Performing a Home Inspection with Certified Master Inspector Jim Krumm

[Music] hi I'm Jim Crum here with Colorado's best home inspections here to show you what a basic home inspection is thanks for having me out today when I start I take a bunch of pictures you know to begin with I always take couple pictures in front of the house you know these are your memory they're also you know unfortunately if you do have a an issue down the road where somebody is questioning something it was it your get out of jail card free you know if you can't see it you can't report it you can't respect inspect it so the more pictures you take the better you know I include defect pictures in my report some guys include a lot more pictures than that but I don't like to make things hard to read difficult things like that you know our primary concern here is safety you know so whenever ever trip hazards things like this we're gonna point them out your cut pictures of the house and then we'll talk about the driveway and we consider anything with a 3/4 and ranch of difference to be a trip hazard so this driveway we can see that we have a couple of trip hazards on it we can also see from these little holes here that it's been mud jacked before that means it's settled once they've jacked it back up and it's settled again so chances are if they have somebody out my jacket and it's going to settle for a third time you know the long-term solution is probably going to be to replace this driveway you know your clients gonna be you know incur a $5,000 expense there at some point so it's fairly substantial you want to make sure they know about it you want to make sure that they know that you know it'll probably reoccur it's not your job to tell them prices but you know if you know if you and your head that's a good idea okay I like to walk on the sidewalks you don't want to inspect in a house I'll walk on the grass but the last thing I want to do is come up straight to a house through the grass you know it just doesn't show respect if a seller is at the house they don't like it again we can see on this sidewalk here we have my jacking it looks like it's settled here we may have a little erosion again this sidewalk you know long term they're probably gonna have to replace it you know least pointed out to them it isn't a trip hazard right now so it's not an immediate concern but you know at one point it is gonna cost them some money we have looks like vinyl siding brick veneer brick is really nice because it helps shows foundation movement so uh you know I like to look make sure when you don't have a horizontal crack here that would give me an indication the walls pushing in of course we're looking for a stair step and cracks things like that the front of this looks pretty good now these trees here we're gonna talk about we never like to see any trees within 10 foot of the house vegetation wise we don't want to touch in the house it's really hard on the siding this tree definitely has a potential to damage that foundation so my recommendation is going to be to get rid of it like we said this tree this tree here they're both too close these here we don't like to see splashbacks use for our downspouts for a gutter system because as they settle now the water goes back towards the house it's pretty much just like not having a downspout extension pipe I write them up as missing we really want that water at least six feet away you know if our grading is not perfect that really makes it a problem even with good grading we like to see six foot extension pipes here it looks like we may have had a little bit of hail damage there's one hole in the siding sometimes it's also a lot more but I'm definitely gonna document that there's damaged siding on this side of the house or our gas meter here looks like somebody's freshly painted it which is good because if we have rust corrosion it likes to follow the threads in a lot of times we'll get a gas leak when they're corroded so I always recommend to keep those papers okay we don't like to see any vegetation touching the siding one it's hard on the siding two it just brings moisture of the house other than that we have a little better grading on this side again we like to see downspout extension pipes up here on the edge of the roof I like to see that flashing we always like to see Gable and drip edge flashings it does help prevent ice damming most of our Colorado jurisdictions started require in that 2006 so I like to tell my clients it looks like we have a more recent roof when around the roof we'll be able to see more of the date and actually see the actual condition of it but like I said at least keep that vegetation trimmed up so it doesn't touch the house okay I like to make sure we close the gates in case there's pets dogs things like that over here we have missing downspout extension pipe to rely on a splash back which is now settled and it's actually sloping towards the house our patio over here is concrete it's now sloping towards the house also maybe a direct cause of this water just going underneath it and washing away if you look about six feet away we actually slope away from the house so this is a trip hazard plus it's the water hazard because now that water's gonna slope towards the house I like to tell my clients you know our job is to put on every defect we see priority wise I look at number one is safety because it'll hurt them or kill them two is water because it can easily bankrupt you you know most people can't afford to fix the foundation or if they can they'd much rather go on vacation than pay to fix that foundation so water is very very detrimental you know anything they can do to remove it from the house is a good thing over here a little bit of warp siding you know all that tells me