What's This About An Inspection?!

Before you have any major work performed on your home, you may need to get your property inspected twice: once before the work is started and again after the work is complete. Your need for an inspection (and the number of times that the inspection is required) depends upon the laws of your state or city and the type of work that you plan on having done. A simple paint job for the interior of your home for example, doesn't need an inspection however a siding job does. In fact, a siding job requires an inspection before the job even starts and after the job is complete.

Why? Basically, the community that you live in requires that your section of the neighborhood isn't a hazard and that it's safe for both you and others around it. A home that isn't up to code is dangerous and to protect its citizens, laws enforce that home improvements must be quality work and must not be constructed in such a way that it risks the lives of others. These codes also attempt to enforce a standard quality of living and to protect its property value.

Even though they may seem like a pain, inspections that are required after a job is complete are really designed to protect you. According to the laws in some areas, you legally can not pay a contractor unless an inspector approves the completed work.

So if you're having cement work, stucco, or wood installed on the outside of your home, inspectors will look for cracks after the job is complete, and require that they be repaired before you release payment. If you're having a new roof installed or you're having an existing roof repaired, inspectors will check to ensure that all its shingles are in place, all the tiles are in one piece, and that the wood isn't damaged.

Other things that inspectors look for are good tuck pointing jobs, sealed windows, and strong fencing - of course depending on the type of work that you're having done. Inside the home, inspectors won't want to see plumbing problems or cracks on the floors or walls. Nor will they want to notice any strange smells or sense a lack of proper ventilation. If an inspector detects these things - the job that you had contracted won't pass and will have to be corrected until these problems no longer exist.

An inspector's assessment of a completed job isn't just based on word alone so you can certainly challenge the findings in the written report if you think its justified. Remember, an inspection report exists to protect you from paying for shoddy work, and to ensure that the work you're paying for is up to code. Otherwise, you could open yourself to other problems later on down the road - whether those problems are code violations or health hazards.

In most cases, you don't have to worry about finding an inspector. Because some jobs like siding require an inspection before it even begins, your contractor will bring an inspector onto the job site for you.

Author Paul White represents FloridaHomeBuild.com. A site designed to help home owners from Florida locate local home contractors with their home improvement projects.
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