RRIO City of Seattle House Inspections

The city of Seattle has a program to ensure that all rental properties within the city meet a certian level of livability.  It is not an exhaustive or intrusive exam by any means.  It really is a quick review of the essentials.  It ensures things like smoke dectors and heat in every room are being provided.  It ensures there are no life and safety issues going on, such as gas leaks or invasive pests.

Signs of Repairs

During a good home inspection, like the ones from the House Inspection Team, your inspector will be ACTIVELY OBSERVING your house looking for signs and signals of change and out of normal.  Sometimes it stands out, like in our picture above, and sometimes only from our experience can we see the story.

Common Window Failure -

As I often mention we live in a harsh environment and our homes take the brunt of it.  Windows are exposed and not as stong as other building materials so there is a lot of movement and that means opportunity to fail.  During a good house inspection, like the ones I give, everywindow will be examend closely. 

Retaining Walls -

Especially here in our undulating topogrophy we use alot of retaining walls. These will be discussed during the lot and grounds section of most standard home inspection reports.  This is an especially important section for a family with childern as children tend to climb on these structures, more so than the trees even.

Attic Storage Over Insulation

Building products have really come along way.  Today there are many types insulation that can be used in our homes.  Two very common types to use is the blown-in loose fill and batt insulation.  Batt insulation are the commonly seen pink rolls or bundles and they are in the form of a strip and fit inbetween the house joist or lays directly on the top of the joists.

Plumbing challenges -

On a recent home inspection I came across the above situation where two pipes of different material had not been seperated and it has caused corrosion.  Areas with corriosion are more prone to leaking, therefore it is not desirable. When an inspector finds this, it will always be called out in the report.

House Inspection - Siding Damage

Vinyl siding is a high quality product and is very good to use in our climate and weather.  Vinyl is fundamentally a plasitic and heat is the enemy of plastic causing it to melt, which can not be repaired.

As you can see in the picture above the work on this electrical panel is pretty clean and looks very nice.  There are so many different contractors out there but you can always tell the good ones by the work they leave behind that I see in my home inspections.