You are totally correct about the “Termite Guys Having a Good Lobby”, they are the ones who forced the Passagae of the Structural Pest Inspection Law. In their own Literature and Justification about forcing Home Inspectors to perform Structural Pest Instpections, WSDA cites the complaints and fraud that was involved in the Pest Inspection Industry as the reason they make Home Inspectors do the Pest Industry’s job. It seems that the Pest Constrol Lobby was strong enough to prevent WSDA from enforcing existing State Laws that regulated them, so they forced the State to pass on the Liability and responsibility to an Industry with nearly no Lobby or Political Influence, Home Inspection.
This Law has increased the business while reducing the liability of the Pest Control Industry, they got a Law passed that requires a Home Inspector to conduct the “Free Pest Inspections” they previously offered to many Home Buyers and Sellers, now we do their Inspection and they get the Referal…pretty Slick, but then that’s Washington State where State Government likes to have a finger in every pie.
“Home Inspectors generally do not do termite inspections because the termite – or more accurately the ‘wood boring insect’ – inspection concentrates on indications of activity, as opposed to analysis of damage, which is the home inspector’s task,” says Andrew Kleeman, president of Kleeman Associates, a home inspection service with 18 inspectors active throughout the Philadelphia area.
“A good wood boring insect inspector is trained to locate even very subtle indications of termite infestation – slight undulations and tiny holes in wall board, for example, which may indicate infestation in the paper layer of common gypsum board. Termite activity is almost always latent (to a layperson) and it often takes a special skill set to identify termite problems before they become structurally severe.” Even in areas where termite problems
A good point is that the Home Inspector is to be a generalist, and Wa State is asking them to be specialists.
Also, we are to do visual inspections. Someone only doing a visual inspection could easily overlook WDO and be cited for it. But that is one of our defenses when things are hidden from view, that we can’t see in the walls etc. Pest inspection and Home inspection are contrary to each other as you cannot stay within the SOP and still perform Pest inspections.