Home Inspection with InterNACHI® Certified Inspector

[Applause] welcome my name is ray klein i'm a certified professional inspector with internachi today we're going to be shooting an internachi home inspection standards of practice video course and we're going to be covering all of the items in the standards of practice we are not going to exceed the standards of practice we're going to do this on this property here this is in colorado the sop starts with roofing so let's go ahead and get started on the roofing okay this is section 3.1 roofing the roof materials specifically states in the sop that inspectors are not required to walk on the roof that would exceed the sop but we are required to inspect from the ground or from the eaves with this particular roof i'm going to go start with the ground and just specifically do that with a pair of binoculars to improve my vision and the first thing i'm noticing right away is i've got some obvious surface damage that appears to be from a past hail storm i'm working my way across the the front section of the roof i've got some loose shingles and i've got a temporary patch on the roof too that probably was put on to stop any leaks that were caused by the hail damage i'm also noticing some tree overhang to the roof which i'll put that in my report too as a note to trim that back and this damage i would rate is pretty pretty severe so this this roof is going to need to be replaced and that's what my findings are going to be in my report i will recommend to get a professional roofer come out take a look but i would recommend a new roof now we're going to inspect the gutters and that is required in the sop under the roofing section the first thing i'm going to notice here looking at this gutter on the front i can see the slope is uh not what we'd like to see about a quarter of an inch per 10 feet uh the middle looks like it's pretty low so these gutters probably would not drain very well so i'm going to recommend an elevation change in these gutters so they maintain that quarter inch per 10 feet now i'm going to get up on the ladder and take a look at the the gutter up on the roof right away i noticed that all the gutters are full of debris they're full of vegetation they're probably not going to flow any water in the current state they're in right now so they need to be cleaned out we're going to move on to the roofing downspouts now and the first thing i like to do is just make sure that our downspouts are secure to the house and then i'll go down here and look and see if we have at least a four foot to six foot downspout extension i always like to check these for damage or debris that might be clogging up the downspout if there is any damage or any kind of debris in here that really can affect the way the rain gutters handle the extra water now we're going to move on to the vents flashings and chimney or any roof penetrations in the sop and from the ground here right away i can see that i don't have any drip edge flash anywhere on this roof so i'm going to put that in my report and recommend that all of the plumbing vents up on the roof the top end of the roof all look pretty good so we're gonna just leave that i won't have any notes in my report with that so now we're gonna go check the chimney now we're moving on to the fireplace chimney right here actually this does not penetrate the roof but it does penetrate the outside of the house and this is a gas log fireplace what i'm looking for here is just any damage to this chimney cap any kind of debris that might be clogging up the opening it looks pretty good i don't see any any damage or any debris i can tell that this is the chimney and chimney cap for the fireplace i've been inside already the fireplace is behind this i believe that this is going to be a bee vent type vent pipe on here so make sure you watch out for this and uh note any damage uh possible clearance issues with the eve above look for black spots where you might have some incomplete burns where it put a lot of soot out here on the siding that's another thing to look for and this one here looks good this is going to be section 3.2 exteriors and the first thing we want to do is inspect all of the exterior wall covering materials i'm going to be taking photographs so i have a record of all of the exterior wall covering materials and i will pick up any defects too along the way that i see so let's go ahead and get started here on the front of the house basically what i'm looking for is just to make sure all of the siding is tight there's no under driven nails or fasteners i'm looking at this trim work making sure we don't have any water damage of any kind in the corners that our caulking is still secure and get a little bit over here we got some brick we got some brick on the back of the porch here got some brick columns here the brick columns are going to fall under our structural portion so i'll get that later but what i want to do is just come in here and look at the the brick surface coverings look for cracks any loose brick make sure you got your lentil across the door here to carry the weight of the upper brick and so far everything looks pretty tight pretty good check all the siding here check all this trim this siding appears to be a like a masonite hardboard siding so that's what i'm going to note in my report you want to check all your fasteners on the window trim and the door trim as well on the exterior make sure everything's secure now we're on the east side of the house we're going to inspect this we've got a lot of uh i don't know little nails or something here that i'll probably note in the report that these get pulled out and sealed we got some unused holes here as well it's possible somebody had something hanging up here i've got a little bit of paint chipping here and peeling i'll probably note that in my report we're not really required to inspect or make any comments about any cosmetic damage but in this case not having this painted could actually hurt the siding so i think that you know we should at least note that for a paint touch-up so far everything looks pretty good down here i'm noticing some water damage down at the bottom of this trim right behind this downspout i'm going to go ahead and make a note of that in my report you can actually see it here on the side as well it actually looks like this trim piece is also loose so i'm going to go ahead and note that too let's continue on we're now on the north side of the property and i can see we've got some deteriorating caulking and some missing so we want to make a note about that in our report we recommend that the exterior windows and doors get re-cocked around the edge got a little bit of water damage on that upper trim on the second floor you can see that dark spot there on the corner i'm going to have that in my report you can see where the caulking is failing here along the bottom of the window or next to the trim you want to get that addressed got a little siding damage here next to this electrical receptacle i'll put a note in there for that it's going to need some kind of repair to keep the water out of this this electrical device what i'm doing now is just checking some pretty common spots where you get some water damage and one of them is usually this trim piece right below the patio door i can see that we've got some peeling paint failed caulking so probably just put that in with my my note that i'm gonna have about all the caulking to be to be replaced i want to make sure all these gaps like here on the corner get those filled up with caulking got some more loose trim here we want to get that taken care of so so far you know what we've what i'm finding is just some maintenance problems you know maybe some deferred maintenance a little bit of water damage or weather damage take up one last photo here off the side of the house and i think we'll move on to the west side again we've got some peeling paint faded paint so really we need some paint touch-ups and some caulking i'm also looking for the flashing above all the windows and doors as i'm going through and looking at the exterior we've got some uh over driven nails here in the siding i probably recommend they get those filled with some caulking all in all this siding is in pretty good shape it just needs some updated maintenance a little bit of painting some caulking this concludes our exterior wall inspection this is the exterior eaves sofas and fascia so we're going to start up here in the front of the house and i'll start looking at all everything up above