Home flippers buy dilapidated houses, fix them up, then sell them again as quickly as possible with the intention of making a tidy profit.  Flipped houses look shiny and new inside, but what’s going on underneath all the new drywall, carpet, and paint?  Very few home buyers seem to trust flippers, and with the cheesy ‘repairs’ or ‘cover-ups’ I’ve seen over the years, it’s easy to understand why.  Most of the quick and dirty home flippers take the same shortcuts when flipping houses; I’ve seen so many of them done the same way that I’m going to tell you all about the flipped house you just looked at without even knowing the address.

Interior

The interior of the home looks great.  The kitchen has all new or re-painted cabinets, stainless steel appliances, granite counter tops, and a tiled floor.  The first floor bathroom has been completely re-done, and a second floor bathroom was recently added, or possibly a basement bathroom.  They look great.  All new carpet, paint, light fixtures, outlets, and switches throughout the house.  Possibly all new windows as well.

When looking at flipped houses, you might notice poorly designed kitchens (ie – cabinet doors / drawers that are blocked by other cabinets), nail holes that aren’t filled, appliances installed without an outlet to plug them in to, and loose / unsecured countertops or base cabinets.  Bathrooms will often have vanity cabinets that are way too small for the space because the flipper bought the ‘special buy’ vanity, top, and faucet combo on sale at whatever home improvement store was close.

The handrails are new, but they might come right out of the wall if you pull on them.  I’ve found a few handrails at flipped houses that were only attached to drywall.

Electrical

There is a brand new circuit breaker panel installed in the basement, which replaced the old 60-amp fuse panel.  The new panel has a state electrical inspection sticker on it, and everything looks great.  I don’t find many electrical problems on flipped houses.  Even the worst home flippers usually know better than to mess with the electrical; they don’t want their houses to burn down.

Heating

The home has an old, unsafe heating system at the end of it’s life expectancy.  The flipper has documentation from ‘their guy’, some heating contractor that you’ve never heard of, saying the heating system is safe.  You should be suspicious.  I’ve found heating safety check forms filled out that weren’t worth the paper they were written on.  I’ve found furnaces and boilers creating high levels of carbon monoxide that the heating contractors said were fine.  In one particular case, the home flipper claimed my equipment was faulty; we argued for a while, and eventually the flipper had the gas company come out to do their own test.  The gas company promptly red-tagged the heating plant and shut it down.

Another possibility is that the heating system was completely replaced.  If so, great, but check the furnace’s blower fan for drywall dust.  There’s a good chance that the flipper had the blower fan running while they were doing their drywall sanding, and the interior of the furnace is completely caked in drywall dust.  The photo below shows a close-up view of a furnace’s blower fan blades covered in a thick layer of drywall dust.

If the home was originally heated with a boiler, the home flipper most likely pulled out all of the pipes and radiators and converted the system to forced air; this is usually far less expensive than repairing or replacing the existing system.

Air Conditioning

If the house is being sold during the winter, the AC is very old and may not be functional.  If the house is being sold during the summer, the AC is brand new and keeps the house very comfortable.  I don’t find much in-between those two extremes.

Structure

This is the item that home buyers are most concerned about, especially on flipped house, but I’m afraid I can’t shed any light on this one.  Despite what home buyers expect, I don’t find structural problems on flipped houses any more than I do with other houses.

Plumbing

The water distribution pipes will either be in acceptable condition or they’ll all have recently been replaced; no issues there.  There will be major problems with the drains though; nobody has lived in the house yet, so nobody knows about the leaks and clogged drains.  The old steel drain lines are often clogged at the kitchen sink, and possibly at other locations.

New plumbing fixtures often leak when they’re filled with water and then drained; it’s not unusual to find several leaking drains at flipped houses.

Sometimes we’ll find floor drains, basement showers, or even basement sinks that back up with water when the plumbing fixtures at the upper levels are filled and then drained.  That’s exactly what was happening with this new basement bathroom sink at a flipped house in New Hope.

Tiled shower floors are also notorious leakers at flipped houses; I’d estimate that half of them leak.  I remember inspecting one house in Minneapolis about two years ago where both of the tiled shower floors leaked like crazy.  The buyers decided they didn’t want the house before I was even finished with my inspection.

Roofs

The shingles on the roof are in bad shape.  You’ll find patched sections of shingles or shingles that are badly deteriorated and at the end of their life expectancy.   Replacing the roof covering is an expensive project, but it won’t make the house sell for any more money, so flippers leave the roof alone if it’s not leaking.  I can’t say I blame them.

Insulation

The insulation in the attic hasn’t been touched for a long time – it might even be original, and it will need improvement.  Flippers don’t get any return on their investment for new insulation, so don’t expect anything to be done here.

Exterior

Shoddy workmanship abounds at the exterior.  The original wood windows were replaced with vinyl inserts, but the old wood at the exterior is still rotting away and has been freshly painted, or someone did a quick and dirty job of wrapping the windows with aluminum and left a lot of rotted wood still exposed.

The basement windows have been replaced with whatever size window was close,  and the flipper used clear pine or plywood to make up the difference in size.  This is sloppy workmanship, at best.

