Common Home Inspection Issues

Today I’m meeting with one of my preferred home inspectors to talk about Common Home Inspection issues. If this is your first time visiting my website my name is Kerri Jonikas and I’m a Realtor in Chicago southwest suburbs. Please consider subscribing to my blog to be notified of any new content that I post. I post new posts every Monday and I wouldn’t want you to miss out.

I’m here with one of my preferred home inspectors today were talking about common home inspection issues.  Can you first tell us a little bit about yourself, and then tell us some common home inspection issues.

Sure! So, I’m Joe Ziolkowski with On Target Home Inspection. We’ve been serving Chicagoland and all the surrounding counties for about the last 8 years. Some of the most common home inspection issues that we find, I’ll just kind of go down the list.

The first one is the simplest to fix and is the one that kind of leads to a lot of the other ones and that’s grading and drainage.  So what that means is all the measures that you would take on the outside of the house to keep water away from the house. This includes downspout extensions. How the ground is kind of shape around the house like is it going in toward the house, or is it going away from the house? You always want water to be shed away from the house and the foundation and all like the walkways and everything because if you don’t you’re going to get what the next common issue is, water issues in the basement.

So what’ll happen is you’ll get the water that kind of goes against the house and against the foundation and it puts pressure on the foundation and that water eventually finds Its way in through the weakest spot whether it’s a crack or an opening somewhere and then you’ll get water in your basement. So that’s kind of our second most common issue that we find.

A related issue we find  a lot as well is cracking in the foundation. Now there is a bunch of different kind of foundation cracks. Some are way worse than others, the ones that we find most typically are settlement cracks, which are kind of like the vertical / diagonal sort of cracks. These are usually caused by settlement and this is usually the main point of entry where that water is going to get in.  So we’re seeing all these things are kind of related so far and that’s kind of how home inspection is, we look at it holistically. How one thing affects another.

So the next thing I would say that we find is issues with the roof. We actually get up on the roof whenever it’s safe to do so. So we actually get a really good view of the shingles and also a good feel for the sheathing underneath as we’re walking. But just things happen you know, like hail storms will damage the shingles, branches will fall down and knock shingles off the roof. These are all important things to know just because they will lead to water intrusion into the attic if not taken care of in a timely manner.

The next thing I would say that is electrical issues. Electrical issues are one of those things that they’re usually pretty cheap and easy to fix and that they’re also really important to fix. That usually translate to a safety issue if not fixed properly. This includes you know missing gfci’s, which of those safety outlets you find, like in the bathrooms and the kitchen, by water basically. Exposed wiring, wrong type of wiring.  So these are all things that would find to and this is all throughout the house, whether it’s kitchens, bathroom, attic, whatever.

The next most kind of thing would be ventilation issues. Now this isn’t something that a lot of people would necessarily know a lot about unless they had specific training. Ventilation in an attic is really important, that’s the air flow in the attic. That number one, it allows the the attic wood to stay dry and it helps to prevent moisture issues like mold. It also helps to regulate the attic temperature, you know so it’s not going to be too hot in the summer, it’s not going to be too cold in the winter. So and what that does is it just helps the roof to last longer, right. Now the way to accomplish that is through venting. So you have soffit vents along the bottom of the soffits, roof vents on top of the roof and that allows for a proper airflow. A lot of times we’ll see that those are obstructed and we have seen that it has caused issues in the attic and like mold and frost in the winter and that kind of stuff.

So just a few of the many many things that we look for. I’ll say that those are probably some of the most common things that we find during an inspection.

What about ventilation in a laundry room? Do you find that when there is gas washer, dryer and a closed door, if there’s not enough proper ventilation, do you find that it becomes an issue?

A dryer typically, unless it’s an electric dryer a dryer. A dryer is typically a gas-fired  appliance, right? So you would want to make sure that you do have ventilation in there in terms of either like a louvered door, or a vent fan, or something. I mean that would be ideal. If the room is big enough in like it’s kind of got an open flow to the rest of the house, I would say it’s not as an issue. It’s a consideration for sure. You definitely do want to make sure the dryer is vented to the exterior so that it can dissipate all that warm air. Well thank you so much for joining me today and giving us this helpful information. We really appreciate it. Thank you for having me it was a pleasure.