As we rapidly approach winter, homeowners and renters may start to feel colder in various areas of their residences. There are typically multiple causal factors for homes to become colder and less energy efficient, but there is a base cause that drives the rest of the sources – stack effect. Stack effect is a result…
As fall begins, people start to think about things associated with this time of year and if you have a fireplace in your home, you may be thinking about having a fire in the fireplace. While the warmth of a fire can be comforting, a fire outside of the fireplace would be a disaster. In…
As we are experiencing the final warm days of summer, I was reminded of moisture problems that can occur even during warm dry conditions.
Imagine coming home one day and discovering your ceiling is on the floor. This happened recently to one of my clients and I was contacted to find out why this occurred. Apparently there had been cracking on the ceiling that preceded the collapse and similar cracking was found in the bedroom. Ceiling failures like this…
“….Life in the Flat lane, surely you can lose your mind…”
Sounds familiar, right? Well, that’s our little lyrical spin on the well known Eagles tune as it pertains to flat roof ventilation. It a challenging topic and one we are seeing more and more roofers and builders getting wrong. So what can we do to get them back into the fast lane?
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After performing fee based inspections full time for the past 6+ years I find myself asking a repeated question–am I giving clients what they need to make the best decision? My immediate answer is that I’m pretty damn close. Why not 100% you might say? I’ll tell you why….no inspector can deliver the perfect product to every client because every client’s needs are slightly different than the last. A first time homebuyer will want to know as much as they can because they’re a bit nervous, excited and typically don’t have the building knowledge to know what is minor and what is major in terms of defects. Veteran homeowners, on the other hand, may tell us to not worry about the little things and really focus on X, Y or Z. That’s understandable and often times expected. So what can we do as inspectors to fulfill these needs? Anything and everything we can to deliver as much information about the property we’re inspecting so that we can allow our clients to make the best decision possible with the best information.
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