on the second floor okay i'm going to move down to the next level i get down here i can see some loose soffit right here i want to note that and as i go down on this fascia i've got some water damage right here too and it's loose as well the water damage doesn't surprise me because this particular house didn't have any drip edge flashing on it to prevent this i can see along the fascia you can see some stains here where the water off the roof is actually getting behind the gutter and coming down onto the fascia this is a result of that is this water damaged fascia material okay let's go move over to the side okay we're back over here on the east side of the house so we're going to start looking really closely in the corner on our soffit and our fascia everything down here on the first floor looks pretty good now i'm going to be looking up towards the second floor i can see that we've got our soffit vents for the attic spacer in there move around here to the back you can see the vents as well this is a good good time to observe these soffit vents that's all going to be part of your attic inspection later but this is the best time to view those and i can see a little water damage right up here on the corner on the fascia i'm going to take a photo of that focus in and it looks like we may have some on this outer corner here as well try and capture that that concludes our soffit eaves and fascia inspection we did find a few minor items we'll note that in our report and we'll move on to the next section so now we're going to do a representative amount of exterior windows and the things that i look for is make sure that the window frame isn't cracked broken uh we don't have any distortion of any kind we want to make sure these weep drain holes on the bottom frame are open and not plugged up this is where any outside rain or or any kind of moisture that comes in this this is what allows it to drain out of the track of the window so make sure those aren't plugged up i will check the screens even though that's not part of the sop but i want to make sure that the screens aren't bent these two windows here they look good let's go ahead and move on to another one so we're going to move on to the next side and remember we're doing a representative amount of windows which means approximately one window per side on the house again i want to look at the frame make sure we don't have any frame distortion of any kind i want to make sure everything is good and tight in here that we don't have any points for entry for water check our drain holes or weep holes on the bottom of the frame make sure we got a place for water to leak out of get out of the track this one looks good so let's move on to another side this one here has got a bent screen frame so i probably will note that in my report again i'm looking for my drain holes to make sure they're not plugged up looking for any distortion any kind of cracking bending any kind of window breakage and i don't see anything so i think we're in good shape here too now the sop tells us to inspect all exterior doors so we're going to start with the front entry door here i'm going to go ahead and take a picture for just for reference and right away i can see these side lights which are on both sides of the entry door we've got some broken trim around the glass we've got a lot of failed caulking they go up and down the sash um some of these pieces are broken in half i can see it over here as well so we've got broken trim and caulking failed caulking this is all potential entry points for water and water could get in here and start to damage the window frame and everything else inside so we want to get that all noted now i'm going to check this storm door check the closing device and it closes and it latches [Music] now i'm going to move in here to the inner door i'm going to check all my weatherstripping all around the jamb those are all pretty good shape check the threshold make sure that i don't have any open holes or screws that are drilled into this outer part of the threshold which would allow water to get in the door itself this is a steel door and what i want to do now is move to the inside and check the locks on this door i'm going to close this and we'll see if the deadbolt locks easily the door latches easily so that's all good so let's go ahead and move into the garage and check those doors we've got one entry door in the back we've also got our entry door into the house at the firewall so we'll start with this one right here we'll get a reference photo again the same routine i'm going to be checking the threshold all the weather stripping got a change in weather stripping type up here at the top looks like it's been replaced i do notice we got some under driven nails here on both sides of the of the jamb so i'm going to recommend to get this tightened up this is a steel door as well but this has an upper glass in it everything looks good and tight here and we've got some peeling paint here but i can put that in with my maintenance exterior maintenance report we'll step in here we're going to check the locks deadbolt locks good however we've got a malfunctioning lock lower lock on here so i'm going to note that it doesn't want to lock and it's not latching so i think we'll we'll get that in the report let's move over here to the fire door take a picture [Music] this is a fiberglass door fire rated here's my certificate here for the fire rating on the door you want to note that and we want to see some self-closing hinges on this door so we've got three we're gonna see if they're gonna function right it did close the door but it didn't latch so i think i'm gonna recommend maybe an adjustment on the self-closing hinges take a little photo okay we're going to come on in here and we're going to well first of all let's let's check our weather stripping all along the jamb take a look at our threshold everything looks good there check the deadbolt first it's good lower lock let's make sure this lower takes a little coaxing but it is working so i'm going to go ahead and just recommend an adjustment for the self-closing hinges we want to make sure that this latches by itself we don't want any gaps here that would allow any vapor or smoke into the house from the garage so so we're going to move on now to the patio door we'll start with the outside first take a reference photo i can see we've got some uh loose weather stripping but i was able to just pop that back in there we've got some cracking on this plastic molding around the the door the door glass so we're going to note that just check the function of this screen seems to be adjusted quite well check the reveal here it's a little stiff probably could use a little lubricant but uh i think i'm not going to put any notes in for that now we can check the locks okay the lock is working well they do have a secondary lock on here as well they had it in here before it looks like it needs to be adjusted to fit this this particular door but that is out of our sop so that concludes all of our exterior door inspections okay now we're going to move on to the flashing and the trim and so what i'm going to do is just start here at these windows on the front of the house and what i'm looking for is the flashing above the window and all the trim that comes down on the corners and around all the windows and the doors so i'm looking for that i'm going to be looking for potential missing caulking water damage loose fasteners or loose nails i will only address any cosmetic things like like paint if it's really bad go around the entry door here and check that that trim looks good a little trim up here in the corner that all looks good there just continue on here we got some trim above the garage door we got our flashing is in place here that's what we want to see it does extend clear across as well as this other door so that's all in place our trim all looks good all right let's go ahead and move on to the next side of the house we'll check our corner trim here the trim next to the soffit all looks good got a little bit of an over driven nail here there's really no room for any caulking so i'm just going to leave that and we got a little bit of missing paint here at the bottom of the trim uh probably just put that in as some maintenance recommended maintenance we do have some under driven nails here on this brick mold trim so probably going to put that in too again that's going to be part of their maintenance we've got some missing caulking along here we'll put that in too as well so we got some