if somebody had their gas grill too close to the house I do typically advise my clients to have at least a couple feet away or to put it out here on the end so that they don't have that problem you can see up here they've added soffit venting which is lower roofing that's good because it'll help keep a cooler attic it'll make our shingles last longer it'll make a healthier house okay we are missing the glass globe I'll talk to my clients about it we typically don't make a huge deal of that though but we do like to have that sealed up because of the electrical and the water issue here we have an electrical panel you know first thing I always do is tug on this make sure somebody hasn't cut or compromised our Excel tech utility thing here we have an older panel it is a split bus which means these four up here are for our two 40s this one actually shuts off this first thing you want to do is always brush it to make sure that it's not hot not live okay I always get in habit of use a pin for this so they don't actually touch something that's gonna hurt me but part of our industry standards just supposed to know what we have for electrical wiring here we can see it's copper here we can see some aluminum for a two 40s we still use that today okay I'm going to check we have 14 gauge wiring so we have 15 amp breakers here we have 12 gauge wire and we have 20 multi so we do have 150 that's not currently in use maybe somebody had a hot tub it's hard to say but you know it is a pretty full panel there are a couple things down here there's no legend up here it's missing so when I write this up I'm gonna say Brit or amperage not determined because we have no main breaker I happen to know what size this is but I'm not gonna put up my report just in case somebody has any questions but here if you come over to this side you're gonna see we have a little bit of wine this right here looks like a cop bloom crimp which means that they have had some work done on it but if you just looked right here you're gonna see all these shrink wraps it looks like it's copper you need to look especially when you consider the age of the house you know Colorado we used Illumina extensively from 69 to about 74 we've even seen it back in the early 60s but it's not that common so I'm gonna have a note in my report that says there's been documented problems associated with a little bit of wine recommend they get it completely evaluated although what I'm going to talk to my client tell them it looks like they've had the cup of them crimps done which is a good repair actually here there's a sticker that says when that was done was done 910 2014 and it was done by the aluminum repair ink company I think that's Alex company but they should be able to get some documentation on that to make sure it was all done their insurance company may require that I always make sure you close it completely make sure you get it tight for a water proof Colorado is one of the few jurisdictions you're gonna find an electrical panel outside we typically don't see a lot of problems with it I know a lot of people think it's not but it does work out here and not what we don't have to take interior space to do it now I will mention to my clients that this is not a frost free hose faucet if they were gonna do any upgrades I'd be a good idea otherwise in the winter this should be turned off so we don't have freeze problems coming over here I'm looking at this spot the grading is not great we're a little bit negative I'm looking at this mulch right here this is old mulch this is new mulch I liked at least kick it a little bit and see what I see underneath it okay when I've seen nothing and I just keep moving it now I'm already down to the point where I have multi per than I have the dirt so I know the grading is negative here I just don't know how negative so I'm gonna write this up as a grading issue but I'm also gonna note that the mulch prevented me from seeing all this because you know we could have a foot we could have two feet we could have a big hole here so they need to take care of this need to pull back the mulch and bring some dirt in otherwise they're gonna have more of a problem okay let's talk about my truck for a second we're getting ready to go on the roof I've set up my truck so that I can actually have four ladders in here right now a lot of times I'll have five liar's but I have my outside shoes on right here here I have my inside shoes plus I put booties on that way nobody complains I don't get the floors dirty things like that you got to remember we're going into somebody's house we have to show that house respect because you know we don't own it we're never gonna own it but somebody else has and somebody currently does so this here is one of my inside ladders this is one of my inside ladders these are my two outside ladders I don't like to mix them because you know you're gonna get the house dirty you're gonna get grass you can get mud things like that especially as what as we've been here in Colorado right now you know plus you want to make sure it's always safe so if you have stuff on your ladder and you move it it might slip on the hardwood floor so you always want to make sure that you have good pads put this right here ladder safety is priority most of our home inspector accidents involve letters you know they are very scary if you don't place them correctly I really like to put them on the grass not on concrete but it's wet like we have right here we actually have to use to drive would probably the safest thing we have now for safety we need to make sure we have at least two rungs above the roof I really prefer three want to make sure you don't scratch your gutters so set it down very gently one of the ways you can check your ladder you should just