Common Home Inspection Finds: Can You Spot Them?

OK, CandysDirt.com readers, you know a thing or two about houses and home ownership. Time to put your knowledge to the test, and see if you’ve been paying attention.

Today, at #UponCloserInspection we’ve got some images from the field, and we want you to put your inspector’s hat on and see if you can spot these common home inspection finds.

1. The Panel Box

We’ll start with an easy one because there are so many things wrong with this picture, you should be able to find at least one:

Hopefully, you noticed the plethora of loose, tangled wires right off the bat. We’ve also got sharp edges (always a no-no around electricity), no cover plate on the box, the pipe that’s just hanging there, and mismatched breakers (if you have a GE panel box you’re supposed to have GE breakers).

Did you notice the white and silver discoloration on the top right breaker? That one has caught fire, and given this … situation, there’s a solid chance it will do so again.

There are also some aluminum wires in that mess, which are not common home inspection finds — not since aluminum wiring was found to cause house fires. It was used in homes built before 1972 but should be immediately replaced.

This is basically an electrician’s dream — like a going-to-pay-for-my-kid’s-braces kind of dream. Here’s what a normal panel box, not installed and tinkered with by a monster looks like:

2. The Kitchen

This one is a little more challenging, so look closely.

Need a hint? Look toward the ceiling.

If you noticed that there is several inches difference between the distance between the cabinets and the ceiling on the right and the left sides, you are correct! Maybe it was a choice not to continue the tile above the cabinets … or maybe they just couldn’t. Either way, something went badly wrong. Either the room is out of level because of foundation issues or the cabinets were installed unevenly. 😖

3. The Foundation Fix

Do you know what they did wrong here?

It’s pretty hard to fix your own foundation when you have a slab foundation, but some handy homeowners aren’t too scared to shimmy into the crawlspace to save a few dollars when it comes to pier and beam foundations. So these kinds of DIY repairs are pretty common home inspection finds.

Unfortunately, this is more like a leaning tower of Jenga, than an actual repair. They’ve used a wooden board as a base, some bricks, and a wedge to prop up the beam, where one supposes they were perceiving sagging or movement. The problems are that the wood pieces will attract wood-destroying insects, and will get moist and fail quickly. The bricks aren’t held together at all and, as you can see are already falling apart.

In a professional foundation repair, they might have chosen to add metal shims to the existing concrete pier to level out the floor like in this repair:

How did you do? I bet you did great. If not, go to “Categories” on CandysDirt.com, and click Upon Closer Inspection, and do a little homework! Or if you got them all, check out more #houseporn for fixer-upper nerds and real estate junkies like us at the same link.