Home Fixes and Repairs You Should Expect After a Home Inspection

Whether you’re buying a home, selling one, or are just looking for general maintenance, home inspections are crucial. With a thorough home inspection, you can identify and pinpoint any problems your home may have related to matters such as insulation, utility systems, exterior cladding, foundational issues, pest infestations, and a slew of other problems. Without a proper home inspection, you may not realize these problems are present in your home until it’s too late.

But home inspection is just the first step in your task to keep your home in one shape. There is plenty more you need to take care of once the inspection is finished. After all: home inspections are not performed simply to sign a few documents or fill out a few forms. There is a very practical reason why inspections are performed and you will need to take action if an issue is found.

So, if you’re about to have your home inspected, there are some of the most common home repairs you should be aware of and potentially prepare for. 

Electrical Wiring and Outlets Tuning

Electrical Issues You Should Take Care of Before Selling Your Home

Electricity plays a big part in our lives. Regardless of how advanced modern electrical technology has gotten, there are going to be a lot of problems since electricity is quite difficult to maintain in good condition, especially if you’re not an electrician yourself. Many homeowners are surprised to find a lot of faulty wiring and electrical outlet problems after a home inspection.

After a home inspection is finished, the inspector will let you know which outlets they’ve identified as faulty or non-functional. These will need to be replaced as there is nothing buyers hate more than faulty outlets. Not only that, but certain outlets when damaged, can even become a health risk. So you must have them replaced. Also, ask your inspector to use a multimeter (if they aren’t already using one) to check exactly where the faulty wiring is. This way you have a better idea of what needs repairing and in which area of the room. 

Foundational Repair

The Importance Foundation Repair and Maintenance

Building and structures look like they’re very sturdy, but the dirty little trade secret is that they are not as rigid as you think. The foundation of your home is constantly moving around and bending, which is a completely natural phenomenon and does not mean that your home was built incorrectly. A common foundation problem that many homeowners don’t even know exists is the shifting of the support beams. These are foundational beams that take on a lot of the weight of your home.

Over time, as the ground below your home shifts through natural circumstances, the beams are no longer lined up with the piers in the foundation of your home. As a result, certain problems could arise, such as the tilting of the foundation, or in more severe cases, even the collapse of certain areas of your home. This may also happen through many years of corrosion, as the beams and piers in the foundation begin to rot away. Most homeowners are not going to know all the intricacies of foundational engineering, so a home inspection is required to identify these problems. Foundational issues are very common home repairs for many homeowners. This is why after home inspections, many homeowners call in foundation engineers to take a look and fix any problem that is hiding below. 

HVAC Maintenance

How Homeowners Forget to Check the HVAC

Many homeowners don’t give their HVAC enough care which is unfortunate considering just how important they are in ensuring the comfort of you and your household. While modern HVAC systems are built to last, they are still susceptible to some more subtle wear and tear which is not easy to spot. Sure, you likely replace the AC filter regularly as per the manufacturer’s instructions, but there are other problems hidden away in the deeper pockets of the HVAC system.

For example, clogged pipes and vents are not as easy to spot and not all homeowners have made it a regular habit of calling in HVAC specialists to inspect their system. As a result, a lot of dust and dirt buildup finds its way into the HVAC system, causing it to be faulty and not work as intended. This can be identified by an experienced home inspector. After the inspection, you should have your HVAC pipes and ventilation ducts thoroughly cleaned out and you will notice a huge improvement in its performance. Another common repair needed after the home inspection is replacing rusted components. Many homeowners don’t know the intricacies of these two HVAC components and have no way of taking them apart and caring for them without professional help. Being left unattended, various parts of the furnace and especially the panels of the AC condenser unit can rust. Homeowners are advised against opening up the condenser hardware themselves and should call in a professional, but many of them forget to do this regularly. Rusted parts of condenser units can lead to further corrosion and serious damage, requiring you to replace a lot of parts or even the condenser in its entirety.

Exterior Refurbishing

Checking the Exterior Caulking and Sealer of Your Home

Even if you live in an area with very mild weather conditions, the weather is still going to take its toll on your home’s exterior. This is a completely natural factor and cannot be avoided even with modern construction techniques and materials. However, regular maintenance will help you keep the exterior in good shape for a long time.

It’s quite easy to see where the cladding may be broken, cracked, or chipped, be it the material itself or the exterior paint. These kinds of superficial problems are generally quite easy to spot and take care of. However, more nuanced exterior problems are not as visible and will require a more experienced pair of eyes to identify. For example, caulking and sealer hideaway in the smallest cracks and crevices in your exterior, be it around a doorframe, window, or other small thresholds in the exterior. Chipped away and flaky caulking will lead to less heat retention in your home, making the building less energy efficient as you spend more on heating. Not only that, but broken sealer and caulk can also lead to water leaking through the exterior walls, pests finding little nooks and crannies to enter your home through, and if left unattended, can lead to much larger structural problems. After a home inspection repairs are performed to fix any problems with the exterior caulking and sealer. 

Door Maintenance

How Your Door Weakens Over Time

As time goes on, your doors are going to go through a lot of wear and tear. The time it takes for doors to wear out is significantly shortened if you have a few door slammers living in the household. One way or another, the door will need to be fixed up after many years of use. Even solid wood doors with steel hinges, which is arguably the sturdiest combination you can create, can still bend and warp over time.

Even if you don’t open or close the door too much, gravity is still going to take its toll on your door after a long time, causing it to hang off the hinges as opposed to being tightly attached to them and floating in the air. This isn’t very noticeable at first but some telltale signs let you know whether your door is hanging off the hinges or not. If the door is even barely scraping the floor as it opens and closes, something that it didn’t use to do before, then it is most likely hanging. In more serious cases you will notice that there are cracks at the top of your wooden door, signifying that it has been hanging off the hinges for quite some time and is no longer structurally sound. These are minor nuances that are very easy to miss when you use the door daily. However, upon a closer inspection, these problems become apparent and need to be addressed lest you want the hinges breaking off the frame, requiring you to redo the entire door casing altogether. 

Pest Control

Ways That Pests Can Ruin Your Sale

Pests are a lot more than a nuisance. Sure, a mosquito or a fly can be very irritating to hear when you’re trying to sleep, but you should also consider the health risks that come with having pest infestations in your home. While small spiders may simply be a little scary, rats and wasp hives pose a real health risk to you and your household.

If the inspection identifies any form of pest infestation inside your home, you must get in touch with pest control as soon as possible. The longer the pests make themselves at home, the more corners of your home they’re going to get into and the more difficult they will be to get rid of. The last thing any buyer wishes to come across in their new home is big spider webs or rat droppings. So do yourself, your household, and pretty much anyone else who’s planning on living in your home and ensure that no unwanted guests are hiding away in any corner of your home.