be out an arm's reach when your toes are touching the ladder that way you have a nice slope on it it's not liable to come back at you I always make sure you have at least three points of contact with a ladder which means one hand two feet when you're putting on your safety strap or I like to use a safety strap you know just tie it to the gutters that way the wind can't blow your ladder off you always want to be at least two rungs above the roof I prefer more because then I can have a really nice solid connection this here is the ridge venting you know we like to see upper roof auntie sometimes will use a square or turtle vent we do consider this superior it goes along with the soffit venting we saw down below I always walk clockwise rotation whether I'm doing a roof or doing the inside of the house the big thing is to just get a system deep to it if you're always walk a certain direction it's really simple because then you know that you already saw that other side remember never walk backwards on a roof that is unsafe it's very easy to fall off the edge now looking back here this gutter is full of water looks like it may not slope correctly it does have some debris in it but this side over here is completely full this side isn't so when I'm down I'll take another look at the slope of this gutter but also mention that standing water at it doesn't appear to be draining correctly I like to see silicone on our bolts here I can see where there's silicone a few holes up these are always kind of moisture penetrations just like a nail in a shingle we always want to see caulking on top of them here's our main house flue we have some deteriorated paint want to look at this for cracking corrosion damage things like that we want to make sure our sewer boots have been replaced most of our jurisdictions require they be painted it does make them hold up better for the UV Sun here we have an evaporative cooler or a swamp cooler I will note that the lower flashing is loose that looks like it's winter ice so it can't run it I do try to look up a little bit and see what kind of corrosion we have you're not required to take the cover off it definitely looks like it needs to be serviced it doesn't look like it's terribly old you know I asked to tell them to ask the seller how old it is but my suspicions are it was replaced with the roof now here we have a tree that's really close the recommendation is get rid of the tree but do look at the gutters see how much debris is in them actually not as much as I thought there was going to be a lot of times we'll see soffit damage when this situation occurs just because the gutters can't keep up [Music] we have a ridge vent here our singles look good I'm gonna come over here where I can stand and I'm gonna look and see how many layers we have in here this furnace flue or a roof flew flashing it's loose also so I'm gonna make a note about this does look like we have one layer so I'd write this up with a cop composite roof with one layer I just changed into my inside shoes I also put booties on you know we have to remember to respect the property we're in it's not it's never go to be ours you know your clients are buying the house you're not so I always put booties on I won't walk in the house that I don't know one without them when I first get the house I like to come and just take a bunch of pictures and I take 3/4 of every room at this time I'm going to turn on the oven a little bit later then I switch it over to broil but that way when I come in and inspect the kitchen I turn the water the oven off so I don't go home wondering it night 50 ovens still on you know also you know when I start the inspection I come back and I start right here I always work in a clockwise rotation around the house you know I'll do this room the next room work my way up and I finished in the basement you know you want to get a systematic approach it doesn't matter if you do clockwise counter clockwise if you want to do the same house or same way every house it doesn't matter if the house at 10,000 square foot 1,000 square foot you know the worst day and this happened to me when I was very doing the business I came in and I checked things and kind of worked around I had to go back that night knock on the door and asked if I could inspect the fireplace now when I do my systematic approach I come to the fireplace science beckon so always get into routine and always do the same inspection if somebody asks you to come look at something just set your bag down go back to your bag and you can start this batch again so I'm gonna come in I'm gonna take a bunch of pictures and we'll come back to the door will start the instruction now I do always make sure I get a picture of everybody who isn't in the inspection in the reporting or not in the report but on my camera that way if they call you down the road you can remember what your client looked like you know when you do forth out or 400-500 inspections a year they're not gonna remember everybody's face so that way you can put the name of the face it's much easier when you're talking to them down the road when I get in I like to turn the oven on when I'm coming around and taking my pictures that way when I start inspecting I'll come and I'll switch over to broil but that we want to get to actually inspect the kitchen I turn the oven off that way at night I'm not wondering did it leave the oven on you know I've done that nobody likes doing that you know it's not something we want to do so any system you can come up with it's going to prevent that is a good thing you know just looking at this I'm going to do some of the obvious right now as I'm walking through like type of plumbing floor structure things like that but we're looking at a gas oven a gas oven is supposed to