New construction home inspections – are they really necessary? Well that’s what we’re talking about today and we are starting right now. Hey everyone, welcome back to my blog. I’m Karin Carr, a REALTOR in Savannah, Georgia with Keller Williams. Today we have a special guest. Will Pearson, the owner of Mr. Home Inspector here in Savannah. And he’s going to answer that question and show you exactly why a home inspection is necessary.
Hi, I’m Will Pearson with Mr. Home Inspector and today we will be talking about new construction. Why you should have a home inspection with new construction. Well honestly, the Builder doesn’t necessarily always know what his builders have been up to. So let’s go ahead and take a look. One of the common things on a home that’s been around for maybe just a little while is the door jambs. This is a good place for rot to start because a lot of rain comes in and it’s constantly hitting on the door facings things and you’ll find very common all the way around most houses here in Savannah.
Another common thing that we have are leaks underneath the sink, as common as can be. The way I check it is I turn the water on, and I’ll put it on warm because it’s easier to check if it’s warm. And a lot of the times if there’s a leak you can’t necessarily see it. This is what you have to do to make them easier to actually feel where the water is coming out at. One of the first things I do when I come into a home is to start the dishwasher the reason that I do that it usually takes the length of times we run the dishwasher to do the home inspection and it lets the dishwasher run a full cycle. Because I want to make sure all the appliances are operating. The big thing for me is I have to make sure the windows work, all the outlets work, I check every single outlet I can get to.
If you have a home inspector come in and they check one outlet and one window per room that is the bare minimum standard. You want somebody that’s going to check everything they could possibly check. One thing I do that most inspectors don’t do is I take pictures of the model number and serial number and I do recall checks. Just a couple of weeks ago we had a leaky dishwasher. It turned out there is a product manufacturer recall on that and they got a brand new dishwasher. That paid for your home inspection. The water heater’s up there, your two return airs for your heat pumps are up there but I want to talk about the actual rails for a second.
A lot of times these are a safety issue. Their maximum weight capacity for this set is 250 pounds. I’m running pretty close! You want make sure that it lines up flush. If it’s bent this way or even backwards it means that it’s not safe and that needs to be adjusted. Checking the water pressure… what we do is turn on all the faucets at the same time, the tub and the shower, we have it all running and then flush the toilet.
I know you hate it when you’re at home and you’re in the shower and someone flushes the toilet and you get burned. Or you get all that sudden blast of hot water and then all of a sudden it goes all cold on you. Absolutely terrible. It’s my job to make sure that you know if that’s going to happen before you buy your home. Guys, we’re looking at the electrical panel and you’re probably wondering when the home inspector is looking in the electrical panel what exactly is he looking at? Well we want to know what kind of wires coming in? This is aluminum wire here. The amperage for the wire should always be higher than the breakers because you want the breakers to kick before the wires burn. We’re also checking this to make sure that all the wires have these little fittings around the wires that’s to protect the wires from getting cut.
Thank you! So now you know what the home inspector looks for. If you’re looking for a home inspection checklist to kind of give you an idea of the things that should be looked at when you do your home inspection click the link right here. I did a video once before all about that with a downloadable checklist. Thank you so much and we’ll see you next week!
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About the Author: The article above, New Construction Home Inspection, was provided by Karin Carr, an authority on Savannah area real estate and a leader in the field of real estate blogging and vlogging. Karin has helped literally helped hundreds of families buy and sell homes since 2005.
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