Performing a Home Inspection with InterNACHI® Certified Professional Inspector CPI® Jim Krumm.

Hi, I'm Jim Chrome with Colorado's Best Home Inspections. Today we will do a soft

inspection

of this house. I hope you follow along and learn some tips before starting your

home

inspection

. I would like to start with some equipment that we are using all my

inspector

s wear body cameras. You can use it like this. You can use it with a small camera accessory. In fact, the other day, one of our

inspector

s was bitten by a dog and had it on body camera. So it's good for our insurance because it also checks that you're not doing anything you shouldn't and shows what you're seeing during the inspection.

I use diving cameras. You know, this is where we are. There are several manufacturers of dive cameras right now, but they take dust, they take drop tests, they take things like that, if you drop them in a sump pump, they hold up very well, we take an average of 450 pictures per inspection, like that. than when we go for the first time. At one house, we're taking a couple hundred photographs that are documented, what we see right away, you know, is their pets and the premise, if there are pets on the premise, like this house, it actually has a sign, beware the dog, you know, we sent a seller notice. asking them to have all their pets contained or off site, even with that said, sometimes you will get there and there is a pet you know, do your best to befriend it from the start, try not to let it out, but part of Our sellers disclosure says we are not responsible for your own pets so I like to use the sabai flashlight from the inspector outlet.

They are maintained very well. It's the Phoenix. He's probably three years old. Now the battery is charged approximately once a month. They are maintained very, very well. We can also buy the body cameras, two inspector lights, so this is my cell phone. It may not look very good to have it like this, but if we need it, it is available. Actually, it's also my backup camera. this here I use military grade motion f5 tablets it's actually a Windows 10 there's a docking station in the truck there's a docking station in my office it's the only computer I use and it will run pretty much all the software that's out there. buy my inspector accessories through inspector outlet, you can find them at inspector outlet comm, you can also find them at international forum, in fact, you can buy the sewer camera that I use through inspector outlet comm, okay, when we enter the house the first thing we do is knock on the door of course we make a lot of noise if we open the house and a salesperson doesn't let us in we yell constantly to start hello cbhi

home

inspection cbhi radon test and let go, however you want.

Make sure someone knows you are going up the stairs especially if there is someone home, you don't want to pass someone in the bathroom or changing or something it creates a very bad situation so we make a lot of noise which I once had. The neighbors called the police on me when I was putting in the radon because I made a lot of noise. I'd rather have that happen than surprise someone and not have them know we were there, so when we walk into the house the first thing we start doing is taking pictures, we usually take a couple hundred pictures doing our general tour, we're taking pictures of any money, any jewelry, at least four or five photographs of each room from different angles or also remember we are using a body camera, you are recording all of this on video.

We're taking pictures of our water heater, we're taking pictures of our bathrooms, when we're done with that, we go out to the house and start our inspection on the outside, but that way I know where the heater is. where the water heater is, we've figured out where we're going to access everything so the inspection goes smoothly and then also documents the actual condition when we walk into the house, so if there's a broken blind, if there's a broken blind . furniture, we have it all in our camera from the beginning, those are there, we'll cover the photos, they usually don't end up in the report, but those are the things I keep forever to protect my business assets, let's get into it. the house, yes, when he comes into the house first thing in the morning or in the afternoon, what we do is we start at the front door, we just start taking pictures, now we have our body cameras as a backup, but we are taking up a big room like this.

We probably took 8 pictures because we came from all different angles, but from every corner we take now, if we find something expensive, something like that, okay, I want to document it: they're starting and ending the inspection like here. Take a photo of this entire area and we'll call them here and you'll see it as you walk around. Remember we do it clockwise so all my photos will be clockwise so if I have any questions feel free to come back. and I know where it will be in my photos so I go to the bathroom now we take a photo from afar we take a photo under the sink from a distance and then we take a close up so we have at least three photos of each sink and if I see something obvious like the worn floor, we'll take pictures of it now, usually this is where we take our data labels that are easily accessible, like here's a 40 gallon water heater, so I put it in my report that we have a drip pan and we have our copper 18 inches.

I'm also going to take a photo of that humidifier so I know to come back to it later. I also take that they are made of fire settings, our thermostat so we know. exactly what it was we walked in the door now we try to do this right when you want to get to the door because there may not be an agent to come in and turn up the heat or turn on the air conditioning we want to know where the seller left it no as much as what the agent gave him and then we will continue upstairs taking the same photographs.

Okay, we just took our preliminary photos. Now we are going to start the inspection on the outside of the house, you realize we were booties, we will not enter someone's house without booties, so always, always put on booties or take off your shoes, so we are outside the house , now you know, I usually take a screwdriver when I go out. That way, when we take down some electrical panels, things like that, I'm all set in my business, we go around the house clockwise all the time, once we do that, then we work counterclockwise. clockwise inside the house, everything is done clockwise, the most important thing.

If you learn nothing else today is to get a system and stick to it, it doesn't matter if the house is a thousand square feet, ten thousand square feet or forty thousand square feet, if you use the same systematic approach, you won't miss anything, it's a Un Really bad day when you have to knock on someone's door at night and ask if you can look at the fireplace because you forgot to look at it, so don't do that, always do the same inspection. Okay, when we do an inspection most of the time. the time my clients are with me we invite them to follow us anywhere, but our stairs are responsible, no one can touch their stairs now I use the same spiel to start with, I always tell clients the same thing the same thing they know, my jobs to point out flaws, we are very good at that, you know, number one is always safety, it is the one that hurts or kills you, if you were a child, it is water, it ruins you, so we are going to talk a lot about water , how to prevent problems, here we have an underground drain, underground drains are supposed to have natural light.

