Louis Agudo- Roswell Home Inspector

I love my job because I never know what I am going to find from inspection to inspection. All homes are different and there is almost always something that peaks my interest.

Take this picture for example. This is a perfect example of why a correct switch plate is needed. I opened the cover and voila, somethings looking back at me. It caught me by surprise and startled me a bit. I'm wondering how many of his buddies are behind the plate, fried to the bone?

Why do I like to keep up with what's going on with the Consumer Product Safety Commission or CPSC? I am able to inform my clients of any recalls or safety news that may affect their homes. I"ll receive an email alert from the CPSC. If it affects homes I will send out an email to my database indicating what the recall was with the link provided. It's easy to do and provides me with a little marketing exposure.

Go to www.cpsc.gov This will take you to the home page. Click on "sign up for email announcements". You will be able to choose the type of alert that you want. This weeks alert is about Wolf Ranges manufactured from 1998 to the present. A delayed ignition of gas in the 18" oven can cause a flash of flames when the door is opened resulting in possibly burning the user. I do have clients who own Wolf ranges but none with this particular model.

This is another way that I like to provide continuing service to my clients. It's not hard to do and is beneficial to all.

How long will my water heater last? How long do you think the air conditioner will last before I have to replace it? When do you think I will have to replace my roof? How much longer do you think the decking will last? How long will the paint last on the exterior of my home? The heating unit is 20 years old, should I replace it?

These are just a few of the questions that I am asked on a regular basis. If I knew the answers to these questions I wouldn't be a home inspector but instead playing blackjack in Vegas.

When I'm asked, I use guidelines in determining how long an appliance will last. I make sure to tell my client that this is exactly what it is, a guideline. I have had a roof on my home that was original to the house, 32 years old, and worked as intended. It did not leak nor was there any sheathing decay. Granted, granules were missing, vent boots had to be replaced but the fields of the roof were working. Notice I didn't talk about how good it looked.

When talking about longevity, we have to talk about advances in technology. I inspected a home where the heating unit was over 50 years old. The serial number of the unit was 025, obviously one of the first right off of the assembly line. This unit was a beast. This was the biggest heating unit I ever saw for a home that was 1200 square feet in size. It did fire up when I set the thermostat and it produced heat as intended but at what cost.

It is not my place to tell clients how long something will last because I truly do not know. I will give them estimates and discuss the energy efficiency of new models. If it works, it works. When deciding on replacement of a system or a cost to repair it, it is important to take into account the energy efficiency of the existing system and how well the system has been maintained.

We all have our own cost pain threshold when it comes to cost of replacement versus repair. When making the decision, think of energy efficiency, which could reduce the overall cost with years of energy savings. The link provided is to the National Association of Home Builders. This will give you an idea of guidelines for appliance and system life. This is by no means the only list of its kind. Many organizations have there own guidelines but this will give you a start in determining life expectancy of home components. http://www.nahb.org/fileUpload_details.aspx?contentID=72475.

Instead of thinking how long something is going to last, it is important to maintain a system at peak efficiency. Whether that means keeping your gutters clean, cleaning debris off of your roof, changing your air filters, testing our water heater TPR valve or testing your GFCI's, the more we do to keep our systems running at peak performance, the better off we will be in the long run. And Why Not?

I love my job. Yes, I will say it again. I love my job. I never know what I will find from inspection to inspection. Every home is different. Every home provides me with a unique experience and a chance to learn and discover things that I never thought possible. Every home teaches me that not all homes are created equal.

Home inspectors are not omniscient. Some may portend to be but inspectors as a whole, are learning every day we are on a job. There is no one size fits all category when inspecting homes. That's what makes my job so interesting and fulfilling.

Sometimes I feel like a detective in search of the truth. Following leads and clues that will give me a better understanding of what the home was like. About a month and a half ago I did a maintenance inspection on a home over 30 years old. At the back of the home I noticed that the deck had been added on to. I could tell this because the original framing had been the shape of a rhombus and they added on to the deck to make it a rectangle. It also appeared that the foundation had been added to and that the family room was part of this addition, though from the exterior it certainly looked like part of the original home. What to do next? Search the crawl space.