missing caulking here we'll get that in there we've still got some underdriven nails all around this brick mold on the door and we do have a little damage here we got some cracking and some peeling paint so we probably want to address that that's just going to be part of our maintenance recommendation got some more trim here trim up along the soffit and just make sure that it's good and tight we got some loose corner trim down here right down here at the bottom it's pulled away from the wall i want to get that tightened up got some water damage here at the bottom of this trim i'm gonna note that as well as some loose trim just around the corner you can see a gap in here so we want to get this tightened up and maybe replace this bottom piece because of the water damage that's down here at the bottom everything else looks pretty good i keep moving along i can see our flashing above the windows here and we want to make sure our trim is in good shape a little bit of peeling paint here if you look underneath here in this trim it this trim never got painted at the bottom so i want to make sure we note that up there we see a little bit of water damage at the bottom of that window trim the bottom corner and it looks to be like the looks looks like they never painted the bottom of the trim there so i want to get that in our report overall i think that you know the best way to put this is a lot of this caulking and paint is just part of uh deferred maintenance you know just some maintenance that needs to be kept up on you know you i like to check to tell my clients to check this stuff about every three to four years especially the caulking okay we're still looking at our trim got a gap here need some caulking this trim along the patio door in the back here this is very common to see any kind of water damage here um so we want to make sure this is good and tight again it looks like we've got some under driven nails i want to make sure we get those tightened up get some caulking in here along the bottom of the door we've got more under driven nails on this siding or this trim rather by this window this is the kitchen window so we'll make sure we note that i can see our flashing above flashing above over there on that window as well so that's all in place that's all good we got a loose piece of trim here on the corner got an exposed gap got some loose nails so we want to get that tightened up get some caulking in there we're going to conclude our trim and flashing inspection and my notes and my report will just would just show some deferred maintenance this next part is walkways and driveways so what we want to do now is we want to take a good close look at our flat work in the driveway and right away i can see we've got some cracking on that section there we've got a little bit of cracking back here but one thing i noticed on this driveway we've got a bit of a movement here so in terms of how much movement i would say this is probably about an inch where this piece here is heaved up from this other surface so i'm going to note this in my report as a potential trip hazard in most cases when you have more than three quarters of an inch of difference in surface that can create a trip hazard other than that this this driveway looks to be in pretty good shape other than a little bit of movement and cracking pretty typical so let's go over here to the sidewalk or the walkway take a reference photo and it's pretty obvious on this one we've got some settling here probably over well over an inch in some spots so this is actually dropped down and if you go up here to this upper section we've got substantial cracking here we've got some substantial settling where it steps up to the front porch so i'm going to note this in some cases this can be repaired by mud jacking but it really depends on how severe the cracking is here so i'm going to note this as substantial movement in the walkway and i would recommend a professional concrete contractor to come out and take a look at it okay we're going to move on to the side in the back this is our sidewalkway looks to be in pretty good shape we've got some uh varying elevation in the surface of this sidewalk i think probably it was originally put in that way i'm going to note that in my report i also notice over here that there's quite a gap from the end of the sidewalk to where it meets the patio uh apparently that was done intentional that way i don't know why but just for my clients information i'll put that in my report so now we're going to move on to stairways stoops and ramps and also individual steps too first thing we're going to do here is we're going to look at this step that's on the patio and i can see here with this paint line on the trim that this this stairway or the stair has actually settled probably about three-fourths of an inch the first thing it's going to do is it's going to exceed the rise between this stair and the entryway through the patio door the maximum rise should only be about seven and three quarters of an inch so this is easily over nine inches we're going to note that in my report that can create a trip hazard i can also see that right next to the step some mud jacking has been performed possibly to raise this except they didn't raise it enough i'll make a note of that so let's go around the front of the house and look at those steps we're going to continue on with our steps here we are at the front entryway and we did notice the settling here on this pad prior to this when we did the walkways so you can also notice here as well i think that we're going to be pretty close on the seven and three quarters inch rise right here but i think it'll be okay we're going to move up look at these others i see a little hairline cracking here and everything looks pretty good here it looks stable it doesn't look like it's settled at all it's pretty solid there's no cracks in this portion other than that little hair line and the last installment on our stairway inspection we're going to look at these steps going from the garage floor up into the house and first thing we're going to do is check and make sure they're secure for safety and they are and everything looks good down here at the bottom i don't think we're exceeding any of the the seven three quarter inch rise on any of the steps so in terms of that i think we're we're settled right here i mean it looks good now we're into the section for porches patios decks and balconies we're going to start up here on the front porch it's covered concrete looks to be in pretty good shape there's a little cracking along the the upper step you can see it right here so we've had a little movement typically i just recommend to my clients to keep these cracks filled with a good concrete sealer so actually here on the front porch we're in pretty good shape so i think we'll move on to the back and look at the patio okay now we're back here at the patio on the back of the house i'm going to take a reference photo here and over here to my left i can see we've had some pretty substantial settling from where it used to be next to the house so probably from about this inner corner here clear across it's dropped about an inch and a half so i'm going to note that in my report but when i turn around i can see that they've attempted a mud jacking repair back here to lift this pad back up to its normal level but they they didn't get it done so i'm going to actually recommend that they get a concrete contractor or a mud jacking contractor out here to correct this because this is uh a spot where you could get a lot of water down along the foundation and that's something we don't want so let's move out here into the center of the patio got a hairline crack here pretty common you know i think that it's good practice to keep the patio where it meets the side of the house keep that sealed so i'm going to recommend some caulking or some kind of sealant along here to keep the water from getting down next to the house so i moved over here i can see they've done more mud jacking repairs we got the same issue over here get some pretty substantial settling up next to the house i'd say two inches or more again i think that their repair has failed and if i look around the corner we've got a crack here on the corner some substantial settling next to the house anywhere from two or more inches again i see a attempt at a mud jacking repair here but that they just didn't get it done so i'm going to recommend further review by a concrete contractor okay we're going to move on to railings guards and handrails