Sewer Scoping and Home Inspections
Sewer Scoping and Home Inspections
Having a sewer scope done while the home inspector completes his works looks like a no-brainer. After all, the home inspector will not be checking the plumbing under the slab of the house or underground.
I agree. That's why I recommend professionals to do sewer line inspections with professional grade equipment.
Why don't I do it myself? All the home inspector organizations say it is a great add-on that will make me a lot of money.
The truth is that I did offer sewer scoping with home inspections in Moscow and Pullman and Lewiston. But, the same as with home inspections, a person who does six a day is going to be far better at sewer scoping, finding problems before their YOUR problem, than a home inspector who does it on an occasional basis.
Also, in the State of Washington, a contractor's license from Labor and Industries is required to perform sewer scoping. I let my lapse when I stop sewer scoping. None of the inspectors in Pullman or Clarkston carry the license, either.
So, I recommend the following companies for sewer scoping here:
All will do a great job for you. They're pros in their field.
And, if you need a pro in the home inspection field, please give me a call. I'd be delighted to be of service.
Want To Be an Expert Witness? Careful What You Wish For!
Background - How a Lawsuit Begins
Home inspectors live in terror of phone calls from lawyers. Well, most home inspectors. I do a fair number of inspections for lawyers for their personal purchases. They are detail-oriented and precise, and I enjoy working with them. Still, there’s a bit of a gulp when you find out that the attorney does not want to schedule an inspection. Instead, litigation is under way. In this case, the lawyer that contacted me needed an expert witness. The case, he explained without going into details, involved a local inspector which meant there would be blow-back from the community. Would I be willing?
I tentatively agreed subject to reviewing what they had - I won’t work as a witness in a case I do not believe has merit. I asked how the lawyer had heard of me - this isn’t a service that I’ve advertised. In this case, the lawyer had sent queries around, and my name was mentioned by several attorneys in the region as someone who had done outstanding research work in previous cases and was very solid on the stand. (Pro tip: be prepared and tell the truth - it’s just not that complicated.) There was a second industry recommendation, but we’ll get to that a bit later below.
And, honestly, my first reaction, once I heard the name, was to think that the plaintiffs were mistaken. The inspector named in the suit (no, I’m not sharing it - if you are that curious, my deposition is part of the public record as are the other pertinent details of the case including names) is a very experienced inspector. No way he would make a mistake egregious enough to warrant a legal action.
Every inspector has a story about a client who didn’t read the report and gets ‘surprised’ later. I had one last year, in fact, exactly like this. I defected a roof, said it needed short-term replacement, said it would be expensive, get a roofer out to provide an estimate - and the client complained after the fact. I pointed this out in detail to him and he left a bad review. Such is the life of a home inspector. I thought this was the same type of scenario.
Until I saw the first pictures, that is. Then, I had a “oh holy hell!” moment.
At the heart of the case was an inspection that was performed on a log home that was about 15 years old. Log homes present special challenges to home inspectors and most lack the training to do a good job on these structures. The inspector failed to report, in writing, extensive damage to the logs. By extensive, estimates ranged from $100,000-$300,000 dollars in needed repairs. That is, by way of understatement, a big miss.
Becoming the Expert Witness
I met a partner in the law firm for coffee in Pullman and we went through an initial review. He had a binder with the inspection report and a sample of pictures from the inspector. Visible in the pictures was wood rot, extensive failure of finish coatings on the logs (which is a critical failure point), failed chinking, and assorted other visible defects. It was about the seventh picture that I told the gentleman flipping pages that this home needed a log home expert to perform repairs.
As it turned out, they had contacted a top-notch log home restoration contractor. That was the source of my second recommendation. I had inspected a log home in 2018 with similar damage. Unfortunately, I was working for the seller on a pre-listing inspection. Itemizing all the damage and explaining it to her was agonizing. I hate giving bad news - but it is my job. I try to do so with some compassion but, at the end of the day, I have to be accurate. The log home contractor that she brought in also worked on the home at the heart of the litigation. He referred me as some who was extremely knowledgeable who also knew when to call in the cavalry.
Apparently I passed the initial test, so we set a time to meet at the property. That occurred in April of 2019. The damage was even worse than I thought from the pictures. Portions of the logs were so soft I could depress the wood with my thumb. I use a 3” awl for probing and had several places where I buried it to the hilt. The chinking was in terrible condition as was the finish coat. To make matters worse, there were entry holes that looked like they were made by carpenter ants.