have an external discharged fan I'm not seeing any venting system for the house so I'm gonna write that up as safety as a gas ovens allowed to put on 800 parts per million carbon dioxide you know you don't want to be breathing that so I'll talk to my cousin or my clients one of the options is to open the window for now but the long-term solution really is to get a venting system in here all right over here is the garage I'm gonna snap a couple pictures you know we should have a self closing fire rated or you know this one here looks like a new door but it doesn't close so I'll be writing that in the report when I come in and inspect the garage I'm gonna do a much more thorough job than this but just looking up here I can see there's a radon mitigation system that's what that fan is right there I actually heard it venting on the outside of the house earlier when I was in the roof so I suspected we had one but I want to make sure this was done to the current standards I'm like right now I'm gonna write down in my report the closure was missing [Music] and I said these are just little things I'm doing as I take the pictures we really haven't started the inspection yet you know we're gonna do all this as we go through now this is also where I'm gonna start the dishwasher this is today we're just doing this in a training video they're not ready to run this right now just to save water we're not gonna actually run it but I do run everyone while we're doing this and I explain to my clients that we're really not testing the appliance you know any built in is part of a standards but most of them were using just to load test the house check the plumbing for leaks things like that so we use this to check the plumbing system we don't like to see anything over a four inch opening here these are quite large so it definitely you know a safety hazard for small children I'm also going to have a note that the basement sterling is missing the other thing these are not graspable age of the house they weren't required but I'm going to talk to my client about doing some upgrades as long as we're standing right here this acoustic ceiling has a 1972 house that could easily be s best us we are not asbestos inspectors not part of our standard you know we don't need to and most people don't do it I do tell and I do put it in my report that due to the age of the house this may contain asbestos and that before they scrape but they should have attested it should be very careful around it in the meantime okay coming upstairs first thing I see is this right here that smoke detector is yellow they do make them out of a resin that turns yellow on purpose that's one of the ways we can date them smoke detectors are good for eight to ten years that one looks like it's older than that my recommendation is going to be Consumer Product Safety Commission they recommend a smoke detector in each bedroom is slept in common area each level house smokes are good for eight to ten years so that's what my report says Colorado has a CO detector law the seller has to provide a CO detector within 15 foot of each sleeping area I'm gonna look for that but again I'm gonna refer to the Consumer Product Safety Commission because they recommend one each finished level of the house so my notes gonna say at this point unless I see one in the bedrooms they do not have coming into the bathroom we're only gonna inspect one bathroom today we want to give them the house back but of course when you do the home inspection you'd inspect both or all three bathrooms first thing I do is just kind of come in and give the toilet a nudge I don't want to rip it out of the floor but I do want to see if it's loose a lot of times they'll Rock a lot of times they'll move whenever I see that I tell them the wax seal may be leaking turn the water on I check your drain stopper I let that run a while see what our hot water temperature comes to we never want to see it above 124 degrees we start seeing a lot of steam roll off that as my indication it might be too hot look in here you know we got some discolored caulking it's black you know we're not mold inspectors could it be mold yes if it's not sampled I can't tell them that so I can definitely say hey this is all deteriorated should really be stripped it should be cleaned and it should be retaught now what I'm looking for under here is to make sure we have a proper p-trap I like to look to see if we have individual water shut-off valves they weren't a requirement or inspection houses as is but if they're not there I usually talk to my client to say you know if you do any remodeling it's a good idea to add them on a newer house that is a requirement so when I turn the shower on I put the drain stopper on to see if it does actually hold water check to make sure house hot cold cold now since we do not have a window here it's a requirement we have a fan that fan is a little bit noisy so I'm gonna put that in my report it doesn't look like it's been vacuumed or cleaning over here we have a GFCI outlet which is great go to check it like this I also have one of these I like to use this on older houses to see if we have a real ground also one aluminium wire and one of our problems is voltage drops so I like to see what we have for a voltage drop we still have 115 volts a 4% drop at 15 amps that's looking pretty good like I say this house looked like it had complement crimps put on so I would expect to see some good numbers a lot of times when I find a house with the wrong outlets for aluminum wiring will start dropping ground circuits and I'll get a really high voltage drop so this is one of the ways I check that okay coming in first thing I look up do we have any smoke detectors no so they have the one in the common which is what we used to