It’s that time of year again! Please enjoy our favorite home inspection photos from the past year. If you like this stuff, please follow our Facebook and Instagram pages.
Bad ledgerboard – this is an unsafe deck with a badly rotated ledgerboard.
Let’s try that again – there was clearly a fire in this wall. And now there’s new, open spliced wiring in the wall, which is clearly a fire hazard. One fire just wasn’t enough?
Hidden bath fan exhaust – we couldn’t figure out where the first-floor bathroom exhaust fan was vented, until we used our infrared camera around the outside of the home. Boom! There it is. Bath fans need to exhaust to their own dampered terminals, not into the soffit spaces.
New construction, backward furnace venting – the intake and the exhaust for the high-efficiency furnace are flipped around. The intake needs to point down to help prevent water from getting in, and the exhaust needs to point up. This helps prevent exhaust gas from getting sucked into the furnace intake.
Not-so-hidden grow room – stacking a bunch of file drawers in front of the grow room is only going to make us more curious.
Heavy moss growth
Matthew 7:25 – “The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.”
Living on the edge – the water makes it into the tub, but just barely.
Annual lint filter cleaning – dryer lint filters are supposed to be cleaned after every load; not every year. This is a fire hazard and severely hampers the dryer’s performance.
Not a trap – sewer gas will enter the home. Also, the sanitary tee is upside down, and those rubber clamps don’t have metal bands. And there’s a big old hole in the wall.
That’s not a cupholder, it’s a plumbing vent.
This is why we charge more for old houses. There’s so much more to document. There’s a ton going on in this photo, so I marked up a bunch of stuff.
Rusted steel beam – this beam was supporting a pre-stressed concrete floor below a garage. Don’t drive a vehicle in there until the beam is replaced.
Another bath fan that doesn’t vent to the exterior. A bunch of people questioned this photo, saying these can’t possibly be from the same house, but I assure you, they are. I personally took both of these photos. The opening for the bath fan duct was completely shingled over.
Sneaky insulation installers – they raised the depth marker to make it look like there was more insulation. Again, several people questioned this photo. They suggested that we might have accidentally placed our tape measure on the bottom chord of a truss. And to those people, I say, please give us a little credit. We’re not rookies.
Stumped.
One condo building, thirteen lockboxes, five labeled. C’mon people, you’re making life challenging for everyone. Label the lockbox with the unit number! Or at least put your name on it.
How many is too many vents?
Overnotched studs – it’s fine to notch a stud, but no more than 40% for a load-bearing wall, and no more than 60% for a non-load-bearing wall.
Do these upside-down joist hangers make my joists look big?
Failed brick veneer – this bonus photo makes 21, and it’s the only house we didn’t inspect. This was shared by a family member of one of our inspectors, showing their neighbor’s house after a catastrophic collapse of the brick veneer and scaffolding.
Reuben Saltzman, Structure Tech Home Inspections