and the only railings we have on this particular house is out here on the front porch so i'm just going to go ahead and check these to make sure they're not loose that they're good and secure got some peeling paint there you know i'm going to roll that in with part of my maintenance recommendations however i do have a loose railing here right up against this brick column so i'm going to recommend that get secured check this outside railing and now i'll look on the outside make sure we don't have any water damage any loose balusters good everything looks good there other than we've got a little loose top rail here okay now we're going to move on to vegetation surface drainage retaining walls and grading so all that's going to be on the exterior of the house so i'm going to start right here i'll take some photos here we've got quite a bit of vegetation up against the house typically we don't want to see it too close to the structure itself so i'm going to recommend some trimming of these bushes to get it back away from the exterior we've got some tree overhang up above it's touching the fascia and it's hanging over the roof so recommend trimming that grating is not ideal here it's a little low so i'm going to recommend some additional fill and re-grade so the water flows away from the house i will also look at the grating out here in the front and this all looks pretty good we've got a good slope on it that's what we're looking for so let's go ahead and move on to the other side of the house so we're over here on the east side of the home and obviously we've got our walkway it goes right up against the house here it's got a good slope towards me for water and it looks like we got a pretty decent slope from the park that's up close to the house so it's sloping this way so we should have good drainage here up along here we could probably use a little bit more fill and some additional grading there all this along here looks pretty good we've got maybe a couple of minor low spots but nothing concerning again we may have some drainage issues here with the patio because of the slope and the settling of the patio itself so we're going to address that in the patio section our slope doesn't look too bad here um off of this corner we've got some gravel this is the kind of gravel that moves a lot so it's going to be hard to get it perfect but uh in general it looks pretty good i look at it at this site over here the west side of the house this is uh this is not good we've got uh piled up soil we got pretty low spot here it's too high over here towards that window well so i'm going to recommend a landscaper come in here and clean this up and re-grade everything in the event that we have a heavy rainstorm we probably would have pooling water right up against the house and we don't want that to get up next to the foundation and get into the basement so this definitely is going to show up as needing work and that concludes our drainage section we're going to move on to section 3.3 which is basement crawl space foundation and structure we're going to go ahead and get started with the foundation inspection this particular home only has one unfinished space where we could view any section of the foundation wall so i'm going to go down here basically the foundation wall starts here so i'm going to begin to look to see if i have any cracking any other issues i do see i've got a little bit of efflorescence up here which can signify that i've had some past moisture intrusion so i'm going to note that in my report we don't know what the source is but we can certainly describe that it's here and where the location is on the foundation wall so we keep on moving down we do have some obstruction here with some storage shelves that it's blocking our view but we can see a good portion of it um i'm not seeing any structural cracks or even even any hairline cracking at all it looks pretty solid typically i see efflorescence down along the bottom where the basement floor meets the foundation wall and just to give you a reference we're only viewing about approximately 30 feet of the foundation wall the remainder of the basement's all finished we can't see any of that we see a little bit of efflorescence down here not much but a little bit no cracking at all everything looks pretty solid in terms of the inspection on the basement foundation if you have a basement such as this where 95 of it is finished and we could only see just a small portion of the foundation wall in the unfinished room you probably want to note this in your report and you could take a reference photo of just a finished wall in the basement or a room put that in as a reference photo but usually what i'll do is make a comment i will put something like 95 of the basement is finished and it would only allow a very small portion of a view and so it was an extremely limited inspection on the foundation wall that way your client or anybody else knows that you couldn't view these walls because they're all finished so you want to exclude that so now we're going to go on and start inspecting the basement area so we're going to just take a walk around here and i'm going to be looking for any potential structural issues in the drywall i might add that this this basement is entirely finished so our our view of anything is going to be pretty limited but what i'm looking for is uneven spots in the floor low spots maybe some concrete heaving underneath and the flooring cracking in the drywall that might be a sign of structural issues we'll move on to the next room typically i like to walk along the foundation wall to see if i can feel any anomalies in the floor so far so good so far on the interior i'm not really seeing anything everything looks pretty good i do like to take a look at these window wells too that are attached to the foundation just to see if we got any issues there so i'd say all in all in this basement everything looks good that concludes our basement inspection we're going to talk about the crawl space part of 3.3 this particular home does not have a crawl space however the only thing you can do is exclude it in your report if there was a crawl space in this home you would probably want to enter that crawl space take a look at the structure look for any moisture intrusion into the crawl space look to see if they have a vapor barrier look to see if there's any issues with concrete walls of the foundation there's a number of things you can look at down there and it's very important because that's an area that sometimes will not get viewed so pay close attention if you do get in a crawl space for any safety issues as well like stored items that that make it so you can't view everything just keep in mind that you know crawl spaces are just dark and dingy and sometimes the access is not very good to get into so just make sure that everything is safe for the inspector too okay now we're going to do the structural components and we're going to start in this little unfinished area in the basement since this is the only spot we can view [Music] any of the flooring structure components and i can see that we've got some plywood tgai's as our floor joists the decking or the subfloor is an osb material i'm just going to look for any bowing or cracking of any of these components we also have a steel i-beam which is part of the main support and back here we've got a microlamb beam right at the top of the stairs this is carrying the weight of the stairway at the top everything looks pretty good i'm not seeing any issues whatsoever any twisting or sagging but again we're just in a very small area that where we can review this kind of material it's the rest of the basement's 95 percent finished so we're going to have to exclude that in that report this is section 3.4 heating the inspectors shall operate the heating system and describe the heating system using the normal operating controls the first thing we're going to do is we're going to locate the thermostat and we're here on the first floor and this is our thermostat this is a smart thermostat so we're going to set this up a little bit high so we can go downstairs to the furnace and see if we can get the furnace to engage we're down here at the furnace in the basement and basically this is just a mechanical room for this type of equipment i'm going to go ahead and take a reference photo of the furnace and i am gonna remove the front cover so i can view everything on the inside okay um we'll see if we can get this furnace to ignite i'm going to take a few reference photos when i