Crawl spaces are a wealth of information. First off, nobody ever goes into them and secondly builders and tradesmen believe that they can hide a lot of problems. I crawled into the space and went into the far depths of the crawl looking for the area of concern. What I found excited me and also startled me.

First off, it seems that I was right in that it was an addition that was built sometime ago. The problem was that outside of the original home there was a concrete slab that acted as the patio. Instead of removing it and then building the addition, they left it and built the addition around it. That in of it self would be okay but the builder needed to heat and cool the new addition. Instead of running the main HVAC supply trunk through the attic they decided to undermine the existing slab. They actually trenched out a tunnel that was roughly 10' long by 3'high by 4' wide then ran the supply trunk. I applaud whoever did it.

To understand what I'm talking about, stand on a part of your driveway and take three and a half paces. Turn around and look down 3' deep and 4' wide. Underneath the concrete would be the tunnel. What did they do with all that dirt? I'm sure most of it was left in the existing crawl space. What bothered me most was that the slab now had no support on a roughly 40 square foot area. Concrete slabs can certainly be engineered to span an area but this slab was obviously meant to be a patio.

Secondly, instead of removing the stumps of the trees that had to be cut down to put in the addition, they left them in the ground and built the foundation walls around them. Just what I don't like to see in crawl spaces, termite food.

I informed the homeowner of what I found and he decided to ask his neighbors. He always thought that the home was the original floor plan. The next day I get a call from my client informing me that I was right. The home stopped and there was a patio. The addition was built 20 years ago beyond the patio by the homeowner. The Homeowner decided that since it has been this way, why bother doing anything about it. He was extremely pleased with knowing more about his home then he knew before.

This is just one example of why I love my job. I wish we all could have this much fun. I will continue to strive and educate myself in trying to make myself omniscient. I'll never make it but it's certainly worth the journey. And Why Not!

I received a call this morning from a client I did a pre-listing inspection for about 3 months ago. He told me that he is in contract and the buyer just had their inspection done and only one thing was found. One thing! Missing screws for a face plate cover. How awesome is that.

I did find many areas of concern that he did address to get his home in tip top shape. Decayed siding and trim he took care of. Caulking issues on the exterior of the home and in the interior of bathrooms. Repaired glazing on sashes and peeling paint. He replaced a faulty GFCI. He repaired all his sink pop-ups so they work as intended. He made sure all his windows worked and weren't painted shut. He reinsulated the refrigerant lines at the AC unit. He repaired the grading to get the dirt and wood chips off of the home. He tightened all the hardware on cabinets and attic stairs.

One thing he didn't do was repair the landing guard on the second floor and the hand rail that leads down to the first floor. He had someone replace the knee wall on the second floor with a newel post and a guard rail and balusters. He also replaced the knee wall and railing that transcended the stairs with a decorative railing, newel post and balusters. The problem with the new work was that it did not meet the code required height requirement of 36" to the top of guard for the second floor landing and between 34" and 38" for the stair hand rail.

He had this work done two years ago and wasn't aware that there were requirements that needed to be met and apparently neither did the handyman who did the work. The guard rail height was at 33" and the stair rail height was at 32". I pointed this out as a safety/liability issue and a defect and that it needs to be repaired. He contacted the handyman who never returned his phone calls. So, he left it the way it was because of the cost to repair it.

When the buyer went to contract, my client, in the disclosure, let them know that they had a pre listing inspection done and they were more then happy to provide it to them. The buyer declined to see it because he had his own home inspector. How the inspector missed the height of the railings is beyond me.

I talk to so many realtors about prelisting inspections and many of them don't even discuss it with their clients. I guess they feel that it's up to the buyer to figure out what's wrong. From my point of view, all the pre listing inspections I have done has made a house easier to sell. The seller is able to repair problems, defects and maintenance issues and get their home in tip top shape. Any problems or issues found by the buyer's inspector are minimal at best which makes for a smoother transaction for all parties involved.

I guess I shouldn't be doing this but I am gloating. I like receiving phone calls like this. I believe that successes should be trumpeted out loud. So many times the inspector get's bashed. One question I have is, How many realtors in the AR community advise on getting a pre listing inspection done? By the way, I'll be inspecting his new home purchase next week. Have a great week.