VIP Watching

The first things that pops into my mind, when someone mentions the word skylight, is roof leaks and plenty of light. If your skylight isn’t installed properly, you’re going to have water leaking from them, whenever it starts to rain, and it won’t really matter, whether your skylights were installed properly, there’s a good chance that you will have plenty of natural light shining from them.

If you’re going to have a skylight installed, make sure that you aren’t going to have any problems with roof leaks. Now you’re probably asking yourself, how I will know if my skylight leaks, unless it rains the day before I make my final payment to the contractor.

Well, that’s why I am here. I’m here to give you a few suggestions before I pay the contractor, just to make sure that everything is working like it should be.

Simply take the garden hose out and start spraying it over the skylight. If the skylight is one that opens and closes, please make sure that it’s closed, before you start spraying any water over your skylight. Sometimes a little common sense can save you a lot of frustration and agony.

Simply try to re-create a heavy rainstorm around your skylight. This doesn’t mean that you need to spray the water directly at the skylight or underneath the roof shingles, because this might create other problems that your skylight installation contractor won’t be responsible for.

Do this for at least five minutes and then walk inside to make sure that no water is leaking from the skylight. It would be a better idea, to have one person located on the inside of the house, just in case there are leaks and one person on the outside of the house spraying the water above the skylight.

Tragic news was reported today in California, of two year old twin girls drowning in their families pool. This shocking news is a reminder to home inspectors that the primary duty to our clients is home safety. Drowning is primarily of young children and accounts for 800 in home deaths in the U.S. each year.

When conducting a home inspection, often times my clients opt out of a pool inspection as part of their inspection, to save money. When they make this decision, I always still review with them the importance of effective safety barriers for pools, spas and fountains, for their children and guest children. A proper barrier system of fencing and self-closing gates would defeat any young child’s attempts to access to access a water area. Knowing the professional standards of my home inspection CREIA and ASHI peers, I am certain that they review these water safety issues with their clients as well.

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When I first started working in construction, in the late 1970s it seemed like every person on the job had an attitude. The carpenters didn’t like the plumbers, the plumbers didn’t like the electricians and the electricians didn’t like the plumbers or the carpenters.

There were even times, when fights would start between one of the different tradesman and it was usually over something silly. Things are a little different today as more and more people become afraid of lawsuits and losing everything that they own. This has forced most people to learn about more constructive ways to deal with other people.

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