Our Home Inspection

We finally arrived after our road trip.  It took an extra day.  Mostly because we saw an opportunity for a little detour to see some cool caves in the area. 

First thing we did is go straight to the house.  We met our realtor there.  None of the utilities were turned on except the electricity, which was a disappointment, but everything else seemed to be ok.

Old AC

The electrical panel needs replacing.  Our realtor told us that it was the model that is prone to catch fire in that part of the country.  He has access to a licensed electrician that will come in, put in the new box, and label all the circuits.

The water heater appears to be fairly new and should work just fine.  The air conditioner looks really old, but it works and we won’t have to replace it.  Some of the glass window panes are cracked and these are an easy handyman repair.  There are some strange water pipes in the back yard sticking out of the ground that appear to be cracked from a freeze.  Our realtor will have his plumber look at them later this afternoon.

There is an electrical junction box for the neighborhood in the back yard.  Attached to it is an electrical line that goes over the fence and into the neighbor’s yard and into their meter.  It almost looks like the neighbor may be stealing electricity, but that can’t be right, so we will call the electrical company.  All in all, it really just needs some catch up on differed maintenance, cleaning, and painting.

The realtor will have his home inspector here tomorrow.  However, the plumbing and gas would not be able to be turned on unless we put the bills in our names and this would take a week to process.

We called the electrical company and they said no, the neighbors were not stealing electricity.  Apparently the neighbors had an electrical issue and needed to have what was called a bypass to operate off of until the repair was made.  The bypass repair was scheduled to happen that afternoon so everything should be good by the time the home inspector gets there.

A couple of times during the day we drove around the area to look for any signs of dismay and found none.  The neighborhood looks great.  The schools are very well maintained.  The kids are playing outside and show respect to the adults.  No boom boxes blaring loudly.  No excess of cars in front of homes.  We are very happy with the appearance.

Then we drove over to the Home Owners Association office to get a copy of the deed restrictions and to meet with the Association Manager.  She was very nice and gave us a clean copy to review.  Then she told us all about the neighborhood and the city in general.  Plus, we got some great sightseeing tips of the local area.