Some of the siding repairs may even be comical; I actually found a hole in the siding repaired with a coffee can lid at a recent flipped home inspection.

There is a thin layer of new wood chips surrounding the house, but nothing has been done to correct improperly pitched soils around the house that can lead to a wet basement.  You’ll want to re-grade right away.

The chimney has a lot of missing mortar and cracks in the crown.  You’ll need to hire someone to repair the chimney to help prevent the deterioration from getting worse.

Conclusion

Was I close?  If you just finished looking at a flipped house and you didn’t find any of these issues, buy the house! take a closer look.  These are the defects that I often find at flipped houses, but keep in mind, these are broad generalizations.  Some flipped houses aren’t in nearly this good of shape, while others are pristine.  I’ve worked with plenty of home flippers who do high quality construction work, including a friend, Andy Blessing.  His company occasionally flips houses, and I’d be perfectly happy to buy any house he flipped because he does honest, high quality work.  There are plenty of good contractors who do excellent work, but it’s the rest of ‘em that give home flippers a bad name.

If you’re buying a flipped house, the items you should pay the most attention to should be the exterior, roof, insulation, and drains.  Individual results will vary.

Reuben Saltzman, Structure Tech Home Inspections - Email - Minneapolis Home Inspector

About two to three times a month, I get a call or email from someone who is interested in becoming a home inspector.

“What kind of training is required to be a home inspector in Minnesota?  What type of background is required to be a home inspector?  Are you hiring?”

I always call people back to chat about this business and give the long answers to all of these questions; there is no such thing as licensing for home inspectors in Minnesota, so there is no ‘right’ answer to these questions.  I’m happy to share my time chatting about this stuff, but I end up giving different suggestions every time.  Like so many other frequently asked questions, I’ve found it’s nice to have a document already put together to direct people to for a well-thought out answer, not just the first stuff that comes to my mind.

To do this, I asked several successful ASHI Certified Inspectors in the Twin Cities area about their background, and what advice they would give to anyone who is interested in this profession.   I appreciated hearing their advice, and I hope you do too.

Fred Comb, Home Inspections of Minnesota

Me: When did you start your business?

Fred: I began inspecting homes in 1990.  Being a fourth generation building contractor, many friends called me for advice and asked me to look at houses they were thinking of buying.  Expanding my construction business into home inspections seemed to be a natural progression.

Me: How did you get your phone to start ringing?

Fred: I began at a time when we had this thing called a phone book, so I thought having an ad in the phone book would help, it didn’t.  I tracked a few calls to my yellow page ad, but not many.  Most of my business came by way of referrals from friends or face-to-face meeting/networking with Realtors.  It was slow going for many years, but as referrals increased so did the business.

Me: Thank goodness phone books are gone.  How long did it take to start doing home inspections full time, and what did you do in the meantime?

Fred: Thankfully I was in the construction business, which supported my family.  I quickly discovered that performing home inspections required considerable technical expertise that was far beyond what I knew as a contractor.  I devoted about 5 years time and energy into educating myself about the home inspection industry before I was comfortable inspecting homes for paid clients.  It took another 5 years before it became a full-time business.

Me: What kind of training, formal and informal, did you go through before your first home inspection?

Fred: I read books and technical journals that taught electrical, plumbing, heating, architecture, structural support, cold climate weatherization and more.  I went to the library and read building codes.  I traveled and attended weekend-long intensive seminars taught by experts in their field.  I joined multiple national organizations including the American Society of Home Inspectors (ASHI) which held both national and local monthly seminars.

Me: What kind of training would you recommend someone have before doing their first home inspection?

Fred: The list is long and goes far beyond the basic “house” knowledge; inspectors need good business, legal and writing abilities.  I highly recommend joining a national home inspector organization such as ASHI, which has online learning opportunities.  In MN, we have local inspector organizations including ASHI, NAHI and MSHI that offer low cost classroom style monthly seminars.  I also recommend getting to know local inspectors, someone you can call when you have a question, someone you can ride along with and watch as they perform an inspection.  When the time is right, test your skills by taking the National Home Inspectors Exam.

Pat Cullen, 1st Step Home Inspection Services

Barry Eliason, Private Eye Home Inspections & Moisture Testing

Me: When did you start your business?

Barry: Back in the early 80s I studied pre-architecture at the U of M and then architectural drafting at the St Paul TVI. I took a two week class at TVI in Home Energy Auditing and after passing the test became a certified energy auditor. This allowed me to do home energy audits as a sub contractor with NSP (now Xcel Energy).

By about 1986 the energy audit demand was dropping and I started looking for something else to do. Someone suggested that I look into the Truth in Housing programs of St Paul and Mpls since I was already inspecting many of the home components of a TISH inspection while doing my energy audits. I didn’t know much about plumbing, electrical, structural or building codes however, so I bought all the code books for each trade and started to study. At that time there was no place that offered training classes for home inspectors that I knew of.

Me: How did you get your phone to start ringing?

Barry: I had some business cards printed up and started going to real estate offices to promote my services.  I got a couple neighborhood agents to start using me and slowly expanded my business.  It wasn’t long before some of my TISH customers started asking me to inspect the houses they were buying and I had no idea how to begin.  

Me: How long did it take to start doing home inspections full time?

