Wednesday 13 June 2007

[Others.003] New Home Inspection / Process of Building a Home

I am currently reasearching for information about new home inspection. Although the builder has their own inspector/certifier, the inspector is paid by the builder and we would prefer to spend some money (about $300-$450) to get a second opinion from the experts. Especially before every payment.

Found this site for a home inspector which provides some good information about different stages involved during the construction process. See 14 Stages of Building a Home - H & K Ryan & Associates.

Also found this site from another inspector talking about "how to discover the most shocking hidden secret about your new project home", the title is quite attractive, and it provides some scary information about how bad the project home builders can be. Need to go through the long 16 page web site, and hopefully will find something helpful/interesting. click here for the site.

I remembered there used to be a document from AVJennings web site which provides detail step-by-step instruction starting from picking a design, presentation, colour selection, submit to council, ...etc until the construction finished. Unfortunately when I checked their web site last night, couldn't find that information any more.

4 comments:

Rick Royem said...

Hi,
I have over 40 years building here in the American midwest. If you have a question or two I could try to answer them for you.

In either case good luck.

Rick

Anonymous said...

Allan
how many inpsections did you? every stage? do you find it is worthwhile
many thanks

BuildingOurFirstHouse said...

Inspections are definitely very importand and you should have at least 2 - with your own inspector.

But for us, "Official" ones involving our own inspector - 1, should have 2, but we didn't have another one before handover.

Reason?

Well, because we lived just about 50m away from the construction site, we basically "unofficially" inspect the site almost daily. Sometimes twice just for me: 1st before my way to work, and 2nd one on my way home - mainly from external if site locked. And with other family members around, they went on site as well if there's anyone working.

Legally you are not supposed to enter the site without site supervisor due to security/safety/insurance reason. But normally if you provide some coke/beer/cigarettes, the trade persons were normally quite friendly after knowing that you are the owner and would let you in. Just make sure you don't hurt yourself as you won't be covered by any insurance...

Whenever we found any problem, or something we don't understand, or noticed some upgrades weren't installed as expected, we took photos and call the site supervisor to discuss/check, or send email to the builder for clarification.

BuildingOurFirstHouse said...

Forgot to mention normally there's 2 inspections - one before the gyprock walls been installed: to check all brick work, frames, wiring, cabling, plumbing, air-con pipes, ...etc. - 2nd one before hand over.

Can have more if you like.

All inspections need to inform and make appointment with builder as site supervisor has to be on site.

After each inspection, your inspector should provide a detail list of problems for the builder to fix.