The number one thing that residential, and even commercial property buyers do wrong, is to not get the whole picture of what is happening with said property.
Sure, one is usually required to purchase a home inspection when borrowing money from a lender, but having a home inspection is not complete unless you do this added step… and very few home inspectors know how to really do this step correctly…
Inspect your sewer system!
While many people may believe that spending $300 or more on a home inspection is wasted money, they quiver over the idea of spending less than $300 for an inspection that informs them of extremely important and potentially high-cost issues.
“We were just about to close the deal and I used the restroom. I noticed when I flushed the toilet that the water did go down, but at a very slow speed. I became suspicious about a possible clogged pipe. I knew of, and called Bronson, at Westcoast Sewer Inspection and he came out the next day. Turns out they saved me about $15k as the sewer pipes were not only clogged, but badly broken in a few places. It wasn’t a deal breaker for buying the house, but it was a negotiating factor.” – J.T.
How your sewer sytem works…
So, to get a better idea of how your home’s sewer system operates, take a look at your body. It looks beautiful on the outside, but deep within your arteries there could be a clog. What happens soon thereafter if a clog is not handled? Of course… an eventual heart attack… which shuts everything down and can be quite expensive without insurance. Well, the sewer system to one’s home or commercial property is the main artery and if it stops… everything stops!
Westcoast Sewer Inspection is like that specialized doctor. They come in with their special equipment and make sure your potential home or commercial property purchase isn’t about to have a coronary.
Who to hire for an inspection…
One might think that hiring a plumber would be the best option when checking a sewer line, residential or commercial, but that’s not necessarily the best choice.
Through Bronson Pichlik, the owner of Westcoast Sewer Inspection, we learned that there are a lot of great plumbers out there, but there are also a lot of unscrupulous plumbers out there.
“We are unbiased and will tell you exactly what is happening in your sewer system. We don’t do any major repairs, so we aren’t going to try and sell you on a job you might not need.” – Bronson Pichlik
Walking through a property’s sewer inspection with Bronson, we learned that there are a few different types of pipes: Iron, ABS, Clay and each has its strength and weakness. California, being infamous for earthquakes, can often times crack, separate, or even break these pipes apart given the right amount of shake, rattle and roll. Then, there are things like tree roots which find their way into the sewer system one little air gap at a time. Roots look for water and guess what goes through the sewer system… yep… water.
Depending on the condition of the sewer pipe, Westcoast sewer inspection has often come along to save the day by hydrojetting tree roots out of a pipe. Hydrojetting, in case you don’t know, is a hi-speed water cutting technique that allows the pressure to cut tree roots away from the inside of the pipe and, in turn, allows debris to continue to flow to the city sewer line which meets the property’s sewer line at the street.
In any case, when buying a residential or commercial property, there are many things that can go undetected without the right equipment. Westcoast Sewer Inspection is referred by hundreds of Realtors, works with many home inspectors and a few plumbing companies. Their underlying mission statement is to ensure that buyers are aware of what they are getting into before an actual purchase. The main idea to keep in mind is that a relatively low cost expense for a sewer inspection far outweighs the cost of a repair one might have to do if a problem has not been detected before signing on the dotted line.