How To Do A Home Inspection

[Music] hi how are you this is gerald with the inspection firm we're here in westchester which is a suburb of miami florida and we're going to start a full inspection with a four point and win it on this home uh as usual like i always said before we start with a wrap around we walk on each section we take a view from the router to the tutor in other words from the top to the bottom of each home and we're also going to go ahead and do images we're going to walk on the roof it's a shingle roof so it's safe not any issues and we also have a flat portion in the back of addition that was made we're going to start like i always say start clockwise or counterclockwise always look up and down so make sure you don't miss anything you go ahead and take photographs and images of each individual sections depending on what you're looking for whether it be hvac or your up above ground or below ground electrical systems so let's get started okay first thing we're going to do is obviously we have the home but i want to go ahead and take a look at the perimeter fence because the customer needs to know that it's in some type of proper working order so what we do is we look at the top supports the side supports and make sure they're functioning and working properly if something needs a minor adjustment i usually don't like a huge deal about it this is just the bottom support for the pin it's just out of alignment so we're going to go ahead and bring the door across and make sure it's functioning [Music] okay the doors as you can see are sagging somewhat so i'm going to recommend to the customer they have an adjuster or a wheel that they could put on the side it's just like where they have elongate or they have a bracing that goes diagonally and it will support it and they can adjust as they need [Music] so we tested both doors as we can see we have a gap on both of them so they have to get adjusted this one's dragging and this was completely uneven also on this on this post right here probably may or not you'll see on the video but it got bent i straightened it up but it got shrimp here on here so this thing is eventually gonna from that stress it's basically gonna break off so this also i'm gonna recommend having it replaced okay now we're in the rear portion of the house for the next gate i opened and closed the gate it was functioning properly but i noticed the bottom bracing is rusted through and as you can see it right here eventually this is going to fail so we're going to go ahead and let the client know to go ahead and take care of this uh what i mentioned earlier as far as the diagonal bracing this is an example right here where you light tighten this nut and you can adjust the angle of the door up or down to give us some support now we're in the back portion of the home we have found the electrical panel uh if we step back we can see there's an overhead system so i want to make sure always that tie strap is on it's secure connect and connected properly to the gooseneck that you see and the wiring is running to the pole and we have no sagging and it's supported properly so let's go ahead and photograph this now also we have what's good we have two grounding rods all right we have one approximately six feet apart and one on this side probably not pardon me on that corner and we also have a cold water pipe hookup so this is more more than safe because we have three points of grounding so this is excellent let's go ahead and open this up here we're using we have a service disconnect and they're using it as a sub panel being that said we go ahead and open it when it is a sub panel to verify the connections are done properly okay as you can see we opened up the exterior panel and lo and behold we have what is famously known as a double tap double tap basically means that we have two wires going into a breaker okay as you can see it right here on this 50 amp breaker we have okay two different size wires on a 50 am you should never put wire this thin so this is definitely something that we have to inform the customer that has to go on the report as a defect okay something that i always like to do is check incoming water pressure uh just as you get a general idea of what we're looking at so average water pressure in this in date in broward county we try to say it's about 60 psi this one's running at 70 psi so what i put as a suggestion to the client is to have it checked for this area by my the local water and sewer authority now we're going to do it on the driveway what can i say people sometimes don't listen either to the person doing the installation or they're not informed correctly as you can see we're going to have a diagonal crack almost down the center where two points meet with a half moon i guess you want to call driveway and a straight portion a lot of this can be avoided if they do something simple called expansion joints if you look over to a sidewalk that's those lines they say cut across those are for expansion and contraction same thing here also it could be an issue due to weight this is a a rather large driveway uh sometimes if it's not done properly it's not supported properly with rebar or some type of other type of support system you're gonna have this cracking issue uh this can be alleviated or at least what they can do in some instances is they can grind it and fill it with epoxy sometimes that'll work now we're checking the perimeter as you see we're taking the fascia and soffit now on this fascia here this is coming off the flat roof portion of the house situation is this is why i insist so much and especially in south florida on gutters water's coming down for the drip edge flashing it's slowly leaking on the side and what happens is the wood starts turning it's called a wick action wicking is similar type with a candle actually a water will go up the ignores gravity don't tell me why it starts going right into the wood and as you can see it starts rotting it and we also have some rotting here on the soffit uh a lot of this can be eliminated again i'll repeat myself from having gutters and downspouts it may not be some people aesthetically what they want but to be honest with you it adds value to the home i was walking on the perimeter we want to always look up the soffit events okay look up through