Barry: I still wasn’t able to make inspections much more than a part time job, so I called around and got offered a job as an independent contractor with one of the few large home inspection companies in town. There I got more hands on training. After a few years I left there and started my own company.

I wasn’t able to get inspections to be much more than about ¾ time work for the first 10 years or so, but that was OK because I was also very active in the parenting of my three children at that time. About the time the kids were getting through school I introduced moisture testing services to the Twin Cities area and with that additional work I was finally fully employed.

Me: What kind of training, formal and informal, did you go through before your first home inspection?

Barry: I flew out to Virginia to attend an ASHI seminar called “Back to the Basics” that covered what a buyers inspection should include.  Along the line I have gone to countless seminars and home inspector conventions, always learning more.  I sometimes regret not having had much formal education in home inspections, but think that in the end I know more than anyone who has only taken a two week class.

Me: What kind of training would you recommend someone have before doing their first home inspection?

Barry: If I had it to do over again I would take the Building Inspection Technology classes on becoming a Certified Building Official.  Although home inspections are not code inspections, there is a great deal of overlap.  This would be a great credential, and there are also more jobs available working for the various cities as a building inspector if a person didn’t want to go out on their own.  Very few home inspection companies hire employee inspectors because they struggle to just keep themselves busy.

Roger Hankey, Hankey & Brown Inspections

Me: When did you start your business?

Roger: In 1975, the Minneapolis City Council adopted a Truth in Sale of Housing ordinance which called for housing evaluations to be done on property listed for sale. The ordinance set up an examination and licensing program for private evaluators. I took the first test for this program, passed, took training offered by the city and joined the first group of evaluators in December of 1975.

Me: How did you get your phone to start ringing?

Roger:  REALTORS® and home sellers were directly affected by this new requirement, and I quickly became aware of the need to explain the program to real estate agents listing properties in Minneapolis. I spent many Tuesday mornings speaking at real estate offices around the Twin Cities, doing slide shows on what the program required and what the evaluators checked. I also began working with my partner Cheryll Brown and helped train her to conduct all types of home inspections.

I obtained a license to do energy audits in 1980, and went out to the real estate community and explained the features of this statewide program.  The energy audit program exposed me to the suburban market and the potential to do home inspections for buyers. In 1982 I became the first inspector in Minnesota to be a full member of the American Society of Home Inspectors. (ASHI)

Over the years, we have spent a great deal of time marketing home inspections through our participation in ASHI® including taking leadership position in the local chapter and on the ASHI Board of Directors. In recent years, my marketing efforts have focused largely on contacts with previous customers and developing a website with extensive content on home inspection and maintenance topics.

Our training included 10 annual ASHI conferences, dozens of ASHI chapter seminars, annual attendance at the Institute for Building Code officials, and Building Inspection Technology classes at Inver Hills and North Hennepin Community College.

Me: What kind of training would you recommend someone have before doing their first home inspection?

Roger:  The home inspection business seems easy to enter, but in reality, unless you have had years of experience and training in multiple building trades, you probably do not have the experience base to succeed on your own. The best path is probably to work under the guidance of an experienced inspector. Unfortunately the current state of the real estate market has greatly reduced the demand for home inspections and most established inspectors do not have enough work for themselves, let alone take on a trainee. For those who wish to try, the Building Inspection Technology classes at community colleges provide a good base of information on building codes. Keep in mind that private home inspectors are not code inspectors, and an important area of training is field experiences found only while conducting inspections of existing houses.

Neil Saltzman, Structure Tech

Me: Hey pops, when did you start your business?

Neil: I started doing home inspections in 1990.

Me: How did you get your phone to start ringing?

Neil: I joined a network group and wore two hats: construction and home inspections.  I started literature drops at real estate offices and gave presentations at these offices when I could, but it wasn’t easy to get in front of these groups. 

Me: How long did it take to start doing home inspections full time?

Neil: I think it took at least 3 years to get it to the point of doing it full time.  In the meantime I was doing construction.

Me: What kind of training, formal and informal, did you go through before your first home inspection?

Neil: My informal training was doing construction for over twenty years.  My formal training was attending a number of Building Inspection Technology classes at the community college.  I also passed the ICBO Building Inspector exam. 

Me: What kind of training would you recommend someone have before doing their first home inspection?

Neil: The best training is to be mentored by a seasoned inspector.  In the building trades,  you were an apprentice first.  You just hung out doing the grunt work – carrying, digging, lifting, doing the demolition, etc.  Then, depending on the trade,  you might have been handed a tool to use.  Working alongside of the craftsman, you learned by watching and listening.   Then  after many years,  you were able to do it on your own.   I think this is ideal.  

Unfortunately, the majority of the people who enter and then quickly leave this business are the people who want to transition from a dead-end business to a model in which a training school is advertising huge rewards and money in the home inspection business.  If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Summary

The responses I received were similar; personally, I’m a big fan of the community college classes mentioned by Barry, Roger, and Neil.  If you’re in Minnesota and you’re interested in getting in to the home inspection business, I believe the two key components of your training should be education through Building Inspection Technology (BIT) classes and training with a veteran home inspector.

