Just Another Home Inspection Nightmare in B.C.

[hausdok]

[utube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYspUTKU6Ss" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="344">

Home Inspection Nightmare in B.C.

[ghentjr]

You really have to feel sorry for these folks. Too bad they didn't name the inspector.

[Marc]

People always look to regulation when these sad stories come up. Regulation is good but it's only a start. It doesn't address an important fact in this profession...There's but one school in all of North America that's designed to prepare an individual for a career in home inspection.

Replace the requirement for so many hours of CE per year with a five year curriculum - engineered for the particular geographic climate - of at least 250 hours of classroom instruction that includes proxy testing.

Marc

[Stephen Lagueux]

I wonder if the inspector who condemned the house (once the walls are torn out) would've done it 6 years ago?

[John Kogel]

If anyone is wondering about BC inspectors, there are two rival TV networks in Vancouver BC, and the CBC story went national about a month ago, so GlobalTV is pulling out the stops and pulling out the stories they had been saving up. At least that is how I see it.

There are a lot of dedicated and competent inspectors here as elsewhere, and there are 1000's of satisfied home buyers, who generally keep quite and will never make the 6 o'clock news.

We wanted regulation to be the cure, but it was diluted, by the government agency, to include anybody that can write an open book exam. [:-party]

Re: training, yes, training and exams are important, but how do you train someone to expect the unexpected in a classroom? A class on case histories of inspections gone bad would be helpful, but people forget details, especially if it is just a story in a book or on a video screen.

So you have a slab home, they say it's a slab, looks like a slab. Didn't anyone notice they were walking on wood? Don't be lazy, don't take anything for granted and remember the logger's motto - Expect the unexpected.

[Marc]

...Re: training, yes, training and exams are important, but how do you train someone to expect the unexpected in a classroom? A class on case histories of inspections gone bad would be helpful, but people forget details, especially if it is just a story in a book or on a video screen...

There's unexpected in automotive, medical, engineering. Heck, there's unexpected everywhere, even in radio/TV.

Don't train for the unexpected. Train by teaching methods, materials, systems, organisms, insects, animals, etc. It's endless.

Marc