by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | Sep 22, 2021 | Home Inspection
What Are Cast-Iron Drains? Before plastic plumbing such as ABS (Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) and PVC (Polyvinyl chloride) in the 70’s, cast-iron was a commonly used material for waste drain pipes installed in San Antonio, TX homes. Mankind has experimented...
by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | Sep 22, 2021 | Home Inspection
When you live in a hot climate like San Antonio or South Texas, air-conditioning is a big deal. I don’t think I’d live here without it! Air-conditioning was first invented in the 1920’s and involves the compression and evaporation of volatile gases...
by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | Sep 22, 2021 | Home Inspection
So you’ve just gone under contract on your new home and your realtor correctly advised you to find a home inspector. You give google a search for “home inspection san antonio” and you get about a dozen pages of results. You’re overwhelmed!...
by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | Sep 22, 2021 | Home Inspection
Breaking out the different gizmos and gadgets a home inspector in San Antonio would use is always fun for home owners. Considering the amount of money they are paying for the Home Inspection, most home owners want to see us show up with some specialty inspection...
by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | Jun 29, 2021 | Home Inspection
Common Concerns with Older Homes Revealed During a Home Inspection When gathering information from a client about the home they would like inspected, one of the first questions is “how large is the home in square feet?” and “how old is it?”...
by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | May 3, 2021 | Home Inspection
I’ve seen several inspectors reporting nails popping on asphalt roof system throughout the years. Take a look at the pictures above. You can see just below one shingle a nail that is working it’s way back out. Why does this happen? There are several different...
by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | May 3, 2021 | Home Inspection
Requirements for doors between Dwelling and the Attached Garage Section 305.2.1 of the 2018 International Residential Code provides an exception to the one-hour separation requirement between a dwelling and an attached garage. That exception is for the doorway...
by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | May 2, 2021 | Home Inspection
Before using your fireplace this year there are a few things you should do in order to ensure it is safe to do so. We will start at the top and work our way through the fireplace system. Step one. Check The Storm Cap and Spark Arrester. Warning, if you are afraid of...
by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | May 2, 2021 | Home Inspection
What are Federal Pacific Electric (Stab-Lok) Panels? Federal Pacific Electric Stab-Lok (FPE Stab-Lok®) panels were commonly installed electrical cabinets from 1950’s until the mid-80s. Before Federal Pacific began manufacturing the Stab-Lok, they made...
by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | Jan 18, 2021 | Uncategorized
How a San Antonio Home Inspector Maintain’s His Home: 2024 Edition We often spend time talking with our clients about potential concerns we have with a property at the end of the inspection, and our feedback from clients and their realtors/agents has been...
by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | Nov 16, 2020 | Home Inspection
A Quick Run-Down on Your San Antonio Home’s Foundation: Soil, Movement, Indicators, and Performance Foundations Are One of the “Big Three” The three most common concerns home-buyers have when buying a home in the San Antonio area are the roof, the...
by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | May 12, 2020 | Home Inspection
We inspect a lot of homes in San Antonio, and it’s not uncommon to find segments of the electrical wiring that are made of aluminum, especially in the older areas closer to the city center. Aluminum wiring isn’t inherently dangerous by just existing, and...
by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | May 8, 2020 | Home Inspection
While home inspectors in San Antonio are running into Polybutylene piping less often than they used to, home owners in Texas need to be aware of PB piping. What is Polybutylene Pipe? Polybutylene is a type of plastic that was utilized widely in the plumbing industry...
by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | May 6, 2020 | Home Inspection
Yes, you do need a license to be a home inspector in San Antonio, New Braunfels, or any other part of Texas. In fact, you need a license to be a home inspector in 40 out of 50 states in the US! What Are the Licensing Requirements for Home Inspectors in Texas? First,...
by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | Mar 21, 2020 | Home Inspection
What Is Chinese Drywall? What the heck is “Chinese Drywall” though, and why is it special? Well, from about 2001 to 2009, the US imported ultra-cheap drywall from mainland China to be used in home throughout 20 different states. This drywall, in typical...