I can't find where this natural light is, so I'll talk to my clients about that because if this gets covered up, it could cause clearance issues in the garage while we're working here. I'll take pictures of the defects. I'm seeing that the pain has faded quite a bit, so let's talk about it actually being due to a paint job. You know, you can see a little bit of shedding here. It's a fiber coating, so faster. If they paint it, the cheaper it will be if they wait another winter or two, they'll probably have to do some repairs to the siding and now I think the dogs are gone, let me take a quick look, they're not just checking to do.

I'm sure we didn't have dogs in the backyard now, when we go back inside I'll go to the backyard. I'm going to take a bunch of pictures and everything, it's just the document that you're looking at when you get here and also if there are pets that you want to look at, make sure you don't step on anything, so here with a patio, we'll look here, we can see erosion, so we'll take a picture of it, you know, in the report we do our inspections. on site, so we want to make sure we have all of these things documented so we don't try to come home that night and write the report from memory, that's a good way to forget things, so we have a concrete patio on the back and we have soil erosion now if you do this a lot they will drop you so you don't have to write much you know usually all I have to write is northwest southwest we just have to do locations we have pretty much all the defects which we will see already written previously, so now we are happy with them.

I always write about dog doors as a safety issue, just the other day I went to do a radon test. a dog door because the lockbox didn't work so I could go through that one and so could a thief or a thief so we always write them down as a security issue now here we are looking I think we have a chute of smoke up there. It could also be a drain for a laundry room, but you need to pay attention. When you see things like that, you'll be able to figure out what's going on. If it is a flue, it should have a screen.

We always write down his conditioning. an image of all data labels. We have changed the water heaters. We have had a couple boilers go out between the time we do the inspection and the time of closing. This is a 2003 model, it weighs 2 tons and if you look at this one, actually. use r22 now r22 was banned as a refrigerant in 2008 which means they can still sell it but they don't make it so we put a note in our report that the refrigerant can be very expensive or hard to find so basically yes this has a problem.

It's not really worth fixing anymore, we also have a lot of erosion under here so it's not level anymore, that's very difficult and it's very dirty, so those three things are very difficult for an air conditioner, hopefully we can make it work . today if we can if it's above 65 degrees we will so right now I'm just jotting down the notes I see and your pins are dirty it's not level it doesn't look like it's been serviced recently it should be serviced annually now. the coolant line fittings are missing here and there is also a big hole right there in the liner so you should note that it is not cocked into the liner but also in the coolant section you should have a note about that .

Now what we do is if we have something I've seen this a few times, so we have a drop down menu, but if I have to write something new that I haven't written before and it's a long paragraph, what I'll do is check the spelling and make some mistakes. 3GS or something, so when I spell check on my computer it pops up and says oh yeah, I need to write that story so I'm not sitting in an inspection trying to write a long story. I can do it in my office when I have a keyboard now here we are actually missing the downspout extension tube so water has been falling on this so now this has been getting wet the trim is damaged from moisture while we talk and everything goes.

Back to not having a downspout extension, which is a very quick way to ruin a house, so I'm going to put a note about moisture damage to trim. Now we have a photo. Here is our electrical panel. We always take a photo at every home we inspect. we pull the tag, it's amazing how many times you'll see this cut up and put together to make it look good, this one is still safe if you pull it down and someone has been involved, or they've been stealing electricity or someone's been involved. It wasn't supposed to be in that so we checked that every house we look at and we open it up the first thing we do is take a picture that way if we take things in part we can and we flip a breaker we actually know that. was on what was off so this is a Siemens panel right here so we should have Siemens circuit breakers just looking at these are all Siemens these are Siemens arc faults now you can still read the legend it's fading a little bit but you can read it , so it's a hundred and fifty amp Service, we had already been to the house when you verified this.

You should also brush the panel that way. If you have problems, your hands are clasped like this and not on the panel. Normally we would also use safety glasses for this. For thefilming the video we won't do that, but you should wear your protective safety equipment, like gloves are a good idea, glasses or a face shield are a good idea. Now, with this style, you have to be careful and try not to trip over the main one. circuit breaker now, if the homeowner is home while we do the inspection and they are working on a computer, I will let them know that I am going to the electrical panel and there is a chance that he could trip the circuit breaker, so they should do it. they'll be saving their stuff on their computer so when we go through this you never want to grab a screwdriver anything hot to look at your panel so what we do is we check each breaker and see if our wire size correlates so that the size be correct. here we have 20s we are looking at our grounding system what is this bus bar like? here this is the main panel so it should be physically connected to this panel here we have another bus bar down here that also has to be connected because we have everything has to be connected so we are seeing that we cannot tell what the service cables are in this one, but we can see that we have copper for our main line for our 20s down here all of our two 20s are copper as well, so we don't have many two 20s in the house we have our stove we have our dryer we have our air conditioner these white wires those are for our arc faults those are our neutrals if we had white wires like hot wires we would write it because you're not supposed to have them so inside we look good and now we carefully put the cover back on let's screw .

