The Home Inspection Checklist You Didn’t Know You Needed

Jamie: 00:00:00

Welcome to Thoughts from the Crawl Space, a podcast where our goal as home inspection experts is to support and serve our community.

Whether you’re a homeowner, home buyer, real estate agent or investor, we believe everyone deserves solutions to their homeownership challenges and inspiration along the way. Your path to success starts here. Welcome back to another episode of Thoughts from the Crawl Space. Hope you all are doing well out there today.

We are going to jump into ancillary services today. What in the world are you talking about?

Well, ancillary services are what we term any kind of service that is not automatically included with a home inspection. And more importantly today, which ones should you order?

If you call our company and you have an average sized house and you add every single ancillary service that we offer, your bill could easily be over $2,000. We value what we offer. We put a lot of research into it, a lot of work into getting good at it. And our ladies on the phone will offer other services.

However, we’re not going to offer every service to every person because it just doesn’t really make sense. So how do you know what makes sense? How do you know when to add those extra dollars on and is it worth it?

So let’s jump into what we offer and which ones that we think. Some points to consider when you’re making that decision. So first of all, why ancillary services matter?

Well, a home inspection, inspection, excuse me, is the foundation, but it doesn’t cover everything. When we send you out our pre inspection agreement, it’s going to specifically exclude several aspects that you might think would be included.

For example, mold testing. Mold is not a part of any national home inspector standards. So mold would not be included.

Water testing, well, inspections, sewer line scans, not included. So all those things. And we’ll touch on these in a little more detail as we go down.

But if you have a concern about any of these other topics is something that you need to order, give you that peace of mind. Yeah, it’s a few hundred extra dollars. But you’re buying a house that’s probably the biggest purchase you’ll ever make until you buy a bigger one.

And it’s really small, a small price to pay to pay even a thousand or fifteen hundred dollars to protect an investment that could be five hundred thousand or a million or more. So think of those. Think of it in that term. It’s an investment, it’s not an expense as you move forward with some of these.

So first of all, radon testing, radon is an invisible colorless gas. It’s a leading cause of lung cancer after smoking. Excuse me. Second leading cause after. And if you do smoke, it exponentially increases your chance.

So this is probably found in all the regions that we inspect.

Everybody that can hear me now in Indiana and Michigan and it’s throughout most of the United States, even southern states which don’t have as much because the type of soil is different. But radon gas is essentially radiation in your house. And so how do you know if you have it? There’s only one way to know and that’s the test.

A test takes 48 hours under the right conditions. It can take longer if you get a long term test.

But in a real estate traction transaction you will, you’ll have the short term test which is considered 48 hours. And what do you do if you have it? Well, if you have, first of all, everybody’s going to have some.

It’s even occurring outside because it’s a naturally occurring gas. It gets trapped in houses and has high concentrations, especially on the lower levels like a basement. And you just want to find out what you have.

If you have an elevated level, they can be remediated.

A remediation system is going to run you about $1,500 to $2,000, which sounds like a lot, but it’s better than breathing in more radiation than you should. Also, a radon test itself is generally going to cost you around $150, so not a huge add on to any home inspection. Mold testing.

Highly recommend mold testing if you have any concerns about mold whatsoever. We get asked frequently, have you seen any mold? Well, no, maybe we haven’t, but you can’t always see the mold that’s in the house.

It could be in the walls. It could potentially be in a ceiling if they’ve had a leak above it. It could be in the attic.

If you’ve had a chronic moisture leak around a roof penetration mold can be in a lot of places. Most home inspectors don’t have a nose that is going to match your nose. And so we can’t necessarily just smell it.

So what you’re going to want to do, get an air quality test. This is going to test the air at several locations, give you an idea of what you got and what you don’t have.

And this is a way to give you peace of mind or identify a problem and follow up and get it fixed. Highly recommend mold testing on every inspection.

It’s going to run you about $350, but it gives you really good information and can really give you that peace of mind you need. Some people are deathly allergic to it. It doesn’t bother others. Whatever your situation is, I would highly recommend getting a mold testing done.

Sewer scope. In my opinion, if you can only afford one extra service, I would go with a sewer scope.

A sewer scope is simply we take a camera down the main sewer line from your house to either the septic tank or to the city especially. We would recommend this on houses older than 25 years old and if you have large trees in the pathway of the sewer line.ve a home that is, let’s say,: 1980

Either way, those are not as subject to root entry as clay tile is or even cast iron, but they all have the potential for it. So a sewer scan is going to run you again, about $250. But we’re going to take that camera down there. We’re going to look for any cracks.

