Sharing Information About Home Inspections

Month: January 2017

Fence Inspection Checklist

metal-fence

Get Your Fence Inspected

It’s that certain time of the year when you’re out and about and you’re thinking of ways on how to improve your home and to ensure its safety.  A great home improvement project that you can do is updating or building a new fence.  This is a big job and most often times is best to leave this one to a professional unless you are very good at DIY type projects, so think hard before you tackle this one by yourself.   No matter if you do this one yourself, or if you hire a professional you are left with the question, what type of fence should you put up? What should I consider in constructing a new fence?  We consulted with a fence builder in Lubbock to gather some great information on this topic.

 
Fences are structures that are constructed from posts (wood or metal) which are then connected to railings, and used to enclose a specific area.  Your fence is an upright structure, and a barrier to control access or to mark a property and boundary.

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Signs of Wood Eating Insects

beautiful-home

Is Your Home Infested?

While houses and buildings can be destroyed by earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods, these calamities don’t happen as often as the most common threat to homes, insect infestation. Have you discovered signs of wood eating insects? Is your home infested? Without our realizing it, insects can slowly take over our homes, eating their way into our food, our clothes, our things, and even the home itself. Because they act slowly, not many people realize they have a problem till there’s a big problem.  Many people do not even realize they have a problem until they have their home inspection prior to the buying or selling of a home.  We have asked Mark, a Dallas Home Inspector to give us his thoughts on wood eating insects.

Pest control can seem expensive and when it is not done in time, a property can be damaged leading to great losses.  It’s important to spot the signs which tell you your house is being taken over by thousands, possibly millions, of tiny creatures. The following are four steps to determine whether pests have taken over your home.

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Roof Repairs or Replace

roof-repair

Should I Repair/Keep My Roof or Totally Replace

Considering the long-term costs associated with roof repair and renovation, you need to make the right decisions so that you ensure your shelter as well as finances are guaranteed. Based on the needs and the structural considerations of your existing roof, roof repair contractors will provide you with the available options for renovating your roof. If you want to minimize the cost of repair, you need to take decisions based on the condition of your roof. Depending on the underlying condition of your roof, you can decide to replace or have a new none altogether. If your roof has wear and tear, or has localized rots under the shingles, then simply replacing the shingles over the existing layer would benefit you. However, if the roof has been greatly damaged by a fallen tree limb, water infiltration after rain, wind or storm damage, and snow accumulation, then you should definitely replace it for good!

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When to Replace Your Water Heater

water-heater-in-garage

Know Your Water Heater

Like most people, you wouldn’t bother replacing a water heater until it actually has problems. This problems usually happens at the worst possible times, when you’ve had a long day in the office and just needs a hot shower or when you have company visiting.   No matter the scenario, waiting for there to be a major problem never seems to work out at a good time.

 
Some people never suggest you replace the water heater until there’s something actually wrong with it, which as I mentioned above is a really bad idea. Water heaters can last up to ten years (fifteen if you’re lucky) but they don’t last forever. When your water heater is getting near 10 years old or older you should have a plumber check it out. The plumber would probably advise you on how much time it has left and how to manage it.

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Home Insulation Problems?

blown-insulation

Keeping It Green – Wasting Money, Literally Because You have a Poor Seal and are Low on Insulation

insulationInsulation – it’s something you rarely see or think about. But it could be costing you hundreds of dollars a year in utility bills. The hot air is sucked out into the cold during the winter and the hot air from outside will come in during the summer. Did you know that before 1980 most building codes didn’t require insulation in exterior walls? And many older homes have no insulation at all!

Before we talk about the different types of insulation and the pros and cons, let’s first address what the purpose of insulation even is. Insulation is meant to stop the transfer of air from one location to another. If it is colder outside your house than inside, the purpose is to keep the hot air in and the cold air out. The air around us is always trying to be exactly equal. That’s why if you take a hot coffee in an open mug outside, the hot air will rise out of the mug and cold air will take it’s place. The air transfer will stop once the contents of the mug reach the exact same temperature as the air outside the mug.

This is exactly what is happening in your home. If it is 75 degrees in your home and 50 degrees outside, the natural tendency of hot air would be to leave your home, allowing cold air to come in, until your house reaches 50 degrees. Insulation is a barrier to stop the movement of that air. The exact opposite happens in the summer. The cooler inside air will want to switch places with the hot air outside. The purpose of all insulation is to stop that transfer, although some do it better than others.

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Do you have a Foundation Problem

cracked-concrete

Cracking Tiles – Tight Doors – Do you have a Foundation Problem?

Foundations are vital to the function of the rest of the house. The foundation is the structure that the entire home is built on and when the foundation starts to fail, the rest of the house is not far behind. Many times however, it is hard to tell if your foundation has a problem. Foundations are usually poured almost totally underground so that you may only be able to see a few inches of the actual concrete between the last row of siding and the ground.

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