“Why haven’t I had a Home Inspection? I just don’t want to know…”
Welcome Back to the Short Notice Inspections Blog. We hope you all had a great start to the new year. Lets get right into the question and answer in the title of this blog post.
This is a common answer. It goes along with the saying “ignorance is bliss”. I can understand people's view of this also, I don’t agree with it, but I get it. It’s nice to not think about the age of your heating system or the condition of your pipes. It’s very nice to not think about the condition of your attic structure. It’s even easy to ignore visual signs of a roof that is in need of repairs, as long as you don’t notice anything wrong in the living areas of your home where you spend your time. That doesn’t mean things aren’t still happening. The world does not stop when you are not paying attention to it. All that happens is you need to play catch up when you finally start paying attention.
Now, I’m not saying you need to go in your attic and basement before and after every storm to check for any changes. It’s not a bad idea to do that every now and then, or after bad storms, but I’m not saying you need to worry about your house all the time. We actually recommend a 5-7 year Home Health inspection to check your home. It’s a home inspection, but not in the pursuit of buying or selling a home. I personally like these because when working directly with the home owner, we’re able to get authorization to do some more invasive inspections that are not part of a standard home inspection, which are non-invasive. Home owners also normally have a few items they want specifically checked on these, which tends to lead to great conversations in general.
Not knowing about items in your home doesn’t really help you. If you don’t know something is in need of repair approaching the end of its lifespan, that doesn’t help you plan and budget for it. Then emergencies happen and you are in a worse spot to handle it than if you had been planning for it for a few months or even years. Even if something is found that just can’t be corrected in the near term, it is still important to know it exists, so you can try to prevent any additional issues that come from it. For example, say you have a leak in your attic. Now, that is not something that is easy to ignore, unless you just don’t go up to your attic, which some people don’t. You have a leak in there, that is not bad enough where it’s coming through the ceiling into your living space. “Out of sight, out of mind” as they say, but it's not just the leak that is happening. The leak is letting water onto your roof framing, and possibly down the side of your wall framing. That water can start the wood rotting, depending on how much penetration there is. That water can also lead to mold growth, which can, and most times will, cause respiratory issues.
Say you can’t get someone to repair the roof quickly, though…what then…what is the point of knowing? Well you can work with people to take small steps to track it as best as possible and mitigate issues you know about, until you have the means to correct them. If you know that an issue is there, you also can learn about the additional issues that can be caused by it. While it’s very easy to say, “I just don’t want to know”, you’ll feel a lot better knowing, planning and taking action, rather than waiting for an emergency and just taking action.
Make sure to come back for the next blog post, where we will be talking about the benefits of doing a Home Inspection as a seller, before you list your home.