Building Inspection Technology

Building Inspection Technology classes are offered through North Hennepin Community College and Inver Hills Community College.  These classes are focused on teaching someone how to work in building code enforcement; it’s not the same thing as home inspections, but provides a solid foundation for an education in home inspections.  These classes are mostly taught at night or online as a part-time gig by Minnesota State Certified Building Officials.  I’ve taken about fifteen of these classes over the years, and I’ve found the instructors to be top-notch; they’re great teachers, they’re incredibly knowledgeable, and most of them make the classes interesting.

You can see a full list of the classes offered here –  BIT classes.   A few of the first classes to take would be Introduction to Building Inspection, Foundations of Construction Codes and Inspections, Field Inspection, Mechanical Inspection, Electrical Inspection, Plumbing Code, and Housing Field Inspection Fundamentals.

On-Site Training

Every home inspector agrees; there is no substitute for on-site home inspection training.  If you want to be a home inspector, you need to learn the business from another home inspector.  Pairing up with a veteran home inspector is the only way to do this.  A good mentor will teach etiquette, procedure, safety, report writing… and plenty of other aspects of the business.

What about home inspection schools?

I’m not a huge fan, and I don’t know any seasoned home inspector who is.  In 2004 I attended a home inspection school from a company that claims to have the industry’s “best home inspector training”.  I found it to be very… blah.   The focus of the class seemed to be on teaching new home inspectors how to produce an inspection report that wouldn’t get them sued.  I wasn’t impressed.  I have nothing against home inspection schools… but they should be considered a very small portion of the total education required to be a home inspector.

The bottom line is that if you want to be a competent home inspector, there is no magic pill.  You’ll need to invest a lot of time in learning.

Reuben Saltzman, Structure Tech Home Inspections - Email - Minneapolis Home Inspector

For at least the last twenty years or so, the most common way of insulating attics in Minnesota is to use loose-fill insulation – either cellulose or fiberglass.  This is a huge improvement over fiberglass batts, because batts are nearly impossible to install in attics and they cost more money.  Despite the decline of fiberglass batts in attics, I still find a small section of fiberglass batting used above the attic access panel at about 90% of the homes that I inspect, even on new construction.

For the fiberglass batt to insulate the scuttle hole effectively, it needs to fill the entire space and be in significant contact with all four sides of the wood ‘dam’ that is built inside the attic for the access panel to slide up through.  When the insulation piece is too small, it doesn’t touch all four sides and allows for heat loss.  When the insulation piece is properly sized, it works fine, but the insulation won’t drop in to place inside the dam.  It needs to be pushed in to place.  To do this, the insulation needs to be installed from the attic side.  

How is the homeowner (or home inspector) supposed to be able to do that?  It’s impossible unless there are two ways of getting in to the attic.  When there are two ways of getting in to the attic, it’s usually because the average person can’t climb from one section of the attic to the other.  I’m an above-average climber, and I’ve climbed through plenty enough attics to see what those fiberglass batts look like on the other side.  They’re almost never right.  The photos below show a few recent examples; either the batts aren’t pushed down inside the dams, they’re too large, or they’re too small.

When the fiberglass insulation above the attic access panel doesn’t get installed properly, the home experiences unnecessary heat loss at this location, which you can clearly see in the infrared image below.  This isn’t an unusual installation; this is typical of attic access panels that are insulated with fiberglass batts that are too large.

If you want to know how well your attic access panel is insulated, climb up in to your attic and have another person drop the attic access panel down behind you.  You’ll probably see something very similar to the photos above.

I’ve found two solutions that seem to work pretty well.  One is to have the panel re-insulated with something other than a tight-fitting fiberglass batt, such as rigid foam boards that fit the attic scuttle hole perfectly.  Easier said than done, but it’s probably the best method I’ve seen.  In a perfect world, it would fit so tight that the panel had to be pulled down in place with two handles attached to the cover… but most people wouldn’t go for that look.  I took a shot at building my own by cutting four pieces of rigid foam to size, gluing them together with 3M spray adhesive, and then duct taping them together for good measure.  It looked about as pathetic as my home-made recessed light cover, but too bad.  I’m the only one who will ever know.

Another solution I’ve found is to use a fiberglass batt that’s slightly too large, and attach it to two or three pieces drywall that covers the scuttle hole.  This makes the cover so heavy that it’s quite a chore to push it up in to the attic, but it also helps the panel fall down in to place, pulling the insulation down with itself.

The other common issue I find with attic access panels is that they’re not airtight.   This is much more of an issue with old houses than it is with new houses, but I still find my share of new construction homes with poorly sealed panels, such as the one shown below at a new construction inspection in Farmington.

One way to make the attic access panel airtight would be to caulk it shut, but I hesitate to do that because the attic is supposed to be accessible.  A much better option would be to install weatherstripping around the panel, but if the access panel is located in a commonly used hallway, I can understand why homeowners wouldn’t want to do this: it’s ugly.  I rarely find weatherstripping installed unless the access panel is located in an out-of-the-way closet.

If you want to know if your access panel is airtight, just waft some smoke around the panel edges.  If it’s leaking, you’ll see air movement here.  While air leaks at the lower levels create cold drafts, you usually don’t feel them at the attic access panel because it’s air leaving the house, not coming back in.

