Bay Area Home Inspection

After several thousand home inspections, I'm still amazed what I sometimes discover. I was walking on an asphalt shingle roof during a Brentwood house inspection, and spotted a little irregularity in the roofing surface.

As you can see, it was a slug from a 9mm bullet. I have a set of calipers that I used to measure the slug.

Of course, I thought about whether or not a falling bullet can kill you. I goggled 'falling 9mm bullet' and came across this article: Falling Bullets Don't Kill you, Bullets Kill You...

When the hot water was turned at the master bathroom sink during a recent Concord home inspection; I wasn't overly surprised to see discolored water fill the sink.

Rusty hot water is not only unpleasant to see, it can smell bad, taste bad and stain clothing instead of cleaning it. In rare circumstances, it can even signal dangerous contamination in your water supply. There are one or more causes for rusty water.

Sediment Buildup: One of the most common causes of rusty hot water is built-up sediment in the water heater. Small traces of rust and dirt from the water supply can accumulate as water is pumped through the water heater. This water settles on the bottom of the tank. When the tank is suddenly turned on, it stirs up the water and sends a burst of brownish sediment down through the water line, making the hot water come out of the tap brown at first.

As I rounded the back of a house during a Danville home inspection, what greeted my eyes were the skeletal remains of an air conditioning condenser unit. It was my first experience with copper theft during the height of the real estate foreclosure market.

I had heard the stories about copper water supply pipes being removed from vacant houses and daring metal scavengers pulling out the copper wire from street lights... But the AC condensing unit? Well, why not? The tubing that runs through the cooling fins is copper.

 Copper theft reached all-time highs in 2007-2008 due to worldwide economic growth and the high price of the metal, which had quadrupled in cost in some corners of the globe, was worth between $3 and $4 a pound.

During the 1970's, aluminum (instead of copper) wiring became quite popular and was extensively used.

Since that time, aluminum wiring has been implicated in a number of house fires, and most jurisdictions no longer permit it in new installations. We found this electrical subpanel during a recent Home Inspection in Moraga.

But don't panic if your house has aluminum wiring. Aluminum wiring, when properly installed, can be just as safe as copper. Aluminum wiring is, however, very unforgiving of improper installation.

The main problem with aluminum wiring is a phenomenon known as "cold creep".