first look at the furnace i've already discovered that this is a gas forced air type furnace it's an up flow and over here i can see that i've got a fuel line here and this is a natural gas fuel line i can look at my burners right here i've got a draft inducing fan and the first thing i noticed now is that after we adjusted the thermostat to ignite the furnace that it is not igniting uh the circulation fan has come on but the burners are not lighting and it's not attempting to ignite as well so we're going to take a photo and i'm going to put that in my report now probably what i'll do is recommend that they get a review by an hvac technician a professional typically in my reports i generally recommend a cleaning recertification by a licensed hvac technician the reason i do that is is because we don't have the instrumentation to to test these thoroughly so it's better if the professional takes a look at it now we're going to conclude our inspection for the heating system we'll make sure we document everything we found we're moving on to 3.5 cooling the inspector shell described the cooling method and the normal operating controls so again we're here at the thermostat we are going to try to engage the ac and i can see here that it's showing that it's been engaged we'll go down again so you can see it you see the change right there so let's go outside and take a look at that condenser we're outside here at our condenser i'm going to take a reference photo one of the things i can see is we have some build up here on the coils so i'm going to recommend the cleaning of the coils this will really affect the efficiency of the unit the other thing i can see up here at the top you've got some wires sticking above i'm going to go ahead and document that and i'm also going to take a photo of this debris for our report i'm going to come around here the unit seems to be pretty level also want to look at the insulation on the refrigerant lines looks to be in decent shape and we have a disconnect within sight in terms of performing it seems like it's performing well so that concludes our cooling section we're now going to start section 3.6 plumbing and the first thing we're going to do is look at the main water supply shutoff valve and right down here in the basement this yellow handle valve is would be our main water supply shutoff valve our main water supply coming in is copper three quarter inch and so we'll work while we're here we're going to take a look and make sure we have no leakage or anything in the main water line this feeds the entire house on the inside everything looks pretty solid so that we're going to conclude that part of this of the inspection and we'll move on to the next one okay now we're going to inspect the main fuel supply shutoff valve we're going to have to go outside by the gas meter to take a look at this and over here to the right of the gas meter is a valve that could be used to shut the gas source off to the inside of the house and this is on the outside of the house it looks to be in good shape it's a little rusty but you know typically they all get a little rusty from being outside but it looks like it's in good shape and we don't have any gas leaks here because i can't smell any gas so i think we're good now we're down here we're going to do the water heating equipment and what we've got here is a water heater i'm going to take a reference photo for my report first thing i'm going to do is start up here at the top i'm going to check my ventilation pipe make sure it's all secure all the fasteners are in place i don't have any signs of corrosion or any holes everything looks to be good and solid on both sides now i'm going to move on to the top of the tank i can see right away i've got some corrosion on both sides right below the dielectric fittings so i'm going to take some photographs put that in my report and i'm going to recommend it a plumber take a look at that so moving on down next thing i want to look for is some seismic bracing and it appears we don't have any on this water heater so i'm going to go ahead and take a photograph and i'm going to recommend that in my report next thing i'm going to look at is this tpr valve it's in place i don't see any corrosion around the base i want to make sure i've got my extension on here that goes all the way towards the floor typically you want to see no more than six inches between the the extension and the floor itself also want to make sure we're close to a floor drain in case the water heater would have to release any high pressure moving on down here i'm going to check our fuel source here we're on natural gas here and here's our shut off valve for the water heater so this is a natural gas water tank check our gas line make sure it looks like everything's good there i think that this is a little bit loose here i think i'll recommend they secure this gas line a little bit better to the wall you also want to make sure that you've got a trap on down here on the bottom of the gas line because this will allow any solids or any debris that's in the gas to settle in down below here in this little trap that's pretty important so i think that pretty much wraps up our water heater inspection okay now we're going to be doing the interior water supply which includes all of the interior fixtures and faucets and we're going to do that by running some water we're in the kitchen right now we're going to start with running some water i'm going to take a look down here and make sure that we don't have any obvious leaks running some water not seeing any so anything so far the next thing you want to do is just verify you've got hot water so right now we're in hot and i do i have verified that it's hot so i'm going to move to the cold i go back down here again check and see if we have any leaks check the base of the sink check around the disposal and i think that we're dry down here i don't see any evidence of past leaks or current lakes so i think we're good so i'm gonna just go ahead and get a reference photo here the sink i'm gonna shut this water off and for the sake of this video we're gonna be just inspecting one bathroom and the kitchen so we're gonna move on to do a bathroom now okay we're gonna continue on with our interior water supply this is actually part two this is gonna be the bathrooms and i'm gonna come in here and i'm going to start some water both sinks and i'm also going to turn some water on the tub this is a good way to check to see how good your water pressure is now i'm going to start sewing the shower so i'm going to go down below start looking for any leaks that might be happening i'm not seeing anything on this sink so now i'm going to verify my hot water i'll shut my cold off make sure the other side's hot and i've got hot water so i verified that take one more look everything looks good on that sink this particular bathroom is the master bath and it has dual sinks again we're going to check for any leakage going to come up here and shut the coal off check to make sure we got hot water we do check again i don't see anything there sub scenes be running good i'm going to shut the cold verified hot water let's check our drain and make sure we're draining well i also want to note that this particular tub is a jet tub in terms of our sop we're not required to test these so if you do test jet tubs you want to make sure that you include those in your report and if you you have one and you don't inspect it you want to exclude it in your report so now we're going to move over to the shower i had that on hot so now i'm putting it to a mix of hot and cold it's just a little bit warmer i'm just checking my faucets faucet heads up here faucet handles make sure i don't have any leakage this is an opportunity to uh recommend any kind of caulking like around the base of these faucets i would probably recommend this get some caulking and any caulking as well in your shower enclosure this one here looks like it sure could use some new caulking as well okay we're going to move on to toilets we're going to be just inspecting for proper operation and for the sake of this video we are just going to show you just one toilet in this home so we're just going to go over here to the lever just operate it normally look for proper drainage you know we can look for any potential leak around the base or around the supply valve i don't see any we're just going to give it a couple seconds here to make sure it fills up properly and shuts off okay it filled up the float valve shuttered off in the tank so this