Since that is the case, the home owner should have the right to waive the inspections and fees and inspect it themselves. I'm a mechanical engineer and many of the current city inspector are fairly new and they really don't understand the basics of construction or the 'why' codes are set. Instead, they just try and memorize the specific rules and try to blindly apply them. That means that they just don't have the experience to catch poor building practices that might technically meet code. On the other hand, they tend to overly focus on little minor details that really don't matter so they add unnecessary costs and delays to the homeowner.
Clearly they just want the money. It is no longer about making homes safer. The Supreme Court must have been made up of idiots to give government immunity from being sued. There are no checks and balances in our government when the judicial doesn't hold the executive branch in check. There is no check and balances when congress puts its ability to declare war on the executive branch by allowing them to call it a police action. So much of what our founding fathers put in place has been usurped by laziness and politics.
It does seem that government should have SOME responsibility but so many things can be legitimately missed in an inspection. If they were TOTALLY responsible and not immune, inspection costs would be through the roof and so untimely they would hold up construction for objectionably long periods.
@@e.jameszettlemoyer3819 I agree, but this particular case was so egregious that there should be no question that at least some of the issues should have been caught. They should not have blanket immunity.
I'm a home inspector and have witnessed code inspectors inspecting a roof replacement and he never even got out of his car. He stated "it looks good to me, your good to go." When I was finished with my inspection I had found that they did not provide adequate attic ventilation and had missing materials at the ridge of the roof. I've even seen new construction where they never added insulation in the attic, yet the code inspector gave a certificate of occupancy. Obviously he never looked. Always do your own due diligence.
A friend of my brother was having a house built with exterior framing of 2x6, 18" on center. The inspector demanded, in writing, that the builders rip it all down and replace it with 2x4, 24" on center. Within five months the house was twisting, jamming doors and windows and opening gaps that weather blew straight through. The town lawyered up and fought tooth and nail until the homeowner had to give up for lack of money for lawyers. And the inspector never even lost a shift. - edit: the 18" on center above should be 16" on center. Thanks, OneWildTurkey!
18" centers? How would you go about sheathing that? Not with plywood; unless you do a lot of wasteful cutting. 24" is common for roofs and might be good enough for a small shed in a warm climate. Where the hell was this?
In 1985, I attended a training class where one of my instructors complained about getting an inspection. He and his wife were both Electrical Engineers and had rewired their house. In fact he was one of the designers for the computer system I was there to train on. He had researched the local codes and made sure everything meet or exceeded code. When the Inspector came out, he refused to even look at it but demanded that they get a licensed contractor. They ended up paying a contractor $250 who never looked at anything but stood there and told the inspector that everything was up to code. He said in total it took less than 15 minutes to get approved and no one ever looked at the work that was done. Just the inspector looking out for the contractors.
I've seen the same thing happen more than once. They refuse to even look at the work unless it was done by a contractor. Then when the homeowner caves and hires a contractor the inspector signs off without really looking at anything. My grandfather had run ins with one inspector who refused to pass things that were up to code. He was pushing for a bribe and my Grandfather refused to cave in. The inspector would find something new to fail every time he came out. The guy demanded that all the pvc drain pipes be removed on a huge job. He wanted them replaced with cast iron despite pvc being standard practice for years at that point (mid 1980s). Grandpa just documented everything until it was obvious and went over inspector dude's head. When his superiors realized that they were going to lose a very large lawsuit if they didn't do something, they threw Inspector bribey pants under the bus and fired him. The new guy pretty much rubber stamped anything my grandpa did for years afterward.
I don't know anything about electrical code. I had a landlord that was an electrical engineer and therefore could sign off on whatever. The power company came out to upgrade the meter once and shut the power off for being unsafe. We had no power for 3 days but when they came back they told us it was completely unsafe but he had the authority to sign off on it. That happened three more times while we were living there. Every single person that came to do any works that it was unsafe including the town inspector but this guy's signature could override it all. To be fair to him though, we never had any issues like we did in other apartments where we couldn't use different appliances at the same time. I guess I'll never know if it was actually unsafe or not but he was a PhD level professor for a top 50 electrical engineering program.
@@paulf3 In my admittedly, limited experience anything out of the ordinary is considered “unsafe”. In the litigious society, we live, in most people refuse to exercise their own judgment when it comes to things like this. The local power company came out after a storm and shut the power off to a neighbor who was heavily reliant on an oxygen machine. Service outside his house had been knocked loose and was leaning precariously. Another neighbor had temporarily secured it in place but had done an excellent job. It honestly was more secure than it was originally. Power stayed on throughout and no wiring was exposed, damaged, or in danger of coming down. He would have been fine until he could have found an electrician to come out and redo it, but nope. They took his lines loose from the pole and told him to go find a hotel. Poor guy was on fixed income and had to spring for a hotel and find an electrician on a holiday weekend. He also lost everything he had in his freezer. If they’d just left him alone until after the weekend he’d have been without power a few hours at most. There is dangerous, and then there is “dangerous”. This was very much in the latter category. Earlier this year, we had a powerful windstorm knock down several power lines. One line that ran from a transformer across the road to a residence blocked a nearby street. These weren’t high voltage lines, just residential power. Rather than securing them, or taking them loose and reopening the road, they blocked it and trapped dozens of people in the cold for almost a whole day. I understand that they were busy, but they already had the truck back there with the bucket out and the guy in it inspecting the pole. They could’ve pulled the fuse at the transformer and secured the lines in less time than it took for them to leave and come back with barriers. Some people view “code” as holy writ, but there is often more than one way to do something safely. I’ve seen cases where codes will conflict from one area to another. Make no mistake, there are people out there, who do shoddy work. They absolutely should be shut down. That doesn’t mean anyone who doesn’t have the proper local license is dangerous though.
It's a revenue source. Where I live a municipality can use the State Electrical Board or use their own inspectors, if they use their own they are statutorily limited in how much they charge. The big cities are always trying to get around it because they make so much on other trades.
30 years ago when my mom was building a house, I would go to the job site every single day and then call the builder about problems I had found. I was actually a bit frustrated by the fact that he was not checking on his sub-contractors. That was his job. To inspect all the work they did.
My brother, the home owner from the video, did go to the site often and asked questions and was assured that everything was on track every step of the way. That is why he has so much documentation of the failures which as a layperson would not have known at the time. Of course in hindsight he can cite codes in his sleep after this. Don’t trust anyone especially local government.
Right??? Like did these people just pay the builders, do nothing for months, and expect to walk into their finished home at the end of it without any effort?
So am I, and my brother. I have called for a Final Inspection on a service panel change in a warehouse, and had the Inspector tell me his initials, and to scribble those and that day's date on the Building Permit. This was AFTER he had double-checked and made sure that it WAS me, and _not_ my brother. Who also just happens to be a Contractor as well. And after he said that, I said, "I'd be more comfortable if you came and looked." To which he said, "And that's why I'm comfortable letting you do this. Once."
I worked for a utility and often inspected services before approving a connection. A good many electricain took pride in their work but a few don’t. Didn’t take me long to figure out who I’d trust and who would go on “do not connect before inspection” list.
Most electricians do take pride in their work but like the old saying goes it only takes one bad apple to make the basket look bad. Same goes here with all the trades including the inspectors.
I live in North Carolina. On July 29th of last year, at 4:30 in the morning, (1-year anniversary is coming up), a 12-condominium building complex caught on fire that I live in. The fire department just happened to be returning from another call, saw the smoke (This is a 1 road 2 stoplight town) and was on scene almost immediately. The fire department went to hookup at the special fire hose risers meant to serve the 4-12 condo complexes and found out that repair parts for the special water risers had been on order for months and all of the risers were not operational. The fire department was forced to lay out over 600 feet of firehose to the nearest underrated fire hydrant, allowing an additional 20-30 minutes of burn time. What fire could have been confined to one or two units, destroyed 9 units with fire damage and 3 units with water damage. The county claimed, "SOVERIGN IMMUNITY"....... We are still dealing with this mess. It could have been limited to one or two units, but we don't have money to fight it.
I am so sorry to hear that mate. I'm a volunteer firefighter in Australia and it is so crap that even with them being there that quickly so many people lost their homes. I hope everyone was OK and no one was injured or worse. The delay in getting a bulk water assets really impacts any agencies ability to effectively fight a fire. 20-30 minutes for assets from other brigades in surrounding areas is a LONG time. I wish you the best of luck and again, very sorry to hear a story like that. None of us join wanting people to lose their homes or worse. Maybe something the institute for justice could help with? Steve raves about them all the time :)
My friends house caught fire and the nearest fire hydrant was 4 miles away. Interestingly enough the fire chief lived nearby and said he's been fighting the county for years to add another fire hydrant closer to their community. The amount of time it took to hookup a fire hose gave the fire time to do more damage. The chief wanted my friend to join him in pressuring the county to ad the hydrant. For some reason they're so resistant to it. There is an excuse they have, but I can't recall what it was.
Mom+dad has a custom home built and during the process they were on site often. One day they came in and found a flooring guy putting vinyl tile over a 3' hole in the floor that looked straight into the basement--it had rained a lot without a roof and the floor had rotted. Mom shrieked and the tile dude said "I was just told to put down the tile in the kitchen, I don't fix floors". Contractor put the front door about 4 feet from where the plans showed. Mom shrieked (she and dad had worked with the architect to get exactly the house mom wanted, so she knew it all by heart). Contractor said "it's better this way--you get a huge entryway!" Mom explained "you took 4 feet out of my living room--MOVE THE DOOR". Contractor told 'em after he was done "I doubt I made a penny on this house with all the crap you kept making me fix". Ummmm... do it right the first time? Buy hey, on the pre-karma side, the guy did fall off the roof and break his arm during construction. Even with all this, just a couple years ago this 50 year old house was found to have never been bolted to the foundation. In tornado alley. Where a tornado tore through the city 5 years earlier (but missed the neighborhood by about 1.5 miles). Swimming pool was found to have an ungrounded in-water light. Would have been a shocking experience if a swimmer had kicked the light hard enough to shatter it. You just never know what yer gonna get.
50 years ago, my father wanted to buy a newish house in a development of high end homes. When he asked the realtor why the house was so cheap in comparison to others, she mentioned that many of the other homes in the community were undergoing work. Undeterred, my father called the township. The township inspector told him that the house my father was looking at didn't have builder's insurance. The others undergoing work were ones which had builder's insurance. The township inspector, who stated that he was new, told us to go inspect the house and look for various issues. He said when a house in that development changes hands, he has to inspect it. If we found what he told us to look for, we should run away from the deal. Sure enough, when we went back we found a 2x6 that was supposed to have a pier underneath it sitting on dirt. That pier was supposed to support the entire center of the house. The roof rafters were 2x8's instead of 2x12's based upon the span length. One section of floor underneath a closet was visible from the basement was framed in 2x4's. We ran away immediately.
As a former contractor in California I saw this happen a lot. Not talking about little mistakes either but things so noticeable I'm surprised the inspectors even got out of their truck. Exposed wires in a daycare, septic system parts just thrown in the hole and covered up with nothing connected, clapboard siding installed upside-down and wrong side out, an addition where every peice of hardware (screws,nails,bolts,washers,brackets) was of the wrong size, wrong type and wrong placement just to name a few. This in an area that threatened to red tag my job for about 8 cups worth of dirt on a sidewalk as we were digging to find a broken main line. The same people that would climb through our dumpsters to see if by looking at our rubbish they could tell if we were exceeding the scope of our permits. These are the people that couldn't tell the difference between a working septic system and a few thousand dollars in parts dumped in a hole, yet we had to pay them to make sure the public was kept "safe".
