Coming out of the Walls: How Infrared Technology is Changing

Home Inspections

by Carey Carson

We've all been suspicious at some point that perhaps a seller was not quite disclosing all of the known problems associated with a particular property.

We've all wondered, catching a glimpse of an empty 5-gallon pail of drywall mud in the corner of a garage, just what serious problems have simply been plastered over, waiting to provide the most unpleasant of surprises to an unsuspecting buyer months or years down the road.

Usually these problems are caught before it is too late by a talented and knowledgeable building inspector. But what if they aren't?

When major, previously undisclosed problems make an appearance, what ensues can become ugly indeed. Even with home warranties becoming more common, such situations often develop into conflicts and lawsuits that can drag on for months, and that quite rarely benefit either party in their resolution.

Some interesting new products from HomeSafe Inspection, Inc. have real potential to minimize and prevent these disputes by vastly improving inspectors’ effectiveness.

HomeSafe's inspection system combines acoustic technology, pattern recognition software, and perhaps what's most interesting, infrared scanning.

Homesafe's patent-pending acoustic sensors are highly specialized and structural-borne, and enable inspectors to hear termites without causing damage to a home even in areas where termite activity is not observable.

The acoustic sensors work in concert with the pattern recognition software that is also part of the Homesafe package. The software, which is also patent-pending, is loaded onto a handheld PC, and is able to isolate sound patterns that indicate that termite activity is present, greatly reducing the instance of human error in termite detection.

What is most exciting about the HomeSafe product, however, is its infrared scanning component, which employs a combination of an infrared camera and a digital camcorder. The infrared, thermal imaging camera is able to detect temperature variations through walls as slight as .08ºC, and can operate in a temperature range from -20ºC to 150ºC. The infrared and digital images captured by the camera duo can be downloaded and printed from any computer.

Just what the infrared camera is able to detect is impressive to say the least:

Areas of the house into which moisture has penetrated, tunnels made my mice or other pests, missing or inadequate insulation, faulty framing and construction, termite activity, and hot or defective wiring.

Not only is HomeSafe's system effective at detecting all of these problems, which enables homeowners to address problems before they develop further, and to minimize the costs associated with misdiagnosis, it also does so without removing so much as a nail or damaging so much as a baseboard.

The implications of a technology like that developed by HomeSafe entering into widespread use are obvious and, at first, unsettling. No houses are perfect including brand new ones.

With so much suspicion involved in the process of buying an older house already, once infrared technology can quickly detect even small inadequacies, will anyone ever be able to close a deal again?

Building inspections unnerve buyers, sellers, and agents as it is sellers for fear of losing their sale at the last minute, buyers for fear of discovering that something prohibitive is wrong with the home they've already set their hearts on, and agents for both reasons, and traditional inspections clearly cannot be as thorough as systems like the one being offered by HomeSafe.

As a result, some individuals have suggested that it might be in our best interest to attempt to suppress this technology in an effort to avoid a dramatic increase in the number of buyers backing out of sales at the last minute and the generally greater difficulty that will result in selling any house.

There is certainly no need, however, to take such an alarmist stance. Our initial response to any element that will likely improve the real estate industry should not be to resist that element, but rather, to embrace it.

Not only would a more thorough picture of a home's problems encourage more appropriate pricing, minimize the potential for sellers to be dishonest, and cut back on post-sale conflicts, it likely won't bog down the sale process much at all.

Most agents would testify to the fact that when buyers have fallen in love with and decided on a home, 99 in 100 will follow through on their intention to purchase regardless of what obstacles and problems present themselves in the process.

When buyers discover problems with the property they have already decided to purchase, their first reaction is virtually never to walk away from the sale. Rather they usually either attempt to make arrangements for the seller to fix the problem or to drop their asking price correspondingly. Most sellers are willing to do so because of how far they've already proceeded through the sale process.

So no matter how terrifying the prospect of turning up the Greater Metropolitan Termite Association just behind your bedroom wall may be, remember that more knowledge is better than less, and in the end, knowing will benefit everyone involved.

A Silent Killer Lurks Behind Your Walls

Why Mold is Gold for some and others just find the whole debate cheesy.

by Carey Carson

Protect your family, because extreme danger may be knocking at your door! Killer bees are coming, kidnappers are everywhere, and lurking behind your walls, you very well may be playing unwitting host to the silent killer mold!

We've all heard of the scourge of black mold, toxic mold, and have likely encountered entire companies dedicated to mold remediation. I cut into a wall in the basement of my old house the other day and found an alarmingly large and disturbingly black area surrounding a window. A respirator, full plastic coverall, gloves, and an air cleaner later (and looking sexy as can be), I started the removal process.

After a few deft crowbar maneuvers, I realized that the problem was even more widespread than I had initially thought, and I reached for the yellow pages and my slightly annoying, know-it-all friend, Google.

I found two local mold remediation experts and 375,000 websites for basement mold (in 0.19 seconds, by the way). The first site I looked at had the following heading:  DangerBusters:  Toxic Black Mold Inspectors, Toxic Black Mold Inspection, Toxic Black Mold Testing, Toxic Mold Analysis Laboratory, Toxic Mold Remediation, and Toxic Mold Removal accompanied by an entirely disturbing picture of a menacing-looking Mold monster growing hidden inside a wall.

After spending some time perusing this and a few other sites, and becoming more and more afraid, I calmly collected the entire contents of my basement, including all of my clothes and several pieces of furniture, and gathered them in a pit, covered them in gasoline, and set them on fire . . . almost.

Not being one to jump to conclusions (except that time I heard that carbs made you fat and ripped the carburetor out of my Jeep), I looked through a few less-partisan sites (read: ones that don't sell mold remediation equipment).

