Home Inspector always has to find at least 3 things wrong, even if there is nothing really wrong. 
I’m thinking she has lots of stuff to do and just doesn’t have any free time to update us.
PHYSICAL INSPECTION
Another totally exhausting day and it’s very unusually hot on the coast here in San Diego this weekend. Luckily the project house is nice and cool as soon as you open up some windows and let breezes through. Kind of cooking out on the deck with the full sun. Last night I took advantage of a couple of strong guys and asked them to take all the deck furniture back to my house. So the deck is no longer comfortable for lounging.
I arrived at the project in a whirl at 8:20am to clean up and set out all the paperwork, remotes and keys. The home inspector was already there in his car. I invited him to get started before everyone else arrives. It is not customary for an owner to be present during a home inspection (they get too defensive and upset). But I needed to wait around until someone showed up. He did not discuss any issues that he found with me while I was there because I am not his client.
I had already typed up a list of a few things that we needed to finish and left it on the counter. They were:
We had to cut out the baseboard in the hallway so that the barn door would close properly. I was not happy with our ‘cosmetic’ patch of this area and we still needed to do some putty, sanding and paint.
Had completely forgot that we still had one screw missing from all the exterior door hinges. When the doors and door jambs come from the factory they come with small screws. We don’t like that and we always install one long screw into each hinge. But of course the guys kept trying to screw in ugly gold brass screws and I hadn’t gotten around to buying the stainless ones.
Last night when we had all doors and windows open without screens (always take the screens off your windows when you are showing the house - it makes everything cleaner and brighter) and a gazillion moths came flying in to the lighting. Need to take down a couple of the light globes and clean them out.
I had forgotten to put weather strip on one of the exterior doors.
My agent arrived, I showed her all the docs and stuff and then the buyers arrived so I made an exit
cb, that sounds like a whole lot of little nothings. Here’s hoping the inspector found nothing else.
Sorry, got distracted… continuing
Within 10 minutes after arriving home I was getting phone calls asking this or that. I am always available during home inspection because my agent knows she can call and ask a question to clear anything up. Then she called about 1 1/2 later and said the Home Inspector was going to give his summary to the Buyers and everyone (except Home Inspector) wanted me to join them.
The Home Inspector was honestly rather rude and making things sound extremely scary. I think he found about 4 things that were actually important and the other things were just crazy. Here are the key things that I am going to fix:
It turns out that there were several exposed nails in the roofing. We need to put a drop of Henry’s roof goo on each nail so that water does not intrude
Big fight about the dishwasher air gap. I hate the appearance of air gaps, refuse to put one in. I even had a discussion with the City Inspector. He said as long as the dishwasher installation manual provided a description of how to install the drainage without an air gap, it was allowed. We installed to exact manufacturer instructions. The Home Inspector went ballistic and starting calling it a Health and Safety violation and that the City doesn’t know what they are talking about and the manufacturers shouldn’t have instructions on how to do it. I just sat there and said “I will not be installing an air gap. You are welcome to install one after the sale.”
There is one 1/4" size crack in the foundation, which is pretty darn good after 80 years. I agreed to put epoxy on the crack to prevent water intrusion and they asked me “Since you have the epoxy out, can you please put some on the small crack in the interior garage wall”.
Some bozo on the team accidentally turned a small amount of the roll fiberglass insulation upside down with the paper facing up towards roof in the main bathroom. It’s supposed to be facing down against the drywall. He started going on and on about how this was a huge fire hazard. Geez, get a grip!
And, we completely forgot to hook up the 220 circuit for the dryer in the laundry room. Ooops! And a couple of other electrical issues.
I think there are about 10 very easy things on the list. Buyer kept asking if I was going to do gutters and I kept referring him to the listing and my disclosures where it clearly stated that gutters were not going to be installed. Buyer agreed that they don’t care about the closet organizers or the pantry closet. They want to do it themselves anyway. Of course the Home Inspector kept pointing out that there wasn’t a closet rod in each closet and there were no screens on the windows.
So, Home Inspector didn’t find anything but a couple of electrical issues, 6 exposed nails on the roof and ‘no screens, no closet rods’. Oh, and the scary story about dishwasher air gap and insulation catching on fire.