@@Gangsta1168 just curious, how many politicians actually campaign against this specific subset of corruption? I'm betting few, if any... So, should I just, not vote at all unless the person I'm voting for is an absolutely perfect saint that doesn't follow any corrupt practices at all? What if it's an election between someone who's only corrupt practice is this one specific subset of corruption, while the opposition is nothing but corruption through and through? Sure, I'd rather have an honest politician but...rofl, have you ever met one? Often elections end up being a choice between the lesser of two evils... But keep in mind, not voting at all is likewise a decision. If you don't vote for anyone, you've also tacitly accepted said corruption. But wait, what if you vote for someone you know isn't corrupt (hypothetically even yourself?) Well, I guess maybe then you've got a righteous leg to stand on, but, well... effectively, you've simply abstained from the process just with extra steps. Welcome to the real world. It often sucks and is full of decisions that leave a sour taste in your mouth.
@@Gangsta1168 don't be foolish. Nearly every state has a large city population dominated by the left, California just has more large cities than most states. Despite that it wouldn't matter who you voted for its all corrupt anyway. But no, your assumption is wrong.
That sounds like the inspector(s) were committing fraud against the city. Either not doing his job, or getting paid by the builder to not do his job. If that is the case, it should be easy enough to figure out if they got punished for it.
@@christopherg2347 You assume the City will go after them. You assume the City isn't in on the scheme. From reading the comments, it seems like the ENTIRE industry is a fraud scheme. From the people who Licience fake companies who have no idea what they are doing, to the inspectors not doing their job and getting paid off by the companies, to the government who ENFORCE that EVERY building be built MUST be inspected to be legal and allowed or else demolished. The ENTIRE thing is a massive fraud scheme to harm and hurt American Citizens. EVERYONE involved should be held Liable, Destroyed, and forced to pay money to the Victims while rotting in jail, with all their assets liqudated and given to the victims.
I once did a tour and tasting at a artisan whisky distillery with my daughter and her friend. The distillery was located in a building in an older industrial park. My daughter is an interior architect. While we waited for the tour to begin, she was pointing out to her friend all the fire and life safety code violations that she could see.
Having bought a new-build property that was riddled with building faults, I know how devastating it can be to deal with this corruption. And it is corruption: the local authorities sign off on construction that is sub-standard (probably having been bribed to do that) and the builders liquidate their company after construction to avoid liability, then set up again under a new name.
The large amount of code violations make me suspect that negligence wasn't involved and something more shady was going on. I wonder how well the inspector knew that builder?
I agree there may be some sort of collusion happening... While I myself am a card-carrying hillbilly 😂 I know the "good ole boys" can often stiff arm others.
Often inspectors rely on reputation and past experiences with the builder. They know them and know they do solid work. I think what can happen is the builder runs into debt, or for some other reason start cutting corners, and the inspectors didn't know.
The family should have at least had the opportunity to argue that issues were so bad that they could have only been missed if the inspector was either unqualified or the inspection was not performed. Edit to add: The county should also update its inspection procedure to include photos verifying the inspection has checked what needs to be checked so no one can go back and say "I inspected it and verified measurements and placements," only for that statement to turn out false.
As an electrician who has done some remodel work. We have passed inspection several times and later in the remodel work found some pretty substantial electrical problems that were from the new construction that we then fixed. If youre relying on an inspector to catch stuff in my experience your odds are not that good. Theyre hard to find but if you want it done right you really need to have a trustworthy contractor, the inspector is a last resort and their abilities are often just as lacking as the contractors.
I had an inspection done when selling a house. This guy spent hours looking at the smallest details. He found a few things that required fixing but also noted things that weren't a mandatory fix but let the buyer know about conditions of things. I was impressed.
I purchased a newly constructed home. The Credit Union that mortgaged the house required a home inspection. I was supposed to arrange a time for the inspector and the builder to meet. I hadn't heard back from the builder, and when I questioned him, he replied they did the inspection "over the phone." About a year later, I attended a home buyer's workshop with a friend put on by the same credit union. I recognized the home inspection speaker as the same person that "inspected" my home. I asked if they would ever perform an inspection without physically visiting the property. I was assured that would never happen. A lot of dishonest people out there.
As a resident of NC for the past 30 years and someone who has applied for different county positions, it helps if you’re related rather than what you know.
I used to be a low volt contractor. I got in a disagreement with the builder and inspector about grounding a satellite dish. I refused to install because I had no grounding provision. Missing a 10 guage ground wire and walls were finished. Inspctor was on site and informed me as not required. I showed him in the NEC (national electrical code) book where grounding is required. He said that was new to him. This code had been in effect since 1976.
I did residential wiring early on in my career as an Electrician in the early 2000's. The Metro-Atlanta area was fraught with an insane amount of favoritism, the good ol boy system, alleged payoffs, and just a general lack of concern and knowledge from county inspectors.
We bought a home in a development built by one builder. When we started remodeling it, we discovered all kinds of things wrong. We started asking questions and learned the builders disappeared, moving out of the country and no one was able to hold them accountable.
Friend's townhouse that I was renting in needed the roof replaced. The roofers discovered the joists had never been cross braced, only held apart by the roof paneling. Once the old plywood was removed they flopped around freely. They had to fix it before putting the new roof on. Never buy a townhouse. They all have crappy cooling and heating because there's no doors dividing the floors. The ground floor or basement will always be freezing and the bedrooms up top will always be hot. My computer was set up in the basement. I had flannel sheets covering all the doorways to the room and a space heater running constantly.
I agree. Check references 100%. I’ve had a contractor who promised to give references, never did, but then asked when I was ready to start. Finally got the hint I was not going to sign anything without references. Second contractor had me three references within an hour. Went and checked their work, saw what I liked, and am happy with my final result after going with them.
I used to work for building contractors in Philadelphia many decades ago, and there was a common phrase for bribing an L&I inspector (Licenses & Inspection, the city's inspections department). It was "Inspecting the boiler" whereby the inspector and the contractor would go into the basement so that cash could be exchanged in private.
When I had my house built, I hired an independent inspector to check on the work. I had heard stories of our city inspectors not performing inspections properly. It was worth the extra money spent!
One thing you need to make sure of when hiring a contractor is to make sure they are licensed, insured, and bonded. The last part is important. A surety bond compensates the customer.
It sounds to me like the inspectors did what we in the Navy call Gundecking. Said they did a job but only signed off the paperwork they did it. They show up on site, walked around the site, said hi to the workers and left. Inspection done, I have 4 more to do today.
You have that right. Worked in the City of Seattle for a decade. Their fire inspectors are straight out of the fire department with NO education in code for the systems they inspect. Only jurisdiction I've worked, with qualified inspectors, is within the Federal system and that's limited to the Navy. Most inspectors examine the last 8 hour seminar they attended that quarters "continuing education " or misinformation provided by a fried. You wouldn't believe the battles we've fought. BTW, we've had two inspectors removed and one plan examiner fired due to misrepresentation of his credentials. Construction us full of rats and proof the permit process is nothing but a shakedown. Otherwise, jurisdictions would hire qualified people.
I'm from Chatham County and worked construction in the past. This didn't surprise me when I first heard about it. I've seen many things missed by the inspectors here or they want it in a way that doesn't comply with code but won't sign off til it's their way even if it's wrong.
Yes and I work with commercial construction. "... their way even if it's wrong." Happens all the time, a power trip from inspectors who don't even know the codes; then there are those who can barely speak English because they are paid so little that the county has to take whoever they can get.
Those SPECIFIC Inspectors should be held Liable, ALONG with the County for Employing them and having no oversight or training to make sure they do their job.
A fun topic. I am in the middle of a build myself. I am not a building engineer but I am an engineer. I have challenged the inspectors on many issues in question and in most cases I may no more about the issue than the inspector. I have even had inspectors tell me they just learned about an issue in a class they just took. In our county there is only one engineer familiar with the code that is unique about my build. (Flood plain). The story continues. But is has been a good educational project. The sad part is From an engineering perspective I spot Deficiencies in the code.
As someone also an engineer and doing a rebuild, the "minimum code" is garbage. And much of the "changes" to it in the last 20 years have been pushed not for safety but because "company X" can force people to buy their products. It has been a sham and money grab since day one. There are plenty of places that have no code requirements, you don't hear about people dying left and right there.
My dad was an engineer. When he remodeled our house, he did some of the work himself, and had us kids help him sometimes. He wanted a 16 foot wide patio door consisting of two 8 foot wide sliding glass doors, with no post between them. So he designed a truss to go above the door. He had to take his plans before the city planning commission to get a variance, and they approved it. In the 45 years between the remodel and his death, I don't think he ever had to adjust the turnbuckle he included in the truss in case of settling.
If the county inspectors can't be held to account, then the county should get out of the business of inspections and privatize it - requiring the position to be bonded.
That's a great idea, building a new house would be cheaper, with permit being cheaper ,you wouldn't have to deal with someone on a power trip and someone would be held accountable .
Live in a rural country in Northwest Illinois. There are 2 county building inspectors for the entire county. You need to get a building permit and the first thing ant contractor tells you is that if you want to get your inspections done and passed you need to leave an envelope with a couple of Benjamins in the building and don’t expect it to be there after the inspection is over.
I'll tell you what the inspector did (or rather didn't) do. My dad worked in an oil refinery. Part of his job was to sign off on work orders for contractor to perform certain jobs. A big part of this process was to make sure the unit was safe to work on. Just shutting down the unit was not enough. The unit needs to be check to make sure any fluids or pressurized gases had been purged. My dad took this part of his job seriously and always went out to the unit to make sure what it said on the paperwork was reality. More than once it was not. My dad's counterpart, working in another refinery did not take his job as seriously. He'd make sure the paperwork was filled out properly and if it was he'd sing off that it was safe to work on without actually looking at the physical unit. So this group of contractors went to work. The opened a valve that was not suppose to have anything behind it. It did in fact have several thousands of gallons of super heated sulfuric acid under pressured. 17 people were killed all together. The inspector was unhurt, but he was convicted of manslaughter. I think the inspector here missed the violations because he never actually performed the inspections.
This happened right down the road from me in Chatham County, North Carolina. It has been a major fiasco here. For a long time, a large portion of the county has complained that the old rich people in Pittsboro seem to control everything in the county despite the vast majority of the county not agreeing with them. There is certain to be a lot of corruption that cuts deep here. I've also been told some of the past county commisssioners haven't even lived in the county! There have been calls to split up the county to isolate the rich "I wish this place was Chapel Hill but with no business" psychos in Pittsboro but they haven't produced anything.
Just obey, for the greater good. Mask up, vax up, shut up. Ain't communism grand. 81 million ballots, 2weeks to slow the spread, safe and effective. 🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑
I cannot fathom how an honest building inspector could miss spotting that roof joists were so undersized. The same is true with many of the other code violations that were mentioned in the story. Since the inspections' shortcomings cannot be explained by incompetence, that leaves us with corruption as the most likely explanation.
Back when I worked for my father installing home sized septic treatment systems, we had a health inspector do a test of our systems where we turn it on and he watches the water squirt into the air before we are allowed to put the plastic caps on it and then bury the whole thing. We run a few tests and I notice that one of the pipes is at an angle it shouldn't be at so I wait until the inspector's back is turned and I push it. It came off in my hand and I slapped it back on before anyone saw it. I reported what happened to my father and we discover that the contractor forgot to glue the entire disposal field and we had to go back and redo his work. Construction contractors can never be trusted.
I been in business over 50 years long before they started these inspections and I wouldn't trust any code official or inspector as far as I could spit, it was better when the mafia was running things, love your channel Steve, thanks for all you do,
@@christopherg2347it's a little different because they are privately hired, and you'd think they would care about their reputation enough to get more business
General home inspectors do not memorize or know specific codes. They ARE trained to spot to defects in homes specific to safety concerns and general operability of the house systems. But they are not code inspectors and actually are not encouraged to quote building codes in their reports. Most of them have that specific wording in the inspection agreement.
@@steves_garage have to find the right one I met with a home inspector and asked if he did new homes He said he did and able to find defects He said general contractor were not his fan
@@DaveBigDawg Yeah there's probably a wide range of ability there. I'm actually about ready to get my license to be a general inspector and I would feel more comfortable starting with homes are a bit older because I already know what is going to be wrong with them. Newer homes would be harder since they are the illusion of being perfect.
