a nice blowing hot tub you always like to take a cover photo for the pool most of the time this is the nicest element of the house now you can see here again there used to be a screen room here you can see where the paint's different where the framework was probably took it and sold it for scrap I noticed you on the exterior all the light fixtures are missing so all those will need to be replaced or put cover plates on them you don't want to have that exposed wiring I'm looking at the pool look in the skimmer in the drain and we have a bag in there now the pool looks to be in good shape from being a bank owned property usually they're full of debris and covered and dirty and nasty here we've got the step into the hot tub its cracking has some crack tile crack here you can see where somebody's trying to repair it we need to get a pool company to come out and resurface that here we have a storage building that was built out of wood and you can see that there's some wood decay which is very common in Florida but every years wood we have a lot of moisture a little bit of lattice repair and more wood decay which is common on older wood sheds here's the electrical panel for the shed I notice here by the panel you've got a spliced wire all splices should be in a junction box all right now we're going to go check the pool equipment now this pool has just about everything your cartridge filter your pump this is a pool heater this is your blower for the spa and this is the salt pool this right here's your salt sale the nice thing about a salt pool is you don't have to use chlorine they're a little expensive up front but in the long run they save you money this here is the control panel now you can see it just told me the salt level is 3900 so that's a little high but that's okay because it was just treated so let's go ahead and turn the filter on we'll see how everything runs I can see that all the drain lines are labeled you have the pull cleaner of the pool skimmer the main drain the spa here you have the spa return the air blower and the pool return other than being a little noisy it seems that everything works well one nice thing this is all stay right equipment so that's all top-of-the-line equipment let's walk out to the pool and see this everything is working out there and I can see water moving all around the pool pump has a lot of pressure I don't know if you've ever had a salt pool but it's really misleading because you really don't taste any salt it's just better for the equipment and better for your skin than having all that chlorine in the system now I highly recommend if you've never owned a pool before that you get with a local pool service company maybe hire them for a few months so that you can learn and get an education from them on how your pool works there's a lot of different pools and a lot of different operating systems all right here we have the gas meter this is the main shutoff right here whenever it's turned down where the two holes line up it's shut off everything looks good another nice feature to point out here is this is the dryer vent and you can see the condenser used to go right there so they put this elbow on the direct the flow away from the AC you don't usually see that usually it goes right in the condenser and then it clogs up the condenser now that we're done with the outside we'll come on the inside first thing I like to do is check all the outlets I use my meter so we'll go around my meter tells me everything's wired correctly working we just got from room to room test all the outlets that we can get to and here you can see 119 volts do things good now here this is a bathroom outlet so it should have a GFCI here I just tested it and it's not tripping so there's no GFCI that's an improvement I'd recommend they make now that we're done with all the outlets we'll go into the kitchen start our final walkthrough no anti-tip racket on the stove that's a major issue because kids like to see what's up there they'll put this down climb up there to see what's there it tipped over and everything falls on them and they get barked five minutes being proactive you can avoid a lifetime injury for a child turn the hot water on house has copper plumbing and take everything under the sinks now check make sure there's no leaks everything looks good let the hot water come through here one thing I've learned over the years of being inspector it's a good idea to take pictures of all the common things that are in a house like the hot water that way if somebody calls you after the fact you can tell what show them that there was hot water need to improve the caulking around the countertop moisture can get back there just check all the cabinets and be amazed how many times I find cabinets aids installed with drywall screws which drywall screws aren't designed to carry that amount of weight check the refrigerator freezer 12 degrees check all the seals like the refrigerator is 39 thing looks good make sure it's got a water hookup looks good and we'll carry on through the rest of the house now we'll check the bathroom here we turn the water on on the sink check up underneath everything looks good make sure we have hot water running here hot and cold check the water closet it's nice and secure flush everything works good looks good here we have the bathtub make sure the tile is nice and solid these older houses it's always a concern especially when you have a window and your bath enclosure Moisture always gets behind everything here looks nice and tight check the window here you can see it catches the need to have that fixed here we have a gas furnace this part of the split AC system up here all the coils which is usually a conventional air handler the coils are at the bottom that's one of the drawbacks to a gas furnace thing looks good in there this was manufactured in 1992 since 23 years old we usually get about 30 years life out of now one problem I do see with this furnace is we have no combustion air well they need to put a grill on the door so that combustion air can get in and here we have a conductor this trick just terminates in midair that should be in a junction box here in the bedrooms we just check around all the ceilings the walls check out the windows these are the old awning type windows very common in the 60s this house was built looking for any water stains any leaks and then we also go through the house and check the a/c system check the temperature to see what we have there we have 56 degrees take a picture of that now here in the laundry room it really depends on if