Foundations and Structural Supports Preparing the Groundwork Well

Worried about your home not standing up to time? Then you would need a professional home inspector to go through your foundations and structural supports to lay your worries to rest. This evaluation by a home inspector is also necessary if you are thinking of selling your house or have spotted a house to buy and are wondering about the stability and strength of its foundation and structural support system.

If these be the cases, then it is also important for you to know what exactly the home inspector will look for in the foundation of your house and the accompanying structural support mechanism.

What Will The Home Inspector Look For In The Foundation of Your House?

Whether or not you specify, the first thing that a home inspector will check in your house is the foundation, upon which the stability of the entire structure along with its myriad fittings and accessories, rest. So it is obvious that when the home inspector visits your house, he will be thorough with the foundation.

Generally, he will check for any suspicious dents, bulges or anything out of the ordinary in the foundation. He will turn his hawk eyes to the discernible parts of the foundation like the slab, floor and the walls and check for signs of stress and degradation, like cracks and dents and also shifts in position. In particular, he will be on the lookout for the following defects in the structure:

- Cracks and fissures in the piers and also between the foundation and the frame of the house.

- Cracks in the basement walls and in the brick veneer.

- Wilting floor joists.

- The mortar giving away.

- Absence of caulking at the joints.

- Whitish and chalky mineral deposits on the walls.

- Damp basement walls or worse, leakages from the walls.

- Inadequate ventilation in the crawl space.

These may sound like trivial problems to you, but only a trained inspector knows what terrible consequences the occurrence of even a single one of these can wring in. He can also tell you whether you need a whole new foundation to carry the weight of the house.

In fact, even if you are not buying or selling a house, it is always worthwhile to get your foundation periodically checked by an expert home inspector so that you can bask in the thought that you and your family are living in a safe and secure house. You can also bring in the home inspector to have a look at your house and determine whether it adheres to the accepted building codes of your area.

What The Home Inspector Will Think About The Structural Support System Of Your House?

The structural supports form integral parts of your house. They are instrumental in building up the stability of the house and as such it is imperative that you call in the home inspector and have him go through the various nooks and crannies. And you can be sure that if your home inspector is an expert in his field, he will be quite finicky about the load-bearing walls of your house.

To elaborate, if you have a wall in the upper floor of the house that supports the existing walls from the floor joists, you can be sure that the home inspector will call for additional beams. A competent home inspector will understand in a flash that the wall will not be able to support the weight of the joists and not to speak of its own weight.

Say you are planning to build a house. You can bring in the home inspector to go through the floor construction pattern and determine how much weight the wall on the ground floor can bear. A home inspector is also the best person to advise you on the choice of the structural support mechanisms as based on the peculiarities of the flooring you have.

Your home inspector will go through every aspect of the load-bearing walls of your house. But you can be dead sure that he will not neglect the non-load bearing walls either. He is especially concerned about how they are supported. For instance, he will insist upon supporting them on the prevailing floor joists and never ever on the floor boards, either with a double floor joist underneath or across the current ones.

But before you go through all of these, it is imperative that you consult the home inspector or a specialized structural engineer about whether the floor joists would at all hold up to all such fittings. For example, masonry walls are bulky and heavy and you need bigger floor joists to support them and even extra beams.

So there's absolutely no need to feel awed at the thought of bringing in a home inspector. The home inspector is not bent on finding faults with your foundation and structural supports. He can be a good guide too, with handy tips up his sleeves to help you make changes for the better.