If you have a great attic access panel insulation method that doesn’t look hideous and you’d like to share it, please send it to me.  I’d be happy to share it with others.

Reuben Saltzman, Structure Tech Home Inspections - Email - Minneapolis Home Inspector

I inspected a house in Minneapolis yesterday with an old gravity furnace.  The furnace had supposedly been certified, and the seller left the paperwork sitting on the kitchen table.  Here’s the form:

Here are a few key points:
1. The printout shown below was attached to the form and has the same date.  This is the ORSAT test that needed to be attached.  This shows the CO level in the stack at 3617 ppm, which is ridiculously high. The gas company will shut down the equipment and red tag it at 400 ppm.  The contractor wrote “0 at registers”.  Who cares about registers?  That’s not where they’re supposed to be testing!

2. The form specifically says the installer checked the vent connector for signs of deterioration. The vent connector was wrapped with duct tape and completely rusted out underneath the duct tape; I could feel it crumble as I pushed on it. Signs of deterioration don’t get much more obvious.

3. The contractor was supposed to check the manual gas shut-off to make sure it’s consistent with City Code Enforcement Standards. Gate valves are not.  That round handle thing in the middle of the photo is a gate valve.

So what the heck was this contractor looking at?  You’ll notice the address on the form at the top was actually left blank.  Maybe they inspected the wrong house?

I might follow up with this contractor to figure out exactly how they could have signed this blank check.

Reuben Saltzman, Structure Tech Home Inspections - Email - Minneapolis Home Inspector

I don’t know how it happened, and I’m not accusing anyone of intentionally doing something that’s completely despicable, but it looks like someone intentionally tampered with a radon test.

I recently inspected a home that was being flipped for some young first-time home buyers.  The home had a newly finished basement, and the young couple planned to use one of the basement bedrooms as their master bedroom, so they hired me to do a radon test at the same time.  For the record, radon causes lung cancer.

The radon test was high, so the buyers asked the home flipper to install a radon mitigation  system.  Here’s where it starts to get interesting.

Red Flag #1

The flipper refused, and said they wanted to have the radon re-tested.  Why?  I don’t know.  There was absolutely no legitimate reason to have the radon re-tested.  We followed EPA protocol for the radon test, using a continuous electronic monitor that we send in for calibration annually.

Red Flag #2

The flipper wanted to have ‘their own guy’ perform a radon test, using the charcoal canister method.  Why would someone prefer to use an older method of testing?  I don’t know.  The electronic monitor gives an hour-by-hour breakdown of the radon levels in the home; the charcoal canister method just gives the final number.   It’s far easier to tamper with a charcoal canister than an electronic test.

Red Flag #3

The buyer’s agent, who is a great guy that I know and trust, warned the young buyers that this was highly unusual. The buyers really wanted the house, so they agreed to have a second test performed.  They said the test had to be done by me, and the results would be averaged with the first test.  If the average was still high, the seller would need to install a mitigation system.  Here’s the unbelievable part: the seller crossed off that part of the purchase agreement addendum and wrote “we’ll see when the results come back.”

Um… gee… that doesn’t sound suspicious or anything.  The buyers went along with it.

So we set another test…

I received the call to do a second radon test on a Wednesday afternoon.  The buyer’s agent said we had permission to set the test any time.  I told him we’d try to get it set on Thursday morning, but  someone from my company was able to set the radon test later that same evening.  In other words, we set the test earlier than planned.

Here’s the unbelievable part

When I picked up the radon test at 6 pm on Friday, the bedroom window was open.  The window wasn’t open when we set the test.  It was below freezing outside, the house was vacant, and the temperature was supposed to drop down to the teens that night.

So why was the window open?

I took a photo of the open window and immediately notified the buyer and their agent that the test was invalid.  I ran the test anyway, just because I was curious about the results.  The radon levels were almost identical to the first test we did, up until the last four hours, when the levels plummeted.  I have no doubt in my mind that that’s when the window was opened; there is no other reasonable explanation for the sudden drop in radon levels.  The graph below shows the hour-by-hour breakdown.

Did someone open the window on purpose, with the idea of coming back early the next day to close the window?  I don’t know.  I’m a trusting person who gives people the benefit of the doubt, but I’m having a hard time even entertaining the idea that this was an accident.

What do you think?  What would you do if you were the buyer?

Reuben Saltzman, Structure Tech Home Inspections - Email - Maple Grove Home Inspector

Often I run into people who tell me that remodeling projects seem to drag on forever. And ever. And even a little bit more.

My friend Terri lives in Chicago. She started a kitchen remodel in June 2011. It was supposed to be a two month project. As of November 2011, she still can’t use her kitchen. She and her partner are having to eat out every night – which is getting to be tiresome for a couple that loves to cook.

I was just talking with my friend Heather Nemer last Thursday. She was bemoaning the fact that her contractor, who was a friend of the family, was taking three weeks to get some in-stock carpet installed in her basement.

Stuff like that is enough to make you want to pull your hair out.

Why do projects get delayed and what you can do to keep your project from dragging out?

There are only three reasons projects get delayed:

1)      Poor upfront planning by the contractor.

2)      Unforeseen conditions.