this toyota is operating properly so now we're going to test for a functional drainage at the sinks the tub and the shower okay so we're going to be looking at our uh our drain down here if i had a water buildup in this shower pan if it was backing up i should see it by now but it actually looks like it's draining well a lot of times what can happen in these drains they can get hair clogs in them and it can really affect the proper drainage okay we're going to shut this water off to the tub i'm going to view my drain it looks good it's flowing really easily and well so i'm going to go over to the sinks do the same shut both of these off and we've easily got these drained quick everything looks good everything's functional while we're down in the unfinished area we're going to take a look at the drain vent and waste system we're going to have a very limited view of this so i can see that we've got some pvc pipe and it connects with our main this is actually our main sewer drain right here we got a clean out right here next to the floor this part here this black pipe is an abs and we're going to take a look at that we're just going to look for any potential leaks but again this is a very limited view a lot of this piping is behind finished walls and you won't be able to look at it so we have to take the opportunity down here in the unfinished area to see what we can find we'll go back there's a little bit more behind us here they do have strapping on these pipes which is good they're being supported just look for any leaks got another clean out here this is another major line going underneath the concrete we got a little bit more behind us here everything looks pretty good it's all secure i don't see any leaks so we're good there okay now we're going to look at our plumbing venting uh this is a studer vent we got one here this is in the basement this is for the basement bathroom which is behind this wall to my left so that all looks good we don't have any leakage coming around it we've got another one up here on this line here that's a little bit larger studer type vent but everything looks good from what i can see however we also have some venting that goes up through the roof and the plumbing system this is section 3.7 electrical and we're going to start with the service drop and it's over here on the east side of the house i'm going to take a reference photo this is an all-in-one unit it's the meter and the circuit breaker box all in one and so i'm going to be looking at everything that's connected to this like here's my riser my service riser comes up here to the bottom i want to make sure that everything's tight and there's no loose connections with the conduit so now we're going to open up the circuit breaker panel here on the bottom this is an exterior panel i'm going to take a photo this is a 200 amp main disconnect there's a 200 amp breaker by shutting this off that would shut everything down below on this this panel so now i'm just going to take a brief view of what i've got for circuit rating on these circuit breakers and look at where they're feeding what rooms make sure that we don't have any breakers that are too big or oversized or undersized we've got two arc fault breakers here in the panel for the basement and basement bedroom so i'm going to go ahead and i'm going to test these okay that tripped that tripped okay we'll reset so our arc faults seem to be functional they tested correct in the sop it talks about an overhead service drop and on this particular house we don't have an overhead feed our service feed comes in from the bottom and without pulling the dead front off i can't view those conductors uh if i pull this dead front off i'm going to exceed the sop so in terms of this we're not going to be able to put anything in for this in terms of a service head gooseneck and drip loops there isn't any on this house so we're going to put a reference photo in for you so you can see what they look like we're going to go on to the surface mast raceway and conduit and in this case we have an underground service so it comes up from the ground into the bottom of the service equipment everything looks secure here we're gonna we want to make sure that it's good and solid that the fitting with the lock nut on it is good and tight we can't see the the conductors inside so we just have to judge what we can see from the outside so this is a pretty simple application here so that pretty much concludes this okay we're going to talk about the electrical meter and base now and one of the first things i like to do is make sure that it's good and secure to the wall and it is the one thing i've noticed here that there is no meter seal on here there should be a meter seal that is applied by the utility this is for security purposes that way if it gets cut off like in this case it makes you have to be concerned that somebody got in here and made modifications so i'm going to recommend to my client that they call the electrical utility company to come out and check this meter base and reseal it okay we're going to move on to the service entrance conductors and in this case because we're going to stick to the sop and we're not going to pull the dead front off the panel we cannot view the service entrance conductors inside so we probably will exclude those in our report now we're moving to the main service disconnect we can we got a little tag here it says service disconnect it's a breaker it's rated at 200 amps we do not test these so all you do is just record what you can see here and that concludes that now we're going to look at our over current protection devices and our panel boards this is considered our main distribution panel these are our over current protection devices our breakers you can see that they are labeled all the way up and down on both sides i like to just go through real quick and match them up with the current rating on the breaker to make sure that we don't have anything that's oversized or undersized i think we're good here everything looks good this section is the service grounding and bonding portion of the electrical we're going to be checking a couple of visual points that we can actually see now in terms of the bonding internal bonding in the panel itself because we would exceed the standards of practice by pulling the dead front off we're not going to be able to view that portion so okay so we're going to go down here and check the ground rod part of the service grounding and right away i'm going to just make sure that these connectors are tight here's our ground grounding electrode wire this is considered to be our grounding electrode that's the ground rod everything looks to be tight and pretty clean i can see that it comes up over here and goes directly into the panel the service panel so everything looks pretty good here we're now going to move on to the water main and check that ground connection down there in the basement okay we're now in the basement of the home and i wanted to come down here and check the other grounding connection point on the water main coming into the house i can see our clamp right here so i'm just going to make sure that's tight this is a copper water main line here's my grounding electrode wire back here and as i'm coming up to look at that i've noticed that there is no bonding jumper around the water meter itself i'm going to mention that i'm going to take a photo of this and i'm going to mention this in my report the importance of this bonding jumper is that if the meter is ever removed for maintenance or if any of these internal gaskets or seals on these fittings are non-conductive then we wouldn't have the continuity through the water line like we want with our ground so i'm just going to take a photo of that real quick i'll mention that my report everything else looks pretty good that would conclude our grounding and bonding for this portion of the electrical inspection now we're going to cover the uh representative amount of switches receptacles light fixtures and afci receptacles or afci protected receptacles and in this case our afci breakers are in located in the main distribution panel and so it's going to be easier for me to just test these from here test button they both tripped as it should now i'm going to do a reset they both reset fine now let's move inside okay this is part j we're going to be doing a representative amount of testing the lights switches and receptacles including the afci receptacles which are in this house or in the basement so i'm just going to turn this light on