do but like I say Consumer Product Safety Commission recommends each bedroom so my report is gonna say add smoke detectors Perkins or practice Safety Commission and I'm gonna talk to my clients about it but when I come in we're just gonna check a few outlets but typically you check every accessible outlet you check every accessible window you know you're not required to climb over beds you're not required to move furniture or things like that in fact you don't want to get in that habit because it's easy to break things but we want to do that and you know right now in any case of the reverse polarity things like that these are TR or tamper resistant outlets tells me somebody's done quite a bit to the electrical system well that deed there was a deep coat on the panel that said September 2014 the kapalama currents had been put in so that's probably when a lot of this work was done sometimes that means we had a real estate transaction then sometimes they were just doing it for safety now this one here we're not required to look any outline but this one has a 6.7% voltage drop the others were three and four so since this isn't painted I'm just gonna look behind there and see what it looks like going on see if we had to cop lokrum see if we had wire nuts now we are a visual inspection we can use a screwdriver but what I want to look here is see what's going on now I can see the copper loom crimps all that looks good I'm not seeing any discoloration so it looks like this is all right just a little bit more of a drop that I was expecting to have I might talk to my clients and say we had a little bit excessive voltage drop compared to the others but we are farther away from the electrical panels we would expect to see some kind of a voltage drop difference that way but whenever I see something that's different it's what I like to do a little bit more further evaluation just to make sure we're good sometimes they'll miss an outlet and we'll still have a wire not it without something improper on that it looks like I can get it this window even though we have some some knickknacks there but we're gonna open close the windows make sure they lock securely now one thing we run into once in a while is a low window in a bedroom I do like to write that up to safety and talk to about young kids you know they want to put a lock on the windows so it can't be open very far because you won't want a child fall out of one of them here's the closet one of the things we look for here this is the fluorescent lightbulb that's fine we want to make sure we're not seeing incandescent in a clothes closet because they are a fire hazard okay now I like to close the door from both angles when the door has been replaced it doesn't tell me as much as if it's an original door sometimes that will tell us movement inside the house do we have cracking things like that we have a little crack up here which isn't a real uncommon place to have a crack but it does tell me I want to look when I get downstairs just see if everything adds up here's the attic access that's typically the last place I go I usually look if we have a crawlspace with this house as a crawlspace at a partial basement whichever is dirtier that's where I'm gonna finish my inspection because I want to respect the house and not get it dirty that window looks like it might be a little bit high to me for current standards yeah and it's at 44 inches we really want to see egress window at 42 so I tell my clients you know while that did comply it probably doesn't comply anymore so if you're gonna replace windows which these are done somewhere jurisdictions require you actually put a bigger window there so you know I just like to educate them on that you know as is that window works fine sometimes people will actually put a step there if they have little kids they should make it easier for them to get out again we have no smoke detectors didn't see any CO detectors down here so you know I'm gonna make that recommendation here's our common area smoke back here this is where the grading wasn't good so I'm gonna look here to see if we have any signs of moisture intrusion damage things like that if I see anything I'll use both an infrared and a moisture meter to see if it's actually wet at this time right now it's looking pretty good we'll come back to this and address it shortly [Music] then here's our mechanicals our notice our laundry with our mechanicals back here so good look is it accessible we have our three foot in front of this these are removable so our water heater can be put in the back corner I'm going to look and see this furnace try and get a better age on it just because it looks like they're using inside combustion air 2002 we started requiring outside so I'm going to look at that whenever we have looks like an 83% efficient furnace we do like to see a double wall fluid not a single wall I'm gonna even know what about that and it does look like they pull gas line flex gas line here for the the oven okay we have a drip leg on a gas line we have a 2004 water heater so my reports going to put near the end of its useful life typically we get nine to twelve years well that one's 11 years old now so we're coming up coming up to our time we have a combination of copper and abs for our waste lines copper firm our supply lines we've got a flux gas fitting looking at our furnace here usually a date code is bedded into the serial this one is prior to 1996 so it's not it looks like it's about a 1993 from the certification date again a furnace typically last night 20 years so I'm gonna have a note that near the end of its useful life and I'm definitely going to recommend a certification we're gonna run it make sure everything works correctly look at our numbers things like that but just