An inspector reach out regarding an interaction that he had with a builder after inspecting a new construction home. The water heater was located in the attic, and it was a tankless unit. From what I understand, there was no overflow drain pan below the water heater and the builder was challenging the inspector for including this fact in his …
Unlimited Possible Experiences
As we navigate the events of our daily lives, the number of possible experiences that we can have are almost unlimited. This same rule applies when we perform a home inspection: there are an almost unlimited number of possible things that we could find when analyzing a home’s systems and components. Just as it’s hard to prepare ourselves for an …
Providing Information
Information is the lifeblood of every creature. Most of the time, the more information we have, the better off we are. As an inspector, as a home buyer, as a human being in general, the more we know about a situation, the more successful we’ll be. We’re better prepared to face the experiences of the day when we know what’s …
Employer or Employee; Which One am I?
As children, we were taught that once we started working, we had our choice of either a blue or white-collar job. For as long as we can remember, that was the norm. You went to school and got a white-collar job, or you skipped school and started working right away at a blue-collar job. We could be a worker, or …
Daily Reminders
Face it, sometimes bad things happen to us. Oftentimes, it’s simply the result of bad luck: we find ourselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Other times, we’re the ones making bad decisions, and those poor choices generally lead to bad outcomes. In some of these situations, we find that there remain constant, daily reminders of those bad …
The Razor’s Edge
If you’re a fan of the television show “The Big Bang Theory”, then it’s quite likely that you’ve heard Dr. Sheldon Cooper utter the phrase “Ockham’s razor” before. If you’re like most people, that phrase simply joins the rest of the scientific jargon that theoretical physicist Sheldon spouts on the show. Most of it goes right over our heads, but …
What’s Going On Here?
Face it, we’re an unknown. The dreaded home inspector. The deal killer. (And yes, one of my agents actually calls me that…) The agents think we’re there to cause trouble; to create hurdles to them closing the deal. But the buyers, they really have no idea what we’re there for. They know that their agent told them they had to …
Wicked Problems
(L)earning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. Peter Drucker In this life, the only thing that anyone can really promise us is that things are going to change. For home inspectors, this fact means that our client’s HVAC system is eventually going to change from functional to non-functional. Good maintenance (and good luck) may be able to …
Do I Want Fewer Agents?
We all want to be the most successful inspector out there. We all want to be on the short list of inspectors for all the agents. We all want to be everything to everyone. But that’s not really possible, is it? We couldn’t work for every real estate agent. It’s physically impossible. There are simply not enough hours in the …
The Most Important Thing
It’s not too difficult to start a business. Most people are able to get a basic business off the ground in short order. Growing that “basic” business into something that makes us happy, well, that’s a whole different story. In most states, in order to call ourselves a home inspector, we need to do some basic schooling and pass a …