Tech Tools in inspections

Intro: 00:00:01

Welcome to Thoughts from the Crawl Space, a podcast where our goal as home inspection experts is to support and serve our community.

Whether you're a homeowner, home buyer, real estate agent, or investor, we believe everyone deserves solutions to their homeownership challenges and inspiration along the way. Your path to success starts here.

Jamie: 00:00:20

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Thoughts from the Crawl Space.

Today, we are going to dive into technology, how it is helping home inspectors find things that otherwise you would not be able to find. So, big picture why tech is changing home inspection.

We know technology is changing pretty much everything out there in the world, and home inspection is no different. Now, home inspectors used to rely heavily on experience, eyesight, intuition.

Some of the best inspectors I've ever known needed nothing more than a flashlight and their eyes, and they were really good at what they did. And they still are, and we still are. But why not enhance that a little bit if necessary or if possible, in a convenient way?

Modern tools don't replace inspectors. They just extend human senses.

And so tech helps inspectors to see what's hidden, to measure instead of guess, which helps the transaction go more, more smoothly. They document findings more clearly. They reduce liability and miss defects. And buyers and agents now expect a higher level of detail and proof.

home inspection back in, oh,: 2001

He had a flashlight and a screwdriver or an ice pick and paper and pen. And the report was a white sheet with a carbon sheet and then a yellow sheet, so he had the carbon in between.

And he would write on the one page, and it would transfer through to the other one, kind of like checkbook, if you got the duplicates. And he would give one copy to the buyer, and he'd keep one copy. You know what? He was a great inspector, did a great job.

But technology has advanced a little bit more than that. And everybody involved, they want a good inspection first, but they also want convenience, and they want that digital aspect of a report.

And so that technology has changed greatly as well. So let's talk about a few tools that help inspectors to do their job well. So some of the drawbacks of them, maybe some limitations on some of them.

So let's start with the big one that everybody talks about, and that's drones. All right, what do drones do? Well. Well, number one, they do roof inspections without climbing on the roof.

They can check chimneys, upper siding, flashing, and gutters. Most Inspectors will tell you they much prefer to walk the roof. You get on the roof, you look down, you can feel it, you can hear it when you walk.

Certain roofs, shingles, the age of them, they may look good from the ground, but they. They're maybe crunchy, they're brittle, and that's sometimes hard to tell just visually from a ladder or from the ground, even from a drone.

So that's why walking it is most much preferred. But there are certain circumstances. Physically, maybe you can't walk Bruce, as much as you used to. Maybe the roof's too steep to walk safely.

Maybe it's raining and it's wet and you got moss and it wouldn't be safe. And of course, like right now, snow.

But if you got snow on a roof, maybe there are some areas that could be seen if you could get to them, but the snow's still hanging out around the eaves and you can't get past that part. So drones can go where humans can't, I think, especially at the top of chimneys. This is a really big one.

You can't see down the chimney even if you're on the roof, because the chimney could extend several feet above the roof line. It's just not safe to drag a ladder up there and prop it up against there and climb to the top.

So that's another way that they can help get the information you need without causing undue risk for the home inspector. So overall, why they matter? Safety number one, fewer ladder risks.

Almost every fall that occurs from a home inspector isn't from the inspector being on the roof. It's from transferring from the ladder to the roof or the roof back to the ladder. And that's where most of the falls happen.

This eliminates that possibility. Speed. Potentially, you can do a faster assessment with a drone. Now, this matter, your skill level with the drone matters.

If you're struggling to operate the thing, obviously it's going to take you longer to do the inspection, but in general, a drone is going to do it pretty quickly. You can fly that thing back and forth pretty quickly. You can go in circles, however you want to do it and get the information that you need. Coverage.

Even if you walk some roofs, there may be areas you can't get to. It might be multi level. It might just have obstructions that keep you going from certain areas.

If it's too hot outside, believe it or not, you don't want to walk certain roofs because you could damage the shingles more easily. They're very soft, very susceptible to damage, and then just giving you visual proof the technology on drones is, has just come a long way.

You can zoom in, you can set certain parameters. So it's just going to take a slow roll around it. Take video. You can, I mean, you can practically set the drone on the roof.

You can get close enough to take pictures. So, you know, drones have their place. There's, there's downsides to them. Sometimes when you have a lot of trees in the area, they don't work so well.

You don't have a great signal. If you're near airports, there's limitations on what you're allowed to do with them. So all those things combined can cause an issue with drones.

But in general, it gives you the opportunity to do some things you couldn't otherwise do. Another tech, techy type tool that inspectors use on inspections. And again, not all inspectors do this at Gold Key. We certainly do this if you.

And we almost couldn't live without them anymore. And that's thermal cameras. Thermal cameras tell a story. Okay, so let me just say this right up front.

On thermal cameras, they are not moisture detectors in and of themselves, all right? They won't tell you if something is wet or not. What do thermal cameras reveal? Well, they can reveal missing or damaged insulation.

They can reveal air leaks or thermal bridging. They can reveal overheating electrical components. Have you ever taken a thermal image of a dimmer switch in a basement with 16 lights on it?