by each it's coming up to time so you want to make sure the client knows that their age now in the report I take a picture of your data tag but we're also gonna put the serial number and a lot of lumber for me as a newer igniter so they've had some work done on this our gas line is rigid going out flex here that's what we want to see here it's not a concrete floor now it's always a good idea when you're looking at a furnace to 1 turn the thermostat on and run it before you inspect it after you inspect it turn the furnace on a thermostat on and run it again that way you know that it worked before you inspected the furnace because sometimes they don't you also know it works when you left the house that way nobody ends up with a cold house because you didn't get the bottom of handle on correctly and the tamper switch is off we have a floor drain here at EPR discharges about 6 inches from the floor so that's alright and we do have our flexible water lines along with our flexible gas lines those are some of the things we're going to look for dryer vents this isn't what we'd really like to see but it is acceptable as long as it's an exposed area it goes out the back side of the house here so it's a relatively short run we don't ever want to see them over 27 feet and you want to take off for for every 90 so you know I like to kind of look approximate I don't measure them all but I want to make sure that we're not just really excessive run because they're more prone to the fires typically I like to run the washing machine just in a in a rinse low just to check the water in water I I tell my clients that the appliances aren't part of a standard I'm not really trying to check the washer and dryer and if there's octopus belongings in their clothes I'm not gonna run them but I do like to see something move just so we know we don't have any leaks in the waistline you know we're gonna do a visual will check both of our outlets the 240 I'm going to check with my multimeter this one here I'm just gonna check with my voltage tester and then we're gonna do a visual on the backside now I will mention that my clients this pipe right here there is a clean up behind the washing machine here so if they're going to get a sewer scope which the age of the house that's a definite recommendation that is where they're probably going to need to do it so they may ask the seller to remove this so they can get a sewer scope done just so it doesn't get damaged crawlspace again you want to make sure you get in here safely sometimes they're a little difficult here looks like we have the a pipe for our mitigation system really is nice when we see where they drilled into the concrete here to mitigate both sides of the foundation I'm not seeing it right off usually when I see that I recommend you know the house is always supposed to be tested for radon but that we test on the other side sometimes they'll test both sides but when I see this one's mitigated for sure I want to make sure that sides working also here we have regulated water here's our main water shut-off this is an old-style gate valve I do tell my clients you know while they're still used if it's ever replaced most people are gonna use a ball valve just so they have a lever less chance for leaks here this should be sealed all the way we want to look at our support here make sure they're nice and plumb that they are connected all the way around now we're gonna look there's a little bit of a fluorescence on the back foundation wall we had a kind of an issue with draining your grating back there at the patio so that's not real surprising now we do have a pretty good crack right here usually what happens is the water comes down to finance your foundation rebar the rebar corrodes and expands that's exactly what we're looking at right there there we can actually see the foundation rebar we are not structural engineer how I usually address this is I'll write this up as a long horizontal crack on the crawlspace rear foundation wall I always recommend in my summary that they have further evaluation about structural engineer this here most structural engineers would recommend epoxy injection we can see we have water coming through but they really need to fix the source of this water on the back side of the house if that patio is not fixed if the gutter downspouts aren't fixed and this is actually where the gutter was full of water also it doesn't matter what they do it's just gonna keep coming back so like I said water will bankrupt you they always have to fix the water first before we bother fixing any of this you know the good news is the rest of the foundation here it looks pretty good so there's some repair to do on this wall when I put my hand down here I'm not really feeling a lot of movement this way but I'm seeing a lot of a lot of corrosion a lot of deterioration here's actually since the mitigation system was put in this is falling apart so that's really easy if some a lot of our mitigators put a date on the mitigation system so we know what is put in so we know this Dan much has happened since then here you can see we have a little bit more movement here so this wall is actually being pushed in like this we have a crack here so that also is coming like this you can see this continues it may continue all the way back into the basement foundation wall so that's something I needed to take a better look at back behind that water heater so I'll probably have to try to work my way back in behind the laundry there but they have to fix the water and like I say most recommendations would be to poxy inject reseal the back side of this just get this sealed up because you can see this efflorescence that's all your middle when the water evaporates so this is a fairly significant issue that