From: The Grand Forks Herald
FARGO – A glance at the website for Nordic Home Inspection gives you a look through the portals of home inspection hell.
Lars Knobloch, the owner of Nordic Home Inspection, is one of a few dozen full- and part-time inspectors in the area who check out homes and condos for buyers and sellers.
In his six years in business, Knobloch’s amassed a collection of photos and videos of bowing basement walls, sketchy electrical wiring and palaces of mold that could gag a maggot.
It’s all in a day’s work for home inspectors, who’ve seen all manner of homeowner horrors.
Knobloch’s favorite inspection find was when he spotted a mouse in a water softener.
“That was so cool, I had to make beer koozies out of it,” he said. “I had my logo on one side and I had the photo on the other side.”
At another home, he found a sump pump outlet a couple of feet from a window well.
“It turns out the water was turned on before the inspection. There was so much water in the drain tile around the house, that when they turned the sump pump on, it just kept pumping it out” and it went into the window well, he said.
Inside the house, water dribbled in through the window frame and covered the basement floor. Frost rimed the interior walls and outlined the studs. It was a five-year old home and it had to be gutted, Knobloch said.
At a West Fargo home once owned by a bank, the electricity had been shut off to save money. It was the worst of false economies. With no sump pump running, a foot of water accumulated in the basement before the damage was discovered, he said.
Knobloch was called in to test for mold. He didn’t have to look hard; it practically reached out and hugged him as he walked through the home. The ceiling fans were so sodden by humidity, their black-blotched blades drooped like flower petals. Every wall, ceiling and surface of the home was a penicillin factory.
“That probably was the worst house I ever walked into,” Knobloch said. “I talked to a neighbor and he said that when the wind was in the right direction, they could smell the mold from that house.”
Out of sight, out of mind, can also be potentially deadly.
Knobloch once found a home with three or four large junction boxes in the attic.
“Just a hot mess of electrical wires. Open splices, bare wires and all of this covered in insulation and dust,” he said. “I can’t believe it didn’t burn down.”
Moldy Messes & A Mouse
Knobloch’s favorite inspection find was when he spotted a mouse in a water softener.
“That was so cool, I had to make beer koozies out of it,” he said. “I had my logo on one side and I had the photo on the other side.”
At another home, he found a sump pump outlet a couple of feet from a window well.
“It turns out the water was turned on before the inspection. There was so much water in the drain tile around the house, that when they turned the sump pump on, it just kept pumping it out” and it went into the window well, he said.
Inside the house, water dribbled in through the window frame and covered the basement floor. Frost rimed the interior walls and outlined the studs. It was a five-year old home and it had to be gutted, Knobloch said.
At a West Fargo home once owned by a bank, the electricity had been shut off to save money. It was the worst of false economies. With no sump pump running, a foot of water accumulated in the basement before the damage was discovered, he said.
Knobloch was called in to test for mold. He didn’t have to look hard; it practically reached out and hugged him as he walked through the home. The ceiling fans were so sodden by humidity, their black-blotched blades drooped like flower petals. Every wall, ceiling and surface of the home was a penicillin factory.
“That probably was the worst house I ever walked into,” Knobloch said. “I talked to a neighbor and he said that when the wind was in the right direction, they could smell the mold from that house.”
Out of sight, out of mind, can also be potentially deadly.
Knobloch once found a home with three or four large junction boxes in the attic.
“Just a hot mess of electrical wires. Open splices, bare wires and all of this covered in insulation and dust,” he said. “I can’t believe it didn’t burn down.”
Vibrating Attic
Dean Foell has been operating Tri State Home Inspection in Fargo for 16 years. He figures he’s inspected 8,500 homes.
Foell has found plumbing stacks that weren’t extended through the roof during re-roofing jobs, allowing sewer gas to accumulate in the attic. Other times, the venting stacks were capped in the attic, causing the plumbing system to malfunction.