When we press it and then we step back and take another photo that shows that all the switches are on, we close the panel and take another photo that shows that we left it as it is down here is the floor, so in this one we have a driven rod to Earth. Age of the house, we should also have a cold water ground, so we're going to take pictures of all of those. Okay, let's check the hose bibs now. If there is a hose, you need to make sure it is not. just spray yourself, turn it on, see if we have any leaks and also if it's any time in cold weather, we want to put a note that leaving the hoses on a hose bib or cold weather can cause damage, so this, the handles, it probably wasn't the original handle but it works now when we check our electrical system, we check our outlets before we trip them, then we are inside the house, we have tried to figure out where our GFCIs will be, so if there are a lot of things in the garage this is the age of this house, the GFCIs will be in the garage.

I don't want to trip them if they're tied to a freezer and I can't get to the outlet, but if we can reach them, we'll trip them. If we do not get to where the GFCI is, we will make a note that we did not activate the GSC eyes due to the occupants' belongings. We are looking at the lamps. One who wants to see if he is loose. To see if they are hammered or sealed around them, we don't want water getting in and again the house needs a paint job. Usually before we go up on the roof, we take a step back to see what kind of ventilation systems we have in this house. soffits and gable vents we don't normally mix the two in Colorado, we do it more often than other cases because we have such a high solar load, but you're usually not supposed to do that.

We're going to look and see if we have tortoise or ridge vents sometimes what we find if someone thinks the gables work like a ridge vent and it actually doesn't work very well so from below I usually look at my whole team of gentlemen and then we stand on the roof and look. On their Indian roof top, when you walk through the doors, you always make sure to close them that way. If they come home and let a pet out, you are not responsible for letting them loose. Fences are not really part of our standards. practice, so we write them down if there is a defect, if a fence looks good, I don't include it in my report, but if there is a problem with a gate, a loose post, any problem with the fence, we write it down as security because We don't know if our buyers will have children, pets, etc. and we don't want there to be a problem now that we are going to walk around the house.

This driveway looks pretty good. There are a couple of cracks right here, so in the report. Let's put the few cracks. I usually put them as marginal, unless they are really big cracks. Talk to my clients. It would be a good idea to put some in there. Right now, here you can see that the stone veneer is in contact. on the porch they are supposed to have a space like this right here so that if we have any movement the stone veneer doesn't fall off, so that will be in my report, you can see the mortars moved, we have had a little settling on the porch front due to settling which has not affected the stone, if we had had a lift it would have broken the stone so I will talk to my clients if they see the stone coming loose, it's basically just for laughs, re-heal it, it's not a structural component of the house again, we're going to check the outlet, we'll use a GFCI tester once we find where the GFCIs are coming from, here look, we've had a little bit of movement here.

Again, I'd like to make sure we make a note about caulking the gas meter. This looks very very good, in fact it looks like it was just replaced recently. We take pictures of all gas meters if there is any type of corrosion. I'm going to put a note about painting the gas lines because the corrosion will actually follow the threads and then we start to leak gas. Gas leaks are not part of standard practice. You don't need to review them, but you definitely want them returned just in case. You see a situation that could cause a gas leak and if you smell it, you know we always shut it off again.

We will check our hose bibs, make sure they are secure and on. This one actually has a leak, it has been replaced at least once, but it is currently leaking. This is a sprinkler backflow prevention device. Let's see if there is one. Sprinklers are not part of a standard because they are typically closed for about eight months of the year. At least where we live, I'll look to see if there's a physical leak from something like that. Now this backflow is usually only rated for a couple of zones again, we may have more zones than that from what we see here, but my concern is whether it has one or not and then if we write a complaint or an issue with this, so I have a disclaimer that says sprinkler systems are not part of the standards of practice.

Any time you exceed Sander's standards of practice, you'll want to make sure you meet them. a note there and kind of a disclaimer that way, they don't think you've inspected the entire sprinkler system, including what's below grade. Now looking here we can see that the siding is a little slanted again, it just needs a paint job. It's not at a critical stage right now, but they could probably secure it a bit, but the sooner they paint this, the better it will be. Now we are going to take out the ladder, we are going to climb to the roof. our roof inspection and we'll go into the house, okay, when you're in difficult terrain, you always want to maintain a three-point connection that way, if the wind comes up, you won't get blown away, you always want to have three steps.

When we're here we'll look and see how many layers there are, we'll also check if something like this comes in the gutters this one has a lot of granular in there which is usually an indication that we've got some hail damage right here we'll see that we've got moisture damage. Someone tried to put a flashing there, but it is a very low flashing and they put the siding too close to the roofing material, so it will be damaged. all that side and we're supposed to be two inches away and here you can see there's gable flashing right here, our WAAFs are very careful when you go up on a roof because a lot of times the bees are the wasps.

I've made a nest there and it's very easy to get angry and walk away and not pay attention and fall off a ladder, which is why we want the three point connection and we want three rings up now, when you're on a fault, never ever. If you ever back up that's the easiest way to fall off the roof it's a good idea to try to stay at least three feet away from the edge that way if you trip on your ride things like that you don't have any problems now this is the 612 tilt, Most of our jurisdictions now require mooring equipment on a grade of 612 or greater.