3)      Changes by the home owner.

Let’s look at each one of these see what they sound like and learn what you can do.

Poor upfront planning by the contractor

Poor upfront planning by the contractor is one of the most common reasons for a project delay. I know this because every time I slip on the planning side of the project, my projects get delayed.

Poor upfront planning often sounds like this:

“We are ready for the electrician, but he can’t make it here for another week.”

“The tile we selected is out of stock and is on back order.”

“I keep calling my contractor but he never gets back to me.”

“I’m sorry, but we aren’t going to be able to get your job done on schedule. We’ve been delayed in some of our other jobs.”

How do you minimize poor upfront planning with your contractor?

The easiest way to minimize this problem is to get a written schedule for how the construction project will be done.  Some contractors are very detailed about what goes into the schedule; others are not quite as detailed. Lots of detail or a little detail, either way will work because it will give you a chance to see immediately what is going on from week to week. If you get to the end of a particular week, and the work is not done according to schedule, you are at risk for a delay. This is a good time to talk to your contractor about what is going on.

Unforeseen conditions

Most projects do have things that are hiding behind the walls or some other conditions that can’t be seen until the construction project starts. Unless your contractor did a poor job preparing for your project, or was lowballing you to get the work, these hidden items should be relatively small – but not always.

Unforeseen conditions often sound like this:

“We just took out the plaster and the insulation in your house and we discovered rot.”

“We just opened up your ceiling and noticed a plumbing problem.”

“It’s been raining all week and this has affected our schedule.”

If your contractor is keeping a written schedule for you, he or she should be able to tell you almost right away how many days or weeks the project might be delayed. Even though delays are undesirable, I have found that telling people that their project will be delayed as soon as I know is better than waiting till the end when you’ve gone past the original scheduled by a few weeks.

Changes by the homeowner

A homeowner who adds to the project and a contractor who is not upfront about the added time for the added work is the second most common reason for delays.

Changes by the homeowner sound a lot like this:

“I know we were thinking of laminate countertops, but we’d like to change to granite now.”

“We would like to do our bathroom as long as you are doing the kitchen.”

Homeowner changes happen quite often and are considered quite normal. The impact to the schedule can be minimized by an experienced contractor who asks a lot of questions during the design phase of the project. Most homeowners don’t have the expertise or experience to know what other work makes sense to do at the same time a particular remodel is being done. A good contractor does. Asking about these potential changes early on can help set price and schedule expectations.

When you decide to make some changes in the middle of the job, the contractor should update your schedule to show what impact these changes will have.

So, to sum this up, a written construction schedule can keep you and your contractor on track. A verbal, “Yeah, I think we can be done in 2 months” is not a schedule you should accept from your contractor.

Tell Us What You Think.

Mike Otto, Fair and Square Remodeling

When a temperature and pressure  (T&P) relief valve at a water heater leaks, it’s usually a simple fix; just replace the valve.   These valves cost less than $15, and replacing the valve is a very basic job – just drain some water out of the water heater, remove the discharge tube, and replace the valve.  No big deal.

Unless it starts leaking again.

If a recently replaced T&P relief valve starts leaking again, it probably means that the relief valve is only doing it’s job; it relieving excess pressure in the water heater.  When this happens, the fix gets a little bit more involved.  I’ll explain.

When a water heater heats up the water in the tank, the water expands.  When this happens, the water typically ends up expanding back out the cold water inlet, all the way back to the water supply coming in to the house.  The municipal water supply for the house acts as a gigantic expansion tank… and nobody notices.  This is illustrated in the diagram below.

What would happen if a one-way valve, or check valve, was installed on the water supply piping for the house?  The water wouldn’t have anywhere to go.  As the water heater heats the water, it expands, which builds up pressure in what is now essentially a closed system.  When the pressure builds up enough, the T&P relief valve on the water heater just does it’s job and relieves the excess pressure by leaking a little water.

In Minnesota it’s rare for a check valve to be installed on the water supply line for the house, but it’s fairly common to have a pressure regulator installed.  When the pressure from the water supply coming in to a house is too high, a pressure regulator needs to be installed on the water main, to prevent damage to the plumbing components in the house.  The problem that these regulators can create is that they will act as a check valve; they’ll allow water in to the home, but they won’t allow water back out.  This creates what is called a ‘closed system’.

When this happens, the T&P relief valve for the water heater can leak.  This doesn’t happen every time a pressure reducing valve is installed, but there may be other problems that show up in the house, such as the toilet fill valves randomly re-filling toilets, or faucets chronically dripping.

The Fix  When a closed system exists on the water distribution piping in a home, an expansion tank needs to be installed somewhere on the plumbing system.  This is a fairly simple and straightforward fix; an expansion tank will give the water somewhere to go when it expands, and the T&P relief valve on the water heater will stop causing problems.

This rule also applies to hot water heating systems; when a boiler heats the water in a hydronic heating system, the expansion tank allows for the water to expand without the pressure relief valve leaking.  If the pressure relief valve on a boiler system chronically leaks, even after replacement, it probably means there is a problem with the expansion tank.