should be addressed as soon as possible so it doesn't become bigger because that wall will just continue to move this is actually where we're doing the suction for the radon mitigation system they put a flex pipe all the way around kind of like a a subsurface drainage system this is all sealed liquid nail may not be exactly the the best type of sealant but it is secure I can't move anything it's all tight and I like I say I definitely could hear air movement on the roof when we're in the garage we'll look at the YouTube and see what our backyard readings are when I was on the outside of the house I did see some crawlspace fans but in here I can't see any we would like to really see some some venting still going on although now that they've sealed this a lot of people will eliminate those and they'll actually use our HVAC system to event this area so we'll use conditioned air down here makes a warmer floor but it also seems to work really well in our climate different climates different areas the country have different venting requirements just like an attic when I'm in a crawlspace I take a picture before I go on I take a picture afterwards that way if somebody ever says you left the curl out the crawlspace the door the attic access door off you can say you did it now what happens is you know we point out a lot of issues then they get the next contractor coming to look at something he may not put it together right or like this here this trim was loosened damaged before we went into it you may be accused of causing that damage so if we have a picture before we went into it pictures inside it pictures coming out just like a furnace we take a picture before we take it apart I take a picture of the data take and I take a picture you want us back together running that way we can always show that we put things together it's kind of your trail of work now we wanted to look see if we could see anything back in this corner and actually unfortunately it's going to be the bathroom so we may or may not be able to see this where that crack goes to we're gonna come back here and look and yes we can't see anything this is the tile but see this right here you can see this tiles popping apart that could either be water damage or it could be that foundation crack that we are coming across this back wall so it definitely needs further evaluation definitely needs repairs when I see a movement like this my suspicion is this is caused by the foundation not caused so much by water so definitely need a structural engineer here to evaluation and recommend repairs now remember it's not our job to tell them how to fix something in fact most things if we tell them how to fix it were crossing the line you cannot act as a structural engineer I can't tell you you know you need to epoxy injector we can talk about typical repairs a lot of times they'll do this a lot of times they'll do that but you can't say you need to get this epoxy injected or you need to get helical piers on this that's way beyond the scope of a home inspection it's way beyond what we're supposed to do your job is to punt of the defect that walls crack we have that fluorescence of moisture intrusion you know they need to get further evaluation that's what they need to do coming into the garage should have a self closure on that door coming into here you know we're gonna check a few things for safety but right now I'm looking at the mitigation system here we have a YouTube we actually have a flower caller here we need to see that so that's good this just tells us that the fan is working it does not tell us radon levels that's a fallacy I hear that a lot by my clients it's like oh well they have one people cure your radon it can see it right there it's like no that just tells me my fans working we come up through the ceiling we have a mitigation fan in the ceiling of the garage because this has no livable space above it it is acceptable to have that in the garage so this looks good I'm pretty comfortable with how it was installed I think you said would have been nice to have a suction onto that basement floor depending on how deep the foundation is the crawlspace 1-month made again it might not so we're gonna test the radon on that side of the house coming through here when the doors down I like to look make sure our hinges all look good make sure I'm not seeing a lot of slipping movement which tells me my screws are loose it looks like we have safety springs up here so it's a steel door looks like a relatively new door we're gonna open it we're gonna check both our optic eyes we're gonna check our clothes force adjustment that is safety for a little kid so we definitely want to make sure those are checked coming through here gonna look at our walls everything we can see you know I'm gonna put a note in my report the walls aren't completely visible to the occupants belongings but we're gonna look and we're gonna document anything we can see outlets you know we want to check them see if they're GFCI protected if they're wired correctly all those kind of things there is an attic access right up there you know you want to be careful when you do climb in there but you don't break or damage this radon mitigation system now I like to check my reverse stop first because if it's not adjusted right then I can do my op the guy's but it does work might be a little bit tight so what I typically talk to my clients is about how it can be adjusted with a screw and I usually look around the neighborhood and when I live in a house the smaller the kids the smaller the pets the lighter I like to see that load set it is functioning so now we're gonna lower check our optic eyes those are more for your car well we have the door open it's a good time to look at our drive our garage floor it looks