If this roof was wet, we would not be able to walk safely without using our tie-down equipment. Your safety always comes first when we encounter a failure, here is the mooring. of the equipment we're talking about here, this is the safety lashing hook before you tie it off, pull it up and make sure it's really secure. The problem with mooring equipment is that it needs to get to the hook before you can tie it off. Can you safely get to that location to use your mooring equipment? Also the question now down here, they've done a partial cricket for this fireplace, which is great, but the water is still damaging the trim, so I put a note here.

I can see the trim is damaged again. We are supposed to have a two inch gap between our siding and the roofing material because of this. I can't see the flashing on the step. I can't even tell you if there is step flashing there until it's gone. just to be a note in my report on the side wall flashings, we are not visible due to the siding again, we are getting some damage there again, we need a paint job, this is the soffit vent I was talking about from below. there is one on each side of the house, we usually don't mix them with Gables, now this is our duct for the water heater in the furnace, most manufacturers require this duct to end at least two feet above any thing within 10 feet, so it's too close to the roof, so if we have the right wind we may not produce correctly or we may force the exhaust gases down, so you want to put a note of that the flue ends too close to the ceiling right here, you can't see it from there. but there is another mooring hook.

Walking along the ridge is one of the safest places. Now I'm not going to get too close on that end without using the tie-down gear because you might fall off now that you're standing here. I can see there is no original, so what? What they did is they are using soffit vents on the Gables thinking it will blow the heat out of the Gables, that doesn't work so my reports will have insufficient ventilation. Insufficient or inadequate ventilation. This roof will be much warmer than the attic space. higher than necessary sometimes that will cause things like this where the ridge will loosen and heat up trying to find a spot outside looking at the roof we are in pretty good shape we will walk to where we can walk safely check the flashings on the sewer boots like one right there, we're going to be checking for exposed nails, uncocking the nail heads, things like that.

I say you can walk like this quite safely, but if this roof was steeper or if it didn't have perfect conditions like today we would be using mooring equipment. I've found that street shoes like this are the best go-to shoes I've found, so this is what I wear them with. If I were wearing tennis shoes, I probably wouldn't walk on this roof properly. Now okay, we are done with the roof inspection, now we will safely go down the ladder, we will put away our equipment, we never leave our ladders outside, although sometimes it would be more convenient, we always put them away and then we will go in and start. interior inspection okay, we just wanted to show you how we set up our truck, you know, we have several ladders, we always want to use the right ladder for the job because it makes it safer, we have several painter's sticks, we use them and put a There is an attachment to the camera, so when we look at the rust on the concrete sometimes it's too windy to draw things like that, so it's never too windy for a pole.

Keep in mind that they are fiberglass, so we don't have to worry about hitting power lines without saying you want to be around power lines, but if something catastrophic happened and you dropped them, you'd be fine. This is our bag that we use in our daily life. We have our electrical test shirt. We have our boots. We have backups for everything we carry. truck here we have our little ferret camera this bag here has extra humidity meters things like that I think you should always have two of everything in case you break something we have a safe in the truck there's actually another backup computer in there along with a The backup infrared listens to our foray into this, we set up our tripods,that kind of thing, which is our backup sewer camera, we have another one in front of it that we use on a day to day basis, these are my incidental expenses and this is a locator, this is a heavy umbrella that we use to make super sights under the sun and this is your tie down equipment so I guess every house should have tie down equipment and then we have drop cloths so when we go into the attic things like we don't make the house dirty remember if your insurance is like the mine, you don't have insurance for your equipment if your truck isn't locked, so even if you're just going into the house to set up a radon monitor, always, always, always lock it.

Your truck, what's going on? The house is fine. Let's put on our boots. We'll turn on the lights. We'll turn on a lot of lights. In fact, if it's a salesman, that's the inspection. I explained to him that we're going to turn on all the lights and leave them on. We're trying to test the load of the house. as much as possible in a couple of hours, so part of how we're going to do that is use the appliances, the lights, things like that, now I see how Nick Ramiro was dressed when I started as The home inspector 15 years ago told me it was fine get dirty on an inspection, but it's never okay to start the inspection dirty, so we have clean clothes in the truck, so we do two inspections a day if we get our pants or shirt dirty. and anything like that we change before the next inspection, so we always start the inspection looking clean, you may have heard my phone ring.

I try not to answer phone calls during the inspection, if I have to take one I will keep it short, but we get a lot of text messages from our students or former students and that's what was there. We don't want it to be seen internationally. If you're in the middle of an inspection, you don't know what you're looking at. We want to help you, so a text message is a great way to do it because then when we get to a quiet area, I can step aside and respond to your message. Send me a photo.

Do something like that. A phone call is much more difficult. way to do it because we have to answer it now so I love when you text me because then when I have a couple of minutes like that I can text you back okay when we get in the house the first thing we do is put our shoes on. ankle boots. What we need to do is turn around and look at the door. Look, we have a bad seal. This door is actually rubbing when it comes many times, that's as simple as putting longer screws in the hinge, so if my customers here I'll tell you, but we'll write it down because it's rubbing and not sealing properly now that we have it.

