Why Does a Home Inspector Look So Closely at Building Materials?
Materials, from the Source
Most home inspectors come to this work from the trades, from construction management, or from a career change and a licensing course. All of those are good roads in!
I came from surfaces, specifically luxury stone products (not to be confused with tile). And I may or may not be a jack of all trades when it comes to kitchens, bathrooms, fireplaces, mantles, window details, thresholds, cornice and luxurious carved historical architecture.
Building materials were my world before inspections, and that background changed one specific thing about how I inspect, and I'd like to explain it, because it's also the honest answer to why you might want me in the house instead of someone with more years in this particular chair.
Building materials fail in patterns - especially manmade stone or natural stone surfaces
When you spend a career on the supply side of construction, you see the same failures arrive over and over... from different projects, different builders, different states. And after a while you start to notice that the failures aren't random. They cluster.
A material almost never fails because the material was bad. It fails because of what happened underneath it, or before it, or around it:
The substrate wasn't prepared, or wasn't dry, or wasn't flat
The waterproofing behind it was installed out of sequence, so water gets behind the assembly and has nowhere to go
The wrong setting material was used, or the right one was used wrong
Movement wasn't accommodated, so something rigid was bonded to something that moves
The installer followed an old habit instead of the current manufacturer instruction — which is a document, with requirements, that most people never open
Every one of those is invisible in the finished photograph. All you see is beautiful stone. Picture it: the afternoon light across a new shower wall, the veining lined up just so. The decision that will determine whether it's still beautiful in nine years was made three steps earlier, by somebody working fast.
What that means when I'm in a house
It means I spend more time than most folks would expect on the "boring" parts.
The sequence of a wall assembly... what got installed before what. Sill pans under windows. Whether the house wrap is sealed around flashings with proper tape. Kickout flashing at the bottom of a roof-wall intersection, which is a small piece of metal that prevents a very large problem and is missing more often than you'd expect. The deck ledger and how it's flashed, which is a safety issue and a water issue at the same time.
And in kitchens and baths: what's behind the tile. I can't see it on a finished house, but I can see the evidence of it — how the grout is behaving, where the caulk lines are failing, what the transitions look like at a threshold, whether a shower floor is holding water it shouldn't.
I love the art of a good caulking worker, honestly a friend and i were standing in the parking lot of Milito's for about 30 minutes last Saturday talking about caulk! I love having the knowledge about sealers and stains and paint! Oh lordy, ya'll do not want to see my house we need a fresh coat so dearly. Coatings saves the world of construction mistakes I'll tell you that.
The part I want to be careful about
None of this is a claim that other inspectors are missing things. Most of the inspectors I know in Central Virginia are careful, experienced people who catch plenty I'd have to work to see. Framing, structure, and systems are their home ground, and often mine to learn from.
It's just that every inspector slows down somewhere, shaped by whatever they did before. Some are former electricians, and the panel gets an unusually good look. Some came from roofing, and you should be glad! Mine is the envelope and the finish materials, because that's where I spent the years before this one.
It's outside the standard scope in places. I do it anyway. Not as a differentiator... just because I can't walk past it.
Why this series exists
Once a month I'm going to write about materials the way the trades actually experience them. What fails, why, what's behind the finish, and how to think about the choice before it's installed rather than after. Come along?
Some of it will be useful to buyers. Some will be more useful to folks remodeling, or to agents fielding a question about a countertop they've been asked to have an opinion on.
One disclosure, because it should be part of the pattern and not a footnote: I work with natural stone commercially as well as inspecting it. That's where the knowledge came from, and you should know it's there.
Already home and staying put? Houses keep changing long after closing day. A maintenance inspection gives you a fresh look at what's aging, what's perfectly fine, and what to plan for... on your own schedule, not in the middle of a sale. Pick a date for a maintenance inspection here.
Clear details. Confident decisions.
ACCM Residential Services, a different kind of home inspector. Serving Richmond and Central Virginia.
Alison L. Mullins · inspections@accmva.com · accmva.com
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