There might be a number of reasons you are looking for a new home. Whether you’re displeased with your old home or ready to find your dream house, moving is a time-sensitive and stressful situation that takes a tremendous mental capacity. It can be easy to overlook a few things during your Fort Collins home inspection, especially when you’re trying to shelter yourself and your loved ones. Overlooking aspects of an ill-maintained home, however, might be detrimental to your health, your home, and your house bills. Here are three things you should never ignore when performing a residential inspection of your new house. 

Interior Plumbing

Every home has a plumbing system that is made up of things like pipes, lines, and drains that can all break as they age. When they begin to decay, it is important to fix them as soon as possible, as a failure to do so can lead to flooding and water damage in your home. Water is a home’s greatest enemy. Your inspector should use an infrared camera to check for plumbing problems that exist behind walls, like burst pipes, blocked drains, and leaky pipes. Failure to check interior plumbing could cause water damage and foundation decay in your home.

HVAC Systems 

Contrary to popular belief, HVAC systems need to be tuned and maintained at least twice a year to ensure peak performance and indoor air quality. It might work when you perform your first initial inspection of the home but might stop working quickly after. HVAC systems are expensive to repair and replace, which is why a thorough inspection by your house inspector is recommended. Your home’s heating and cooling equipment should be tested to confirm proper performance during the summer and winter months when you’ll be using it the most. It’s also vital to check and clean the equipment to ensure your indoor air quality doesn’t trigger any allergies or promote the spread of dust throughout your house. 

Attic

Because it is out of sight, inspecting your attic might slip your mind, and upon remembering it later, you might brush the thought away as irrelevant. First, make sure your inspector has access to your attic. The inspection of your attic is important for a couple of reasons, like proper insulation, water erosion, structural integrity, and critters making your cozy attic their home. An attic reflects the history of the home, providing clues to serious problems that might be unknown to the new home buyer and even the inspector. Your inspector should check for proper insulation installation, water damage from a leaky roof, and damage from wildlife. 

When walking through your house, you might be so caught up in looking at the big things that the little things, like leaky faucets or old pipes, might be placed on the backburner. Realistically, these “smaller” things aren’t small at all and have huge consequences for new home buyers who might overlook them. At Winding River Home Inspection, nothing is too “small” or irrelevant to inspect. We take pride and integrity in our quality Loveland home inspections. Call us today to request an inspection.