Termite damage

General Inspection Topics General Inspection Discussion
1

I inspected a house the other day that had a lot of termite damage at the center of the house at the floor joist.This house previously failed inspection do to termite damage.I got called to do the inspection after repairs were made.When I got in the crawl I noticed that there was repairs made by sistering scabs of 2/8 along the the infested joists with nails.No termite treatment was done yet. I recommended to the buyer to have a licensed stucture engineer to evaluate the repair.Did I do the right thing?
Thanks,John
JC Home Inspections
Manchester,Tn.

2

Yes. If you feel like an engineer is required to evaluate the repair, then you did the right thing to protect the client. At the end of the day, that’s all that matters.

3

Yes you made the right call. I recently had the same situation. The seller was making the repairs. As I and an engineer told them the joist must extend from bearing point to bearing point. I am going back to inspect the repairs for the third time again tomorrow. I am just confirming that the repairs were performed to the engineers specifications.

4

Greg,

I would let the engineer issue a letter stating that the repairs were done accoding to the design plan.

5

I’m assuming from your post that you were not doing a complete inspection, but only a re-inspection.

  1. Did you do the original inspection or were you re-inspecting a house previously inspected by someone else?

  2. Houses don’t “fail” inspections.

  3. Here’s another post along the same lines. http://www.nachi.org/forum/f2/get-out-doing-re-inspection-41634/

Personally, if significant structural damage was identified, I wouldn’t re-inspect it because I’m not qualified to say the repairs were adequate. And, I don’t want to spend hours in the crawl doing a board-by-board inspection of the floor structure.

6

I was doing a complete inspection.It was inspected before and the buyers back out because of the termite damage.The owners son did the repairs himself.

Thanks for the help.

7

Do something like this:

“Repairs and new wood (joist, beams, sub-floors) were observed in many (or various) areas. You should ensure the repairs were performed by licensed contractors and you may want to view the condition for yourself. If you cannot confirm the work was performed by a licensed contractor, then we recommend that you have a licensed contractor evaluate the work and the adequacy of repairs.”

8

Thanks Joe.