Health department sites certainly agreed about a few things, first among which is the fact that there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,000 different known types of mold, but that there's good news  if you'd like to avoid exposure to mold entirely, the moon's lack of water and atmosphere makes it relatively safe.

On Earth, however, get used to it.

Experts also agree that potential health risks can be associated with mold, as they can with grass, newspapers, and fuzzy bunnies playing in meadows. A handful of the 100k + varieties of mold have been found to be harmful when their spores are inhaled (usually during removal, when the mold is disturbed).

How harmful? Nobody knows, of course, given the fact that there's so much badness in our air in general it's virtually impossible to isolate any sort of cause-and-effect with inhaled particulates.

These, of course, are the things we fear most; those over which we have little control, know little about, cannot see, and can scarcely avoid altogether.

The most underreported aspect of the health risks associated with exposure to airborne mold spores is naturally the extent of the health problems. Essentially, people who are allergic to mold (about 3%, depending who you ask), will have an allergic reaction like I have every time I even say the word cat.

More serious problems do seem to occur, notably adult-onset asthma and short-term memory loss, both of which tend to disappear after victims have moved or received a settlement in their lawsuit, whichever comes first.

So alarmism in terms of mold is fuelled by two primary elements:  film at eleven-style reporting that embraces anything that incites fear, and companies that sell products and/or services for mold remediation. Is the fear justified?

Well, if you're pregnant, very young, very old, immuno-suppressed, or have an existing respiratory condition, yes. If you fit any of these criteria, then, well, you're at risk from pretty much everything. This is the classic catch-all group of at-risk people, a familiar list that is attached to virtually everything that may not be extremely harmful, but just in case.

This is not to say that mold cannot be harmful. It has been suggested that the curse of King Tut's tomb was not a curse at all, but the result of exposure to some nasty mold. It seems that the king was buried with some food to ensure his postmortem comfort, and sealed in.

When explorers opened the tomb in 1922, about two dozen of them died shortly after entering. It has been theorized that the mold that had been left to thrive for centuries became deadly. This is unproven, but not entirely unlikely.

So, as usual with such seemingly deadly forces in nature, do your research, read the fine print, and make informed judgements. If you are in a high-risk category, by all means, avoid mold as much as you can.

Do you need to make a $30,000 phone call to mold remediation specialists and burn all of your possessions? Well, that's why lawyers who sue for reparations for improper building construction leading to the development of toxic mold openly use the phrase, mold is gold.

Mold has its positives too, of course. Scrubbing the last 2 x 4 with TSP, I thought to myself, I once had a slice of French goat's cheese that was so good, it made all of this worthwhile.

Naughty Realtors®:

Is raising standards an end that justifies its means?

by Carey Carson

Guess what? You're moving back in with your parents! At least, it may seem that way if the group of Realtor® associations currently attempting to set up a standards and review system in the U.S. has its way.

Plans for a non-profit corporation whose intent is to better-train Realtors® and brokers across the country in terms of higher customer service standards have been announced.

The explicit intent of this group is to establish national standards and to ensure that those who meet or exceed those standards are rewarded for it.

A not-insignificant movement, initial involvement includes 51 Realtor® associations, which represent about 280,000 Realtors®, and the ambitious group expects to officially launch this spring.

The group's consumer-centric standards will be an attempt to curb many types of unprofessional behavior, and to encourage positive practices. One of the reasons for the group coming into being is the extremely high number of new agents entering real estate without really being serious about it as a career.

The constant stream of rookies tends to drag down any area's median standard of service and generally make things more difficult for experienced and dedicated Realtors®.

It's not an agent's newness in itself that's the problem, it's those who get a license to sell real estate on the side and never really take the business seriously who cause the rest of us headaches.

Part of the group's purpose will be to police these new agents practices and a far better solution than simply doubling or tripling membership dues, as was recently suggested on RealTalk.

On the surface, this is an idea that makes sense. No one is more angered by poor service standards and unknowledgeable agents than I. No one is more galled when the entire profession is given a bad name by the handful who don't take it seriously and don't do a good job.

That said, how many aspects of such a plan could be a disaster?

A whole pile.

The most obvious difficulty is that real estate is one of the most regionally-determined industries in existence. This is clear in obvious elements like market value, local preferences, rental/ownership splits and the like, but also is true in subtler ways, particularly local business practices.

Local custom can dictate all sorts of details: how square footage is measured, whether or not buyers ride in your vehicle with you, whether or not feedback is customary, what showing practices are standard.

Virtually everything in real estate changes depending on what state or province, or even what city, you're in. So how could one possible presume to establish national standards and rate Realtors® according to such standards with any semblance of fairness?

Another big drawback as far as I'm concerned involves the very nature of real estate sales. Independence is a double-edged sword, and if you want to dull one edge, you're going to have to take care of the other one, too.

Acting, as most of us do, as independent contractors, means many things. It means foregoing guaranteed income, guaranteed pay raises, real job security, a good pension, and paid benefits. It also means doing without a boss in any real sense, not having someone looking over your shoulder or docking your pay if you take a long weekend, and basically, it means freedom.

If a third party intends to promote a standardized, regulated real estate industry, and therefore to add pressure to agents to perform in particular ways, wouldn't a little of the extra security and regularity afforded employees in more typical work environments be a reasonable accompaniment?

There would clearly not be an equitable (or economical) way to provide such accoutrements, so why not keep things the way they are? Weak agents don't last, strong ones become successful it's as pure a marketplace as can likely be found in 21st Century North America, and that's part of its strength.

This may be a first for me, but I think things should be kept the way they are I'm not saying it ain't broke, only that it has a history of fixing itself.