Reuben Saltzman, Structure Tech Home Inspections - Email - Maple Grove Home Inspector

Most homeowners who live in cold climates know it’s important to ‘winterize’ the outside faucets to prevent them from freezing, which can destroy the faucet or lead to a burst pipe.  The problem is that many people don’t quite get it right – winterizing the outside faucets in the fall seems like a simple thing to do, and it seems like it should be straightforward and easy, but there are a few tricks you need to know to make sure all the water is out.

Garden hoses - First and foremost, disconnect your garden hose from the outside faucet.  If you leave your garden hose attached to the faucet, you’re asking for trouble.

Frost-free sillcocks with an integral vacuum breaker  If you have a properly installed frost-free sillcock with an integral vacuum breaker, you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.  You should be able to leave the water on to these faucets all year ’round without them freezing.  A properly installed frost-free sillcock will have a slight downward pitch, so that when the water is turned off, the water will all drain out of the stem.

When frost-free sillcocks aren’t installed with this downward pitch, water will sit inside the stem of the sillcock even when it’s turned off.  The pitch is a little dramatic in the photo below, but you get the point.

If this water freezes, it can burst the stem of the sillcock.  Most homeowners don’t know this has happened until the first time they use their faucet in the spring.  Once they turn their faucet on, water starts shooting out of the burst stem inside the house, making a big mess while nobody is inside the house to see it.  This recently happened to Connecticut home inspector James Quarello while he was inspecting a home.  Better him than me, I say.

The fix for an improperly installed frost-free sillcock is to have it re-installed with a slight downward pitch.

Winterizing standard sillcocks  With a standard sillcock, the water needs to be turned off and drained out to prevent freeze damage.  To do this, you’ll need to first turn off the water supply to the faucet from inside the house.  Exterior faucets should have a separate shutoff valve inside the house, but not all of them do.  On older homes, these valves are typically located at the ceiling somewhere close to the outside faucet.  On newer homes, the valves are typically located right next to the main water valve, and they’re also usually labeled.

Once the water is turned off inside the house, the outside faucet needs to be opened up.  Next, the bleeder cap inside the house needs to be unscrewed – this will allow water to drain out of the pipes.  Depending on how the pipe is pitched, the water may drain through the bleeder cap or through the outside faucet.  Keep a small bucket handy when you do this, just in case a lot of water needs to drain out of the bleeder.  After the water drains out, you can screw the bleeder cap back on and turn off the outside faucet.

Sometimes, two wrongs really do make a right  Some older houses in Minneapolis and Saint Paul don’t have a shutoff valve for the outside faucet, and the faucets never get winterized… yet they never have a problem with freezing.  How can this be?

Here’s a hint:

On older houses with no insulation at the rim space, there can be so much heat loss occurring here that the outside faucets never get cold enough to freeze.  I call this “two wrongs making a right.”  It’s certainly not a reliable method of preventing freeze damage, but it does seem to work.

Vacuum breakers complicate things  The problem with external vacuum breakers (aka backflow preventers) is that they don’t allow all of the water to drain out.  After the water is turned off and appears to have drained out, the rubber seal in the vacuum breaker will still trap enough water to destroy the vacuum breaker, which will cause water to spray out all over the place when the faucet is used again in the spring.

There are two possible solutions: remove the vacuum breaker in the fall, or drain the water out of the vacuum breaker.  If the vacuum breaker will just unscrew from the sillcock, go ahead and take it off in the fall.  The problem with this is that vacuum breakers are often designed to be permanently installed.  They have a little set-screw on the side that gets tightened down until it breaks off, making it so the vacuum breaker can’t be removed.  If your vacuum breaker leaks every time you turn on your faucet and you need to replace it, there is still a way to remove it without destroying your faucet – I made a video showing how to do it.

If the vacuum breaker can’t be removed or you don’t want to hassle with removing it, no problem;  there is still a way to drain the rest of the water out.  If you look up inside the vacuum breaker, you’ll notice that there is a small white plastic post.  Just push this post to the side, and the rest of the water will drain out.  The video below shows how this works.

If the vacuum breaker doesn’t have that white post, it may have a plastic ring that will allow it to drain.

Reuben Saltzman, Structure Tech Home Inspections - Email - Home Inspector in Maple Grove

Why are home inspectors obsessed with flashlights?  It’s probably because flashlights are one of the few tools that home inspectors just absolutely couldn’t do an inspection without, and it’s the only tool that keeps getting better and better every year.  Now please excuse me while I geek out.

Every time I get a new flashlight, I swear to myself that it’s the last flashlight I’ll ever need, and nothing could ever top it. The I’m-in-love-with-my-new-flashlight glow seems to wear off around the second month of ownership… but even sooner if I have the misfortune of reading about some other flashlight that would have been brighter and longer running for a similar price.

The flashlight I’m using now is a Fenix TK35, which I’ve had for just over two weeks, and still quite in love with. The day I got it, my wife had to tell me not to take it to bed. I had no plans to write a love letter blog post about it, but after reading Washington home inspector Rick Bunzel’s recent review of flashlights in the ASHI Reporter where my flashlight wasn’t mentioned, I had to.