by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | Mar 15, 2020 | Home Inspection
After observing that the most frequent search query on google related to the home inspection industry was “home inspection checklist”, we realized decided to sit down and make a cheat-sheet for home sellers and listing agents to make their and the inspector’s...
by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | Mar 7, 2020 | Home Inspection
Typically, a home inspection fee is not a deductible expense for the average homebuyer. There are a few instances where a home inspection cost would be deductible though: Your Home Inspection fee may be deductible if you are purchasing the home as a rental property or...
by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | Mar 4, 2020 | Home Inspection
“What do you think of this house? Should I buy it? Did it pass?” Inspectors at Ensure Home Inspections don’t answer any of these questions. I want you to read the report. There is no “pass” or “fail” when it comes to a Home...
by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | Mar 4, 2020 | Home Inspection
Usually when I arrive to a unoccupied house for a home inspection, especially if I’m in one of the shadier-parts of the San Antonio area, I like to lock the door behind me. That way, I know exactly who is coming in or out of the home, as I feel that it’s...
by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | Mar 4, 2020 | Home Inspection
In some parts of the country (not San Antonio), inspectors frequently perform a much quicker, simpler inspection known as the “four-point” inspection. The 4-point inspection is known as such because it only focuses on: The Roof The Air-Conditioning System...
by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | Feb 10, 2020 | Home Inspection
Due to the nature of the home inspector’s work, we tend to crawl and climb through a lot of small, dark, and otherwise uncomfortable places. In the course of this work, it’s not uncommon for us to come across critters, or more commonly the evidence of...
by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | Feb 10, 2020 | Home Inspection
Yes, all Inspectors at Ensure Home Inspections are licensed with the Texas Department of Agriculture (TDA) as Termite Technicians and are allowed to perform Wood-Destroying Insect (WDI) inspections, but most home inspectors in San Antonio and Texas at large are not....
by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | Feb 9, 2020 | Home Inspection
What is Low-Voltage Wiring? Low-voltage wiring is wiring that is about 50 volts or less and includes systems such as that from audio systems, coaxial cable for television, Cat-V cable for internet and sometimes home security systems. Are Audio Systems and Phone...
by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | Feb 9, 2020 | Home Inspection
Water softeners are a pretty common item to run into during the course of a home inspection. In fact, in places with hard water such as the San Antonio and New Braunfels area, most new homes tend to be built with the plumbing for a water softener readily accessible....
by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | Feb 9, 2020 | Home Inspection
As more and more homeowners opt into photovoltaic energy generation, or solar panels, its becoming more and more common for home inspectors to run into the panels and the associated electrical equipment during the course of a home inspection. I don’t know...
by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | Feb 8, 2020 | Home Inspection
Yes, at Ensure Home Inspections, we inspect mobile homes. I will admit that they are not my favorite homes to inspect, as entering the crawlspace underneath the structure is my least favorite thing to do in this business. I also find that mobile homes age and...
by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | Feb 8, 2020 | Home Inspection
Because San Antonio has such a vast military presence (Fort Sam Houston, Randolf Airbase, Lackland Airbase, the former Kelly Airbase, etc.), we get a lot of inquiries and bookings from clients purchasing a home with a VA Loan. I would estimate that a 5th of all...
by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | Feb 8, 2020 | Home Inspection
When gathering up information required to schedule an inspection, I often ask if the client is working with a realtor, and if so, would they like me to forward a copy of the report to their realtor? Most of the time, the answer is something to the effect of...
by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | Feb 8, 2020 | Home Inspection
While uncommon, once in a while we will be asked if the home inspection can be included in the closing costs, or if we can wait to bill for the inspection until closing. We at Ensure Home Inspections don’t do this, although we do understand that some home...
by Ensure Home Inspection San Antonio | Feb 8, 2020 | Home Inspection
Private home inspectors have no power to condemn a house, while municipal building inspectors and especially fire marshals have a lot of power in regards to building authorities, to the point that they can “red-tag” a building to halt all construction...