When I mentioned that to the lawyer who was accompanying me, he mentioned that a carpenter ant infestation was the trigger for the legal action. Second test passed, and I was offered the opportunity to be their expert witness. (Below - See #34- I’ll explain why they were testing me so much.)
The whole process took until February of this year to resolve. My clients, per the lawyer, negotiated a settlement with the inspector’s insurance company. I’m not privy to the details of the settlement so I have no idea what the terms were. I’m also not going to go into all the details of the process, the research I did, and depositions given. I found them fascinating, especially the research angle, but this doesn’t have any of the pizzazz of a Grisham novel, so we’ll move on to the lessons learned portion of this article.
Lessons Learned as an Expert Witness
Always Get a Signed Contract - Before the Inspection
The inspector in this case did not have a signed inspection agreement before he did the inspection. This immediately became a problem when things went south. In many cases, an insurance company will not even cover the inspector without the agreement, and I’m surprised that this one expended so much money.
Without a clearly written agreement that lays out the responsibilities of both parties, it becomes a he said/they said issue. The contract will lay out the Standard of Practice used, the exclusions, and the limits of liability. For the inspector, this is absolutely critical. Without a signed agreement PRIOR to the inspection, the home inspector is nearly naked in the face of a lawsuit. The various courts have consistently held that a contract signed after the inspection is done under duress.
For the customer, the agreement explains the what they can expect to be inspected, the means of reporting, and lays out their rights in the event there is a grievance.
I feel so strongly about this that I will not leave to inspect a home without the agreement being signed first.
2. If It is Not in Writing, It Doesn’t Count. Period. Full Stop. Do Not Pass Go!
I don’t know how many times, during the deposition with the opposing attorney, that he asked “Well, the inspector told him about it in a phone call. Doesn’t that count?”
No, it doesn’t. The written report is the record that counts. All the standards in our region – Washigton State SoP, ASHI, InterNACHI – require a written report. None mandates the format of the report (though some states do) and the level of detail can vary pretty dramatically.
I use a narrative style report heavy with pictures and, often, video. A decade or more ago, I abandoned the old “Satisfactory, Marginal, Defective” categories. My reasoning then was that the tendency was to move everything into the marginal category so inspector could say he identified a problem but for the same inspector to avoid defecting components since that irks real estate agents. This minimization of issues is prohibited by the various Standards of Practice but is devilishly hard to prove since oftentimes a defect is a matter of opinion.
In this case, the inspector had marked the siding and finish coatings “Satisfactory.” Clearly, they were not even close to being in satisfactory condition. Further, he stated, in writing, that the home was well-maintained.
As a defense, he and his lawyer attempted to argue that he verbally informed them of the true condition of the logs. As they say in the sports world, “Scoreboard, baby!” If it wasn’t in writing, it didn’t count. Those logs were bad, the finish coating and chinking were bad, and the report called them “Satisfactory.”
3. You HAVE to Follow the Standard!
The Standards are not pie-in-the-sky aspirations. They are literally the minimum allowable operating procedures for a home inspection. In the case of Washington, the standard is mandated by regulations from the Department of Licensing. In the case of Idaho, the minimum is set by the Inspection Agreement. Now, I admit, the contract could specify the minimum as “Whatever, the inspector feels like identifying on the day of inspection” but I doubt most customers would sign such a stipulation. Most contracts will specify either the ASHI or InterNACHI Standards of Practice. Personally, I worked on and believe in the Washington SoP, so I use it everywhere. Other inspectors float back and forth between standards.
In this case, the ASHI SoP clearly states, “provide the client with a written report, using a format and medium selected by the inspector, that states:
“1. those systems and components inspected that, in the professional judgment of the inspector, are not functioning properly, significantly deficient, unsafe, or are near the end of their service lives,”
One avenue that the lawyer tried to sieze was the phrase “in the professional judgment of the inspector”. While that might be an explanation for the inspector’s written comments, it is not a shield to being wrong. You can be very professional and very wrong at the same time. Being massively wrong gets you sued – as it should.
