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Identifying a dream home and making arrangements to purchase it can be an exciting experience, but before you buy and get started on celebrating this achievement, make sure the house gets a proper inspection by a professional.
This is crucial for your expectations and those of your family as well. An experienced house inspector will find all the issues to be fixed and make sure that no accidents can happen after your family gets settled.
What Is A House Inspection?
A Building Inspection is an examination of a house by an experienced house inspector. This examination can be of the interior, exterior or both. House inspections ensure that the property you are going to purchase is worth the asking price and has no hidden faults that might be costly to fix in future. Inspecting a house always favors the buyer as they may be able to bargain for a price reduction to compensate for any defects in the property.
Who Is A House Inspector And What Are Their Duties?
A house inspector is a professional with the necessary experience to inspect houses for structural integrity. The building inspector's primary duty is to examine homes for faults that are minor, major, visible or invisible to the buyer, or in some cases the seller. These faults can be fixed before the actual purchase or even after the buyer has bought the house.
A house inspector mostly comes under the command of a professional service provider. The house inspection company is responsible for finding faults in the house.
What Do House Inspections Focus On?
A house inspection before buying is crucial. But you should make sure the team or professional home inspector inspects it thoroughly. Below is a checklist of the most important issues to check during a home inspection to ensure all existing faults are found:
1. Moisture
Moisture is the first thing to check during inspection of the house.
Humidity in a home should range between 30% and 50%. If its lower or higher than this, the building will start having all sorts of problems. If humidity is less than 30%, that environment can make you and your family sick. Low humidity can cause problems with air flow and temperature. On the other hand, where humidity exceeding 50%, you are likely to experience issues ranging from weakness of the foundations and mould and mildew in the walls to damage to your ceiling.
Ask the house inspection team questions about moisture, mould and mildew to make sure they have inspected the house properly. A professional house inspector can help you with this process by keeping a record of moisture from all parts of the house with proper humidity checking instruments.
2. Plumbing
Plumbing is crucial for a house. Strong plumbing is necessary during the construction of the house. Even strongly plumbed materials leak or start draining water after a few years.
A house inspection checklist must contain plumbing as the second most important items to check. The house inspector must check all the pipes for leakage, their fitting, or any other plumbing issues that need to be fixed. Make sure the home inspector makes a check list of these from start to end.
3. Electrical Work
Electrical work is another important thing to assess during a house inspection. Electrical wiring is a complex thing and can only be examined by an electrician. A home inspector can check the electrical work of the building by switching on and off the different circuits, heating systems, and checking the fuse panels, and other electrical installations.
Keep in mind that these are some of the necessary things check if you are planning on moving in immediately after purchasing a house. But, note that these can turn out to be bigger issues and will need a lot more time and energy to get fixed.
If inspected properly, you can get the issues fixed by the seller even before you purchase the house. Doing so ensures that there are no problems with the house after purchase.
4. Windows
The next important item on the checklist of a house inspector during the house inspection is windows. Replacing or repairing faulty windows can be a costly affair. If you have windows that are much older, made of wood, and have taken up a lot of moisture over the years, the frames may not be as functional as they used to be, or they may not be working at all.
That’s certainly something inspectors have to keep an eye out for with regards to the performance of those windows, and not just the environment as far as how tight the house is sealed up. So, the main thing here is to assess and prevent further moisture intrusion.
If you see foggy windows and things like that, you may have a broken seal. These are just indicators where you perhaps could get away with performing some repairs. In some serious cases, you may have to replace an entire window. Something else to note is that having older or broken windows can mean higher heating and thus higher air conditioning costs each month.
5. Foundation
The foundation of a house determines how long a building will stand. It’s the foundation, more than the design, that makes sure the building will face and persist during heavy weather conditions like heavy rain, floods, and storms.
House inspections need to check the foundations from all angles. If the foundation has issues, don’t purchase the building until everything is repaired or look for another one as foundations can be costly to fix. A professionally trained home inspector knows how to check and mark weaknesses in the foundation of the building and explain them to a potential buyer.
6. Septic and Waste System
These are crucial necessities for a house to make it a home. As the water system drains waste water all the time, the cave-in process starts every single day. Sometimes, tree roots can weaken structure of a septic system. It’s hard to notice any issue with the septic system, but the house inspection team must check it from every possible angle to make sure nothing bad happens after the purchase documents are signed. This can only be done through different instruments which are available and utilized by professionally trained house inspectors.
Summing Up
There can be a lot of other issues than highlighted above, like exhaust fans not working, asbestos, wall and painting issues, water leakage, testing for the presence of different gases, the HVAC system, structural weakness of the chimney, and much more.
All these issues can be assessed by a professional house inspection team, and presented in a report. You can save a lot of money through a proper home inspection. So, check out a local professional house inspection company’s profile and let them inspect your house before handover takes place.
