We had our first ever independent building inspection yesterday, and I want to share the experience from a builder's perspective.
As background, I have spent the last 5 years on this forum, being critical of other builders work, often going out to forum members homes in my spare time and picking apart other builders work, and even sometimes helping certifiers with framing inspections, but I have never had my own work independently assessed.....until yesterday.
One of our key principals as a business is to welcome our clients on site as much as they like. We truly believe that building a home is a partnership between ourselves and our clients, and if there are any construction issues, quality wise we all tend to know about it in our whatsapp group ie if we have missed something and our clients are on site they will post a photo as do we. We work with some really amazing people and have an honest open dialogue.
Probably for these reasons we have never had a client ask for an independent inspection before even though there is a clause in our contract that says the clients are more the welcome to do it.
So, when this particular client told me that he wanted to get one done, my initial reaction was "bring it on!" my partner who wasn't as excited at the idea of being critiqued by an independent expert took a little bit of convincing. He's a slab nerd, I'm a bit of a timber framing nerd so I promised him I would have us covered on this one.
At the end of last week, we had forecast that the frames would be finished by Tuesday, so I informed the client he could book his inspection in Thursday or Friday this week. That would give my boys enough time to finish and us a day or 2 to rectify any defects. Unfortunately 2 days of rain slowed us down.
The inspection was booked for 1.30pm Thursday. All good
Got to site yesterday morning, the carpentry crew are still finishing the last bits and pieces, we do a room by room walk where I was playing the part of an overzealous inspector demanding my head carpenter justify a number of things from the code such as "you have used angle bracing instead of speed bracing, how many nails are in each end, where is the code does it say that?"
We did a room by room, wall by wall walk, checking every joist, stud wall and connection. Other than a few bowed studs due to the rain ( easy fix) and some bugles tying my upper frames to my lowers, my conclusion was that I would be super happy if this was my home.
So the boys were given a plan to have everything completed by 1.30pm, including a site clean. I would stay a safe distance, working from my car just in case anything came up.
At 12pm I decided to send the drone up to get a few roof framing snaps. The inspector turns up early, I am busy trying to dodge the attacking crows, if anything goes wrong, there is nothing I can do. My drone hits a tree whilst trying to avoid a crow attack, almost crashes into the road, but I saved it just in time.
By the time I had recovered the drone, the inspector is leaving with a straight edge in hand. He would have definitely picked up on our bowed studs.
My carpenter comes over, tells me he loved the work and yes had picked up on the bowed studs and maybe some other minor items.
Now I have to wait on the report to find out what they are. The anticipation is killing me, every time my phone dings with a new email I check to see if that is the report.
I am expecting the bowed studs down the main hallway to be noted and my upper frame bugles which were still missing at the inspection ( will all be done today), but not sure what other items he has found. There could be some code interpretation issues, but at this point I am just guessing.
I will post some snippets or commentary once I get it so we can all learn together.
In the meantime, here are some drone shots
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
Cheers
Simeon
Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅
Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅
Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