Twelve flashlights were compared in the review, but I think this one tops ‘em all. This little light cannon has the power of a spotlight, yet it’s small enough to fit in to your pocket.  It wasn’t as bright as the brightest flashlight reviewed, but it’s also less than half the price and it’s far smaller.  To give you an idea of how powerful this light is, I compared several lights by shining them against a garage a night.

In the photo below, I laid out a three D-cell MagLite for comparision, which is flashlight shown on the bottom.  The middle flashlight is the TK35, and the top one is the TK11, which has obviously seen some wear.

In this next photo, I have the headlights on my Silverado shining against the garage as a point of reference.

The next photos show the TK35, the TK11, and the MagLite, respectively.

For the past 2 ½ years I’ve been using a Fenix TK11, and it’s been an unfailing light the entire time, even after taking a fall off a two-story roof on to concrete.  I expect to get the same ruggedness and durability out of the TK35.  This flashlight is almost as small, ridiculously bright, and has a long run time – 1 ½ hours on the 820 lumen setting.  I’ve only done a few inspections with it, but I’m already spoiled.

The batteries are the same 18650 lithium ion batteries that my TK11 took, except it takes two batteries, not one like the TK11.  I’ve had the same batteries for my TK11 ever since I got it over two years ago, and I haven’t noticed any drop in performance.  I use my flashlight all week long, then I put the batteries on the charger over the weekend.

If you’re looking for the latest and greatest flashlight, this is a great choice for the money.  If you know of a better flashlight, I’d love to hear about it.

Reuben Saltzman, Structure Tech Home Inspections - Email - Maple Grove Home Inspector

In searching for a home inspector for out-of-state family members buying a home, I ended up comparing dozens of home inspector web sites, trying to separate the great home inspectors from the hacks.  It wasn’t difficult to find qualified home inspectors, but finding someone who I thought was a great home inspector was much more difficult.   As I mentioned at the end of my blog about finding an out-of-state home inspector, it all came down to comparing sample home inspection reports.

Reading sample home inspection reports is the best way to compare home inspectors, short of actually attending the home inspection.

In my humble opinion, the best home inspection reports have several things in common, and these were the things that I looked for in a sample home inspection report while searching for an out-of-state inspector:

Photos - this is a no-brainer and doesn’t need much explanation.  Good home inspection reports have photos.  This is a basic requirement for a good home inspection report that most home inspectors include today.  In a recent survey of ASHI home inspectors with 4,500 responses, over 84% of ASHI home inspectors include photos in their reports.

Easy to read – I don’t want to have to look at a legend to figure out what the inspector is trying to say, and I especially wouldn’t want my family members trying to figure that stuff out.  Home inspection reports should be easy to understand and shouldn’t need someone with industry knowledge to interpret what the inspector is trying to say.

Customized – home inspection reports should contain three basic components when addressing an issue: what the issue is, why it’s an issue (if not obvious), and what should be done.

For example, if a water heater had a pressure relief valve that was plugged off on the end, a great home inspection report might say

“The pressure relief valve discharge tube has a cap attached to the end, which will prevent the valve from functioning; this could cause the water heater to explode or turn in to a missile if the water heater malfunctioned.  Have the cap removed.”

A weak inspection report might say

“Capped relief pipe needs repair”

Both of these descriptions address the defect, but the first description is obviously a far superior description, and lets the client know why this item needs repair.

Disclaimers kept to a minimum – I looked for inspection reports that were focused on helping my family members; not explaining away why they couldn’t.  Many home inspection reports are filled with CYA verbiage that is focused on explaining away why the home inspector couldn’t see this or why they couldn’t inspect that.  This isn’t helpful to the home buyer, and when there’s too much of it, it starts to sound ‘weaselly’.  I don’t want to read through a huge list of stuff that wasn’t  inspected.  That list belongs in the contract or the standards of practice.  If the roof was covered with snow, say it was covered with snow and not inspected.  The end.

Realistic recommendations - This one is huge.  Many home inspection reports are filled with recommendations for further testing and inspections to the point where it gets absurd.  Mold testing?  Asbestos testing?  Lead testing?  Sewer scans?  Plumbing inspections?  Electrical inspections?  When I see recommendations for all these other inspections, I get the feeling that the home inspector is only concerned about not getting sued; they’re not nearly as concerned about providing a good service to my family members.

Confident reports – this point is a little harder to define, but it’s really what sets asides the rookies from the experienced home inspectors.  Anyone with the most basic understanding of a house can observe an abnormality, call attention to it, and recommend repair or a second opinion.  With knowledge and experience comes the confidence to say that something isn’t a problem.

Ownership  - This might be something that many home inspectors don’t even consider when they write reports, but I got turned off reading inspection reports where the inspector clearly didn’t take ownership of the comments and recommendations he or she was making.  For example, “It is recommended…” takes no ownership.  ”I recommend” does.

That makes up most of the stuff that I looked for in a sample home inspection report when choosing a home inspector for out-of-state family members.  In the end, I found a home inspector who had all of these qualities in a sample report, and I weeded out a ridiculous amount of qualified home inspectors who didn’t.

If you’re shopping for a home inspector, be sure to read a sample report.

RELATED POSTS:

My search for an out-of-state home inspector

How to decide on a home inspector

Reuben Saltzman, Structure Tech Home Inspections - Email - Minnesota Home Inspector