The second issue is not techinial but ethical. As such, it is not part of the Standard of Practice but built on the Code of Ethics which works hand-in-hand with the Standards. In this case, the following provision came to bear:
“2. Inspectors shall act in good faith toward each client and other interested parties. A. Inspectors shall perform services and express opinions based on genuine conviction and only within their areas of education, training, or experience. B. Inspectors shall be objective in their reporting and not knowingly understate or overstate the significance of reported conditions..”
I stated directly that I felt the inspector had intentionally minimized the findings. His lawyer challenged me on that, stating I could not know that. My response was (paraphrasing), “He either minimized the findings or he is grossly incompentent – and I’ve never considered him to be incompetent.”
I stand by my assessment. Sadly, minimizing report findings is an everyday occurrence in the home inspection industry. He isn’t alone; he just got caught.
4. Not All Expert Witnesses are Expert
I worked as the expert witness for the plaintiffs. The home inspector and seller’s had their own experts. In the case of the home inspector, the person he chose was an associate of many years standing. This, unfortunately, does not necessarily make for a good expert. The ‘expert’ no longer worked in the home inspection field in any capacity. Further, in 2010, he worked on the Washington side as an unlicensed inspector – a fact I knew as I received the complaint that came in from another local inspector and forwarded it to the appropriate Department of Licensing personnel.
Reading his deposition was eye-opening, not so much of his original statements as for the evolution of his statements. He initially maintained that nothing untoward had occurred, that the home inspector operated fully within standard, and that phone calls were fine for documentation. By the end of the deposition, he had allowed that it probably would have been a good idea to have provided written documentation of the damage that existed and was supposedly discussed on the phone call.
Gee, you think? We went from everything was by the book to undocumented damage was present. And he’s the guy on YOUR side?
He also maintained that a visual inspection does not require the use of any tools or any of the other senses. Really quite astonishing.
5. People Will Lie
This was a bit of an eye-opener for me. That people lie is not the surprise. That the inspector involved would lie, both about the inspection process and in the aftermath of losing, was. He, as with his ‘expert’ witness maintained that he was not required to do anything other than look at the home, completely ignoring the standards of practice and the significant training that he has had. It was so blatant that I went to his website to document, from his own photo gallery, instances where he had performed the activities of home inspection that he was now saying were not within the standard.
He also has expended significant energy in slandering me to real estate agents and other inspectors if the stories I hear are true. I’m a big boy, so I don’t really care with one little quibble. He told at least one person that I stabbed him in the back. Not true. I sat there and gave my testimony with him at the table. If I wouldn’t say it to his face – which I did – I wouldn’t say it at all.
6.Anything You Say in the Past WILL Get Dredged Up
This proved interesting. If you work as an expert witness, expect the other lawyer to do anything they can to impune your reputation. Fair enough.
In this case, the defendent’s attorney brought up a situation from a decade ago involving another inspector along with some other websites that I had purchased.
I had posted on my website a small table that listed the top four inspectors in the region and their license status. It’s important to note that in 2004, all home inspectors were required to hold a Structural Pest Inspector license. This requirement was removed when home inspector licensing was passed. After licensure, a home inspector was not required to continue with an SPI, though many did. I carried mine until 2014 but the market here didn’t support the cost and liability to maintain the SPI license.
SPI licenses renew on the first of the year and the WSDA, who governs the program, has a searchable database. In early February of 2009, it was clear who had renewed – and who had not.
I gathered the information and posted it. Two of the top four were licensed, two were not.
In April/May of 2009, I received a letter from legal counsel of one of those unlicensed inspectors stating that I had committed an act of defamation that had a negative financial impact on his client. I responded, in writing, that truth is an absolute defense against defamation. I also checked his license status, found that he had finally renewed, and removed my chart online. Fair is fair, though the inspector could have accomplished the same thing with a phone call. Or, you know, actually renewed his license in January instead of late April.
As for the websites, I am an entrepreneur. At this writing, I have two businesses after shuttering two others in the last 24 months. I have plans for another business in the next two years after I sell off my chimney sweep business. I experiment, find industries both under-served and that I can excel at, and invest time and money into them.
Having said that, I was born to inspect, I am outstanding at the process, and expect to do home inspections until I’m too decrepit to do them well.
7. Home Inspectors Can Massively Screw Up and Stay in Business
After having lost his case against my clients, you’d think that the inspector would be out of business. Nope. He’s still inspecting, though I suspect it is without insurance.