good we'll be checking this door momentarily I will note the missing drywall although that's not part of a firewall so that's not a safety issue okay that works [Applause] and now here we have a solid or a newer door if we have an old door with non tempered glass I usually write that up as one as a safety hazard for children also it may be a theft issue so if it make it too easy to come in someone you might come in and break in so I do like to bring that up to my clients especially if they ever have it leaving this door on lock here I'm gonna be looking at our trusses things like that look for cracking I just kind of look at the whole you know general shape of this garage over here we'll come in and we'll take a look at this window it's too high to operate but we can see if we have cracked glass things like that at this point it looks good a newer window would be temporary okay now we're going to talk about the attic inspection today we're not going to go in there just because this is a trained inspection but we have an attic access here it's pretty small but it looks like I can safely get in there we're gonna lay it on drop claws like I say I have inside ladders so I'm gonna put inside ladder here we want to make sure it's secure we don't have any problems I also brought my intern ah she sign up that asks people to please stay off it you know that way we don't have to worry about any little kids things like that I talked to my clients they're not a lot on my attic my ladders so that way we don't have that issue when I'm in the Attic now if you can safely enter the attic you're supposed to enter the attic you know we don't just not inspect an attic because we don't want inspect an attic you know standards of practice you know if it's safe we need to go up there and look at it you know we're gonna look at the amount of insulation the type of insulation in the real structure how we trust those how we rafters things like that we also want to look for our venting system if it's adequate or not if we can see sometimes there's so much insulation we can't see we want to look at the wire and make sure we don't have any exposed wire splices missin junction box covers do our bathroom fans actually bent through the roof that's something I look at when I'm on the roof and see if I can see them but I also look through here in the Attic to make sure that we have a good venting system if we discharge our bathroom fans in the Attic week a mold problem so attic ventilation is really really critical it's the amount of insulation you know a lot of times we'll be recommending more for efficiency things like that and doesn't roof structure look good you know we talked on the outside of the house about the flashings on the roof you know they help prevent ice damming our 15 system is our primary means to prevent ice damming so we're gonna look do we are spotted on the sheathing do we have black do we have stains water stains things like that if a venting systems not adequate and the northern climates you know will get a lot of ice damming going on so we want to be careful to make sure we look at all those things when we're up there it's awful hard to see all that from the attic access so when you can go in safely it is much better to be in that attic so you can actually look at everything we're just wrapping up on the house so what I do is I do final walkthrough one I'm checking all make sure all the doors are closed making sure things are on how I left them first thing I do is I look at the oven make sure it is off you know is my dishwasher done running while we're talking about the oven the gas oven is supposed to be clean and serviced annually just like a fireplace just like a furnace so you want to make sure you have that in your report you know we also have a venting issue here but we want to make sure you wrote that up here we got a garage door right here I want to come because I was here I want to make sure that this is locked you may not have been the last person to walk out that door so we want to make sure that the house is secured when we go out the door you know your clients are going to go they're gonna look at things they may open they may close they may do some things you didn't do so you want to make sure you leave the house as you found it typically when I'm doing this walkthrough I'll double check my attic access my crawlspace attic make sure my washer and dryer off make sure my furnace cover plates on all those things just to make sure that when we walk through we walk out we're done you don't get that phone call at the end of the night saying that somebody left something apart or something's damaged or you have a toilet leaking and now you have water damage you know so the last thing I do is I walk through the bathrooms make sure the showers off make sure this thing's off make sure the toilets not running that way my peace of mind when I leave I'm good to go yeah that looks good we're off we're off we're off we can go home okay the last thing we do is secure the property make sure it's all locked up make sure you have your equipment you know don't forget a flashlight by the attic access things like that but thanks for having me out thanks for watching you know the home inspection training video this is Jim Crum Colorado's best home inspections you know please follow all of our training guides [Music] you

Channel: International Association of Certified Home Inspectors (InterNACHI)

Views: 59,423

Keywords: International association of certified home inspectors, InterNACHI, NACHI, become a home inspector, home inspection training, home inspection education, gromicko, jim krumm, certified master inspector

Id: pAQRoLKdTyI

Length: 49min 59sec (2999 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 05 2017