We've already gone through and done our overall look, so we've already put in what kind of flooring we have, the wall material, the roof material, all that kind of stuff, so when we go in to check our bathrooms, we're going to run a bunch of water, so when we go into a bathroom the first thing we do is try to push the toilet towards where his leg moves, if it moves we write it down as a leak, it's another student and we flush it, we actually fill the water and the sinks and the tubs usually have a couple of inches on each one, we always take a picture of our sink when it's running just like our bath in our showers so we really check it out, feel free of any leaks that way, now it we'll drain, make sure it's hot, hot, cold, cold. we make sure we don't have leaks, we check our outlets electrically, this one doesn't have a fan, the half bath is not a legal requirement, but it does have a window, so even if it was a three hallway, a full bath as long as it has a open window, you know you legally need to have a fan when you look at the toilet.

We also look to see if it is armed throughout the base. We generally recommend leaving a couple of inches on the back so that if the wax seal starts to leak, you see it on the floor before you see it on the ceiling below. Now, as we go through the house, we work in a circle, so when we get to something, we will usually turn it on when We first enter from the roof, open the oven, make sure there is nothing inside, check our tip there using the device, and then we'll turn it on, we'll also turn it on if we have a heater in there that way. when we come in here we can change it to broil and turn it off so when we come out we know the ovens are off.

The other thing we do is when we finish our inspection. This is one of the items we are taking a photo of. The way we know the oven is off, we have a picture that shows the oven is off and we leave the property. We never leave a house with running water, so when we turn this on now we typically run one of the shorter rinses. or wash but if we turn it on early then when we finish with the inspection it turns off by itself now you are not connected to move furniture it is not necessary to move blinds things like that we like to look at the windows and see if we can't open them, but I'm not going to move the sofa to Do it, I'm not going to break the lamps, I'm not going to cause problems that way, so if I can reach in and open it safely, we will do it. but don't get into the habit of moving things to get outlets, switches, things like that, everything is supposed to be easily accessible now I like to use this over this, we use this to activate GFCIs because it's easy, but this here tells me everything a lot more about the circuits in an old house, we don't remove this at all, we just use this, anything over 63, this tells me we're wired correctly, this shows me my voltage, this will show me my voltage drop to 15, they.

They will also show you the actual RMS voltage. They will show me a lot of different things, so they are very helpful. We use it a lot and again, this is another one of those tools that inspects the output cells so you can get them in inspector editing Outlook. .com now, if you look, they have the routers with all their stuff connected here. I wouldn't disconnect this cable right here because everything is connected to it. If I can see that this is just the lamp I unplug that one, but since everything is on, I don't want to reset it, it caused them a problem, so reports say some outlets were not accessible.

A test could not be carried out to make the occupants' belongings and I only took a photo of that. Now we normally take pictures inside each closet. Here is our access to the crawl space, this is where we will finish the inspection, okay, let me go into the kitchen now that we had already activated the baking function, so now I'm going to turn it off. I'm going to turn on the grill so that when I'm done. here I can turn it off when I go out. I know it's done, like I say, we run a lot of water when we come in and check our plugs.

This is where I like to use this. It's easier to trip over this, so we'll check all of our outlets and then we'll trip and here's our GFCI. Be sure to reset and recheck your outlets now after the trip, depending on the age of the house and the outlets. GFCIs may not have been required. Remember that when something is done to the house, like replacing an outlet, it is assumed to meet current standards, so if everything looks new, we will write the lack of GFCI as a defect, yes, everything looks original on the house, is older than 86, so we will write it down as an improvement for safety.

We always include it in the report, although we always recommend it. I would just check the disposal now under the sink. This is one of the pictures we took when we started, but we're going to check to make sure there's a clamp on the removal cable, make sure we haven't lost ABS 2 PVC, except for the mechanical connections there, which is a removal belt. air intake, so since this is Peninsula, they didn't fold this through the roof. They use this belt of arid mittens for the sewage system while we look at the upper cabinets of our cabinets.

Deck screws are not recommended. It is a particle board back and with a deck screw you can go through it. They are supposed to use flat head screws. or screws with washers, so let's write that inappropriate screws were used to hang the kitchen cabinets again. We see it a lot, so we have it in a drop-down menu and we write it in as a safety because we've seen where the cabinets come from. from the wall and breaking things, so let's open all the cabinets. Now you'll notice that I'm not really looking in the cabinets, especially the bathroom cabinets.

Things like that. You don't want to be nosy and spy. Your job is. just to see if they work I don't care what's in them you're going to see all kinds of crazy stuff and you don't want to look at that stuff now let me grab a tape and a microwave tester so with the microwave this looks like the microwave could be a little close for me, so let's go down here, okay, where it's 16 and a half inches. The microwave is supposed to be a minimum of 18 inches from the stove and that's for safety, so there we go.

We're going to take a photo of that, then we come back and take a photo and put it in the report. We are going to place a microwave tester. Don't run them more than 10 seconds, otherwise you will destroy it. We're up and running for a while. For a couple of seconds I'm going to turn on the fan. Actually, this is just internal. Yes, it was a gas oven. We would recommend an external fan, although it is no longer a requirement, but it is a good idea. I will take note that it is necessary. Close it and then I'll put my things away.