While walking with an electrical inspector doing a rough in inspection, I asked if they could be held liable if the house subsequently burned down due to an electrical issue. He laughed and said not a chance.
This is a very common occurrence in the building industry. I have seen this same scenario locally several times. Require a bond before construction starts, but most people are building to their financial limits and do not want the extra expense.
What they need is insurance that covers workmanship. Most don't know what that is or how much it cost. I can get a bond in Colorado that doesn't mean anything foe a problem like this. The policy coverage for this house would cost over $20,000. No one will pay that.
As someone in the trades, carpenter, Ive encountered plenty of building inspectors that were pretty incompetent. Sadly, some of them were previously carpenters and still didn’t know much.
You also need to hire a private inspector to go in behind the city inspector. Add an addition put on to my house which was two stories and three out of four times when the inspector came the private inspector found problems even after they were supposedly corrected. Cost a little bit of extra but it's well worth the money. Plus you got to make sure you get the right private inspector
My wife and I had a custom home built about 8 years ago. We were really ignorant about the process. All of the established custom home builders were backed for 3 years or more in the semi-rural area. Fortunately, we had help picking a really great builder who was just establishing his business and is now equally busy. Knowing what I know now, I would never try to build a home without the help of experienced people in the area to advise me through the process. I hope that contractor got his license pulled by the state!
I saw this a lot on the Mike Holmes related shows. Not only were there home inspectors who did poor jobs inspecting a home for people purchasing a home, but also newly built homes which after a few years were developing problems. And I was always amazed at the amount of things that just get by and are never noticed, or built to code just barely but with cheap or shoddy materials that quickly degrade. I think there are companies that sell insurance that will pay out if your build goes bad and you get a judgement in court that never gets paid (so very limited payout conditions). But other than that and doing your own homework ahead of time, yeah the buyer has little protection.
If you are building a home (doing it yourself or contracting it out), go to the library and read how it is done before you even find land to build on. My father questioned people in the business and other families who were having their home built and heard the horror stories. That is when my father decided to build it himself. In 1980, my family, dad, mom and myself, built our house. The inspector came out a few times during the build. During framing, he came out and seen how we were doing. He said he wished every builder put in the amount of nails we did, call me when you start electrical. I (at 16) did the electrical and called him early in the process to make sure it was OK. He again said he wished every builder did this quality of work. He came out maybe a total of 8 time and spent more time talking about other buildings he was inspecting by "professional" companies and how bad a job they do. My family had no experience in construction, no licenses for foundation, framing, plumbing, electrical, fireplace, heating ect. but time invested into going to the library and reading served us well. All three of us invested our time in reading books and building codes before the land was purchased. Even if you have your home built by a contractor, learning how it should be done will save you the horror stories that many families go through.
In the late 70s my parents had a house built and the contractor never really finished the job, dad had to hire other people to finish several aspects of the build. In addition to that there were several liens against the house because the builder didn't pay people like the electricians, the lumberyard and a couple others. Dad sued and he won, but there the only collection he got was the liens removed. The whole process took about 5 years. In the end the contractor ended up with criminal charges, got some jail time and was ordered to pay the suppliers he'd stiffed. If I had to guess, I'd say his monetary debts were probably never paid. But I could be wrong.
Regarding uncollectable builders, I had a case years ago against a company that restored antique cars. My client was a subcontractor on the job for all of the polishing and chrome work. The work was done, and the company never paid up, or collected the parts. Sued, and won judgment. Company did not pay. Filed a few documents, and was able to have the Sheriff padlock the doors to the building, and inventory the machinery for auction. Once those padlocks were on the door, that company “miraculously” had enough money to pay for all of the work my client did.
Dang I have never been 1st to comment! Just wanted to say I love the videos. Im also so glad you post several a day sometime. Always something new to watch! Edit 4th to comment other people typed faster before I could submit mine lol.
I bought a spec house 20-some years ago during a housing boom in our area. The city code inspectors couldn't keep up, so they let the builders sign off on code compliance. About 10 years ago, we started a home remodel. In the process, we found that several concrete footers hadn't been poured, and they just hung the posts over the dirt. The inspectors caught it at the time of the remodel. We contacted the builder, who pointed out that they had gone out of business and the new business (same name, same people) weren't liable. I know many homes in my neighborhood had similar (or worse) problems. So, I should be happy we caught it and fixed it before it destroyed the house and foundation. So always hire an independent home inspector, even on new homes.
Has anyone watched the RUclips series of home inspections done in Britain by the guy who uses such colorful phrases to describe the contractors and their work? He is absolutely hilarious and worth the time to watch! My favorite insult is when he describes a shoddy contractor as a “flipping tuna melt”. That is comedy gold my friend, comedy gold!
Wow sounds like something I would like to see I'm going to search for the RUclips video I've had a few screwey inspectors and wants to see how they are in the U.K.
I live one county north of Chatham in NC. There are several problems, one is Chatham Park, 85,000 homes and units being put in within a 5 year span to ease the housing crunch in the area. Two, all inspectors now inspect all trades to save money. The way it used to work is an electrician, plumber etc... that had been in the business locally for years would retire or get tired of busting his butt, and get hired on as an electrical or plumbing inspector. Now the counties(all in nc) hire people with little to no real world experience as long as they have a degree, and bingo now they are deciding what passes and what doesn't. I've got a million bad inspector stories, I am a licensed electrician in the area, but now am a plant electrician for pharmaceutical companies.
I recently heard a claim that the NTSB is hiring accident investigators with no experience in transportation. You would think it would be wise to hire people who have some kind of expertise with aircraft before having them investigate and air crash. Same with trains. I frequently see complaints from aviators that the head of the NTSB rides a Moped. At least it's a form of transportation. What's really sad is that fast food places can't even hire enough workers, at least in California. Other types of work have the same problem. I do know a guy who got trained as a concrete inspector, just before the financial collapse of 2008. So his new skills weren't needed. He took loaves of bread to a supermarket bakery, got hired as a baker, and worked there until he retired. I bet there's a shortage of concrete inspectors now.
Can they appeal to a state court? This is outrageous! What good are the inspectors if they are not inspecting? Breach of contract? With a permit to build you are paying for legitimate inspections that should be guaranteed. I'm in Brunswick Co. NC. I've heard of many egregious things, building on lakes, swamps, etc in Wilmington where everyone seems to be related and covering for each other but, this takes the cake.
This reminds me of neighbors near us who bought a new manufactured home from a local, 'reputable' builder. Their own inspection, not for code but for flaws, found 200 problems after it was delivered and set up on their property.
Neighbors purchased a two story manufactured home. (Not sure if that's the correct term, here.) It was amazing to watch big cranes lifting the sections into place it looked wonderful! Within a few months, things had shifted, and the upstairs bathroom doors wouldn't close properly. There were other problems, too.
Justice at work again. If an inspector finds a problem they don't hesitate to give penalties and even make you rip out work already done. If they screw up no punishment. Dual justice.
We had / have the issue in British Columbia, Canada. Whenever something occurs to make the headlines, the answer is to increase the code and add on another layer of bureaucracy to the process. That way government is seen to be "doing something" while not having to deal with the root issue of poor inspections.
That's all they care about, getting more power through bureaucracy and regulation. When you can't threaten their bottom line because they get their tax money regardless, they have no incentive to improve quality, just to give themselves more power to pretend to improve quality. So that's all they'll ever do.
Where I had lived in North Carolina, there are two builders that have gotten away with shoddy workmanship on new houses they have built, one building inspector missed a section of floor joists that had a six inch gap that the builder filled by using multiple nails that never connected with a header plate, using subgrade material, not paying employees, paying the building inspector to ignore blatant issues and other stuff, both builders are still in business because they buy off the judge to dismiss any cases that come before them, I know because I seen it with my own eyes
Back in the 1980s, a local tv station followed Hamilton County Building Department Inspectors as they played golf when they were supposed to be preforming building inspections. The tv station followed them for weeks. I bet this still occurs somewhere!
We just had a huge scandal out here in the Quad Cities of Iowa where a local slumlord had one building collapse (3 people died and many more lost everything). It came out that he had put off repairs and inspections. Other lease holders buildings were found to be damaged and have had tenants put out. He’s now under investigation.
Early in my building career (now retired after 30 odd years) I worked as a helper on a concrete crew...the "inspector" (I use the term loosely for reasons that will immediately become apparent) would drive by our projects at the pre-pour stage of the concrete foundation / slab, get handed a case of Coors through his pickup window, and state "Looks good from my house!" as he drove away. Yah, we never failed an inspection apparently. Now, as far as I could tell, we *did* do everything necessary and proper to make sure the foundation was correctly laid...I know this, because whenever something needed doing to make it that way...you can guess who was the guy who did that, hehe. My foreman: "We need to get this footing compacted" Me: "We meaning me, again, right?" My foreman: "You're a smart guy!"
And not only were they failed by builder and inspector but also the builders insurance company that refused to pay for neglect which is also the homeowners insurance (both farm bureau) which says that if their house collapses it’s not covered.
The possibility of fraud, pay-offs, kick-backs and bribes is strong, too. The builder takes 2x8 instead of 2x10s from the lumber yard and gets the cash difference and then pays the inspector to sign off on it. It calls for a ton of rebar? Who's checking after the pour? The sheriff needs to be involved to investigate such cases. I'm a former deputy and have investigated and found crimes by the dozens.
My brother is a city inspector for where he lives, and he knows which properties he’s going to have issues with before he even goes to the site based on the builder. The worst story he ever told me was where one submitted an application for a final inspection, but they had never had any prior inspections applied for or performed.
Reminds me of the nightmare of when work crews come around the area i live in. All their work is just marked as inspected without being inspected and they know it. Of the last 3 groups 1 completely destroyed a significant length of road to the point there wasn’t even intact room to walk doing stunts “i.e loop de loops” with heavy machinery. Another dug across the road without a permit and never even fixed the hole they made just tossed some dirt back in. And the last completely destroyed the drainage system for my entire street. Which caused a lot of damage.
I spent 25 years in home building and most county inspectors are useless at finding problems. They normally walk through the house quickly and just sign off on it. It' is sadly on you to make sure it's done right. If you don't know home building hire someone like a private company home inspector to come out during construction during the different phases to look for you. It will cost money to hire and inspector on your own, but much cheaper to pay them to find problems early. Also after framing get a good level and tape measure to make sure everything is square on the house. To check square on a wall measure 3 feet out on 1 wall, 4 feet on the adjacnt wall, and the distance between those marks should be 5 feet. If it's not it isnt square.
Late Mother & I had a Garden Home built after my Father passed in 1998. After it was built, had a close friend go though the house checking on things. Even though a lot was caught, I was still finding stuff several years after she passed in 2005. One thing we didn’t catch was the garage was for two vehicles, two mid-sized or compact vehicle; both of us had full sized vehicles. Builder got his comeuppance when he died in a vehicle accident.
I was a master carpenter working with my father for a decade before med school. I can tell you from experience in building on several states in New England and my father currently in Nevada …. If you build a decent reputation with a city inspector and do good work for a few projects, they’ll most often just show up so their sat phone records their locations, pop their head in (or not at all), ask of you have any issues or questions…. And simply say “ok good job, call me again during the next phase.” Inspectors notoriously don’t inspect. We did immaculate over the top work (and my father never made a penny because of it) so it was never an issue. But the number of “missed” things we were hired to tear down and fix over the years….. yikes
When I worked as a plumber we had 2 building inspectors in Arizona who didn't like each other. They would actively fail anything directed by the other. I re-piped a washing messiness box 6 times because both inspectors disagreed on how the vent for the drain should be handled. It took my boss taking to their boss to finally get a resolution to finish the remodel we started.
Had similar issues when we had a house built sadly. It's totally inexcusable. Fortunately, ours were not too bad, and we did manage to get it taken care of prior to taking possession.