We’re going to look for breaks in the line, separations in the line, obviously any clogs.

We’re going to look for roots and just anything that indicates this line is going to really limit drainage or worst case, needs replaced because it’s cracked and deteriorated.

A former, a not former, a current team member of ours bought a house several years ago, didn’t know anything about home inspections, and they ended up having a tree root get into the line that actually went under the road, and they had to foot the bill for a $13,000 sewer line repair.

So when I say if you can only afford one, I mean that because it’s potentially the most costly thing you can get inspected other than your roof on a house. And a roof is included with a home inspection. So these are extra services.

So if you had to pick three, I think radon, mold and sewer would really be high on my list if I was advising somebody on this. Okay. Another one is pest and termite inspections. By pest, we mean wood destroying insects. We don’t check for.

We don’t specifically check for mice or rodents or anything like that. If we see evidence of them, it’s something we’re going to mention. But we’re speaking more for the sake of this podcast.

And speaking of wood destroying insects, termites, powder, post beetles, carpenter bees, carpenter ants, all the things that can literally eat the structure or damage the structure. Termites are the only ones that truly eat it. But carpenter ants do their damage.

Carpenter bees, you can see, and they drill into the fascia or under, under decks or into wood sighting but that’s an important one to get as well, especially in wooded areas where you’re going to have a preponderance of those kind of creatures in the woods and hopefully they stay there. But many times they don’t. A pest or a termite inspection can undercover uncover hidden damage. And, you know, repairs may be extensive.

So termites cause roughly a billion dollars a year in damage in the United States alone.

And we have some of the, they’re destructive, but there’s, there’s species, especially in Asia and those kind of countries that are far more destructive. But for 80 or 100 bucks, you can get a termite inspection and help mitigate that risk. Well inspections. I touched this at the beginning.

Touched on this at the beginning. A well inspection is not included with a normal home inspection. It’s a specialized system. Not all homes have wells.

If you do have one, I’d highly recommend getting it checked out. We check the pressure tank, we’re going to check the drawdown pressure, which is the pressure in the tank without water in it.

It comes pre charged from the factory with this pressure.

If you have no pressure in the tank now, and it used to be 38, you know, you have a leak of some sort in that bladder, in that tank, if it’s a bladder tank. So we’re going to check that. We’re going to check the pressure switch, we’re going to check the gallons per minute flow.

We’re going to check how it works when you have multiple fixtures running at one time. We’re going to check the condition of the tank to look for leaks or rusting or little pinholes.

All those things go into a well inspection and then it just gives you more information with which to make a decision on your home. Another one that we do a lot of is one you might not think about, water quality testing.

We work with a certified lab to come out and take water samples. Certain counties in our area require bacteria, nitrates, nitrites and arsenic tests on every real estate transaction.

I think that should be everywhere. Now, obviously, if you have city water or if you have well water, it’s going to change a little bit as to what you want tested.

Some will get the whole panel, some will just get one certain one.

If you just get a bacteria test, depending what time or what type, and some other factors, you’re looking at roughly 50 to $100 to get that tested, to give you that information. What about metals? What about lead? Lead is a concern because it can cause brain damage, can cause blood problems.

Lead can get into Water from underground lines. And we have found strikingly, even in new construction, newer construction, lead can come from fixtures that are come that come from China.

They don’t have the same standards that US made products have. And we have had high lead test pop up on fixtures that came from China.

So not a bad idea to get a lead test on, well, pretty much anything because you don’t know where the fixture came from. So we can check for a variety of metals, coliform, E. Coli, nitrates, nitrites, arsenic, lead, you name it, it can be checked.

And so what’s the fix for all that? Well, if you have something like that in it, like arsenic or lead, generally the fix for that is a reverse osmosis system.

You’ve seen these, I’m sure in homes or maybe you even have one. Just depending on the type of filter that you put in it, you can filter out those harmful contaminants.

Nitrates and nitrites generally come from fertilizers, runoff. Even if you don’t have a field adjacent to you, your subdivision might have used to Benefield.

And so you have that in the aquifer, the drinking water. So it’s a good idea to get that checked. And then bacteria can come from a variety of reasons.

If you have an improperly protected well head, you can get bugs that crawl down in there, lay eggs, contaminate your water and all that kind of stuff. So water testing is probably one of the more popular ones. We do for obvious reasons. People want to know what they’re drinking and bathing with.