the screens and sometimes you'll be able to see the trusses why simply they had repaired the screen but obviously prior to that it's hard to see perhaps the camera but that truss has termite damage again to say termites in florida is like saying canals uh it's extremely common so i do not say the sky is falling you know on a termite damage this is something that's very common and wood rot so those two items are going to be documented but it's not going to be alerting we're just going to simply recommend the customer to have a termite inspection done by someone's reputable that can possibly do just what's called injection we'll just go directly to that point seal that up do the uh whatever they may have to do as far as perhaps uh i don't think it needs to be tended to be honest i haven't seen that much extent of damage so i'm gonna run back and then have that area injected but definitely have a termite inspection done so now hopefully you can tell we're on the roof so we have two different types of roof we have a we have shingle roof and we have roll roofing or mbr modified bitumen roof this one in particular is a little bit better than a three tab there's two kinds three tab and a dimensional all they also call it architectural this one insurance companies will give you five years more and that's about approximately what i do i put 25 years on this and on the mbr if it's in decent shape 10 to 12 years sometimes people go 15 years if we walk through this area we'll notice that some patchwork has been done i'm going to try to see if i could talk to the owner and find out what exactly we're trying to cover here is it nail heads or some perhaps thinking that you had some leaks in this area still this is not the proper way to prepare this anyways okay that type of repair as you can tell it has the granules in it and tar that's for flat roof repair okay now we're looking now at the vent stacks for the plumbing they had you can see they had ports of tar this is a product here this is simply a vent stack that's wrapped around with a boot that's made out of lead and this is done correctly but this area here there's something incorrect here we're going to try to find out when i get in the attic perhaps i'll be able to see something that they were trying to prevent perhaps some leakage of some sort okay this one also has the same now we're going to walk out to the flat roof area we're gonna see another plumbing vent okay what's missing here folks there's no lead boot right okay this is the same type of format as you'll see when you have uh overhead electrical system where you have pipe coming out and they this is poured this is simply just a cap where they load this with like a i guess like a asphalt or asphalt based product uh still due to the flexibility of this and this starts drying out i don't feel this is correct this will start leaking they were complaining about having leaks in the roof this might be an area of concern because this is not designed for this this should be cut down further and the lead boot should be put on here okay this is not correctly done so we're gonna go ahead and check that out okay my co-inspector who helped me out today just happened to point out the fact that this area here is spongy as you can tell there is movement by stepping on it also you can see some exposed felt on this area so i'm going to obviously make a notation on it that they need to get a roof inspection done it might be water intrusion from this area because it's not done 100 correct but it could be also from another area but not sure because water looks for the point at least resistance so it could be from different areas two or three feet away you'll never know it so we're gonna have this area checked out but definitely this is quite spongy so we definitely have an issue with some wood rot here but now we're starting the interior this home happens to have a separate efficiency which is where i at right now so what i'm going to do now is through the living area and what i include basically in the living room area take the flooring walls ceilings and the windows and doors and we also check the electrical outlets to make sure they're functioning properly i do this consistently on every home i do because the client needs to know as much information and he also needs to see that through the photographs i am covering those areas and not that they're going to doubt what i do as far as the work but i want to make sure that they could see or an area perhaps that i located that they didn't see on their walk through that we have a deficiency okay we're still in the efficiency and now we're checking this little kitchenette area as you notice the cabinets are laminated quite simple i went to the sink and the first thing i noticed is the faucet and it's completely loose uh obviously this is a defect so we're going to go ahead and document that so now we're going to go into the oven range as you can see in efficiency the cabinet is pretty much ends so it's not surrounded the thing is still i like to recommend uh that they get installed with what's called the anti-tip device anti-tip device comes equipped with every unit due to lawsuits unfortunately from injuries but basically how you test it you put your foot in the bottom corner grab the back and the unit and tilt it and if it tilts freely we know the anti-tip device is not installed this is an electric range setup so it's not a defect it's a recommendation if this was gas and then we would put it as a defect simply because the line could rupture so we want to make sure that's installed definitely at least on the stove now we just checked the range and now we're checking the oven again i take every single unit to make sure it's functioning properly and we document the temperature reading now we close up the unit make sure everything is in off position and now i also like to put in on every appliance i like to add in the photograph the model and serial number why because the client knows the date of the product also he can use it for reference in case of future repairs because a lot of people don't know where the model shield numbers are in these units believe it or not there's a warming tray bottle number is usually going to be on the one of the back corners and you can see it's right here in the corner so we'll