I was working for a chimney company in Michigan many years ago. Was one of these prefab type neighborhoods. A $650,000 house had a chimney fire. We went there to sweep the chimney and inspect it and the entire chimney pipe from the prefab in the house all the way up to the cap there was no chimney pipe.
So, if you're contracting to build a house, then you need to hire your own inspector. Here, if you get a mortgage based on you being your own contractor, the bank will make you pay for the bank's inspectors to check the job against code at various stages before releasing the next chunk of building cash. As a kid my friend's father would close his incorporated roofing company at the end of the year and open a new co. the next spring. Real schlocky reputation. Marriage fell apart for ... some reason too...
Steve, I’m watching your RUclips right now on building. I had followed my builder for four years. Followed one of his cruise for a year. Still come up with many problems after we moved in. A lot of it could be said was building mistakes. We had water running down a chimney. We had windows in the basement that were plugged over in Bodian. It’s just some of the small stuff. Thank you for listening.
Our house was built during a 60's building boom, in an area newly annexed by our city. The subdivision was one of very affordable homes. Some things in our house were done much better than what many expensive homes of have as far as quality. That being said, we needed to have parts of the original roof removed and replaced, as isn't out of the norm for an older asphalt shingle roof. When plywood was removed, hubby found several old beer cans stashed l, hidden from view during original construction. So, it would appear we might have been lucky to have a decent structural house. Given there was drinking going on during construction. Our house had better quality built in than others in the same area had, as every little thing was an option and many people went the cheapest route to getting their house. I hate to think of things that could have gone wrong.
There is a UK company that does home building inspecting and they are always posting on social media (they use it as advertising for the company) what they find - sometimes walls etc are so out of spec they have to half pull the house down and they also shout out great work by builders as well.
Always find a local contractor who knows the local codes. Always check the contractors work. Find out what they have built before, see if you can go look at the buildings and chat with the owners about how they like the work. Talk to the city about any violations or problems they might have had with the contractor. Contact the inspector and see how things are going througout the build. Do the leg work, and stay on top of the contractor and the city, its a huge investment. Dont just sit back and hope everything happens perfectly. It doesnt seem fair to do all this but it is your money and not everyone in this industry is honest.
This sounds like a case where a suit can be brought against every inspector who signed off on the inspections. Edit: and it's absolutely inexcusable that the judge dismissed said lawsuit.
The immunity extends, at least in my state, and I assume most, if not all others, to the individual governmental employees as long as they were acting within the scope of their employment.
@@danvonwhich is fine, that is “qualified immunity”. The issue here is more sovereign immunity, since the government itself just says “not our problem”, i.e. they caused damages by being incompetent, and not only is the human carrying the uniform immune, but also “the uniform itself” (i.e. government) immune.
Builder who built our home thirty years ago did almost exactly this; each job, on its own, was profitable, but he managed costs by shuffling income from one home to an in-work project. He always managed to work through the, ahem, curious financials, and built a nice home, but he also showed me how thin his operating margins were. Sadly, he took ill and passed a few months after finishing our home. Found he had a few unpaid contractors, and I was glad I had owner's title insurance...
If you live in NC, especially the coastal areas, county inspections are insanely inept. Our company has tried suing different inspectors, but regardless of the issue the county/ city says there is nothing we/ they can do.
I had my own fights with a builder in FL. I won my battles. The problem with mine I was a truck driver and only around every 3 weeks. Not a thing to do. From your video it seems to me that you almost need to hire a licensed home inspector to watch the building process on your behave if your not familiar with the building process. Great video and thank you for all the good information you give us.
I was in charge of construction at a ski resort and we kept getting in trouble with the county building inspector for very questionable infractions . . . until we discovered he needed free seasons passes for his grand-kids. From then on he approved our projects without him even setting foot on the property!
Great share! All builders should be liable, i use to work with contractors years ago, and then my sister had a large house built in Macomb from polute builders poorly made and they were kicked out of Michigan years ago, only to bring back building of Condos that, not only built in a tornado ally area, with no strap supports, and no payment to employees, and they got more then the pricing was worth, then they built Condos in Florida, and they fell down! And people died!And the city of Rochester didn't even care! And made housing unaffordable to non-existent to Owen today. And I still remember my parents back in the 70s, had a new house built, and the basement always leaked, because it was built in a swamp Taylor area, and the house next door was built on our property line too.
Note: I've been through multiple fire inspections, never ONCE 'passed' on the first try, almost all of them minor but not 'by the book'. Beat back a huge fine once by showing an inspector the code book/and how what we did was legal, albeit in a very convoluted way (but saved $1000's). At a certain point, the county/city/jurisdiction SHOULD be on the hook. Maybe not for one missed violation (unless it's egregious), maybe not even 2 or 3 or 4 minor ones. But when you get into dozens of violations, that's negligence. I'd bet if you go back over the builders of record, and the inspectors of record, you'll find more houses that aren't up to code...
Did some wiring work in our house. City inspector came out, flipped a light switch, lights came on. He was going to call it good until I mentioned this room wasn't part of the work and it was an outlet circuit, not lights. So he dug out a tester, plugged it into one outlet that was one of many I'd added. The right lights came on, so he called it good. Good thing I'd spent a lot of time going over the relevant codes and double checking my work. So I'm confident my work was good, but that fellow was sure a waste of the town's money.
This is logical, but many people wouldn't have the knowledge to inspect properly. We built in Person County, NC back in mid 80s. Thankfully, we had decent inspectors, as that house never had problems.
I worked for a man that owned an independent inspection company and he is regularly hired to do inspection on new homes as a back up to the city or county and is always finding issues they missed
Problem is bldg inspectors are often people who have no idea what they are doing. They failed at some other construction job and went to the state for a job. My parents had an inspector who insisted that GFCI outlets had to be installed outside one bathroom in the hallway, 16 ft away from any water. He did not say the ones next to the sink needed GFCI outlets and that there were none needed on the system at all, except for in the hall. The contractor knew that was wrong, but put the GFCI outlets at both places.
My parents had a house built in a new sub division that consisted of town homes. During the build process, my father would go into the home, after house to take photographs of where the plumbing was being run, the electrical lines were placed and the condition of the floors and stair cases. He found a few water lines that had been smashed when the attachment to the foundation walls missed the mark. He complained to the general contractor, that had him trespassed, so he used a telephoto lens to photograph what he could see through the windows. Closing day was uneventful. A few weeks later a freak thunder storm accompanied by high winds blew the roof off his house and a few other enjoined homes falling on his work vehicle and both of their personal cars. The roofer blamed "act of god". Well God didn't install all the nails which is why the roofing material blew off. The normal house settling occurred, dry wall cracked, doors didn't close and stair treads cracked. The builder refused to honor the year warranty. After the suit was filed, the builder declared bankruptcy. The builder moved to Florida where he repeated the scam process of poor workmanship, and had his license pulled.
@gungadinn interesting; I've never looked into it before. Do you not even own the land under it? I'm sure it depends on the contract, hopefully lehto will cover something like it. I'm pretty sure if I hired a builder to build something on land I own outright isn't going to have any ability to exclude me from my own property. I hope anyway, but maybe I'm wrong and there's some weird legal BS
@@mbburry4759 Provided the builder owns the land the house is being built on, until you go through closing, it's his property, and can trespass you from unauthorized visits. As I typed before, this was a townhouse development. As for building on your own property and having someone build a house for you. You need to be the one paying the sub contractors. Once they've been contracted, they'll file a lien against the build so they get paid. Allowing a general contractor to run the show, if he doesn't pay the bills, you lose twice to satisfy the lien and the money you paid the general contractor. I've had 3 homes built.The first was a disaster. I acted as my own general contractor. Getting crews scheduled, materials on site and dealing with inspectors was a pain. The second, I hired someone as a scheduler that worked at a lumber yard I used. He knew the good contractors from the bad. All of the licensed trades were responsible for getting the county inspector on site for sign-off. Went much smoother. The third was got built fast, under budget. The subs were paid weekly and worked their butt off as I paid bonus money for early completion with no defects. Cash talks.
This totally reminds me of the of the 1986 Tom Hanks movie “The Money Pit”. Hopefully this Homeowners won’t go through the agony Tom Hanks and Shelly Long did in the movie. 🤞
Code departments are too busy looking for grass over 8", or trash cans without lids, to be bothered with checking on builders. Code inspectors, and home inspectors live in the same boat. Just there to punch a ticket.
We had a building expansion at our church, and the county inspector signed off on each part of the expansion. After it was done, awaiting final occupancy inspection, the county now wanted it to be completely redone to meet new regulations. A quick visit to the county office, and a different inspector showed up and signed it off.
Had a deal happen in Sioux Falls, SD a few years ago where building permits were issued for a mansion. When construction started they used an unapproved plan for the house. Turned the wrong way on the lot, too close to the neighbors house and too tall. Not sure how the inspectors missed all of this. After a lengthy court battle the house was demolished and hauled to the dump.
So the county requires, by law, inspections by their agents, but nothing requires those agents to do their job. Got it. 👍🏼
You got it
Exactly! What are people paying inspectors to do? Just to pad the counties’ coffers I guess based on this ruling.
Since that is the case, the home owner should have the right to waive the inspections and fees and inspect it themselves.
I'm a mechanical engineer and many of the current city inspector are fairly new and they really don't understand the basics of construction or the 'why' codes are set. Instead, they just try and memorize the specific rules and try to blindly apply them. That means that they just don't have the experience to catch poor building practices that might technically meet code. On the other hand, they tend to overly focus on little minor details that really don't matter so they add unnecessary costs and delays to the homeowner.
Clearly they just want the money. It is no longer about making homes safer. The Supreme Court must have been made up of idiots to give government immunity from being sued. There are no checks and balances in our government when the judicial doesn't hold the executive branch in check. There is no check and balances when congress puts its ability to declare war on the executive branch by allowing them to call it a police action. So much of what our founding fathers put in place has been usurped by laziness and politics.
Umm that's every facet of government being paid without actually providing beneficial results.
It is absolutely inexcusable that the county can be immune to lawsuits for breaching their duty.
@KameraShy and it's in the populations best interests to do their job.
It does seem that government should have SOME responsibility but so many things can be legitimately missed in an inspection. If they were TOTALLY responsible and not immune, inspection costs would be through the roof and so untimely they would hold up construction for objectionably long periods.
The inspector was someone related to someone in the town got hired but did not do his job or could not do his job
@@e.jameszettlemoyer3819 I agree, but this particular case was so egregious that there should be no question that at least some of the issues should have been caught. They should not have blanket immunity.
@@wendwllhickey6426 that's is the most small town/ county thing I've heard so your probably right. Got to love small town politics
I'm a home inspector and have witnessed code inspectors inspecting a roof replacement and he never even got out of his car. He stated "it looks good to me, your good to go." When I was finished with my inspection I had found that they did not provide adequate attic ventilation and had missing materials at the ridge of the roof. I've even seen new construction where they never added insulation in the attic, yet the code inspector gave a certificate of occupancy. Obviously he never looked. Always do your own due diligence.
Code inspectors don't inspect roofs what are you talking about?
A friend of my brother was having a house built with exterior framing of 2x6, 18" on center.
The inspector demanded, in writing, that the builders rip it all down and replace it with 2x4, 24" on center.
Within five months the house was twisting, jamming doors and windows and opening gaps that weather blew straight through.
The town lawyered up and fought tooth and nail until the homeowner had to give up for lack of money for lawyers.
And the inspector never even lost a shift.
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edit: the 18" on center above should be 16" on center. Thanks, OneWildTurkey!
18" centers? How would you go about sheathing that? Not with plywood; unless you do a lot of wasteful cutting. 24" is common for roofs and might be good enough for a small shed in a warm climate. Where the hell was this?
@@MonkeyJedi99Why would a more conservative/better installation be rejected? Weird.
@@MonkeyJedi99 18" ? not 16" ?
Love it. The good old, "It's not my job to do my job. It's your job to make sure I don't get caught not doing my job," defense. It works every time.