I have little advice to offer on this to potential customers. There’s no way for you to verify an inspector’s integrity. If you ask him if he’s been sued, he’ll just lie. If you ask the real estate agent, they won’t, or don’t want to, know.
Right now, in Pullman, we have inspectors who perform home and sewer scope inspections without the proper licenses. Some don’t even have a business license to operate in the state. Agents use them and never check.
In Washington, you can check for license status. In Idaho, there is no way to verify anything except a basic business license.
8. There Will Be a Price to Pay
As I mentioned above, the inspector involved in this case has been blathering about getting stabbed in the back. That sort of negative commentary in small towns will hurt your business as the good-’ol-boy club kicks into gear.
I have had agents blacklist me and have had reports of whole agencies considering doing the same. This is the reason that I am no longer a member of Realtor associations in the area. After 14 years, I declined this year to renew as I cannot justify, in my own mind and to my standards, supporting organizations that would allow a restraint of trade and promote the use of unlicensed activities.
9. You Will Know Who Respects You
I am blessed to have a cadre of professionals who use me on their own projects and refer my services. They have heard the stories, they have dealt with other agents who try to blacklist me, and they know that I’m a honest, competent inspector. To have their support, professionally and personally, is humbling. These are people – and the clients that they represent - that I will run through walls for.
I Need to Lose 10 Pounds - Or Gain 25!
Video first.
So, ask yourself - would you go in there. There’s a concrete foundation wall blocking half the access. It doesn’t show, but there’s a 4” plumbing drain line to the left of the opening. There’s also communications wiring tangling everything up. The shelf above is just a bonus head-knocker.
I always give it a try but I’ve developed a phrase for nearly impossible to get into (and get OUT of, too) places. Home Inspector Yoga. This one fit the definition. And, while I always give it a go, nothing says I get to enjoy it.
The problem was that I didn’t exactly fit that hole. It took about five minutes of twisting, turning, jabbing various body parts into the opening in different sequences before I found the combo and managed to slither in.
Then I had a seventy foot crawl with dust everywhere, spiders everywhere, and no clearance to speak of. It was drag myself ahead with my elbows and push with toes. Get my butt any higher than that and I’d have wedged myself into the joists. It got lower and lower as I went, too.
I found some wood rot but not as much as I expected. Found a ladder down at the front of the space. That piqued my curiosity, so I dug my way under a plumbing drain to see what was going on.
Any hopes for a secret tunnel to hidden treasures were sadly dashed. It was an old plumbing main. Bummer, dude.
Off to the right though was a thoroughly impressive habitation tube. No signs of live insects, which is encouraging. (Still referring the whole thing to a Pest Control Operator.) I like the way it wrapped around the heating duct work.
At that point, I was done. Time to extricate myself. Problem number uno - I didn’t have room to turn around. So, baby scootch backwards until I can find a slightly wider spot to pull a U-turn. Then, back to the access.
Remember the gyrations I went through getting in?
I had help.
From gravity.
Getting out? Oh, boy. I tried following the path I had used getting into the crawlspace (and, arguably into trouble.) I twisted, I turned, I pivoted, I cussed. If I find out what idiot plumber put that pipe there, he and I will have a discussion, probably at very high volume. About half way through the process it occurred to me that I might not be able to get back out. That would be bad since I was in a vacant building. No client to go for help, either. So, once I got done being a mite angry, I put my thinking cap on.
I tied the communication cables that were trapping my legs up to the plumbing with an old dust mask some other workman left behind. I went ninety degrees off my entry angle, and levered one arm up and out. So far, so good. I used that arm to take the weight off my side so I could press with my legs. Hah! Success!
It took nearly ten minutes to get back out. I took a picture of my coveralls. They were spotlessly clean (and navy blue) before I went into the crawlspace.
The whole process took about 35 minutes and presented my with a dilemma. If I were ten pounds lighter, I think that would have gone a bit easier.
Alternatively, if I were 25 pounds heavier, I’d never have tried in the first place.
Somebody pass me a donut while I figure this out. And some potato chips?
Why Are Heat Pumps on Pedestals?
Ever walk past an a/c unit and wonder why it had 'legs' under it? Okay, maybe not, but there's a reason that some due and some don't. Watch to see what clues those legs provide us.