Well, we have.

You might feel it before you see it, but it can really show the temperature of switches or light fixtures or components coming into an electrical panel and all that. And indirectly, they can show you moisture intrusion.

I'll explain a little more later on how we combine this with a moisture meter to really give an accurate reading. But they can definitely do that by showing a different color. Now, ultimately, what the thermal cameras see, you'll see trucks out there.

You'll see people advertise, hey, we can see in your walls. No, you really can't. But what thermal cameras do is they detect thermal differences.

Let's say you're in this time of year, it's colder, it's going to be cold outside, it's warm inside.

If you take the thermal camera and you check any part of a wall, the top and the bottom, or around an outlet, or on a door or a window, you're going to see different colors in the screen on that thermal camera. Why is that? Well, you have air leakage at those areas. So we got air leakage. Cold is represented on a thermal camera as blue.

And you see A lot of blue. We know we got air leakage. Well, you're going to have some air leakage.

But what we see with a thermal camera is do we have pretty good insulation here, pretty consistent insulation in the ceiling for the attic or in the walls compared to what the outside temperature is. And you can really detect a lot of potential problems with that. That, yeah, they may go beyond the scope of a home inspection.

But I think in most cases a buyer really wants to know what's going on with the installation in their house. So thermal cameras really are a great non invasive diagnostic tool.

They help prioritize issues that aren't noticeable yet, aren't obvious yet, and they turn vague concerns, individual evidence. Let me talk about a positive example first. You'll see a stain on a ceiling. Let's say you have a two story house.

You see a stain roughly, it lines up with the shower upstairs. Okay, well that would tell you at one point at least, we had a leak. So the home inspector has just run the shower for 15 minutes.

He's filled the tub, he's drained it. Okay, let's check out that thermal.

Take that thermal camera now and check out that stain isn't showing a different color than the surrounding ceiling. And if it does, that could indicate a potential issue.

So if it's all the same, there's no temperature irregularities at all, and you've given it 10 to 15 minutes for any potential water to evaporate and change temperature. That's a pretty good indicator that at least under these conditions you don't have an active leak going on.

So one nuance with thermal cameras that needs to be brought up though is these thermal cameras don't quote, see water. What did I just say? You can see changes in temperature. Well, when water evaporates, it changes temperature, it gets cooler. Right.

And so as you see cooler temperatures, you have an indication there might be a problem right there. And so that's one way that you can. One, one of the best ways to make a transaction go well is to be accurate, obviously. All right.

Thermal images really help you to eliminate. How would you describe this? False positives with proper context. So you don't want to just see a stain and say you have a leak under your shower.

This is a way to say, you know what, we ran it and under these conditions at least there's no signs of a current leak. Now what's the only thing missing? Somebody staining in the shower. That can make a big difference.

Not something we can replicate on an inspection, but certainly we've taken that extra step with the thermal camera to do the best we can at determining if there's a problem.

I think one of the best real world examples that we see is we will run fixtures upstairs or on the main level and there's a downstairs and you know, we try to run water 10 to 15 minutes, fill up the tubs, flush the toilets, drain the sinks, do it all at once, repeat it, whatever it takes to give it a good workout. And you go underneath, you don't see any signs of a problem.

If you got a finished ceiling, you take your thermal camera and you wait long enough, you go under there and boom, there's a big old blue circular or oblong spot on that ceiling. Uh huh. Now we got a sign of a leak.

So that is a way to find something that's causing an issue or will cause an issue, but hasn't created a visual problem yet. Number one, we can fix this problem without damaged drywall in many cases.

Number two, we're not going to have water slowly leaking into the top of ceiling and potentially causing mold issue down the road. So thermal cameras have a, just a very safe, easy way of telling if we got issues or not. Not 100%.

And the next tech I want to talk about goes with thermal cameras and that's moisture meters. Go back to that blue spot I just talked about under a shower.

No visual signs on the ceiling surface, but the thermal is showing a significant abnormality in that area. Now we take our moisture meter which does detect moisture, whether it's surface or pin type.

A pin type has two little pins sticking out the top and you put them in there and they read if the moisture content in that material is greater or less than the areas around it or just a non marring surface of a moisture meter as well. Put it right on that blue spot and it'll tell you it's active or it isn't.

Sometimes you get fooled, sometimes you think, oh, there's an active leak and you put the moisture meter up there and there really isn't sometimes abnormalities. You can't tell exactly what you're looking at. But these two things together really can help us pinpoint moisture intrusion.

Same on walls anywhere where there's potentially moisture intrusion from plumbing or from the exterior. So why do moisture meters matter? Well, it moves inspectors from saying there appears to be to it measures at.

I used to have a business coach that would say when an inspector said it appears to me, it means you don't know what you're talking about. Means you don't have the Answer. And in many cases, that's absolutely right. But with the moisture meter, we can become more clear on what's going on.

We can take a picture of the moisture meter itself that says zero moisture, put it in the report and say, after all the things we did, it showed no moisture. Or we find a leak. We take a picture showing the moisture meter showing elevated moisture.

