John's Blog

This photograph is from under the home. As you can see there is no concrete foundation on this part of the house.  They used wood and the wood is deteriorating and falling apart. This is not acceptable, homes in Los Angeles must have concrete supporting them.

I'm always sharing all sorts of funny or interesting looking photographs that we find on our inspections and I stumbled across this great website the other day with all sorts of interesting and humorous inspection photos so I thought I'd share! Click the link to see Home Inspection Nightmares!

http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/photos/0,,1220600,00.html

This elecrical panel was exposed at an apartment building that we inspected with children running around playing nearby. There were no covers on the electrical panels and as you can see the wires were completely exposed. Definitely a safety hazard.

Whoops, looks like this seller lost the top of their chimney somewhere along the line... oviously this is unusable in this condition and unfortunately it is going to be a major repair cost.

Changing a furnace filter is a simple but often neglected home maintenance task. It’s recommended to change the filter every three months. Don’t buy the cheapest type; a high quality filter does a much better job of removing fine particles of dust, lint, animal dander and pollen. A quality filter improves air quality making your home a healthier place to live.

If you're planning on selling your home and do not change your filter regularly, consider replacing the filter a week prior to the home inspection and running the system. The filter may get dirty pretty quickly, if this happens you may want to replace it again prior to inspection. Doing this will not only improve the air quality in your home but it might even help the outcome of your home inspection!

If you're not sure which filter to buy, here is a handy guide from Home Depot that has a rating system. http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ContentView?pn=Air_Filters&langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053&cm_sp=96e5c9cd-b521-47d5-a204-eb524aebd146

This furnace exhaust vent was disconnected and the fumes were permeating the house.  This is safety hazard and very dangerous.

Another creative fix... the previous chimney went down in the last earthquake so they sort of put up some other type of flue and used plumbing tape to hold it secure to the roof.  Obviously, this needed to be redone properly.

This is a sprinkler line.  It is made out of pvc piping and is not supposed to be exposed to sunlight nor is it suppose to be across a sidewalk. It also breaks easily so if anyone stepped on it, it would crack and be spraying water everywhere.

It is supposed to underground to protect it and protect the people walking on the sidewalk.

When your inspector crawls underneath the house there are many issues that they may find. These pipes under the house are starting to leak. This is a pretty common find but if the inspector did not go into the crawl space, the client would never have known about it.

When the inspector peeled back the shower curtain, they found a second curtain had been fixed to the shower wall... it appears that they forgot to tile part of the shower and decided to just cover it up instead. Barely noticeable, right? :)