Building a Solar Collector
Things get slow over the winter season for me and, as they say, idle hands do the devil's work. In this case, they built a solar collector for my garage.
The project did not require any fancy materials and the basic plans were available on the internet (though I tweaked them considerably.) All told, the project took a couple of days. For someone handy, it would have been a single day project, but my fine carpentry skills start and stop at the "Honey, where's my sledge hammer?" stage.
Building the Collector
My first step, after gathering supplies, was to build the collector itself. Since I can’t follow a simple recipe, this is where I began deviating from the plans. The colector sits inside the frame and absorbs the solar energy. I intended to use a small duct fan to boost air flow, so instead of designing the system to flow up the screen using natural convection, I made it a down-draft panel with the cold air coming in at the top and the fan sucking the warm air from the bottom.
Then I made three more changes. The original plans called for two layers of mesh. I went with five. I also changed the material from the plastic mesh to black aluminum screeen. (In hindgsight, I think the black plastic mesh would work just as well.) The final change in the collector was to add black plastic to each layer in a staggered pattern so that the air is always in contact with a solid, warm surface.
To anchor all the mesh, I used a frame of 1x2 lumber and mounted each layer on lathe strips (because they are skinny and cheap.)
Building the Box Frame
This is where my general lack of handiness asserted itself. This was combined with at least one moment of total nit-wittery. We’ll get to that shortly.
I spent a bit more money to buy pressure treated 2x12 lumber for the exterior frame. It can be done with less expensive materials, but I paid the additional cost in the dual expectation that the collector would work (there were doubts among friends, family, and the neighbors) and that it would last the next 20 years.
I cut the wood to fit with the bottom edge of the supporting side beveled to improve my angle to the sun. Then I inserted the top and bottom planks and proved to myself that I can be an idiot.
I built the collector to be four feet by eight feet. When I inserted the top and bottom, they were slightly larger than four feet so I could get the collector in without busting it apart. So far, no problem. I bolted everything together, easy as pie. Then I tried to drop the collector in – and discovered my little math error. The collector wouldn’t fit by 1.5 inches. When I measured for the longer axis, I neglected to account for the thickness of the bottom board.
Crud. Given no choice but to undue my work, I did. Re-measured (carefully this time!) and put everything back together. This time, the interior collector fit, if a bit snugger than I intended.
Insulate, Seal, And Ductwork
The next phase was to insulate the box with foam and caulk seal all the joints. Pro-tip for homeowners – if you want to save money on heating and cooling, don’t by a fancier furnace or expensive windows. Insulate and air seal – you’ll get your money back in a year or two.
Once the insulation was in and I got caulk smeared everywhere, I added the ductwork using inexpensive dryer ducting. I insulated that, too. Flipping it over, I caulked the plexiglass to the front of the frame and the collector was ready to move to the south side of the garage.
Remember the bevel cut at the bottom? The second purpose for that was to add stability to the whole frame so I wouldn’t need to screw it to my wall. The frame is heavy enough that wind will not bother it.
The ductwork extended past the back of the box enough to enter in a window. Just as I didn’t want a dozen screw holes in my siding, I didn’t want to cut holes into it, either. So, the window. I framed out ducts with more insulation, sealed with expansion foam and used the window to lock things down tight across the top the same way you would with a window air conditioner.
On the inside of my unheated garage, I ran a 20 foot length of dryer duct and added the fan. The discharge point is right over the laundry machines. The fan is on a timer.
So Does It Work?
Better than expected, actually. The heat on a sunny day coming from the collector exits at better than 100 degrees. Remember that this piece of ducting is 20 feet long, so there is considerable temperature loss along the length of it. When I measured the immediate discharge piping with my infrared camera, the temperature was over 140 degrees. Very pleasing!
On really cloudy, rainy days, it works, but not as effectively. The heat output is usually between six and ten degrees above the input temperature, so it is still heating.
During an average winter, the garage gets down to freezing and stays there. This year, it has gotten as warm as a balmy 63 degrees.
All in all, a fun project that will also save me money in the long run, and it’s kind to Mother Nature. I think I’ll build another one next year for my office.
Washington State License #215
Former SBCC Member, Former Chairman State Home Inspector Advisory Licensing Board.