go ahead and document that okay we've completed the inspection of the bathroom and the efficiency just found a minor a couple minor things and also a recommendation let me go through it real quick the bathtub has a small chip uh when we have chips obviously enamel surface uh this is cast iron so you want to make sure you seal that because in a water environment could cause some rust again minor thing lid is missing on the toilet but the toilet was functioning properly and i did do the straddle test and it's not it's secured to the floor park me the window does have an issue we have a vent window when i cranked it the window dropped as if it was going to pop out it's happened to me before so that's why i say when you do an inspection be careful how you touch these windows especially event windows and as you'll also notice the screen is missing we already checked the gfci system it's working working working it probably functioning properly and so is the the lighting the faucet and sink is in working order no leaks were detected so last thing i do in a home since this is an efficiency and it's separate from the main home we're going to go ahead and start it now i have what's called a flear pro one this is an infrared camera what i like about this one versus the gun is that it's lightweight efficient and uh i'm not going to kid you the cost is great compared to a gun is usually 2 500 if you spend 5 000 easily this goes for about five to 550 okay there's about two or three different models this is for the apple system so as you can see i downloaded the app already we're going to go ahead and attach the system let it turn on here and let's see hurry up come on don't make a fool of me there we go okay this one this particular one i'm going to go ahead and turn this this system up here this has what's called msx technology which is an overlapping system that allows you to see the outline not just of the thermal imaging but also of the surrounding different products another product listen to me sorry of different structures uh for example the doors uh actually you can see the outline of the bed so let's go ahead and check our hvac registers okay so you can see the registers not showing any leaks as far as up in the attic area okay so i'm going to go ahead and document that i take a photograph so the client can know that we check that now what i'm going to do is take a general picture okay the surrounding ceiling to see if there's any lack of insulation and so far we're seeing blue blue tones usually will indicate that we have some good insulation that little bit of highlighting that you see there that are the yellow tones that means a little bit of lack insulation that one wall okay which is just above the tv uh you can just barely catch it there on the side okay so we're gonna wrap around and let's see here okay insulation seems to be good a little bit on the edges i mean that's acceptable you're going to have a little bit of area that's getting missed because also if that area has uh in this particular zone you have a soffit vent you don't want to cover the soffit vent insulation it's not going to do its job properly so you want to have a little bit of a gap so now we're going to go into the bedroom okay and we're going to check this bit okay uh i am seeing some anomalies that appear to be a possibility of some leakage uh if you could try to see i know it's hard to see folks but uh if you see some dialogue or horizontal straight lines not coming out like a brush uh that usually indicates that we do have some seepage in the attic so i'm going to go ahead and photograph that now what i'm going to do is also i'm going to go into visible mode okay so that the persons can get a clearer picture of what i'm looking at so we photograph that that also will indicate on the corner i'll say flear so they know that i'm still operating with the same system so this is something that's an anomaly uh we're gonna have that checked i'm gonna document it okay the installation does not seem to be in bad shape okay a little bit of clearing here as you can see right here let me go ahead and write that up pardon me photograph that okay then we have a little bit of area of lack of insulation here okay i'm going to circle around and i'm not seeing anything in the bedroom as far as like insulation let's go ahead and go into the bathroom okay and this is what i like to check in the bathroom is excessive moisture build-up sometimes it'll show up or if we have a leak or something or lack of insulation remember we can create condensation if we have a lot of heat developing in the in the roof of ceiling and you know you get the difference in temperatures inside will have condensation so it'll cause mildew that's why i believe on this particular i gonna document that the only thing that we had was a window that was non-functioning and if you can see the outline here okay we do have a little bit of heat development around so that could be a little bit of uh air that's coming in or out of that okay that's going to cause some heat thing is we have an issue we don't have an exhaust fan extractor fan pardon me and a non-functioning window so i'm going to highly recommend to have an extractor fan installed here to have better circulation so we continue on and the rest of the installation is good so thumbs up okay now we're in the main part of the home and we're gonna do start off with the kitchen it was right off the exit from the efficiency that we just completed so as you can see the kitchen we have our basic appliances so i asked in advance to the owner of the home if we could run the dishwasher we run a full cycle dishwasher and washer and dryer it's not i know in the kitchen but i run those three appliances before i even start the inspection and i think it's time efficient and also allows for any leaks or any issues that develop from that from a dishwasher so you know sometimes it won't leak right away so you got to give it time to make sure the pump is functioning we open up the unit and see if there's any water left in the system which will say we have defective pump so we're going to go ahead and start the inspection what i do while in the kitchen i go ahead and check the temperature of the water heater and i'll show you why when i apply it we're looking at 120 sorry about