As I return home I called my carpenter to see if he could squeeze in a couple of hours on Monday to fix some of the small issues. He says “I’m parked right outside your house waiting to hear what happened”. Within 30 minutes he is back at the project, with all his tools that we had moved to the storage unit, and he was fixing all the nits. I took pictures of each fix for the Buyers because they may not have a chance to come back and do a final walk through before close of escrow.
Electrician coming Monday and we should be done with our list.
Wow. What a pompous dude.
I hate DW air gaps, too!!! One more thing on the counter top to collect dirt.
I love your carpenter, coralbrook. If he’d ever like to mosey out to Colorado I’d have plenty of work for him. He sounds like a peach.
Yay! Sounds like any inspection contingency will be released soon. Do they have an appraisal contingency? If so, when will the appraisal take place?? That’s a scary one in a rising market!
What is a dshwasher air gap? Guess I don’t have one either.
Let me know, and I’ll ask my husband about the fire and safety code. He is a member of the national association…he will know the code!
Since we worked out the ‘fix list’ together at a table, the buyers will be submitting a Request for Repairs which will hopefully match the list I am working with. Once that formality happens, and I return back my signature to agree to the repairs, the Inspection contingency should be released. I expect it to be released within 3 days. I will push for it.
The appraisal contingency really has me worried. These buyers are putting 20% down which means they need an 80% loan to value. With the new ‘arms length’ appraisal clearing house, their bank (Quicken Loans - giant corporation) could send any num nut from across Southern California. My last sale the appraiser was from Corona, CA… land of a million exactly matching tract homes. It is going to be very difficult to appraise this house since there are no exact comparables. Usually my agent comes up with a list of comparables and an entire comparable analysis. She tells the appraiser they cannot get into the house unless she meets him there for access and then reviews and submits her comparables for his consideration.
We will see, it is the shaky part of the transaction.
Besides being ugly, pick up the outer shell of an air gap that has been on the counter for several years. Grossness abounds. Hidden lurking yuck. It is a long running battle with every single Home Inspector. This one actually gave an entire scenario to the Buyers.
If someone doesn’t run the garbage disposal for a long time and food is clogged up to the top of the disposal AND someone then puts in the stopper and fills the sink to the absolute brim, there MIGHT be a chance that some of the water/food will backwash into the dishwasher.
When was the last time anyone did that scenario? Honestly, make a habit of running the garbage disposal before you turn on the dishwasher. Dishwasher won’t drain well anyways.
This is what an air gap looks like. It sits on a hole on the sink next to faucet. You can see from the cost that it’s not an expense issue with me. It’s a design issue - they are ugly and they will get gross over time. Also, I have heard more cases where water starts spouting out of them than I have heard stories of a bunch of yuck back washing into the dishwasher.
Oops, sorry. here’s the link
I’ve loaded some photos of all the fixes that my carpenter completed today. Believe it or not he had already gone to Home Depot this morning and purchased the extra long stainless steel screws. He had them ready and waiting. I had to make the 1 millionth emergency run to Home Depot to get some weather stripping, Henry’s roof goo and expensive two part epoxy stuff.
Apparently there used to be some jurisdictions that require air gaps. It depends on how your dishwasher is hooked up.
Your installer would have known if you needed this. And you would absolutely need to check your local code. It could be required. Just check.
Is it regional? I’ve never heard of it - we certainly don’t have one.
OK CB, this is your fault. I clicked on your link and now I have kitchen supply parts ads running on the side of my cc page!!! :-w
I hooked up dishwashers directly to the sink drain by elevate the dishwasher discharging hose higher than the sink drain connection so the sewer gas will not get into the dishwasher. I could do that because I do not have a garbage disposal. The way to elevate the discharging hose(flexible) is to drill a hole near the countertop of the cabinet next to the dishwasher and thread the hose through it.
cb,
Why didn’t you negotiate the contract being as is?
You can say that the seller has not lived in the house before and there might be imperfections in a XX year old house, it is the buyers responsibility to fix all small imperfections found by home inspectors with less than $XXXX, seller remains responsible if there are major structural defects.