Your kid falls sick (stomach-ache and fever). You take her to the doctor. The doctor prescribes medicines and assures her speedy recovery and staying fit in the forthcoming days only if certain do’s and don’ts are followed to the tee. You come back home hoping that your kid will be fine and she does recover in an expected manner. But some days later, she again falls sick and you discover it was all because of her unhygienic practice of eating lunch without washing her hands, particularly in school. So, the point is, do you get angry at your doctor that she couldn’t guarantee a disease-free, painless future for your child? No. Right? The same thing applies to a service as evidence-based as home inspection.
The team of professionals visiting your home will check each & every corner of it. Based on the current condition of the property and their understanding of the subject will provide you with a detailed report. It may be so they find your home having little or no issues at all. The report may not indicate at any immediate danger also. But will that guarantee a problem-free future for your home? The answer is ‘No’. You may still have problems arising in your home in coming future. That will not make the inspection you had recently any less effective or a failed one.
Following are the reasons why a property inspection is not guaranteed:
1. Natural calamities
Who on earth can predict an earthquake? Scientists all around the world are putting their best efforts into developing a system that can forecast an earthquake, but they are yet to build one. Imagine such a destructive phenomenon hitting your city soon after you have done an inspection of your home. You will be lucky if your home manages to stand upright, unaffected from the tremor but can you really guarantee for its zero damage? Cracks on the wall near the foundation are common in buildings where Richter scale readings are higher during an earthquake. And these can never be predicted in a home inspection.
Leave earthquake, even a ravaging storm can lash your town causing damages of small to big magnitude. Your glass windows can break; a big tree standing right next to your house can get uprooted and crash on your boundary wall causing it to come down; your balcony shade can blow away, and so on and so forth. Worse? After a heavy shower, the exterior paint1 of your house can become dull!
You cannot expect your home inspection report to predict all these things ever. The precaution it can suggest you is to repair an old part of the building or to replace a weak part with a strong one. You follow them and leave the rest of it to Nature God.
2. A Sudden renovation
Human taste gets upgraded with time. Trends tend to influence it in a big way. And what is a better place than one’s own home to manifest it! Yes, you got it right. We are talking about home renovation which is totally need-based (or home remodelling preference-based). In both the cases, you bring about major changes in your home and while doing so you may go wrong with some parts or processes. For example, you decide to replace the old tiles of your home with new, trendy ones. As your tile installer pulls the old tiles out, the waterproofing layer gets damaged accidentally.
Or, say, you gift yourself a new home theatre system for which you need to do an elaborate wall-mounting job. If something goes wrong during installation the concealed electrical wiring system of your house can get damaged. The same thing can happen during the installation of new bathroom fittings; there, you even run the risk of damaging your water pipeline. Result? – Seepage in the wall.
3. Repair work in the upper floor or adjacent flat
You get your flat inspected. And it passes the inspection with flying colours. The technicians do not indicate at any major problem looming large on your property. You are happy that your dream abode is healthy and then, all of a sudden, you start hearing a heavy sound with that intermittent shrill noise of drilling machine. To your utter surprise, you come to know that your upper floor neighbour has undertaken a renovation job! What do you? Nothing! – Because it is their flat and you really do not have any say in how they plan its repairs. But does that repair work affects your unit? Yes, it may. Any elaborate flooring repair can give rise to seepage like problems (that never existed before) in the ceiling of the lower floor.
The chance of such problematic, unexpected guests invading your home increases if the repair jobs are carried out in your adjacent flat. An unskillful drilling or plumbing repair there can make your home susceptible to cracks and seepage also. No home inspection service can warn you about such problems from before. The best way to avoid damage in these cases is going to your neighbour and requesting them to be careful about their repairing process.
4. Real-time basis and Lack of maintenance
Inspection is essentially a real-time procedure. A property is inspected at a given time under a given weather condition. This can vary after a certain time as the weather changes. Accordingly, observations made may also get changed.
One more important factor is maintenance. If you do not maintain your home properly or do not do the repair jobs as suggested by your inspection report it will not last long. Thereafter, problems will arise with every passing day, wrong usage, varying time and changing weather conditions.
5. Security breach
A professional home inspection checks for basic security issues in a home but to what level your property needs security depends on the premises and the locality where you live. For some houses, having a strong main door with an eyehole and proper locking system may be enough. For other properties, even having a CCTV at the main entrance may not be adequate. There might be a need for multiple CCTVs in every floor and sensors attached to the doors.
Times are changing. So, you better take top-level measures for your home because an inspection can never guarantee you zero breach of security.
Home inspection is a non-invasive and visual process. The professionals report what they see and what they understand from the current condition of the areas and elements. Moreover, the scope of the study is so big and they have to take so many factors – internal as well as external, into account and as well as it is real time based. Hence it is not possible to guarantee the soundness of everything over a long term. So, does that make inspection any less necessary? Well, yes, if you think seeing a doctor for the same disease within a short interval is illogical! Look at the bigger picture and you know why inspection is the best thing you can do for your home. For more information, write to info@macj.in.
Reference links used:
1. https://www.bergerpaints.com/products/exterior-wall-coatings/15/exterior-emulsions