In 1985, I attended a training class where one of my instructors complained about getting an inspection. He and his wife were both Electrical Engineers and had rewired their house. In fact he was one of the designers for the computer system I was there to train on. He had researched the local codes and made sure everything meet or exceeded code. When the Inspector came out, he refused to even look at it but demanded that they get a licensed contractor. They ended up paying a contractor $250 who never looked at anything but stood there and told the inspector that everything was up to code. He said in total it took less than 15 minutes to get approved and no one ever looked at the work that was done. Just the inspector looking out for the contractors.
I've seen the same thing happen more than once. They refuse to even look at the work unless it was done by a contractor. Then when the homeowner caves and hires a contractor the inspector signs off without really looking at anything.
My grandfather had run ins with one inspector who refused to pass things that were up to code. He was pushing for a bribe and my Grandfather refused to cave in. The inspector would find something new to fail every time he came out. The guy demanded that all the pvc drain pipes be removed on a huge job. He wanted them replaced with cast iron despite pvc being standard practice for years at that point (mid 1980s). Grandpa just documented everything until it was obvious and went over inspector dude's head. When his superiors realized that they were going to lose a very large lawsuit if they didn't do something, they threw Inspector bribey pants under the bus and fired him. The new guy pretty much rubber stamped anything my grandpa did for years afterward.
I don't know anything about electrical code. I had a landlord that was an electrical engineer and therefore could sign off on whatever. The power company came out to upgrade the meter once and shut the power off for being unsafe. We had no power for 3 days but when they came back they told us it was completely unsafe but he had the authority to sign off on it. That happened three more times while we were living there. Every single person that came to do any works that it was unsafe including the town inspector but this guy's signature could override it all. To be fair to him though, we never had any issues like we did in other apartments where we couldn't use different appliances at the same time. I guess I'll never know if it was actually unsafe or not but he was a PhD level professor for a top 50 electrical engineering program.
@@paulf3 In my admittedly, limited experience anything out of the ordinary is considered “unsafe”.
In the litigious society, we live, in most people refuse to exercise their own judgment when it comes to things like this.
The local power company came out after a storm and shut the power off to a neighbor who was heavily reliant on an oxygen machine. Service outside his house had been knocked loose and was leaning precariously. Another neighbor had temporarily secured it in place but had done an excellent job. It honestly was more secure than it was originally. Power stayed on throughout and no wiring was exposed, damaged, or in danger of coming down.
He would have been fine until he could have found an electrician to come out and redo it, but nope.
They took his lines loose from the pole and told him to go find a hotel.
Poor guy was on fixed income and had to spring for a hotel and find an electrician on a holiday weekend. He also lost everything he had in his freezer. If they’d just left him alone until after the weekend he’d have been without power a few hours at most.
There is dangerous, and then there is “dangerous”. This was very much in the latter category.
Earlier this year, we had a powerful windstorm knock down several power lines. One line that ran from a transformer across the road to a residence blocked a nearby street.
These weren’t high voltage lines, just residential power. Rather than securing them, or taking them loose and reopening the road, they blocked it and trapped dozens of people in the cold for almost a whole day.
I understand that they were busy, but they already had the truck back there with the bucket out and the guy in it inspecting the pole. They could’ve pulled the fuse at the transformer and secured the lines in less time than it took for them to leave and come back with barriers.
Some people view “code” as holy writ, but there is often more than one way to do something safely. I’ve seen cases where codes will conflict from one area to another.
Make no mistake, there are people out there, who do shoddy work. They absolutely should be shut down. That doesn’t mean anyone who doesn’t have the proper local license is dangerous though.
I was an electrician. I have the opposite experience. An electrical engineer wired his own new home and it failed and we had to go fix his mistakes.
@@BD-xz6te that's a fantastic point.
Why do you have pay the county building inspectors if they take no responsibility?
What's the govt for again ?
Pay is the primary driver for inspections. Its a money grab for the most part
Money grab
Dumbocrats
It's a revenue source. Where I live a municipality can use the State Electrical Board or use their own inspectors, if they use their own they are statutorily limited in how much they charge. The big cities are always trying to get around it because they make so much on other trades.
30 years ago when my mom was building a house, I would go to the job site every single day and then call the builder about problems I had found.
I was actually a bit frustrated by the fact that he was not checking on his sub-contractors.
That was his job. To inspect all the work they did.
My parents did this when they built their home. My mother told me you need to check on the process everyday.
My brother, the home owner from the video, did go to the site often and asked questions and was assured that everything was on track every step of the way. That is why he has so much documentation of the failures which as a layperson would not have known at the time. Of course in hindsight he can cite codes in his sleep after this. Don’t trust anyone especially local government.
@@michellempintoso you trust state and federal government?? 😂😂😂
We did this in 2018 when they were building our first house. Caught a bunch of stuff.
Right??? Like did these people just pay the builders, do nothing for months, and expect to walk into their finished home at the end of it without any effort?
I’m an electrician, and I take pride in doing my work properly and to code.
So am I, and my brother. I have called for a Final Inspection on a service panel change in a warehouse, and had the Inspector tell me his initials, and to scribble those and that day's date on the Building Permit.
This was AFTER he had double-checked and made sure that it WAS me, and _not_ my brother.
Who also just happens to be a Contractor as well.
And after he said that, I said, "I'd be more comfortable if you came and looked."
To which he said, "And that's why I'm comfortable letting you do this. Once."
I worked for a utility and often inspected services before approving a connection. A good many electricain took pride in their work but a few don’t. Didn’t take me long to figure out who I’d trust and who would go on “do not connect before inspection” list.
Most electricians do take pride in their work but like the old saying goes it only takes one bad apple to make the basket look bad. Same goes here with all the trades including the inspectors.
@@jeffloveless6536 If people were paying attention, Contractors would have a worse reputation that Liewyers and Used Car Meth Sales Freaks.
Combined.
I live in North Carolina. On July 29th of last year, at 4:30 in the morning, (1-year anniversary is coming up), a 12-condominium building complex caught on fire that I live in. The fire department just happened to be returning from another call, saw the smoke (This is a 1 road 2 stoplight town) and was on scene almost immediately. The fire department went to hookup at the special fire hose risers meant to serve the 4-12 condo complexes and found out that repair parts for the special water risers had been on order for months and all of the risers were not operational. The fire department was forced to lay out over 600 feet of firehose to the nearest underrated fire hydrant, allowing an additional 20-30 minutes of burn time. What fire could have been confined to one or two units, destroyed 9 units with fire damage and 3 units with water damage.
The county claimed, "SOVERIGN IMMUNITY"....... We are still dealing with this mess. It could have been limited to one or two units, but we don't have money to fight it.
I am so sorry to hear that mate. I'm a volunteer firefighter in Australia and it is so crap that even with them being there that quickly so many people lost their homes. I hope everyone was OK and no one was injured or worse.
The delay in getting a bulk water assets really impacts any agencies ability to effectively fight a fire. 20-30 minutes for assets from other brigades in surrounding areas is a LONG time.
I wish you the best of luck and again, very sorry to hear a story like that. None of us join wanting people to lose their homes or worse.
Maybe something the institute for justice could help with? Steve raves about them all the time :)
My friends house caught fire and the nearest fire hydrant was 4 miles away. Interestingly enough the fire chief lived nearby and said he's been fighting the county for years to add another fire hydrant closer to their community. The amount of time it took to hookup a fire hose gave the fire time to do more damage. The chief wanted my friend to join him in pressuring the county to ad the hydrant. For some reason they're so resistant to it. There is an excuse they have, but I can't recall what it was.
Mom+dad has a custom home built and during the process they were on site often. One day they came in and found a flooring guy putting vinyl tile over a 3' hole in the floor that looked straight into the basement--it had rained a lot without a roof and the floor had rotted. Mom shrieked and the tile dude said "I was just told to put down the tile in the kitchen, I don't fix floors". Contractor put the front door about 4 feet from where the plans showed. Mom shrieked (she and dad had worked with the architect to get exactly the house mom wanted, so she knew it all by heart). Contractor said "it's better this way--you get a huge entryway!" Mom explained "you took 4 feet out of my living room--MOVE THE DOOR". Contractor told 'em after he was done "I doubt I made a penny on this house with all the crap you kept making me fix". Ummmm... do it right the first time? Buy hey, on the pre-karma side, the guy did fall off the roof and break his arm during construction.
Even with all this, just a couple years ago this 50 year old house was found to have never been bolted to the foundation. In tornado alley. Where a tornado tore through the city 5 years earlier (but missed the neighborhood by about 1.5 miles). Swimming pool was found to have an ungrounded in-water light. Would have been a shocking experience if a swimmer had kicked the light hard enough to shatter it. You just never know what yer gonna get.
50 years ago, my father wanted to buy a newish house in a development of high end homes. When he asked the realtor why the house was so cheap in comparison to others, she mentioned that many of the other homes in the community were undergoing work. Undeterred, my father called the township. The township inspector told him that the house my father was looking at didn't have builder's insurance. The others undergoing work were ones which had builder's insurance. The township inspector, who stated that he was new, told us to go inspect the house and look for various issues. He said when a house in that development changes hands, he has to inspect it. If we found what he told us to look for, we should run away from the deal. Sure enough, when we went back we found a 2x6 that was supposed to have a pier underneath it sitting on dirt. That pier was supposed to support the entire center of the house. The roof rafters were 2x8's instead of 2x12's based upon the span length. One section of floor underneath a closet was visible from the basement was framed in 2x4's. We ran away immediately.
The old saying you get what you paid for doesn't apply to government.. 😂😂😂
As a former contractor in California I saw this happen a lot. Not talking about little mistakes either but things so noticeable I'm surprised the inspectors even got out of their truck. Exposed wires in a daycare, septic system parts just thrown in the hole and covered up with nothing connected, clapboard siding installed upside-down and wrong side out, an addition where every peice of hardware (screws,nails,bolts,washers,brackets) was of the wrong size, wrong type and wrong placement just to name a few. This in an area that threatened to red tag my job for about 8 cups worth of dirt on a sidewalk as we were digging to find a broken main line. The same people that would climb through our dumpsters to see if by looking at our rubbish they could tell if we were exceeding the scope of our permits. These are the people that couldn't tell the difference between a working septic system and a few thousand dollars in parts dumped in a hole, yet we had to pay them to make sure the public was kept "safe".
Just further proof that most gov't "inspections" are really nothing more than a means for find more ways to tax people.
I bet you VOTED repeatedly for the corrupt system.. 😂😂😂
@@Gangsta1168 just curious, how many politicians actually campaign against this specific subset of corruption? I'm betting few, if any...
So, should I just, not vote at all unless the person I'm voting for is an absolutely perfect saint that doesn't follow any corrupt practices at all? What if it's an election between someone who's only corrupt practice is this one specific subset of corruption, while the opposition is nothing but corruption through and through? Sure, I'd rather have an honest politician but...rofl, have you ever met one? Often elections end up being a choice between the lesser of two evils...
But keep in mind, not voting at all is likewise a decision. If you don't vote for anyone, you've also tacitly accepted said corruption. But wait, what if you vote for someone you know isn't corrupt (hypothetically even yourself?) Well, I guess maybe then you've got a righteous leg to stand on, but, well... effectively, you've simply abstained from the process just with extra steps.
Welcome to the real world. It often sucks and is full of decisions that leave a sour taste in your mouth.
@@Gangsta1168 don't be foolish. Nearly every state has a large city population dominated by the left, California just has more large cities than most states. Despite that it wouldn't matter who you voted for its all corrupt anyway. But no, your assumption is wrong.
Yeah “safe” from their greedy butts
That sounds like the inspector(s) were committing fraud against the city. Either not doing his job, or getting paid by the builder to not do his job.
If that is the case, it should be easy enough to figure out if they got punished for it.
Bought or blind, take your choice.
Immunity, thrown out.
@@Jirodyne That won't work when the city sues the inspector. They are the only ones that can in the end.
