You have saved all your life only to step into your dream house and be content with your choice. After all, at the end of a long tiring day, nothing beats the comfort of your own house. But just a few days after you settle in, yours dreams turn into nightmare. You can hear a shrill screech when you open your backyard door. When you are watching your favourite show on TV, suddenly the lights start flickering, the TV screen goes blank. Does it sound like familiar scenes from horror movies? Have you landed yourself in a haunted house?
Hang on there! Horror these are – no doubt. But no need to tag your home infested with supernatural beings. It is just a result of skipping home inspection prior to buying the estate. Deploying a home inspector in time would have saved you the horrors of home. These might be a result of only some misfits of wiring system, use of bad quality fittings, workmanship and so on and so forth. So, before you start residing, you must know the nukes and crannies of the building you will fondly call ‘home.’
1. Flickering lights: Did you check the connection?
The most common aetiology of flickering lights is the fluctuation in voltage supply in the power grids. Sudden change of load causes consecutive voltage fluctuations. Also, the connecting wires often get loosened. Together, these cause the lights of your house to flicker and you experience a certain extent of dizziness along with a spooky feeling.Be wise and consult with a home inspector before moving in. Let a comprehensive electrical inspection come up with a detailed report.
2. Sudden Blackouts: It’s just MCB tripping
On a random day after coming back from office, you decide to vacuum-clean your house, wash your clothes in the washing machine, and do some cooking and so on. Putting your clothes in the washing machine you switch it on and then as you proceed to run your mixer grinder, suddenly the power goes out. Know why? You have been running a number of high-electricity consuming devices at a time on the same circuit. This exceeds the capacity of the particular circuit. The MCB trips whenever circuit overloading happens. A circuit overload is one of the main reasons why circuit breakers trip constantly. This occurs when you want a particular circuit to provide more electricity than its actual capacity. This will lead to the overheating of the circuit which puts all the electrical appliances connected to the circuit at risk. It is also a safety issue.
Apart from circuit overloading, short circuits and ground fault are the other causes of MCB tripping1. Call for an electrical inspection as soon as possible. With their suggestion, fix the problems and say goodbye to frequent blackouts.
3. Creaking doors: Check the hinges and lubrication
You feel a shiver up your spine sitting in your room when suddenly you hear your kitchen door creak open. A squeaky sound followed by a soft thud makes you get up only to reveal your four-legged pet coming out of your kitchen stealthily. Sounds familiar? The creaking sound is nothing but the door panel rubbing and hitting the frame because of the wrongly fitted hinges. If your house is not a new one, the doors have sustained friction for long. This has worn off the lubrication as well.
If you be a little attentive, you will see the sounds are more in monsoon. Wooden doors absorb moisture and expand in the rainy season. These then tend to hang downwards causing more friction with the floor. That brings up the squeaky sound you are worried about.
Make appointment with your carpenter and do the needful. Tighten the hinges, lubricate them and if it is monsoon, just wait for it to be over. Your doors will come to their previous size and you will be able to close them without unpleasant sounds. In most cases, only tightening the hinges will solve the issue. Find an easy guide to door maintenance for your home here.
4. Rattling windows: Misaligned installation
On a summer night, do you wake up with a strange sound coming from the window behind the heavy curtains? You perfectly remember to have them closed before you turned on the AC. To your utter disbelief, you find them open. Is that another horror story from your home? No. It is just a result of the carpenters and the window fitters not being attentive to details. The window installation may be misaligned and due to wind, it gives way causing the rattling sounds. Absence of a gasket and keeper plate can also be the reason.
A proper inspection of the window joints, latches, and hinges will take care of all these issues and let you live your life peacefully in your home. And you can also find a guide for maintenance of window here.
5. Feeling out of breath in your own home? Check the ventilation
You have never had any history of breathlessness until you moved in your new home or moved back into your ancestral house. When it struck you, it made you wonder why. Before you get freaked out, look into the matter keeping calm. Your house might have not been used in years. Years of dampness have made the air heavy which is the reason you feel suffocated. If it is a new house, your lack of experience might have let you skip checking the ventilation system. Bad ventilation setup does not allow the heavy air to exit and it circulates in the room. The dampness favours the growth of microbes and the air inside the room gets polluted. When you breathe them in, your respiration system goes through distress causing breathlessness.
Taking the help of home inspection will relieve you from such distresses. Dampened walls, closed ventilators, air exhaustion system- everything must be checked prior to moving in.
6. Dripping Water: Check for leaks
Imagine: you come back from a long tiring day at work, enter the kitchen and find it nearly flooded. You curse your forgetfulness and think that you might have left the tap open. But soon you realise that you have properly turned them off before leaving. Again you doubt that something is fishy with your home. To be truthful, that is not the case. The kitchen faucets might have loosened leaking water even when you think the taps are turned off. This might happen in bathrooms as well. If you find areas of damp spots on the walls of your home, it is some hidden leak2 that you must be worried about. Water seeps through the leaked pipelines keeping the walls wet and destroys your walls over the years.
Call for home inspection the moment you suspect leakage or, even better, prior to moving in. If needed, the pipes and other bathroom and kitchen fittings should be replaced. Some leakage issues which are visible can be solved by a plumber. But those that are invisible are difficult to identify. For that, you need an experienced pair of eyes. Call your plumber or hire a team of home inspectors.
7. Water leakage in WC: Result of various causes
In today’s world, when every part of the globe is experiencing water scarcity, the water tank in your WC decides to add fuel to the fire of water-misuse and continue to run even after a flush cycle is completed. This can occur due to a number of reasons. The most common of them is leakage in the WC. Sometimes the washer wears off causing leakage. This results in the drip-drip you hear from your washroom. One of the biggest problems that you do not have anything to do about, is high iron content in water. It is deposited in the pipes and reduces the water flow.
A good inspection by a plumber followed by replacing the damaged parts will relieve you of these worries. Not only will you avoid unnecessary loss of water but all the apparatus will be functioning properly also.
You can also follow a guide for maintaining your plumbing system to avoid further problems related to it.
To Summarise
All your horrors about your home are actually real issues you should care about and attend them as fast as you can. Home inspection is the ultimate necessity for doing away with potential problem situations of your home. It is those inspectors who will identify what is causing those ‘horrific’ situations and ‘prescribe’ measures to overcome them well beforehand. Thus, you get to enjoy the pride and comfort of your own home that you have always dreamt of. Happy home to you!
Reference links used:
1. https://finolex.com/why-do-mcb-trips-frequently-how-to-avoid-mcb-tripping/
2. https://youtu.be/ve308_XVIK4