Ces Inspections LLC

8900 square foot home in Bellaire today. This'll take me about 6 hours to finish.

Better get started.

A floating neutral bar in a subpanel is no place for a ground.

During this home inspection, I observed that the exterior subpanel's bonding screw had been removed. That part is right — in a subpanel, the grounded conductor (neutral) stays isolated from the enclosure. The equipment ground did not. It was landed on that same floating bar instead of a separate grounding busbar bonded to the enclosure. The garage subpanel had the same pattern: a grounding conductor (neutral) terminated on the neutral bus.

The neutral is the everyday return path for current. The ground and the subpanel enclosure are the safety path. Those two should meet once at the main service (main panel).

Tie them together in a subpanel, and current that should stay on the neutral can travel on unintended pathways — covers, equipment, and the grounding conductors. That current can cause electrical shock or injury.

Leave the subpanel without its own bonded ground bar, and a short to the enclosure may not shut the circuit off. The metal can stay live.

A licensed electrician should isolate the neutrals, install a grounding bar, bond that bar to the enclosure, and move the grounds off the neutral.

One of the primary jobs of a home inspection is safety. It takes a high-level inspection to find wiring that misses the minimum standard and leaves a shock hazard in place.

New Construction Final Inspection | Attic Ventilation System Design

A year ago, I inspected this new-construction roof and attic and found that the ventilation system was woefully configured.

The main attic had ridge vents in three short runs. On a roof this size, that was not enough exhaust to move heat out of the space.

The lower roofs were worse. Soffit intakes were installed — but there was no exhaust in the upper third of those confined spaces. Intake with no outlet is a dead end. Summer heat gets trapped within the structure.

That matters for more than comfort:

* Shingles cook from below, which shortens the life of a brand-new roof
* Most manufacturers will not cover heat damage if the attic is under-vented
* Trapped heat conducts into the house and makes the cooling system run longer and less optimally
* Each enclosed attic is supposed to have cross-ventilation of its own, not just holes at the eave

Attic ventilation is a major system. Soffit intakes only work if you size and place the exhaust at the high point for that same space. Miss one side, and the attic does not ventilate. It just holds heat.

A high-level inspection is what separates “the vents are there” from “the system actually works.”

New Construction Home Inspection

Entire master-wing attic with no insulation!

A year ago, I inspected this new-construction house and found no designed access to the attic over the master wing.

Code typically requires an access opening when an attic is more than 30 square feet and over 30 inches tall — you'll need access to these areas for future adjustments/repairs to electrical, plumbing, etc.

Because nobody could get in, the insulation crew never insulated that attic floor. You could see the bare floor from the upper attic. The thermal camera confirmed it from below: heat pouring through the ceiling of a house that had just been built.

Missing this much insulation significantly affects your thermal comfort and the home's performance. Leave it bare, and you get higher cooling bills and an HVAC system that runs longer and wears faster.

I find notable defects like this in many of the new homes that I inspect.

My advice hasn't changed: hire the best inspector you can find, and work with your builder/construction manager once you have a professional report.

Beautiful 5k sf new construction home out here in Magnolias High Meadow West.

Lets see what we can see!

10,000sf framing inspection for the home builder today. In the last 6 months a large percentage of my business has been with custom home builders that are looking to improve their product.

Ten-thousand sf takes a bit. So I better get started.

If you don't attach the vent to the water heater, it'll discharge the exhaust gasses into the attic/home.

This fella is missing the draft hood, so there was no way to attach.

If you don't install the material correctly, it will not function as intended. Expediency has long overtaken craftsmanship.

Thats as close as you'll ever get.

Im getting the feeling the tankless water heater has a leak.