He’s found plastic kiddie swimming pools in attics to collect water leaking through the roof, overloaded electrical panels, guns and “dead cats where there shouldn’t be dead cats.”
At one property, a Saturday inspection flushed some squatters from the home. “They went out the back door as we came in the front door,” Foell said.
And sometimes, it’s better to beat a retreat when dealing with unwanted house guests, as Foell found out years ago when inspecting the attics of a vacant rural home.
“Once I got it broken open, the whole attic started vibrating. There were literally thousands of wasps in the attic,” Foell said. “You could just hear them … and the Realtor was out of the house before I was. It was amazing.”
Foell said he wants prospective homebuyers along on inspections so that he can show them what they’re buying.
“I’ve gotten a couple of homebuyers, and we started to do the inspection, and we got a third of the way through the house and it’s in too rough of shape to buy it,” Foell said. “You shake hands and say, ‘Give me another call at another time.’ ”
Amateur Issues
Tim Noteboom of 20/20 Home Inspections has been in the business for 15 years. The Moorhead man said experience helps ferret out a lot of issues with homes, as does walking around in his stocking feet, “just so I can feel the house.”
The biggest dangers he sees are when homeowners try to do electrical work.
“Everyone thinks they can put a black wire with a black wire and a white wire with a white wire. A lot of that can be fatal,” Noteboom said.
Other slipshod work by amateur fixer-uppers he blames on television home improvement shows “where everyone can be an expert in a half hour.”
For example, people will remodel basements and forget to put in heat vents or registers.
“They go to sell it and they use a plug-in milk house heater to heat the bedroom in the winter,” he said.
He’s been in homes where the waterline from basement flooding was up to the ground floor subfloor. All of it splotched with mold.
“Bats can be fairly common in older houses. Squirrels in attics. I haven’t come face-to-face with anything in a crawl space, but I’ve smelled skunks there,” Noteboom said.
And sometimes what he smells has nothing to do with critters.
In one home, “the attic space was above a teenager’s closet,” he said.
When Noteboom pushed up the attic access door, he found two little chairs and a table beside it, “with funny little cigarettes.”
The most bizarre home he’s been in was owned by a hoarder.
“You were literally walking through the house in an 18-inch wide pathway. The rest (of the hoard) was piled three-quarters of the way to the ceiling. It was incredible that anyone could live in it,” Noteboom said.
“It made my job almost impossible, because you couldn’t move throughout the house at all,” he said.
Article Summary: What You May Find During a Home Inspection
There are plenty of interesting things in your home that you may not know of when buying a new house, or even after living there for several years. A home inspection is always a must because the average home owner may not catch the issue right away. Lars Knobloch, owner of Nordic Home Inspection has come across some rather crazy things during his inspections.
Too Much Mold
After being called to inspect a home that had its electricity shut off to save money, Lars discovered the mold to be everywhere because of the amount of water flooded from the sump pump in the basement. Moisture is the number one cause of mold, and if it isn’t taken care of immediately, the mold will start to destroy the house and cause an odor like no other. Yes, the neighbors will definitely notice the smell and possibly call the police.
Get Out Your Flood Pants
There are certain things people may overlook on new homes because they think, “Well, it’s a newer build, so I am sure the builders did everything right, right?” Wrong! Home owners tend to believe the builders, electricians, and everyone else involved have done their job correctly, but that isn’t always the case. On a five-year old home inspection, Lars discovered a sump pump outlet near a window well, which caused water to get into the drain tile and eventually drip into the basement covering the floor. The house had to be gutted.
Open Electrical Wires?
If you find electrical wires sticking out of places in your home, it’s probably a sign that you should get it looked at or fixed. Those, we know will cause issues at some point if they’re not taken care of. Of course, Lars found some junction boxes in the attic with bare electrical wires and splices sticking out covered with insulation.
What To Do?
You should always make sure your home is inspected properly, even if it is a rather new home. Nordic Home Inspections will give you a proper inspection. Give us a call today at 701-566-1446 if you notice any issues or think you need an updated inspection!