@@christopherg2347 You assume the City will go after them. You assume the City isn't in on the scheme.
From reading the comments, it seems like the ENTIRE industry is a fraud scheme. From the people who Licience fake companies who have no idea what they are doing, to the inspectors not doing their job and getting paid off by the companies, to the government who ENFORCE that EVERY building be built MUST be inspected to be legal and allowed or else demolished.
The ENTIRE thing is a massive fraud scheme to harm and hurt American Citizens. EVERYONE involved should be held Liable, Destroyed, and forced to pay money to the Victims while rotting in jail, with all their assets liqudated and given to the victims.
@@christopherg2347 And he'd have to make them look REALLY bad, before they would turn on their buddy...
I once did a tour and tasting at a artisan whisky distillery with my daughter and her friend. The distillery was located in a building in an older industrial park. My daughter is an interior architect. While we waited for the tour to begin, she was pointing out to her friend all the fire and life safety code violations that she could see.
While they might be violations now, when it was built, it might have passed code. Code changes all the time.
Having bought a new-build property that was riddled with building faults, I know how devastating it can be to deal with this corruption. And it is corruption: the local authorities sign off on construction that is sub-standard (probably having been bribed to do that) and the builders liquidate their company after construction to avoid liability, then set up again under a new name.
And there are no authorities that oversee local government. No one to report corruption to. All forms of government should have checks and balances.
@@michellempintoreally.. How many times did you give power and consent to be ruled by the corrupt system?? 😂😂😂
The large amount of code violations make me suspect that negligence wasn't involved and something more shady was going on. I wonder how well the inspector knew that builder?
I agree there may be some sort of collusion happening... While I myself am a card-carrying hillbilly 😂 I know the "good ole boys" can often stiff arm others.
Often inspectors rely on reputation and past experiences with the builder. They know them and know they do solid work.
I think what can happen is the builder runs into debt, or for some other reason start cutting corners, and the inspectors didn't know.
The family should have at least had the opportunity to argue that issues were so bad that they could have only been missed if the inspector was either unqualified or the inspection was not performed.
Edit to add: The county should also update its inspection procedure to include photos verifying the inspection has checked what needs to be checked so no one can go back and say "I inspected it and verified measurements and placements," only for that statement to turn out false.
That would be a good thing to implement. Even Amazon takes a picture when they drop off a $10 package.
House was built in 2020. The building inspector probably never left his house the whole year, just got pics sent to them and passed it.
As an electrician who has done some remodel work. We have passed inspection several times and later in the remodel work found some pretty substantial electrical problems that were from the new construction that we then fixed. If youre relying on an inspector to catch stuff in my experience your odds are not that good. Theyre hard to find but if you want it done right you really need to have a trustworthy contractor, the inspector is a last resort and their abilities are often just as lacking as the contractors.
Inspectors are to keep you honest, not make things safe. It's just a nice side benefit when they do the latter.
@@GamesFromSpace inspectors are there to get money for the government and exercise control.
I had an inspection done when selling a house. This guy spent hours looking at the smallest details. He found a few things that required fixing but also noted things that weren't a mandatory fix but let the buyer know about conditions of things. I was impressed.
@@woodlandwonders6887 this is rare, as in most professions most people in them border on incompetent
Your response is one of the few balanced ones here.
I purchased a newly constructed home. The Credit Union that mortgaged the house required a home inspection. I was supposed to arrange a time for the inspector and the builder to meet. I hadn't heard back from the builder, and when I questioned him, he replied they did the inspection "over the phone."
About a year later, I attended a home buyer's workshop with a friend put on by the same credit union. I recognized the home inspection speaker as the same person that "inspected" my home. I asked if they would ever perform an inspection without physically visiting the property. I was assured that would never happen. A lot of dishonest people out there.
As a resident of NC for the past 30 years and someone who has applied for different county positions, it helps if you’re related rather than what you know.
I used to be a low volt contractor. I got in a disagreement with the builder and inspector about grounding a satellite dish. I refused to install because I had no grounding provision. Missing a 10 guage ground wire and walls were finished. Inspctor was on site and informed me as not required. I showed him in the NEC (national electrical code) book where grounding is required. He said that was new to him. This code had been in effect since 1976.
I did residential wiring early on in my career as an Electrician in the early 2000's. The Metro-Atlanta area was fraught with an insane amount of favoritism, the good ol boy system, alleged payoffs, and just a general lack of concern and knowledge from county inspectors.
We bought a home in a development built by one builder. When we started remodeling it, we discovered all kinds of things wrong. We started asking questions and learned the builders disappeared, moving out of the country and no one was able to hold them accountable.
Friend's townhouse that I was renting in needed the roof replaced. The roofers discovered the joists had never been cross braced, only held apart by the roof paneling. Once the old plywood was removed they flopped around freely. They had to fix it before putting the new roof on. Never buy a townhouse. They all have crappy cooling and heating because there's no doors dividing the floors. The ground floor or basement will always be freezing and the bedrooms up top will always be hot. My computer was set up in the basement. I had flannel sheets covering all the doorways to the room and a space heater running constantly.
I agree. Check references 100%. I’ve had a contractor who promised to give references, never did, but then asked when I was ready to start. Finally got the hint I was not going to sign anything without references. Second contractor had me three references within an hour. Went and checked their work, saw what I liked, and am happy with my final result after going with them.
I used to work for building contractors in Philadelphia many decades ago, and there was a common phrase for bribing an L&I inspector (Licenses & Inspection, the city's inspections department). It was "Inspecting the boiler" whereby the inspector and the contractor would go into the basement so that cash could be exchanged in private.
When I had my house built, I hired an independent inspector to check on the work. I had heard stories of our city inspectors not performing inspections properly. It was worth the extra money spent!
One thing you need to make sure of when hiring a contractor is to make sure they are licensed, insured, and bonded. The last part is important. A surety bond compensates the customer.
It sounds to me like the inspectors did what we in the Navy call Gundecking. Said they did a job but only signed off the paperwork they did it. They show up on site, walked around the site, said hi to the workers and left. Inspection done, I have 4 more to do today.
Captains mast for this builder, reduction in rate, 60 days restriction, & 60 days half pay.
That's going to get someone killed.
But what's the bet the inspector will never face the gross negligence charges they should?
considering the requirements to be a county building inspector are minimal, its no surprise they are completely incompetent at their job
You have that right. Worked in the City of Seattle for a decade. Their fire inspectors are straight out of the fire department with NO education in code for the systems they inspect. Only jurisdiction I've worked, with qualified inspectors, is within the Federal system and that's limited to the Navy.
Most inspectors examine the last 8 hour seminar they attended that quarters "continuing education " or misinformation provided by a fried. You wouldn't believe the battles we've fought. BTW, we've had two inspectors removed and one plan examiner fired due to misrepresentation of his credentials. Construction us full of rats and proof the permit process is nothing but a shakedown. Otherwise, jurisdictions would hire qualified people.
I agree. The requirements to be a county inspector should be the same as those of a Real Estate home inspector.
@@brad3706Incest is best, bestiality and BJs get you everywhere ... yeeeeeehaw!
Most of them do an adequate job in my neck of the woods.
It takes more qualifications to build a killdozer
I'm from Chatham County and worked construction in the past. This didn't surprise me when I first heard about it. I've seen many things missed by the inspectors here or they want it in a way that doesn't comply with code but won't sign off til it's their way even if it's wrong.
My first reaction is that what these "inspectors" are highly competent at is concealing income sources.
Yes and I work with commercial construction. "... their way even if it's wrong." Happens all the time, a power trip from inspectors who don't even know the codes; then there are those who can barely speak English because they are paid so little that the county has to take whoever they can get.
Hey fellow Chathamite! I'm the Tritech Computers guy! :)
@@JodyBruchon I know because you build my pc's for me!!!!
Those SPECIFIC Inspectors should be held Liable, ALONG with the County for Employing them and having no oversight or training to make sure they do their job.
A fun topic. I am in the middle of a build myself. I am not a building engineer but I am an engineer. I have challenged the inspectors on many issues in question and in most cases I may no more about the issue than the inspector. I have even had inspectors tell me they just learned about an issue in a class they just took. In our county there is only one engineer familiar with the code that is unique about my build. (Flood plain). The story continues. But is has been a good educational project. The sad part is From an engineering perspective I spot Deficiencies in the code.
As someone also an engineer and doing a rebuild, the "minimum code" is garbage. And much of the "changes" to it in the last 20 years have been pushed not for safety but because "company X" can force people to buy their products. It has been a sham and money grab since day one. There are plenty of places that have no code requirements, you don't hear about people dying left and right there.
My dad was an engineer. When he remodeled our house, he did some of the work himself, and had us kids help him sometimes. He wanted a 16 foot wide patio door consisting of two 8 foot wide sliding glass doors, with no post between them. So he designed a truss to go above the door. He had to take his plans before the city planning commission to get a variance, and they approved it. In the 45 years between the remodel and his death, I don't think he ever had to adjust the turnbuckle he included in the truss in case of settling.
If the county inspectors can't be held to account, then the county should get out of the business of inspections and privatize it - requiring the position to be bonded.
That's a great idea, building a new house would be cheaper, with permit being cheaper ,you wouldn't have to deal with someone on a power trip and someone would be held accountable .
What?? So you expect your masters to stop the extortion racket?? 😂😂😂
@@101sabrewho gave power to the corrupt system?? Gods?? 😂😂😂
Live in a rural country in Northwest Illinois. There are 2 county building inspectors for the entire county. You need to get a building permit and the first thing ant contractor tells you is that if you want to get your inspections done and passed you need to leave an envelope with a couple of Benjamins in the building and don’t expect it to be there after the inspection is over.
That sounds like a bribe. Think you can get that on Recording, and sue the fuck out of all of them?
I would tell the contractor to do his job right so it passes inspection so that it does not require a bribe
Sadly, that’s not the first time I’ve heard that about Illinois inspectors. You should report them.
I'll tell you what the inspector did (or rather didn't) do.
My dad worked in an oil refinery. Part of his job was to sign off on work orders for contractor to perform certain jobs. A big part of this process was to make sure the unit was safe to work on. Just shutting down the unit was not enough. The unit needs to be check to make sure any fluids or pressurized gases had been purged.
My dad took this part of his job seriously and always went out to the unit to make sure what it said on the paperwork was reality. More than once it was not.
My dad's counterpart, working in another refinery did not take his job as seriously. He'd make sure the paperwork was filled out properly and if it was he'd sing off that it was safe to work on without actually looking at the physical unit.
So this group of contractors went to work. The opened a valve that was not suppose to have anything behind it. It did in fact have several thousands of gallons of super heated sulfuric acid under pressured.
17 people were killed all together. The inspector was unhurt, but he was convicted of manslaughter.
I think the inspector here missed the violations because he never actually performed the inspections.
This happened right down the road from me in Chatham County, North Carolina. It has been a major fiasco here. For a long time, a large portion of the county has complained that the old rich people in Pittsboro seem to control everything in the county despite the vast majority of the county not agreeing with them. There is certain to be a lot of corruption that cuts deep here. I've also been told some of the past county commisssioners haven't even lived in the county! There have been calls to split up the county to isolate the rich "I wish this place was Chapel Hill but with no business" psychos in Pittsboro but they haven't produced anything.
Just obey, for the greater good. Mask up, vax up, shut up. Ain't communism grand.
81 million ballots, 2weeks to slow the spread, safe and effective. 🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑
So you didn't know the rich people always control power?? 😂😂😂
I cannot fathom how an honest building inspector could miss spotting that roof joists were so undersized. The same is true with many of the other code violations that were mentioned in the story. Since the inspections' shortcomings cannot be explained by incompetence, that leaves us with corruption as the most likely explanation.
Back when I worked for my father installing home sized septic treatment systems, we had a health inspector do a test of our systems where we turn it on and he watches the water squirt into the air before we are allowed to put the plastic caps on it and then bury the whole thing.