Take a picture of that, put it in the report, and it clearly demonstrates that we have an issue here that needs to be addressed. It's critical for mold assessment.

If you are doing mold assessments or trying to track it or finding a source for the mold, a moisture meter is crucial not just for surface, but for humidity, just to determine what the humidity level in that, maybe in a basement would be. So talking points to sum up, pairing moisture meters with a thermal camera, you can come to strong conclusions.

Not 100% all the time, but a strong conclusion. And different moisture readings help protect inspectors from liability. And baseline readings are just as important as high readings.

So in other words, if I see that blue spot under that shower, I'm going to take moisture readings in other areas that don't show the blue spots. So I know what my baseline is. May maybe we just have elevated moisture from humidity. We might even have condensation.

And showing okay, here at 7%, 7, 8. And right on that blue spot would be 75. Okay, we know we got a significant issue going on there. Instead of just a crazy abnormality.

Sometimes you'll get pipes that are right against the drywall and the maybe you've run cold water and they will show up as blue to a thermal image, but really it's just reading the temperature inside that pipe, and it's not reading actual. It's not an actual leak. One other tech tool that we use that I think is kind of important is a gas detector. And these are invisible risks.

Now, gas is odorized so that you smell it, but naturally it's odorless. And your nose is the best gas detector you can smell. That could be a pipe around the furnace or whatever.

But a gas detector, a combustible gas detector can detect several things. Natural gas, propane, even carbon monoxide, and even sewer odors, depending on what kind of tool you have and why this matters.

The old school way of spraying soapy water on it and having it bubble up certainly is still effective. That's going to show you if you have a natural gas leak, but it doesn't check all the leaks.

And a gas detector, a combustible gas detector, can help pinpoint where that leak is coming from and why it needs to be addressed and why this matters. Well, these are life safety issues. These are not just property conditions. These aren't just leaks.

If you smell a true gas leak and you can detect this, it's time to get out of the house. It's time to call the gas company and they can come out and do what they do with fixing, that kind of thing.

Early detection of this typically prevents emergencies. Adds real value beside just a visual. Can't visually see a gas leak.

You might be able to visually see a sign that you might have carbon monoxide problems here based on the pitch of flue pipes or how it's set on top of a water heater or furnace or whatnot. But gas detection shifts inspections into preventative safety, and that really is peace of mind for whoever's buying a house.

There are situations where inspectors get caught in dangerous conditions. One tool I didn't mention is portable carbon monoxide detectors. You can get them on Amazon for 180 bucks. You can wear them wherever you go.

And it has an audible beep of carbon monoxide is above a certain level, what would be considered a safer level. And so those things go into it, too. We use those just for our own safety. We don't use them to pinpoint carbon monoxide.

Sometimes they can be a little bit off or a little confusing. You don't know exactly where it's coming from, but it definitely has value in that.

So photos, thermal images, drone footage, all that together is just a clearer story that we're given of the house. Again, they say money doesn't make you, it just reflects who you are.

If you're a jerk before you have money, you're going to be a bigger jerk after you have money. And if you're awesome and generous before you have money, you're going to be even more so after you have money.

And I would say to a degree, this is the same with tech tools. If you're a good home inspector, this is going to enhance your performance in the field.

If you're sloppy and not very good, you're going to jump to conclusions and not do a very good job, no matter how many tools you have out there. So keep that in mind as your hiring inspector.

You want one to have the latest and greatest, but you don't want to have it at the exclusion of experience, skill, reviews, and that kind of thing.

So these tech tools help agents, buyers, and sellers understand issues better when they go to read the report and they see thermal images and moisture meter images all showing A certain thing, bam. They know exactly what's going on, right? There's no guessing involved. The value isn't the gadget. It's how well the inspector explains what it means.

You can't go on YouTube and learn about thermal imaging in a half hour, all right? There's training. You need to know how to read the images. What does it really mean? Just because it's blue doesn't mean it's wet. It could just be cold.

And just because it's orange doesn't mean you got a problem. It depends on the conditions outside. It depends on insulation and so forth. The human element still matters.

Tools don't replace judgment, ethics or experience. Technologies amplifies good inspectors. And that's really what we've come to, to agree with and to experience.

The future of home inspections isn't about robots. It's about inspectors who know how to use better tools.

So you want that cutting edge inspector, you want that guy that's always looking for a way to enhance his service and his product, but you don't want one that's going to use tools in place of good old fashioned effort and intelligence and work ethic. So make sure you call, find out what the inspector uses, what they're willing to do, what they don't do.

Make sure you have all that information before you choose that inspector.

Here at Gold Key, we love to explain how we do the job, how we give you peace of mind, how we give you reports on the same day, how we have the strongest guarantee in the business. We'd love to do all that. Give us a call and share this podcast with all your friends. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you next time.

Intro: 00:21:43

Thank you for listening. This week you can catch up on the latest episode of the Thoughts from the Crawl Space podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

For more information about Gold Key inspection services, go togold key inspector dot com.