Home inspection rant!!!! NF

[bigfish1965]

I wasn't gonna post on this as Rick is a friend, but people nobody is responsible for what you have bought but you. To think that a home inspector is, in most cases, qualified to tell you if your furnace is good, fireplace is safe, wiring is to code is just beyond reason. Plumbing apprenticeship FIVE years. Most think of it as shi t going down hill, including me, but facts are facts. Electrician.. similar requirements. Furnace installer certifications. Do you think most of these home inspectors have these qualifications. What ever happened to having a good look yourself... popping the cover plate off the elect panel to see if you're getting something neat or spagettii. Popping a socket cover off to see if you have ground wires, aluminum wiring etc and if you don't know bringing along your father, father-in-law to have a boo for you and then taking the cards you're dealt. Like so many other things we are becoming a "not at fault" society, no different than the wimmin that went thru the ice on Nipissing that everyone was taking shots at.

 

Panel is grandfathered to code, even the crap in half of Milton with Aluminum wire. Only issue is if it's a 60 amp panel your insurance company probably won't touch it. First question on the applicaton.

I am not an electrician. Popping open the panel would have meant nothing to me. This is why you hire someone who is supposed to know what to look for. The panel is not grandfathered because it has been altered.

 

Home inspection or Home insurance...?

 

Can't back charge home improvements to a guy that inspected years ago. Especially when your upgrades will add to value of your home which you recoup on sale.

 

Might get some coin on clearing out a nuisance basis but my votes with the home inspector.

Coin cannot be recovered through sale since there is already a pending offer on the house. According to the agency overseeing the home inspectors, I actually do have a valid claim since the inspector was negligent and stated he had checked the wiring for knob and tube when clearly he did not. I will keep you posted.

If this does not pan out for me I will never use an inspector again. Complete waste of money if there is no protection for me. It would be like getting a car safety and all four wheels fall off the next day.

[Headhunter]

Good luck with that Rick... I hope you do recover something from them, but I wouldn't expect any monies in the very near future! Like most of these types of things, the only folks gettin rich will be the lawyers... no offence to our friendly resident law folks!

HH

[Big Cliff]

When we bought this place we decided we didn't want to go the "home inspector" route. Instead we got a Septic Tank pumping company to pump and inspect the tank. $125.00. A well drilling company come in and do a flow and recovery on our well and inspect our pump and lines. $65.00. The oil company come in and inspect the furnace and tank and make sure they were in good and proper working order. $85.00 including servicing them. And we had an electrician come in and inspect our panel and wiring and give us a quote on upgrading the panel. He ended up not charging us anything because we got him to upgrade the panel and when we did our renovations we got him to do all the wiring too. Oh, and we hired a guy that does chimny cleaning to come and clean and inspect the fire place and chimny, $85.00 and that included cleaning everything. The windows, insulation and everything else I did myself, I just took it one room at a time, took lots of pictures, and made notes of anything I wasn't sure of.

 

All in all it cost us a lot less than a "home inspector" would have charged, we got everything done by the proper trades people, and we knew that everything was serviced and working properly so in the end it cost us a lot less than using an inspector who might have told us what was wrong but then we still would have had to pay to get it fixed.

 

When we sold our house in Milton the buyers brought in a home inspector, he tried to nit pick at everything and didn't have a clue what he was really doing. He told them that one wall they wanted to remove wasn't a load bearing wall, after buying the house they removed it (not a pretty sight).

 

He insisted that the door leading from our kitchen to the garage HAD to be a steel door to meet code. I had to get a letter from the planning Dept. and the fire dept. showing that it did not have to be a steel door, just an exterior grade door with a self closer on it. Same thing with a window in our kitchen that looked out into what once a carport but I had closed in to make a garage. He insisted that the window had to be removed as it was not allowed by code. Again he was wrong, it was an exterior grade window and quite acceptable.

 

All in all he sugested that the modifications would cost about $3000.00 and the buyer wanted me to pay for them....NOT, I finally agreed to pay $400.00 to have an electrician rewire all the outlets upstairs because they were done with aluminum wire, showed him the letters from the planning dept. and fire dept. and told him that if he didn't want the house, someone else would.

 

They bought the house!

[Whopper]

Good Luck Rick

 

I would like to comment on home inspectors though, I totally agree with what Wayne said, not one person can know everything about plumbing, HVAC, structure, roof, electrical and so on. Some people instead of getting a whole house inspector will call each specialty to get a separate inspection for each but then again it's not a 100% foolproof. I used to do home electrical inspections for a company I worked for many years ago and the company had a disclaimer printed at the bottom of the work order and the inspection finding that relieved the company of any liability (I'm sure a good lawyer could have gotten around that). On my inspections the first thing I would tell the clients is that if there was any furniture/appliances blocking any electrical devices it would have to be moved so I could test each one, we didn't want to be responsible for anything broken while it was moved, if it didn't get moved it was noted on the report. Basements, attics, crawlspaces and garages were the worst for gathering clutter. Can't tell you how many times the company would get a phone call from a buyer that wanted us to come fix stuff for free just because we did the inspection six months to a year prior.

Any problems, code violations or unsafe conditions would be noted on the inspection and forwarded to the appropriate party. Some times they would come back to us for estimates for repairs but very seldom did we performed them, they would usually find somebody's uncle's brother's cousin to do the repairs. I always would start at the electrical service and work my way out from there.

Had one particular woman call about a receptacle not working and looked up the report and took a copy with me to check and sure enough when I did the inspection there was a large aquarium sitting in front of the receptacle that did not work that wasn't moved. Showed here the report and even showed her the depression that was still in the carpet three months later but she still thought we were responsible to fix it, she ended up cussing me out and called the owner and bugged the crap out of him until he sent someone out to fix it. Then after it was fixed she had the nerve to call back and complain because the service tech woke her baby while ringing her doorbell, it was definitely one of those no win situations.

Sorry to ramble just thought you might like to hear the other side.

 

There is no way one guy can inspect your whole house and get it right unless theres nothing wrong.

 

Again good luck with your situation

Edited February 13, 2008 by Whopper

[Kirk]

If its a $2,000 repair, if the average house is worth $400,000...your really sweating too much about 0.5% of home equity...nothing to lose sleep over either way it goes.

 

$2,000 in legal fees won't get you too far either. HH's got it right. LOL

 

Whatever claim route you got, take it and good luck.

[bigfish1965]

Kirk what you fail to understand is that if your house burns down to the ground and it is because of knob and tube wiring, and you did not report you have knob and tube wiring, your insurance is INVALID. We supplied the report to the insurance company stating we had been inspected for electrical and it was fine. I do not own a 400,000 home. I am not sweating the 2,000. I am merely annoyed that someone who passes themselves off as a professional was either incompetent or negligent in their duties. Either way, their idiocy cost me alot of money.

In my job, if I or my staff costs a customer money due to error, the money is refunded immediately.

[Kirk]

I understand plenty. If you in good faith make a submission to your insurance company, ie did not knowingly lie, plus you have an independent report, the insurance should cover it...but then insurance companies look for anything to dodge liability but its very difficult to avoid coverage in a good faith scenario you describe.

 

PLUS, old houses that are upgraded from knob and tube can still have some knob and tube left in them, there's differing protocols covering knob and tube. So your first home inspection may not be so 'negligent' as you hope for. You can upgrade a knob and tube home but still have some left and still have insurance coverage if it meets the companies requirements. Its not a straight forward area, but, like I said, if you just keep ranting at someone with cheque writing authority (and not to "bright" on knob and tube), you might get somewhere.

Edited February 13, 2008 by Kirk