We run a few tests and I notice that one of the pipes is at an angle it shouldn't be at so I wait until the inspector's back is turned and I push it. It came off in my hand and I slapped it back on before anyone saw it. I reported what happened to my father and we discover that the contractor forgot to glue the entire disposal field and we had to go back and redo his work.
Construction contractors can never be trusted.
I been in business over 50 years long before they started these inspections and I wouldn't trust any code official or inspector as far as I could spit, it was better when the mafia was running things, love your channel Steve, thanks for all you do,
This is why you hire your own inspector, just like when purchasing a home for sale
IIRC from another story, those inspectors also are not liable for doing a good job.
@@christopherg2347it's a little different because they are privately hired, and you'd think they would care about their reputation enough to get more business
General home inspectors do not memorize or know specific codes. They ARE trained to spot to defects in homes specific to safety concerns and general operability of the house systems. But they are not code inspectors and actually are not encouraged to quote building codes in their reports. Most of them have that specific wording in the inspection agreement.
@@steves_garage have to find the right one
I met with a home inspector and asked if he did new homes
He said he did and able to find defects
He said general contractor were not his fan
@@DaveBigDawg Yeah there's probably a wide range of ability there. I'm actually about ready to get my license to be a general inspector and I would feel more comfortable starting with homes are a bit older because I already know what is going to be wrong with them. Newer homes would be harder since they are the illusion of being perfect.
While walking with an electrical inspector doing a rough in inspection, I asked if they could be held liable if the house subsequently burned down due to an electrical issue. He laughed and said not a chance.
And he was right.. Just ask those people who died in the Miami condo collapse, or the kids and teachers in Uvalde, Parkland, etc... 😂😂😂
This is a very common occurrence in the building industry. I have seen this same scenario locally several times. Require a bond before construction starts, but most people are building to their financial limits and do not want the extra expense.
What they need is insurance that covers workmanship. Most don't know what that is or how much it cost. I can get a bond in Colorado that doesn't mean anything foe a problem like this. The policy coverage for this house would cost over $20,000. No one will pay that.
As someone in the trades, carpenter, Ive encountered plenty of building inspectors that were pretty incompetent. Sadly, some of them were previously carpenters and still didn’t know much.
What you can't do you teach, what you can't teach you criticize. Half these inspectors ain't worth shit
You also need to hire a private inspector to go in behind the city inspector. Add an addition put on to my house which was two stories and three out of four times when the inspector came the private inspector found problems even after they were supposedly corrected. Cost a little bit of extra but it's well worth the money. Plus you got to make sure you get the right private inspector
My wife and I had a custom home built about 8 years ago. We were really ignorant about the process. All of the established custom home builders were backed for 3 years or more in the semi-rural area. Fortunately, we had help picking a really great builder who was just establishing his business and is now equally busy. Knowing what I know now, I would never try to build a home without the help of experienced people in the area to advise me through the process. I hope that contractor got his license pulled by the state!
I saw this a lot on the Mike Holmes related shows. Not only were there home inspectors who did poor jobs inspecting a home for people purchasing a home, but also newly built homes which after a few years were developing problems. And I was always amazed at the amount of things that just get by and are never noticed, or built to code just barely but with cheap or shoddy materials that quickly degrade. I think there are companies that sell insurance that will pay out if your build goes bad and you get a judgement in court that never gets paid (so very limited payout conditions). But other than that and doing your own homework ahead of time, yeah the buyer has little protection.
If you are building a home (doing it yourself or contracting it out), go to the library and read how it is done before you even find land to build on. My father questioned people in the business and other families who were having their home built and heard the horror stories. That is when my father decided to build it himself.
In 1980, my family, dad, mom and myself, built our house. The inspector came out a few times during the build. During framing, he came out and seen how we were doing. He said he wished every builder put in the amount of nails we did, call me when you start electrical. I (at 16) did the electrical and called him early in the process to make sure it was OK. He again said he wished every builder did this quality of work. He came out maybe a total of 8 time and spent more time talking about other buildings he was inspecting by "professional" companies and how bad a job they do. My family had no experience in construction, no licenses for foundation, framing, plumbing, electrical, fireplace, heating ect. but time invested into going to the library and reading served us well. All three of us invested our time in reading books and building codes before the land was purchased. Even if you have your home built by a contractor, learning how it should be done will save you the horror stories that many families go through.
In the late 70s my parents had a house built and the contractor never really finished the job, dad had to hire other people to finish several aspects of the build. In addition to that there were several liens against the house because the builder didn't pay people like the electricians, the lumberyard and a couple others. Dad sued and he won, but there the only collection he got was the liens removed. The whole process took about 5 years. In the end the contractor ended up with criminal charges, got some jail time and was ordered to pay the suppliers he'd stiffed. If I had to guess, I'd say his monetary debts were probably never paid. But I could be wrong.
Regarding uncollectable builders, I had a case years ago against a company that restored antique cars. My client was a subcontractor on the job for all of the polishing and chrome work. The work was done, and the company never paid up, or collected the parts. Sued, and won judgment. Company did not pay. Filed a few documents, and was able to have the Sheriff padlock the doors to the building, and inventory the machinery for auction. Once those padlocks were on the door, that company “miraculously” had enough money to pay for all of the work my client did.
Sherif tried to collect from the builder but there’s apparently nothing in the company name anymore so…
Dang I have never been 1st to comment! Just wanted to say I love the videos. Im also so glad you post several a day sometime. Always something new to watch! Edit 4th to comment other people typed faster before I could submit mine lol.
@@skibee50 lmao cool cool
I bought a spec house 20-some years ago during a housing boom in our area. The city code inspectors couldn't keep up, so they let the builders sign off on code compliance. About 10 years ago, we started a home remodel. In the process, we found that several concrete footers hadn't been poured, and they just hung the posts over the dirt. The inspectors caught it at the time of the remodel. We contacted the builder, who pointed out that they had gone out of business and the new business (same name, same people) weren't liable. I know many homes in my neighborhood had similar (or worse) problems. So, I should be happy we caught it and fixed it before it destroyed the house and foundation. So always hire an independent home inspector, even on new homes.
Has anyone watched the RUclips series of home inspections done in Britain by the guy who uses such colorful phrases to describe the contractors and their work? He is absolutely hilarious and worth the time to watch! My favorite insult is when he describes a shoddy contractor as a “flipping tuna melt”. That is comedy gold my friend, comedy gold!
Wow sounds like something I would like to see I'm going to search for the RUclips video I've had a few screwey inspectors and wants to see how they are in the U.K.
It's one of those times where comedy and tragedy intersect. Poor families who hire these jackwagons have no idea.
I feel so blessed to have used a GC that was also a building inspector in the next county.
I live one county north of Chatham in NC. There are several problems, one is Chatham Park, 85,000 homes and units being put in within a 5 year span to ease the housing crunch in the area. Two, all inspectors now inspect all trades to save money. The way it used to work is an electrician, plumber etc... that had been in the business locally for years would retire or get tired of busting his butt, and get hired on as an electrical or plumbing inspector. Now the counties(all in nc) hire people with little to no real world experience as long as they have a degree, and bingo now they are deciding what passes and what doesn't.
I've got a million bad inspector stories, I am a licensed electrician in the area, but now am a plant electrician for pharmaceutical companies.
I hope the new job has fewer headaches. Bad electrical work really scares me and I've seen a lot. The only thing as bad is a major structural flaw.
I recently heard a claim that the NTSB is hiring accident investigators with no experience in transportation. You would think it would be wise to hire people who have some kind of expertise with aircraft before having them investigate and air crash. Same with trains. I frequently see complaints from aviators that the head of the NTSB rides a Moped. At least it's a form of transportation.
What's really sad is that fast food places can't even hire enough workers, at least in California. Other types of work have the same problem.
I do know a guy who got trained as a concrete inspector, just before the financial collapse of 2008. So his new skills weren't needed. He took loaves of bread to a supermarket bakery, got hired as a baker, and worked there until he retired. I bet there's a shortage of concrete inspectors now.
Can they appeal to a state court? This is outrageous! What good are the inspectors if they are not inspecting? Breach of contract? With a permit to build you are paying for legitimate inspections that should be guaranteed. I'm in Brunswick Co. NC. I've heard of many egregious things, building on lakes, swamps, etc in Wilmington where everyone seems to be related and covering for each other but, this takes the cake.
This reminds me of neighbors near us who bought a new manufactured home from a local, 'reputable' builder. Their own inspection, not for code but for flaws, found 200 problems after it was delivered and set up on their property.
Neighbors purchased a two story manufactured home. (Not sure if that's the correct term, here.) It was amazing to watch big cranes lifting the sections into place it looked wonderful!
Within a few months, things had shifted, and the upstairs bathroom doors wouldn't close properly. There were other problems, too.
Justice at work again. If an inspector finds a problem they don't hesitate to give penalties and even make you rip out work already done. If they screw up no punishment. Dual justice.
We had / have the issue in British Columbia, Canada. Whenever something occurs to make the headlines, the answer is to increase the code and add on another layer of bureaucracy to the process. That way government is seen to be "doing something" while not having to deal with the root issue of poor inspections.
That's all they care about, getting more power through bureaucracy and regulation. When you can't threaten their bottom line because they get their tax money regardless, they have no incentive to improve quality, just to give themselves more power to pretend to improve quality. So that's all they'll ever do.
"Holmes on Homes" tv show!!!
"We have investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing."
Where I had lived in North Carolina, there are two builders that have gotten away with shoddy workmanship on new houses they have built, one building inspector missed a section of floor joists that had a six inch gap that the builder filled by using multiple nails that never connected with a header plate, using subgrade material, not paying employees, paying the building inspector to ignore blatant issues and other stuff, both builders are still in business because they buy off the judge to dismiss any cases that come before them, I know because I seen it with my own eyes
Back in the 1980s, a local tv station followed Hamilton County Building Department Inspectors as they played golf when they were supposed to be preforming building inspections. The tv station followed them for weeks.
I bet this still occurs somewhere!
We just had a huge scandal out here in the Quad Cities of Iowa where a local slumlord had one building collapse (3 people died and many more lost everything). It came out that he had put off repairs and inspections. Other lease holders buildings were found to be damaged and have had tenants put out. He’s now under investigation.
Early in my building career (now retired after 30 odd years) I worked as a helper on a concrete crew...the "inspector" (I use the term loosely for reasons that will immediately become apparent) would drive by our projects at the pre-pour stage of the concrete foundation / slab, get handed a case of Coors through his pickup window, and state "Looks good from my house!" as he drove away.
Yah, we never failed an inspection apparently.
Now, as far as I could tell, we *did* do everything necessary and proper to make sure the foundation was correctly laid...I know this, because whenever something needed doing to make it that way...you can guess who was the guy who did that, hehe.
My foreman: "We need to get this footing compacted"
Me: "We meaning me, again, right?"
My foreman: "You're a smart guy!"
I feel for that family. 🙏 for them. Many are not up to codes. Hence why so many collapse or burn. ♥
There's a class action lawsuit against our builder D.R. Horton. They made plenty of blunders on our house.
And not only were they failed by builder and inspector but also the builders insurance company that refused to pay for neglect which is also the homeowners insurance (both farm bureau) which says that if their house collapses it’s not covered.
The possibility of fraud, pay-offs, kick-backs and bribes is strong, too. The builder takes 2x8 instead of 2x10s from the lumber yard and gets the cash difference and then pays the inspector to sign off on it. It calls for a ton of rebar? Who's checking after the pour?
The sheriff needs to be involved to investigate such cases. I'm a former deputy and have investigated and found crimes by the dozens.
If the inspectors job isn't to catch any and ALL code violations, that would make the building permit ... taxation without representation.
My brother is a city inspector for where he lives, and he knows which properties he’s going to have issues with before he even goes to the site based on the builder. The worst story he ever told me was where one submitted an application for a final inspection, but they had never had any prior inspections applied for or performed.
When you're paying money to have things done by code. Then someone needs to be held responsible...if there's still such a thing!