the appliances can bay or not whether or not we operate them if they do go with the sill then we do operate them and make sure they function properly if they don't go with the cell we just check all their connections in this case I'm just checking all the connections thing looks good the drain line power here we have a gas dryer everything's hooked up behind there's a shutoff on the gas valve everything looks good now we're going out into the garage out here we have the water heater the first thing I see on that is the discharge tube for the temperature pressure relief valve that should extend within a couple inches of the ground the way it is now if that ever activated it would be putting out high pressure and very high scalding water that would really injure someone you have copper plumbing gas line has a shutoff everything looks good this water heater was manufactured no 8 240 gallons that makes it eight years old they usually last seven to twelve years so with this being where it's located in the garage if it does start to leak most of the water it's going to go outside here we have the electrical panel here I can see we've got openings in the dead front those are very easy picks they make a little plastic insert just like these right here the slip right in that way no one ever sticks their finger in there gets electrocuted I always scan all the breakers first to take to the temperature so I make sure that nothing in there is really hot everything looks good always touch the panel with the back of my arm we want to make sure whenever you're touching something like this you have your arm palm your hand facing towards you so that it is is electrified your automatic reaction is to pull back so let's take the cover off and see what we have inside inside the panel I'm looking for any double taps any hot wires melted wires right size breakers and here in this panel I can see you have a GE panel here we have a challenger breaker and a squared e breaker those should be changed out to a GE this here is where the air handler used to be that's the other part of the AC system here again I'm going to pull new copper the wiring still here the ductwork the ductwork looks kind of dirty so that I would recommend that they have the AC contractor replace as much as he can and clean the wrist here we have the garage service door they have a new door put in everything looks good just needs to be painted let's go check the windows and then the garage door these are just single pane contractor grade windows let in the garage so you really need everything looks good here we have the garage door ran the garage door has all the supports that are required for the wind mitigation the only thing I don't see on it is a sticker for the wind mitigation okay there it is it meets the current hurricane standards I always recommend to my clients put a bolt nut in this hole here so that this can't be engaged when you have an opener the little child goes engages that not knowing any better and you go operate the door you'll have damage to the door or the opener here we have a Chamberlain ROG door opener nice thing about this opener it has a battery backup and in today's technology world that we live in it's also Wi-Fi so they have an app you can put on your phone so you can operate your garage door from wherever you are let's turn it on and see how it does it's nice and quiet yes if that earns its name the whisper drive will check the auto reverse alright that works good that's a safety feature looks like the runs door installers did a good job now one of the last things I do on the inside is go through with my infrared camera this allows me to see things that I can't see with the naked eye it's one of the best tools I have in the last year I found six roof leaks that I couldn't see with the naked eye I would have missed them if it wasn't for this tool so let's go around and stay in the house what we're looking for is different colors different colors tell us different things if it's red it's hot if it's blue then it's cold and usually red is an indication of missing insulation and a blue would be a water leak so let's go see what we can find and I just scan the ceilings the walls and around all the windows now you can tell looking here see the difference in the color that tells me that there's no insulation above that attic hatch it's one of the great things about this tool I scanned every attic before I go in it that way I know where the missing insulation is here's another concern I find all the time in houses is from the Hurricanes we had no four no five it blew the insulation away from the edge of the house where the soffit vents where it so I see that all the time it's very common now that the inspections died I'll get with you the home buyer will go over all my concerns show you the pictures on the computer at that time I'll answer any other questions you have and walk throughout the house to make sure you have a good understanding about the condition of the house you're looking to call home we also include a home maintenance book at the end with our inspections this is made by internachi and it'll answer a lot of questions should you ever have any about your home some things you can expect when you hire a home inspector usually a typical Florida home smaller home takes around two hours depending on what we find during the inspection we cover everything from the ridge vent down to the foundation and everything in between that covers your electrical system heating air plumbing roofing structure attic everything that we can see during the inspection and that it's successful these are a lot of the tools that we use as a home inspector it used to be when I first started you know you had a screwdriver and a flashlight today with technology we have all kinds of new tools we have the infrared camera have a drone for roofs that we can see that we can't get up on electrical outlet testers electric screwdrivers moisture meters these come in handy to tell if anything's wet thermometers everything works great so make sure when you hire a home inspector he has all the modern technology that you need to use today to do the job you

Channel: International Association of Certified Home Inspectors (InterNACHI)

Views: 98,751

Keywords: International association of certified home inspectors, InterNACHI, NACHI, become a home inspector, home inspection training, home inspection education, gromicko, florida, home inspection, greg bell

Id: YtPTMUBHp8I

Length: 27min 3sec (1623 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 06 2016