that 127 degrees uh that's above 120 degrees which if you not know what that means that's a scalding temperature this could cause third-degree burns so we're going to go ahead and document that the third degree of first degree i don't know what degree i'm not a lawyer so i don't know we'll figure it out i'll get you back to you okay the last thing i check in the kitchen is the outlets why because remember i explained before there's three areas that require should have gfci ground fault circuit interrupter outlets is outside kitchen and in bathrooms those are all areas that are near water so as for safety reasons i recommend it i've gone ahead and checked the outlets okay there was two outlets one in this area and one as you can see right off the sink and none of them were gsci outlets so we're gonna go ahead and put that also as a defect okay now we're doing the living room section we just finished with the kitchen uh first thing i did is take pictures of the flooring ceilings and walls and i'll go through it later before i leave with the thermals now we're going through the windows these are vent windows first thing we've noticed is none of them have window screens i'll make a notation of that second thing we're noticing is the handles for the window cranks are missing also on the exterior i noticed that some were being held with like machine screws so that's going to prevent from opening it's not helpful also unfortunately that's a fire hazard so i'm going to report that as such so let's go ahead and document this now we're stewing the rest of the home we're in the hallway bathroom and uh a little slash that slash laundry area uh a bit unusual but still acceptable one thing we've noticed is if you could see it try to move this out of the way the dryer vent is venting right into the attic uh if you remember when we're taking pictures video sorry of the roof we did not see any type of venting so that's a little bit disconcerting when i go into the attic or the scuttle hatch which is right here we're going to go ahead and verify to see where that vent is venting to checked the wall mounted sink and everything was functioning properly we checked the toilet also no issues and the shower and the shower pan everything was in satisfactory condition uh we do have ventilation so that's acceptable obviously you know we could put an hvac register and perhaps that would also help a little bit with the ventilation the only issue we're having we have a faulty gfci cfci was tested and we have an open ground open ground is not going to allow the system to function properly so it's a defect unfortunately but it will be noted on the report okay now we're checking the hvac system that was in the hallway we already checked the one in the efficiency which was a ductless mini split on this unit it's a train very good system by the way i went ahead and pulled out the filter and i took pictures of the evaporator coils uh we do show evidence that the evaporative crawls are partially clogged so i'm going to make a notation of this and state to have them cleaned by a professional hvac contractor now we're in the ghost room no not kidding obviously this person probably works night shift or so they have to blackout uh we went to the back base of the back of the bed sorry boy let me wake up here and i tried to check the window when i moved the curtain as you could see i don't know if you can it's completely close so i cannot make any definition whether we have a functioning win or not so i'm going to put that as an effect so that the buyer knows at least to make sure that window's functioning when he goes to move in okay so now we found the electrical panel went ahead and took the uh dead cover off which is a name for it the screws are the correct ones and i'm looking now and we do not have any issues no double taps no cloth wiring no coupling connectors no aluminum branch wiring blah blah blah no just kidding folks everything is fine so we're going to go ahead and put this as satisfactory all right when i went to the attic the dryer vent that we discussed earlier is venting directly into the attic that's an effect we got to take care of that good note note that to the customer and also we are still the attic hatch okay was in the hallway bathroom when i f when i went ahead and looked over to where the exhaust fan extractor fan is pardon me it is extracting the air directly into the attic that's also defect we're causing two issues of increased moisture into an area that is supposed to be kept dry these are both defects that can cause harm and cause more issues than we would need to discuss i mean the thing is this when you have a dryer vent you're causing that dust that dust has moisture that moisture sticks to this area and can cause again more condensation issues more damage to the trussing more damage to the to the uh dimensional lumber okay so also same thing with a dryer you're you're bringing air from the bathroom moist air into an attic so both of those are definitely going to be written up also in the attic itself there's next to no insulation whatsoever that is something in south florida that's necessity in florida we recommend 33 seer that's approximately 11 inches thick of insulation could be blown insulation could be fiberglass fiberglass bats needless to say there's next to no insulation that's another defect that we need to address well this concludes another home inspection i hope it was informative i will definitely continue trying to progress and try to show you more and more details uh like in anything in life if you put your bind to it you can definitely progress and get and get something done correctly especially on a home inspection uh i use a motto is i do an inspection as i've been doing it for myself and i believe that you've do so on that you follow that procedure you're gonna feel a lot of a lot of gratitude a lot of uh i mean positive feedback from people because that's all i've been hearing is the way they like to do the inspection is the way i'm handling it uh i hope you like and subscribe and we'll continue seeing you in the next video

Channel: The Inspection Firm

Views: 1,872

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Id: _ctsOUgDIbY

Length: 25min 45sec (1545 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 19 2021