The 4 Independent Inspections Every Custom Home Needs | Ep. 37

So they're really the lowest level that you could build a home to, you know, without getting in legal trouble for a contractor so a part of your home building process is you've got your contractor hopefully they've got a project manager or superintendent that's handling the coordination and quality control of things but then you'll also have a city inspector and they come by periodically to sign off on your permit card so you have multiple checkpoints and then at the end is when you get a final sign off and your project is officially permitted yay the problem with that when it comes to having a goal of like a high performance robust watertight healthy home is that that city inspector is not in alignment with your vision you have likely never sat down and have had a conversation with your city inspector and that's not what their job is to do they are there to walk the job and check off or make corrections to just the permitting requirements so that is why we really like to push for independent home inspections because it is somebody that you typically you as a homeowner you're hiring them independently to carry out your vision when it comes to a home inspection.

So it's somebody that you're hiring where you can actually have a conversation with, I'm really concerned about the moldy lumber or I'm really concerned about the moisture content or I have concerns about maybe the vapor barrier below the slab goes down.

Those might even be conversations that are that you may not be able to have, and that's okay.

You can even just have a conversation with the inspector and say, I am coming from a home that ruined our family with mold.

We had water damage, we had leaks, we had this, we had that, and I just never wanna go through that again.

So I wanna hire you to go out and do independent inspections.

This is the best money that you can spend during construction because it's very cost-effective.

For the most part, a new construction, independent home inspection is a couple hundred bucks each time they come out.

But what they're doing when they come out is you've already had a conversation with them, shared a bit about what your goals are.

And when they come out, they are taking photos of your project.

They are taking pictures.

pictures easily like 20 30 40 pictures of everything in your home and they're going through and noting where there might be corrections needed things that maybe got missed or home inspections or even taking moisture meters to lumber saying here's a picture this lumber's over 30 40 percent moisture content and that's a red flag then it is put into a report where very easily that report is just emailed over to the contractor to the architect to whoever is involved in the project saying here's a list of corrections needed that is going to feel so much better than you having to carry the burden of showing up to the job site every day try and spot red flags although you're not that familiar with construction so you don't know what you don't know and you have a conversation with the contractor and the contractor tells you it's fine it's supposed to look like that that happens very often.

And it can feel like they're gaslighting you.

Not that they're doing this maliciously, it's just maybe that's how they've always done it.

And for your project to be a healthy home and really hit your goals, you should be able to have an independent home inspector come out and do all of that documentation.

It makes for a much more streamlined conversation where a licensed independent inspector came out.

This is what they found.

Mr. or Mrs.

Contractor, please make these corrections.

That's a much simpler conversation than you feeling like you have to show up and... spot things that might or might not be done incorrectly so if you're going to go down the path of hiring an independent home inspector there's at least four inspections that we'd like to see now our like full comprehensive inspection list for our consulting clients has over 50 inspections on it some of them are handled by the city some are not but we want to give like every available option so that the goal isn't here's a list of 50 inspections that you need to do.