You know our standards of practice are integrated appliances. Refrigerators, not a built-in appliance. You can check if it makes ice if you want, but you don't have to. So you know, like I say, we send a copy of the SOP, we send a link to our customers three times before we do the inspection with their contract with their quote and with their confirmation email so they already know that we are not going to make the refrigerator If they ask me about it, I will talk to him about it, but there is always a disclaimer because it is not marked on the report.

Now, back door, look at it, you're going to open it. I want to make sure we check the locks and latches to make sure our lights. work, we have already seen the outside from the outside of the house, so I don't need to do that, I already did it, there will be an oath of the damaged screens, come in here, this is our clothes stacked and in the back we have our furnace and our water here now, one of the things we need to keep in mind when we look at combustion appliances. Where do we get oxygen now?

When a water heater or furnace is near a dryer, it doesn't matter for gas or electric, we need to have outside combustion air because we can starve it and the dryer will actually pull the exhaust out of the flue, so I don't see any type of outside combustion air at this point, so we're definitely going to put that in both the boiler and water heater sections. This is something we've already looked at to take our pictures, but this one is pretty simple, it was built in November 2013. If you look at the white Bradford, it's actually better than the serial number, but it's a letter, so we have that cheat sheet on our tablet so we can look it up and calculate its age.

We don't put the age in our report, but I like to use it because we usually get 9 to 12 years, so we can say that at the end of its useful life or near the end of its useful life, we saw that pipe stuck in the back of the house and I was wondering what combustion air actually was for this 80 percent efficient furnace. okay, it should have had a screen. This is a single wall flue. Most manufacturers recommend 80% double wall fumes. I'm going to put a note on it, but it didn't need to be antiqued, so we tied it up.

So we have our boiler and our water heater in the old days, it used to be a requirement that the larger appliance enter the flue before the smaller appliance because of our electric draft, now they have gotten rid of that code, but It's still a good asset. What to look at I write it if they are not correct I may not write correctly this is a humidistat it is for this humidifier here again you should look at the media pad to see how dirty it is if it needs to be clean but they recommend that it be given maintenance every year, just like your boiler.

Here we have pecs. You are not allowed to install pecs closer than 18 inches from your water heater, which is why we have these copper risers here. We have a drain down here facing the back. we have a drip tube on our gas line so those are the things we're looking for and we're glad to see because this is low voltage for the thermostat which may be that way now it looks like condensation is coming from our air lines conditioner is leaking into the furnace so I would make a note in my report about that because that can actually cause corrosion problems inside the furnace.

Now we're going to turn this on later, but you'll always want to look at it again. We take photographs of thedata label. so we know exactly what furnace was installed here, we'll take a picture from way back, but this is an Aries and it looks like it's 50,000 BTU, so we'll write down the model number, the serial number of things like that, it's a sealed burner . so there's not much you can see on it, although it is dirty, so we definitely recommend that you clean it now, when you turn it on you can check for carbon monoxide, that's completely up to you again.

Our SOPs don't require it, but we don't. We can't avoid it, so it's not a bad idea to do it. We have gas leak detectors. We have carbon dioxide detectors. We have all that and our truck in our bag, so we take them to the site, but you don't have to have them, so understand. Now back here is the laundry room, we see that this has the occupants' belongings, so we will have a note that the laundry room could not be tested for documents and belongings. Now we always recommend a drip pan if it can damage the house, we always recommend the dryer.

The ventilation must be cleaned. That particular style would not be approved for a gas dryer, but since I can't check any of the outlets, I can't access them. There will be a note stating that we were unable to access them. Here is our garage. There should be a self-closing fire rated door leading out here. We'll look, here's our star label for fire rating. Now that they've painted it, but it looks like it's their turn to turn on the lights. Now we have a car that takes up most of it. the space here, so there's not much we can do to check here, you know, I personally will be very careful, I'll open the garage door, we want to check, reverse stops things like that.

I'd have someone shoot it from here and I'd just shoot it from outside. of the house and look it over because I don't want to scratch your car coming in and out, but I want to take as many pictures as you can to document the condition that I'm in here and see the outlets and things like that right here. You can see that these outlets are blown out so we want to test it but even if that outlet tests well they should do further testing because just because it trips today doesn't mean it will trip tomorrow when we have overheated like this many times.

It damages the outlet and it would be a good idea to replace it over and over again because that's not something I commonly see. I don't have a dropdown for that, so I just put burnt with three T's like that when I cast a spell. I check to make sure my computer picks it up and then I'll write a better story that way. I'm not just going to sit here and spend time doing it right now. Now I check and make sure the door locks are on properly and the deadbolt doesn't close, so I'm going to put that as a security issue, we've already seen it from the outside, but now it also rubs off if you look at that, for what the hinges are loose, so we will have that in your report, not that the hinges were tight.

The lock could get stuck in this garage, we can't see a lie. I also look and check to make sure the steps have an even rise. All of our stairs must be within three days of each other. I suppose we usually find the opposite at this point. stop at the garage door because we have that car on the way, we'll do it later when I can get someone to push the button and they can be out there checking it because we don't want to open it without checking. I'm going to make a note about the Tyrian on the hardwood floors, it could be considered cosmetic, but until there are dogs in here, it's fine, so I caught up with what we looked at in the garage, like I see when there's a car there, just I try to keep everything closed, we don't run the risk of scratching anything, so now, in the oven, we already checked, now the broiler is working, let's turn off the broiler, this is hot.

