Behind the Scenes of an Inspection

Today Aldo is going to show you a little sneak peek of what it's like to be behind the scenes at an inspection. Aldo met with Darren at Caliber Home Inspection to give a tour of what happens during an inspection.

The main thing is just to look at is the wiring of the house, the inspectors want to see what type of wiring you have in your house. Is it copper? Is it aluminum? They know what to expect based on the age of the home usually. Inspectors like to look at your breakers, they like to make sure that everything is sized appropriately, there's no sign of overheating, none of the breakers are double-tapped, so having two wires that come into a breaker that's not designed to handle two wires connected, 25 to 30 years is kind of an average.

For Water heaters, you're looking at more like 8 to 12 years. Next inspectors look at your sheeting, make sure that your roof seems to be doing its job. They check to make sure there are no signs of water leaks or water intrusion or anything like that. They check your framing components, all your web members, your trusses, insulation, you have some wiring usually, you've got some return ducting up here, soffit vents, all those thin are important to check. Everybody thinks of the attic as storage but it's a lot more than that.

Next, they check the crawl space. In the crawl space, they look at the drain lines, these big plastic pipes which need to aim going out of the side of the house. Inspectors want to see what the material the pipes are as well because if it's cast iron or any other type of material, its worrisome but plastic is what they like to see.

Then they look at all the framing components, the posts, beams, all the connections, floor joists, insulation, foundation, crawl space vents and then signs of bar intrusion.

At an inspection realtors don't do a whole lot, they aren't just sitting around doing nothing but the inspection is actually really meant for the buyer and for the inspector to have that one on one to figure out if there's anything majorly wrong in a house so generally the realtor is in the background out of the way.