try that and usually a representative amount of receptacles would be about one or two per room plug my meter in looking for polarity correct polarity that's all good there that one's good let's move on to another one okay we're good there occasionally you should test the bottom one as well so we're all good let's go into one more room and do our lighting check our light a light switch it's all functional come in here and test a couple of receptacles we're good there that one's a good as well so we're all good and functional in this bedroom now we're going to do a representative amount of the receptacles that are on the afci circuits if it's in the circuit breaker panel so we're down into the basement and basically we're just looking for polarity on these and you don't have to test every single receptacle but you should test at least a few in each room if you can the reason i'm not going to do an afci test trip here from the receptacles because i've already done the test trip from the breaker in the panel so it's unnecessary to do it from both locations okay these are all good so our afci circuits look good okay we're going to be doing some gfci testing now we're in one of the second floor bathrooms this is a normal receptacle but it should be tied to a gfci receptacle or breaker located somewhere else so i'm going to do the test button and it tripped it so that verifies that this one is gfci protected so now let's go see if we can find where it's being fed from going into the master bath i can see that i've got a gfci receptacle over here to my left i've got another standard outlet here and it is dead so now i'm going to do a reset and retest and let me go over here and test this one and it tests correct so now we know that both of these bathrooms on the second floor are gfci protected we're still working on our grand fault circuit interrupters and for the bathrooms in the garage and the exterior i'm here in the main floor in the half bath this is a normal receptacle it is polarized correctly but in order to assure that this is on a gfci i still got to do the test button and it kicked it off so somewhere it's being fed by a gfci so we just need to find that so we can reset it so we'll continue on and we'll go down to the basement take a look at that bathroom and see if that's where our gfci is we've got a bar sink here that i'm going to test because it's close to the water this should be gfci protected and it is so let's go in the bathroom in here uh oh bathroom light is on the gfci so we verified that this gfci is working by testing that other receptacle on the bar sink having the lights on this circuit is no problem that's pretty common so we're going to go ahead and note that this one is correct we still have to find the gfci for the main floor half bath so now i think i'm going to look in the garage so i'm here in the garage and we've got one gfci here this one's still energized so i'm going to test this okay it's back on retest perfect so we need we still need to find the gfci for the half bath and my last suspicion is that it's up in the master bath so we got to go back up there okay so the master bath gfci feeds the half bath on the main level too so all of the bathrooms are all circuited together that will conclude our gfci testing okay now we're going to check for the presence of smoke and carbon monoxide detectors and we're on the second floor right now and i can visually see that we've got a battery operated carbon monoxide detector up here on the wall i will take a reference photo and it looks like the placement is correct it has to be within 15 feet of all bedrooms so i've got two bedrooms to my left and i've got one to my right so the placement of this meter it looks like it's correct so we also have to check for the the presence of smoke detectors as well so i'm in the master bedroom here and i can see right here on the ceiling that we have one here and i also noticed in the other bedrooms that there was also a smoke detector as well so i am going to take a reference photo so the next location i'm looking for co detector is close to the bedroom that's in the basement and i can see up here on the wall that i've got a battery operated carbon monoxide detector and it's well within the 15 feet range that's required to be close to the bat the bedroom also above here in the basement we've also got smoke detectors as well i'm going to take some reference photos and i will document these in the report this is going to be section 3.8 fireplaces we're going to be inspecting the readily accessible chimneys or fireplaces so in this one here this is a gas log i'm going to take a photo here for my report i'm going to be looking at my my lentils up here down here at the bottom i want to make sure that i've got fire resistant material this is all wrapped with drywall up here these doors are sealed or locked into place on these fireplaces so i'm going to come down here open up this maintenance panel what i'm looking for down here i want to make sure i've got a gas shut off and it's in the open position right now it's pretty dirty down here so i'll probably recommend a cleaning get all this dust out of here everything looks pretty good in there other than all the lint and dirt in there now i'm going to do a test okay it did ignite i expect to see some moisture build up on the inside of this glass usually there's a little bit of condensate inside the flame will burn that off eventually to clear it up got pretty good flame color seems to be operating pretty well this one also has a circulating fan we'll shut that off circulating fans working good we'll see if the burner goes off and it did so that concludes our fireplace inspection we're going to take a look at this lintel above the fireplace opening and everything looks good looks like we got good clearance this is all fire resistant material tile we got a drywall wrapping up here so that portion of it looks good okay now we're going to address the sop part where it says damper doors if they're readily accessible in this case we have a gas log fireplace these are not operable doors this is a fixed glass over this fireplace so in this case we can't do any damper door testing typically you'll see damper doors on wood burning fireplaces and that would be where you would want to test those next we're going to talk about clean out doors and frames again this is another case where we've got a gas log fireplace typically we're going to see clean outdoors on wood burning fireplaces or wood burning in some cases wood burning stoves so we can't do that inspection on this we're going to start section 3.9 addicts and this says that inspectors shall inspect insulation in unfinished areas such as attics crawl spaces and foundations in this particular home here we do not have a crawl space but we do have a small unfinished area in the basement we'll be looking at we're going to go ahead and take a look up in the attic space okay what we have up here is we've got approximately 16 inches of blown end fiberglass insulation and it looks to be covered really well i don't see any uncovered spaces which could develop some cold spots in the finished area below i'm going to take a couple of reference photos while i'm up here so everything up pip here looks really good it's covered well and it seems to be throughout the surface of the attic space so i don't see any problems we're going to move on to our unfinished area in the basement we're down here in the unfinished room in the basement and we're going to be inspecting the insulation and unfinished spaces so the only insulation we've got down here is going to be the insulation that insulates the rim joist around the outside wall so we just want to look at that and make sure that we don't have any open gaps where cold air could come in that all looks good there we got a little bit more back here everything seems to be in place for this room so that should conclude our insulation and unfinished basis now we're going to move on to the ventilation of unfinished spaces so i'm going to take another look up here in the attic space to check our ventilation what i'm seeing right now is uh we've got roof vents they look to be spaced correctly and out along the eaves and soffits i can visually see the baffles for the soffit vents and it is above the level of the insulation everything looks good we're going to go ahead and take a look at the inspection for the mechanical systems the kitchen and the bathrooms while we're up here and that all seems to be in good shape everything looks good it's