Here we're going to check our burners quickly. You don't want to leave them on for too long with nothing because you can burn things, but this is two stages, so we'll go through both, so now we have everything turned off. So now we're going to take a photo that shows it and when we're done with the inspection, we're going to take a photo that shows this. Remember that the first thing we did was look in here to make sure there was nothing. There we took a photo of that while we're doing our general tour, but you know, you always look when people open Tupperware, they store all kinds of weird things in their oven and you don't want to melt them and now we're.

I'm going to go up, check upstairs again if there are occupants, we always announce that we're going up, okay, we're going up. I will say that I like to announce it now. Let's check, make sure all of our handrails are tight. Actually, they are there now. In Colorado, we have a law that states we must have a smoke detector within a CO detector within 15 feet of each room, which is a smoke seal, so it qualifies. The Consumer Product Safety Commission recommends a smoke detector in the common area of ​​every room, one on each level of the home. of the house and then a CO detector occupied every level of the house, so that's what we recommend, so when we enter the bedroom we're going to turn everything on, but normally we try to run our fans on full power to see if it They wobble when we turn them off.

We're going to see if they're tight on the roof and see how it wobbles so we'll put a note on that because it can actually come off the roof if that's the case so we'll write that down as a safety. Take note of the wobbles of the rear bedroom fan. We've already reviewed and taken our general photos, but let's go in and take a quick look. I guess we have to look at everything, but we're not here to snoop, so. I'm not going to move intimate items I'm not going to move things like that, we're just looking for water stains on the ceiling, damaged holes, things like that, we do a quick walk through the closet in your personal space as we try not to. spend a lot of time with that kind of stuff now here again let's check and see if the toilets are loose then we'll turn on the water and come here a shower or bathtub here we're missing a grunt so let's go look you can hear it ringing different than here so the tiles are actually coming loose so you will know about loose tiles and deteriorated missing grout on the report because that's only going to get worse now I'm going to talk to my clients and tell them that if they fixed the grout and fixed the caulking, that tile is still intact, they can probably buy some time, but eventually they will have to read and redo this shower now.

I want to see if it's hot and if it really gets hot again, we let the water run and again underneath, you know, the personal space that we're looking for. Do we have leaks? That's what we're looking for again. We have an air inlet valve right down there. I'm going to see if that holds up, we show a picture of the actual operation, we get a picture for the report, we are hot now, over time, you will get to the feeling and what is too hot if I turn on the heat and see steam or feel too hot now that one is not holding, so there will be a note on the report not holding if the water seems too hot.

I'm going to take an infrared photo, which we don't want. To be above 130, we really want to be between 124, 119, 125, so we'll check that, but you'll get to a point where you can feel if it's too hot, so we open and close all the doors that way. I can tell if we have any link if the house has moved things like that now in this one we are missing the drain plug it will be a note that it is missing in this one again we are going to go up and see if the toilet It moves now these bathtubs are missing the drain plug drainage, we actually carry a small rubber plug so that it can contain the water if necessary.

Now in this one the grout looks much better. The shape will usually be added if we have a drain plug to three inches of water in there. just to check that we don't have a leak, we now take wet and dry pictures that way, especially plastic tubs, sometimes if someone replaces a toilet or wax seal, they put the tip in, made the toilet in the tub and They break the bathtub. so we always take a photo showing the actual condition of the bathtub during inspection again. Let's look underneath. Now we look at his personal things. Let's see that we are not leaking.

We are not leaking. Things like that. the house all the outlets are GFCI protected check things like that okay as you'll notice I use this flashlight a lot but let's check the closets that come here if I can sleep safely close the door when they have a cord like this . With that we will consider an office, we will look in the closet again but we will not look at his things. Here is the attic. This would be the second and last place we are. We have taken several photographs of that just to show that it is so. damaged we have the photos if it is not damaged we have photos that it is not damaged again when you can get a window like this then we open it now this we see it as a damaged track and it is also missing the screen so there will be a note the track damaged, loose and damaged, and if you are not referring to the missing screen, now up here is a smoke detector, they look good, they are white, if they are yellow or turning yellow, we recommend replacing them, they are made of resin. it turns yellow on purpose so you can date them just by looking at the color, so come back in opening the windows checking our outlets coming here checking our closet remember we've already been here and check by taking three four pictures of each from each angle, so when we're doing this tour we don't have to spend a lot of time because we've already been here and we notice any major defects, like we have water stains, things like that, but you want to make sure you know how to open, close all the doors, open and close all accessible windows, if you can't access a window, put it, it can't be opened, you know, the occupants' belongings and if there's only one or two windows, they'll actually. put the location, if there is more than that, we will put several of you, whatever the case, and we will based on our photographs to show which ones we can lower well, before making changes to the thermostat, we take a photo of them. where it is now we are in a cold temperature of 74 degrees, that way we turn on the air conditioning, if it is hot enough, we turn on the oven when we are done, after the oven it will cool back to 74, you have it while your memories kiss you, it You forget, but As we take our last walk around the house, we always take a photo again of what it was like in winter, which can be very important because you don't want to forget to turn the heating back on and then you can document that we left the heat of 68 degrees right where you had it, so always get in the habit of taking pictures of your thermostat that way, it covers you.