Reminds me of the nightmare of when work crews come around the area i live in.
All their work is just marked as inspected without being inspected and they know it.
Of the last 3 groups 1 completely destroyed a significant length of road to the point there wasn’t even intact room to walk doing stunts “i.e loop de loops” with heavy machinery.
Another dug across the road without a permit and never even fixed the hole they made just tossed some dirt back in.
And the last completely destroyed the drainage system for my entire street.
Which caused a lot of damage.
I spent 25 years in home building and most county inspectors are useless at finding problems. They normally walk through the house quickly and just sign off on it. It' is sadly on you to make sure it's done right. If you don't know home building hire someone like a private company home inspector to come out during construction during the different phases to look for you. It will cost money to hire and inspector on your own, but much cheaper to pay them to find problems early. Also after framing get a good level and tape measure to make sure everything is square on the house. To check square on a wall measure 3 feet out on 1 wall, 4 feet on the adjacnt wall, and the distance between those marks should be 5 feet. If it's not it isnt square.
Late Mother & I had a Garden Home built after my Father passed in 1998. After it was built, had a close friend go though the house checking on things. Even though a lot was caught, I was still finding stuff several years after she passed in 2005. One thing we didn’t catch was the garage was for two vehicles, two mid-sized or compact vehicle; both of us had full sized vehicles. Builder got his comeuppance when he died in a vehicle accident.
I was a master carpenter working with my father for a decade before med school. I can tell you from experience in building on several states in New England and my father currently in Nevada …. If you build a decent reputation with a city inspector and do good work for a few projects, they’ll most often just show up so their sat phone records their locations, pop their head in (or not at all), ask of you have any issues or questions…. And simply say “ok good job, call me again during the next phase.”
Inspectors notoriously don’t inspect. We did immaculate over the top work (and my father never made a penny because of it) so it was never an issue. But the number of “missed” things we were hired to tear down and fix over the years….. yikes
When I worked as a plumber we had 2 building inspectors in Arizona who didn't like each other. They would actively fail anything directed by the other. I re-piped a washing messiness box 6 times because both inspectors disagreed on how the vent for the drain should be handled. It took my boss taking to their boss to finally get a resolution to finish the remodel we started.
Had similar issues when we had a house built sadly. It's totally inexcusable. Fortunately, ours were not too bad, and we did manage to get it taken care of prior to taking possession.
I was working for a chimney company in Michigan many years ago. Was one of these prefab type neighborhoods. A $650,000 house had a chimney fire. We went there to sweep the chimney and inspect it and the entire chimney pipe from the prefab in the house all the way up to the cap there was no chimney pipe.
So, if you're contracting to build a house, then you need to hire your own inspector.
Here, if you get a mortgage based on you being your own contractor, the bank will make you pay for the bank's inspectors to check the job against code at various stages before releasing the next chunk of building cash.
As a kid my friend's father would close his incorporated roofing company at the end of the year and open a new co. the next spring. Real schlocky reputation. Marriage fell apart for ... some reason too...
Steve, I’m watching your RUclips right now on building. I had followed my builder for four years. Followed one of his cruise for a year. Still come up with many problems after we moved in. A lot of it could be said was building mistakes. We had water running down a chimney. We had windows in the basement that were plugged over in Bodian. It’s just some of the small stuff. Thank you for listening.
Incompetence is the legal expectation for government employees.
Our house was built during a 60's building boom, in an area newly annexed by our city. The subdivision was one of very affordable homes. Some things in our house were done much better than what many expensive homes of have as far as quality. That being said, we needed to have parts of the original roof removed and replaced, as isn't out of the norm for an older asphalt shingle roof. When plywood was removed, hubby found several old beer cans stashed l, hidden from view during original construction. So, it would appear we might have been lucky to have a decent structural house. Given there was drinking going on during construction.
Our house had better quality built in than others in the same area had, as every little thing was an option and many people went the cheapest route to getting their house.
I hate to think of things that could have gone wrong.
There is a UK company that does home building inspecting and they are always posting on social media (they use it as advertising for the company) what they find - sometimes walls etc are so out of spec they have to half pull the house down and they also shout out great work by builders as well.
Always find a local contractor who knows the local codes. Always check the contractors work. Find out what they have built before, see if you can go look at the buildings and chat with the owners about how they like the work.
Talk to the city about any violations or problems they might have had with the contractor. Contact the inspector and see how things are going througout the build.
Do the leg work, and stay on top of the contractor and the city, its a huge investment. Dont just sit back and hope everything happens perfectly. It doesnt seem fair to do all this but it is your money and not everyone in this industry is honest.
This sounds like a case where a suit can be brought against every inspector who signed off on the inspections.
Edit: and it's absolutely inexcusable that the judge dismissed said lawsuit.
The immunity extends, at least in my state, and I assume most, if not all others, to the individual governmental employees as long as they were acting within the scope of their employment.
Judge did not want his County pension put in jeopardy.
Bet it was a COUNTY judge.
@@danvonwhich is fine, that is “qualified immunity”. The issue here is more sovereign immunity, since the government itself just says “not our problem”, i.e. they caused damages by being incompetent, and not only is the human carrying the uniform immune, but also “the uniform itself” (i.e. government) immune.
Good luck.. 😂😂😂😂😂😂
Builder who built our home thirty years ago did almost exactly this; each job, on its own, was profitable, but he managed costs by shuffling income from one home to an in-work project. He always managed to work through the, ahem, curious financials, and built a nice home, but he also showed me how thin his operating margins were. Sadly, he took ill and passed a few months after finishing our home. Found he had a few unpaid contractors, and I was glad I had owner's title insurance...
If you live in NC, especially the coastal areas, county inspections are insanely inept. Our company has tried suing different inspectors, but regardless of the issue the county/ city says there is nothing we/ they can do.
I had my own fights with a builder in FL. I won my battles. The problem with mine I was a truck driver and only around every 3 weeks. Not a thing to do. From your video it seems to me that you almost need to hire a licensed home inspector to watch the building process on your behave if your not familiar with the building process. Great video and thank you for all the good information you give us.
I was in charge of construction at a ski resort and we kept getting in trouble with the county building inspector for very questionable infractions . . . until we discovered he needed free seasons passes for his grand-kids. From then on he approved our projects without him even setting foot on the property!
Great share! All builders should be liable, i use to work with contractors years ago, and then my sister had a large house built in Macomb from polute builders poorly made and they were kicked out of Michigan years ago, only to bring back building of Condos that, not only built in a tornado ally area, with no strap supports, and no payment to employees, and they got more then the pricing was worth, then they built Condos in Florida, and they fell down! And people died!And the city of Rochester didn't even care! And made housing unaffordable to non-existent to Owen today.
And I still remember my parents back in the 70s, had a new house built, and the basement always leaked, because it was built in a swamp Taylor area, and the house next door was built on our property line too.
Note: I've been through multiple fire inspections, never ONCE 'passed' on the first try, almost all of them minor but not 'by the book'. Beat back a huge fine once by showing an inspector the code book/and how what we did was legal, albeit in a very convoluted way (but saved $1000's).
At a certain point, the county/city/jurisdiction SHOULD be on the hook. Maybe not for one missed violation (unless it's egregious), maybe not even 2 or 3 or 4 minor ones. But when you get into dozens of violations, that's negligence. I'd bet if you go back over the builders of record, and the inspectors of record, you'll find more houses that aren't up to code...
Did some wiring work in our house. City inspector came out, flipped a light switch, lights came on. He was going to call it good until I mentioned this room wasn't part of the work and it was an outlet circuit, not lights. So he dug out a tester, plugged it into one outlet that was one of many I'd added. The right lights came on, so he called it good. Good thing I'd spent a lot of time going over the relevant codes and double checking my work. So I'm confident my work was good, but that fellow was sure a waste of the town's money.
Remember folks when it comes to builders, you do not get what you pay for. You get what YOU inspect.
This is logical, but many people wouldn't have the knowledge to inspect properly. We built in Person County, NC back in mid 80s. Thankfully, we had decent inspectors, as that house never had problems.
Yeah no one would think they need to become a builder and inspector to pay someone to do it when they already have their own full time career.
In the 80's I worked for a plumber who regularly paid off city inspectors. I doubt much has changed since then.
Drive-by inspection
I worked for a man that owned an independent inspection company and he is regularly hired to do inspection on new homes as a back up to the city or county and is always finding issues they missed
Ben on the left behind the model box for the turbine car.
Problem is bldg inspectors are often people who have no idea what they are doing. They failed at some other construction job and went to the state for a job. My parents had an inspector who insisted that GFCI outlets had to be installed outside one bathroom in the hallway, 16 ft away from any water. He did not say the ones next to the sink needed GFCI outlets and that there were none needed on the system at all, except for in the hall. The contractor knew that was wrong, but put the GFCI outlets at both places.
My parents had a house built in a new sub division that consisted of town homes. During the build process, my father would go into the home, after house to take photographs of where the plumbing was being run, the electrical lines were placed and the condition of the floors and stair cases.
He found a few water lines that had been smashed when the attachment to the foundation walls missed the mark.
He complained to the general contractor, that had him trespassed, so he used a telephoto lens to photograph what he could see through the windows.
Closing day was uneventful. A few weeks later a freak thunder storm accompanied by high winds blew the roof off his house and a few other enjoined homes falling on his work vehicle and both of their personal cars.
The roofer blamed "act of god". Well God didn't install all the nails which is why the roofing material blew off. The normal house settling occurred, dry wall cracked, doors didn't close and stair treads cracked. The builder refused to honor the year warranty. After the suit was filed, the builder declared bankruptcy.
The builder moved to Florida where he repeated the scam process of poor workmanship, and had his license pulled.
How was he trespassed from his own property?
@@mbburry4759 Until you go through closing, the house still belongs to the builder.
@gungadinn interesting; I've never looked into it before. Do you not even own the land under it? I'm sure it depends on the contract, hopefully lehto will cover something like it.
I'm pretty sure if I hired a builder to build something on land I own outright isn't going to have any ability to exclude me from my own property. I hope anyway, but maybe I'm wrong and there's some weird legal BS
@@mbburry4759 Provided the builder owns the land the house is being built on, until you go through closing, it's his property, and can trespass you from unauthorized visits.
As I typed before, this was a townhouse development.
As for building on your own property and having someone build a house for you. You need to be the one paying the sub contractors. Once they've been contracted, they'll file a lien against the build so they get paid. Allowing a general contractor to run the show, if he doesn't pay the bills, you lose twice to satisfy the lien and the money you paid the general contractor.
I've had 3 homes built.The first was a disaster. I acted as my own general contractor. Getting crews scheduled, materials on site and dealing with inspectors was a pain.
The second, I hired someone as a scheduler that worked at a lumber yard I used. He knew the good contractors from the bad. All of the licensed trades were responsible for getting the county inspector on site for sign-off. Went much smoother. The third was got built fast, under budget. The subs were paid weekly and worked their butt off as I paid bonus money for early completion with no defects. Cash talks.
This totally reminds me of the of the 1986 Tom Hanks movie “The Money Pit”. Hopefully this Homeowners won’t go through the agony Tom Hanks and Shelly Long did in the movie. 🤞
Code departments are too busy looking for grass over 8", or trash cans without lids, to be bothered with checking on builders. Code inspectors, and home inspectors live in the same boat. Just there to punch a ticket.
We had a building expansion at our church, and the county inspector signed off on each part of the expansion. After it was done, awaiting final occupancy inspection, the county now wanted it to be completely redone to meet new regulations. A quick visit to the county office, and a different inspector showed up and signed it off.
Goodness, why did they want it redone? What did they think was wrong?
So what exactly are out taxes paying for?
Protection?
Me.
Had a deal happen in Sioux Falls, SD a few years ago where building permits were issued for a mansion. When construction started they used an unapproved plan for the house. Turned the wrong way on the lot, too close to the neighbors house and too tall. Not sure how the inspectors missed all of this. After a lengthy court battle the house was demolished and hauled to the dump.