And then we can get into another ancillary service is asbestos or lead testing. And this is obviously in the environmental field.

And in older homes, asbestos is potentially in the insulation, in the floor tile, in the ceiling tile, on popcorn ceilings. It’s in a variety of duct wrap, the wrap around your ductwork for your furnace.

If you have boiler lines, those are almost always encased in material that contains asbestos. Asbestos was originally thought up as a great fireproofing and insulating material.

But when the fibers get airborne, they can be breathed in and obviously, you know, it can cause mesothelioma and other asbestosis, just scarring of the lungs and just create ongoing health problems. So we can take samples for that, we can take samples for lead paint. If we see especially deteriorated lead based paint, we can add that.

And that way you know what you got and you know where it is. So again, all these things are to give you information with which to make a decision. And it’s not to scare you.

It’s just to let you know what you have. And so what are some. I’ve kind of listed the ancillary services we offer. Well, when should you get them?

Well, it’s hard for me to say you shouldn’t get this or that.ing a house that’s newer than: 1988

If you bought a house later that was built later than that, the chances of that being in there are slim to none. So I’m not going to recommend you do a lead based pent test on a house that was built three years ago. That just doesn’t make sense.

Now you might check for lead in water based on the fixtures, which is what we told you a little bit ago. But we’re not going to hard sell these to you. We’re going to give you the information, let you make the decision. We’ll give you the options.I see your home was built in: 1976

Have you thought about having your sewer line checked to make sure it’s in good condition and doesn’t have a bunch of tree roots breaking it? Something like that. If a home was built last year, you know what, the chances that you have a sewer line problem is very slim.

But we have seen new construction where you have heavy equipment rolling over it and it can dislodge it, it can create an uphill slope, it can just shear it and nobody knows about it because it’s underground. So for a few hundred extra dollars, get it checked. That’s better than having them dig it up later for $10,000. So that’s the way we look at it.

Pester termite inspections. I think you have the possibility of having that on almost any home.

Obviously, if it’s an all brick or all concrete block home, there’s really nothing for them to chew on. But if you have a basement that is concrete block, you got hollows in there, they can crawl up in there and get to the wood part of the house mold.

It’s a personal preference thing if they’ve had. If you smell mustiness in the house, definitely want to get some mold testing done. If you have allergies to mold, definitely want to get that done.

Just to rule it out, if nothing else. And then radon. I think radon testing should be done on every house.

You don’t know what you got until you try it, a test for it, and it’s a quick and easy test. It doesn’t cost very much. So all of these are considerations that you should think about as you’re going to buy a house.

I would highly encourage you to consider these extra services to safeguard your investment. To give you more information, we want to provide elite inspections. And sometimes to do that requires some extra services that cost a little more.

But trust me, we’re not there to rack up your bill.

We’re there to give you elite advice, to give you great inspections, to help you provide for your family, to help you get the information you need to make the right decisions no matter what the situation is going on. So some red flags. If you skip these services, you’re buying the line.

If you don’t get your sewer line scoped and you have one of those high risk areas, it’s on you from there on out. The insurance company is not going to cover it. Nobody will cover it but you.

So one thing you can do is if you’re buying a house and you’re concerned about certain aspects like the well or the septic or the sewer line, ask the seller, show me the evidence.

Instead of asking them, tell them to show you the evidence of when they have had maybe a septic tank pumped or inspected or when the well was installed or if it had been serviced or if the sewer line’s been scoped recently or had to been cleaned out by somebody. Ask those questions ahead of time and that can give you more information.

So maybe if the sewer line had just been cleaned out or scoped out or something six months ago, and you know, maybe it’s not a problem now, depending on what kind of trees you have. So that can give you a little more information before you dive blind into it.

So just remember, ancillary service aren’t just, quote, extras, all right? They’re targeted tools for peace of mind. It’s a good way to think about it. So we don’t have them just for our health.

We don’t take the time and learn the knowledge just to bolster the tools in our truck. Right? It’s to provide a service that can safeguard you and save you literally thousands of dollars in many situations.

So the right mix, it depends on the property, the location, and then just your priorities. What do you truly care about about this house and all that goes into it? So give us a call we can help guide you on it. I won’t hard sell you.

We will offer you other services that you may not know we have just so you can safeguard your purchase. See you again. Thanks for watching. Thank you for listening.

This week you can catch up on the latest episode of the Thoughts from the Crawl Space podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube. For more information about Gold Key Inspection services, go to goldkeyinspect.com.