Okay, now we're going to look at the crawl space to take a photo that shows the crawl space. when it's on carpet it's not a big deal but sometimes it comes on wood and the floor gets damaged things like that so now right below me is the water break which will be the only picture in my report that doesn't relate to a default will be the main water shutoff now there should also be one of the entrances to the crawl space so let's look there now I usually don't take my tablet into the crawl space alone Because it's a dirty area, now you want to look down, make sure you don't hit anything and then go up now.

If there is not enough access to enter safely, you don't have to enter, you can look from here, but when possible it is always best to enter them, you don't know what you are going to find. I always want to look under every bathroom, every boiler and every laundry room because that's where you're going to see some weird things, sometimes from the plumbers or if they cut a beam or if we had a leak, then those are areas susceptible to having problems, no. we should have carpets down here because the carpets can grow mold right now we are dripping water from the furnace area where the air conditioners are running.

I think it's probably condensation water, we'll see about it, it will definitely be noted in the report, but we never want to see any type of leak in the crawl space. Well, here we can see that the floor drains are leaking, so all this water is actually leaking. Here in the crawl space, the return air has become discs and acts, so they are actually pulling the air that they are pumping through the house from the crawl space, it is not a very clean space, no we want to do it. You see, there's a bit of trash. and debris down here we would really like this to be a clear space here is our main water break there should also be one near the foundation not a good place to store boxes here we have some rust and corrosion on the support post we have a vapor barrier, it's a little strange to see the gap we have more than two feet in the floor joist, which is a little strange to see the larger gap.

I would take a tape measure and measure to determine what our space is. "We are just checking thespacing, there's actually two feet in the center, which is a little unusual for a flat, they're two by eight, we're not required to check the spacing, but if I see something that looks a little unusual, I'll usually look." We're at 10 feet wide 2 by 8 2 feet on center, so I'll look it up in my charts and see if that's acceptable Now you always want to put the cover up right away so no one falls out. Okay, now let's inspect the attic. , which is usually close to the batten or the second to last thing we do, depending on if we have a crawl space.

When we install our ladder, we always use drop cloth, so if something falls off, we minimize the amount of dirt you want. Remember when you carry a ladder around the house it's easy to hit walls, doors, things like that, so be very careful with expandable ladders like this, it's easier to get into and they're also very stable so as you go up. You never want to do this to open access to the attic. You can leave fingerprints. You use the backs of your hands this way. You can usually do it without leaving marks, so we'll pick it up and then try to tip it over and not put it down.

Leave it on the painted side because then you're just going to make a very dirty attic access panel. Now you don't need to go into the attic, if it's safe, it's a good idea because there are a lot of things that you will see from there that you will be able to see. it will not be visible from the opening, if you inspect it from the opening you should say that in your report the attic was inspected from access only due to limited headroom, depth of insulation, something like that, we go up there first. First we'll see what it looks like now that no one has been in this attic, so you have to decide if you are the first one who will want to move all the insulation, if you can easily walk on the framing straps, I definitely would. come in, otherwise you know sometimes sellers get upset if you are in the middle of a property and you can see everything many times, you can do it from the driveway, but in this case we are going to go in and Due to the temperature of the attic, also You can see that the ventilation is not working properly because this attic is much hotter than it should be, so you have to try to put the access back the way it was, like I say, don't put your fingers in it.

Now that the attic doesn't look like anyone has walked in it, it is new construction, most builders won't let you go into the attic because if you displace the insulation, they will have to rake it again to get your permits approved for the insulation, so always do a seller notice always do a builders notice so they can tell you it can't be in the attic, no it can't be on the roof, no it maybe can't be in the electrical panel so in new constructions always ask if it's okay. The owner was nice enough to move his car so we can do a proper inspection of the garage, so the first thing we look at is the door, they opened it so we know it's safe to open the openers we're looking for.

Look, here we have some. loose nuts on the hinges we have a loose lock on the ends right there, so we're going to put that on the report here. We wanted our optical eyes to be about eight inches off the ground, so here they are. I always like to come and look and see. What type of opener is it? We have a belt drive. You don't want to put too much pressure on the reverse top of the belt drive because it can actually remove the gear. Remember they have to weigh ten pounds, so if I make 10 pounds and the door doesn't turn on.

I'm writing it as a defect. I don't need to go to 30 or 40 because I don't want to damage the unit itself so I'll come here sometimes you have to be pretty quick so the door doesn't turn there we check the optical types so I'm going to put a note that the reverse stop is incorrectly adjusted and that is to protect children, pets and things like that from being crushed, so now we can look across the garage. Look, the firewall appears to be intact. The garage floor looks good. We have already checked the plugs. Lights. Things like that.

These actually have safety cables installed. If they didn't put tabs on those cables I would recommend them and you can do it right there. In fact, you come there, you know what that's about, so we finish the graduate section, that's what we do with the home inspection now, when we're putting things away, you know we're finishing the house, you want to make sure that the house is locked, but then the last thing. What you want to do is do a quick inventory of your tools, you know, especially your big-ticket items, you know, I have what I brought into the house, it's my infrared saved, it's my sewer camera, it keeps things like that, the last thing I What I want to do is go back home to look for it or simply lose it because many of these tools are very expensive.

Thank you for watching our inspection video. Good luck with your inspection career and don't be afraid to text or email. if you have any questions thank you