meeting all the requirements so that should conclude this portion okay we're going to start section 310 interior windows and doors and we're going to start by operating a representative amount of windows and doors on the interior of the house so what a representative amount means is typically at least one to two windows and doors per room so we're going to go ahead and start with these two doors here by the entryway usually i want to just make sure i can open it all the way check the door frame the jamb make sure that i don't have any cracks anything that might affect the operation i'm going to go ahead and close and latch it and then i'm going to check the gaps all the way around also look at the hinges too to make sure that you don't have any pins that are sticking up and then just kind of rattle the door a little bit i'll try it one more time that door is good let's go ahead and move over to this one same thing i'm going to go ahead and open it as far as i can get it now i'm going to close okay that latched look at the door jamb check it for any damage so i'm going to go on the inside now and check the gaps on the door just like i did the door next to it everything looks good on these two doors let's go ahead and test some windows i'll go ahead and open some of these blinds okay so these windows here are in the living room area of this home so we're going to unlock them we're going to open them when i operate these type of windows these are a single hung type window i want to make sure they stay up when i open them i'm going to look for any counterbalance springs that may be out of position usually you'll see them they'll pop out and then they'll come down into the track on the side of the window and then the window will be cockeyed it won't stay in the frame square so these look to be in good shape i'm going to close it make sure my locks function well and easy the most all windows should operate easily okay those two seem good now when it comes to bedroom windows you really want to make sure they operate easily because those are egress escape windows and the last thing you want is a window that's stuck in case of a fire this window is a slider this is a pretty good sized window i'm gonna do the same thing here i'm gonna move it and open it as much as i can i'm gonna be looking at the track see if we have any obstruction check the screens i'm going to operate it now again to close check the locks they function smoothly a lot of times what can affect the window operation is just dirty tracks and occasionally they will need to be cleaned just to make sure that these windows move easily and everything looks good these these are in good shape and they operate very smoothly okay we're going to do some floors walls and ceilings i'm going to start up here on the wall and what i'm looking for is any cracking potential bulging in the walls which might signify we've got some foundation problems or structure issues i also want to look for any stains around windows where we might get some moisture intrusion we do have a little bit of hairline cracking here but that's in the drywall surface i don't think that poses any kind of a structural issue i'll go up here check this wall up high any transitional spot in the ceiling like up high here i can see potentially one hairline crack in the drywall right there that is pretty common that's probably in the drywall joint itself and usually that does not signify any kind of structural issue i'm going to move down here on the floor when it comes to floors typically what you want to look for is just any spots that might be unlevel bulging potential anomalies from the subfloor that might be happening if you want to walk the floor around the edge that's a good idea just to make sure that you don't feel anything in the floor make sure that you don't mistake a tack strip along the edges some something wrong with the flooring because usually you're going to get a little bit of a high spot there where that that carpet tack strip is let's go over here to a hard surface floor this is a wood tongue and groove we can look for cracking here in terms of any issues here i just don't see any everything looks pretty solid it's a level i think we're good okay we're going to move on to stairs steps landings and ramps so what we've got here we've got a landing at the bottom of our second story stairway right by the entry door and it's a hard surface hardwood we've got a newel post here at the very base it's very very sturdy that's a good thing just make sure we've got some clearance at the bottom and it looks like we're exceeding the necessary clearance at the bottom of the stairs and what i like to do here on the stairway is check my rise you know we're about seven and a quarter inches on our eyes and they're all very consistent so that looks good so i'm going to go ahead and take some reference photographs here i'm going to go ahead and walk up the stairs we got a landing up here at the top as well and it actually is meeting all of the required size just make sure you give it a good a good view and check everything to make sure that it's good and solid stairways can be very dangerous especially for elderly people and children this one's in good shape and it's very very secure okay we're going to do a little bit about railings guards and handrails and the first thing we're going to do is check our new posts our handrails our balusters we're going to check them to make sure they're good and solid and secure and as well we want to check our our gaps between the balusters too to make sure that they they'll meet the child safety recommendations i'm going to measure the distance between my balusters we're about four and a quarter on center so that should be good as well so i'm just gonna go on up here and i'll walk and i'm gonna just kind of check a few of these balusters along with the hand rail just to make sure they're good and tight here's another new post at the top we're going to check this handrail we'll just do a little check here on our balusters give it a quick look on the outside this one's in good shape it's good and tight and it feels very safe we're going to move on and do the garage vehicle door inspection we're going to be using the normal operating controls before i do that i'd like to take a quick view of the doors just to see if there's anything that looks out of order if i have any bent hardware any potential roller issues it's always good to look at this first before you operate it you also want to look at the tension spring up here and make sure it's not broken so this is just a very brief hardware inspection to make sure that if we go to operate this door that something doesn't go wrong so now i'm going to move over and push the button to open the big door i'm going to take a quick look here at the the chain on the garage door opener to make sure it's not too loose that all looks good let's give this opener a little shake to make sure it's fastened up to the ceiling well and it's pretty solid and the other door the smaller door in the garage i'm going to go over here i'm going to have to operate it manually there's no opener on it it seemed to operate pretty smoothly you can kind of tell that this door hasn't been used much i'll just take a quick look at everything make sure the alignment looks good i'm going to go ahead and close this one and now i'm going to test the reverse safety on our garage door opener go ahead and close it go out here and put my foot in the beam [Applause] so our reverse safety works well so now we're going to go ahead and just shut it all away we'll take a look at it this door is operating very smoothly i don't think we have any issues on these vehicle doors thanks for watching our standards of practice inspection course we're going to conclude right now and i'd like to remind you that the standards of practice are basically a guide for home inspectors you are allowed to exceed those if you like but that's your choice so thanks for joining us and happy inspections [Music]

Channel: International Association of Certified Home Inspectors (InterNACHI)

Views: 2,910

Rating: 4.8873239 out of 5

Keywords: International association of certified home inspectors, InterNACHI, NACHI, become a home inspector, home inspection training, home inspection education, gromicko, Certified Professional Inspector, Internachi SOP, Standards of Practice, Home Inspection Standards of Practice, Internachi Certified

Id: x5B2XZ7PIGQ

Length: 94min 42sec (5682 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 01 2021