Local HI airs his gripes

[Marc]

"When you're buying a new home, you expect the home inspector to tell you about everything that's wrong with the house, right?

Well, you can put that expectation aside.

The law does not require inspectors to tell you about some dangerous and harmful concerns."

Read more: Inspector says law is unethical, immoral

Marc

[kurt]

Does the undercover inspector who's afraid of losing their license have the initials "MARC"?

[Richard Moore]

That's one horribly shallow piece of reporting. Sometimes I gets all kinda nostalgic for the days when real journalism existed.

[kurt]

I've noticed similar sorts of shallowness in most, or all, news releases about this thing we do.

[rkenney]

Why give them cake? They only wanted the icing. When one is vague and then confronted with the facts, the reply can always be, "well I didn't say that."

Such a reply is always truthful considering there is no substance to what was said and therefore can be construed to be misunderstood.

My personal favorite, when confronted by a bold faced lie is to say: "I misspoke." As if your tongue and lips conspired against you to form speech without your consent.

[Jim Morrison]

What did I miss?

The Louisiana standards look about the same as every other state standard I ever read, weak, vague, and pretty generic. But there's nothing unethical about saying, as these standards say, the inspector is not required to report on abestos, mold, and all the rest.

If the standards prohibited you from reporting on dangerous things, that would be unethical. Also, I didn't read anything in there that said you were prohibited from exceeding the standards.

It looks to me like the standards let lazy inspectors off the hook because they don't have to report on those things, but they do nothing to prevent an honest, industrious inspector from finding and reporting on them.

[Marc]

What did I miss?

The Louisiana standards look about the same as every other state standard I ever read, weak, vague, and pretty generic. But there's nothing unethical about saying, as these standards say, the inspector is not required to report on abestos, mold, and all the rest.

If the standards prohibited you from reporting on dangerous things, that would be unethical. Also, I didn't read anything in there that said you were prohibited from exceeding the standards.

It looks to me like the standards let lazy inspectors off the hook because they don't have to report on those things, but they do nothing to prevent an honest, industrious inspector from finding and reporting on them.

Perhaps that's what motivating the story - A standard, meant to protect the public, that doesn't require a check on common hazards like asbestos, mold and Chinese drywall.

I shot off a note to my Board representative:

Mold

Mold is everywhere. It's in the air we breathe. It's not possible to get rid of all the mold and mold spores in a house. Some people are susceptible to allergens that can be produced by mold. Some mold also can produce micotoxins that can be toxic to people. For these reasons, home inspectors should be required to report apparent mold growth that is both visible to the naked eye and not hidden. They should not be required to test for mold spores since a home inspector qualification does not and should not, automatically imply a mold testing qualification.

Asbestos

A federal ban and phase-out on all asbestos use was enacted in 1989 but replaced with regulation in 1991. Many products today legally include asbestos. Asbestos cannot be positively identified in every application by mere sight of it. Since home inspections are visual inspections and mention of asbestos can cause undue alarm in home buyers, home inspector should not be required to report it unless the product containing asbestos is both damaged and labeled (or tagged) as containing asbestos.

Chinese Drywall

The Florida Dept of Health has set three criteria for a possible case of Chinese drywall in a home. All three are within the means of what a Louisiana home inspector can do. Since a home inspection is a visual inspection, home inspectors should be required to use these simple criteria to determine if a possible Chinese drywall case exists and to report it.

References

1. A Brief Guide to Mold, Moisture, and Your Home

2. EPA Asbestos Materials Bans: Clarification

3. Self-Assessment Guide

Marc

[rkenney]

Here's an article that is closer to the original thread. Slightly more informative.

http://www.hanfordsentinel.com/news/opi ... _216900999

As for the second question: Should appliances be required. My vote is no!

The reason is simple, there simply is not enough time to explore ALL the functions of All the appliances that might be included. On/off is not an adequate test.

Case in point: Jenn Air Convect bake Oven Range (mine - electric).

The first problem that occured was a blank digital display. The oven worked just fine (with the exception of the self cleaning function) but would not display the temperatures or time.

Display board was about $200. Actual repair cost was about $0.89 (capacitor on the display board.)

Ok, you would probably have seen that and reported it.

Some time later (years) I noticed that it took a long time to preheat the oven. Now preheat on an electric oven usually involves both the bake and broil element with baking only using the bake element after temperature is reached. Are you prepared to test both the bake and broil operation during the home inspection?

Repair, for those interested, was a $39 bake element.

Now, with all that said and done, the self cleaning feature still does not work. Self clean requires both elements to heat the oven to 500 degrees and above, burn of the crud, and typically (lightly soiled) takes about three hours: this process strains both elements and leads to rapid element failure. I am definately not testing that feature during a Home Inspection and generally advise people not to use that feature for the aforementioned reason.

Mom's Gas range: All burners light except one (the most often used). You can, however, light it by lighting an adjacent burner. The switch for that burner is obviously bad (all igniters fire at the same time.) You need to test ALL the burners.

Calls you can expect if SOP includes appliances:

"I can't set the clock on my...microwave, oven, etc."

"My oven doesn't ... self clean, broil, bake, whatever"

"My icemaker, water dispenser, doesn't defrost....

"My dryer won't work on permanent press, gentlecycle..."

And of course every call will be preceded by a request for a refund.

Good luck with that!

[RickSab]

It must have been a slow news day. I don't know anyone who can say thats asbestos just by looking at it. As for mold I think the inspector may have been trying to cover his butt. Some inspectors are afraid to say the M word. In the midwest I haven't seen much Chinese drywall. I think if I spotted some of the associated problems then I might think to look, but if it's up and painted and I can't get behind a sheet what next. It's outside of the scope.

The anonymous inspector may be heading off a law suit. If he's the whistle blower he might not get sued for missing something. Too bad he thinks the minimum standard prevents him from giving his customers good value foe the money.

[Marc]

It must have been a slow news day. I don't know anyone who can say thats asbestos just by looking at it. As for mold I think the inspector may have been trying to cover his butt. Some inspectors are afraid to say the M word. In the midwest I haven't seen much Chinese drywall. I think if I spotted some of the associated problems then I might think to look, but if it's up and painted and I can't get behind a sheet what next. It's outside of the scope.

Chinese drywall manifests as black corrosion on copper building material in the home but you're right about asbestos and mold.

The anonymous inspector may be heading off a law suit. If he's the whistle blower he might not get sued for missing something. Too bad he thinks the minimum standard prevents him from giving his customers good value foe the money.

According to the grapevine, the whistle blower has been identified and HI's everywhere are pissed. I've a gripe with the SOP instead of the whistleblower. I doubt our Board has either the ability or even the motivation to ramp it's consultation skills to a level needed to complete a simple improvement to our SOP. The issue has pretty much dissolved any desire of mine to ever seek membership. I can't hear anyway.

It HAS given me more interest in a version of TIJ for Louisiana inspectors but I've not the funds to do it. Consultation is a good thing.

Marc

[Erby]

Tried one for Kentucky several years ago, Marc. Lack of interest shut it down. Lots of readers, few participants. Kinda like here, but this nationwide scale works. A small state scale one is unlikely to draw much interest. If the interest was there, the forum would be too!