Podcasts Archives

TSI Season 2 Podcast #4: How the Weather Affects Everything

Podcasts / October 20, 2024

mold in SWFL, mold, radon, indoor air quality

EP #4: How the Weather Affects Everything

EP #4:

Sergio DeCesare: 0:07

Sergio here Max business profits, and today I am here again with my friend and inspector, home inspector extraordinaire, Rick Kooyman from trade secrets Inspections today is kind of an interesting little podcast or videocast we’re going to have here. We’re going to talk about the weather now. We’re not just going to talk about any weather. We’re going to talk about Florida weather and why. You need to know how it impacts your home. It the structure of your home and what you can expect living in Florida. Rick, on top of being an extraordinary home inspector, mold assessor, air quality assessor, Rick is also a former pilot, so weather is near and dear to his heart as it is mine, and I’m not a pilot. Never flew an airplane, but jumped out of a few of them, so without taking up any more space or time, let Rick take over. Rick, floor is yours.

Rick Kooyman: 1:08

Awesome. Great to be with you again, Sergio. And this should be fun. Yeah, I thought it’d be different to take a little break from the real estate world. And let’s talk about the weather here a little bit. You know, we

Sergio DeCesare: 1:20

need, we need a break from the real estate world, right? I mean, yeah, right. It’s

Rick Kooyman: 1:24

a little brutal, but, you know, so is the weather,

Sergio DeCesare: 1:27

so is the weather. So here we go, yeah. Welcome to Florida.

Rick Kooyman: 1:30

Welcome to Florida, exactly. So, you know, like, like, everybody says It’s paradise. Well, you know what? Paradise can be, harsh, defined paradise. I always say, right, right. So let’s talk about what weather is, you know, fundamentally, how it happens. And, you know, we’re basically, we’re going to discuss thunderstorms and how that becomes into, you know, the bigger things, which is our our names, threat is the hurricane. So if we can just have a basic understanding of how weather works and the fundamentals of it. Then when you go outside, you can kind of just look up at the sky and kind of read it for yourself and get an idea of what the atmosphere is doing just from fundamental understanding of what you’re seeing. So I thought I’d share a little knowledge on that. Like you said, I do have a long background in aviation, and I spent many years teaching people to fly and teach in weather in classrooms. So this is not a foreign topic to me by any means. So let’s, let’s talk about that. You know, the biggest player in the weather is the same biggest player and owning our homes and and that’s, that’s the sun and ultimately water, you know? And those are the two big players and and what we own and how we live and what the day does. So how does it work? It starts with that sun, that big star. It’s up there. It’s fusing, you know right now, it’s fusing hydrogen into helium, and in doing that, it’s creating a abundance of excess energy. It is radiating that energy outwards in forms of shortwave radiation and microwaves and such. And those, those radiation waves go out, and they get absorbed by the things out in the universe, such as the Earth and us. And in turn, those objects absorb that energy and radiate it back as heat, right? So that’s where we get the heat that we live with, and we end up collecting it down here in paradise, as they call it. But where does that go with it? So ultimately, because the Earth is not an even surface, and we have variations in materials and colors and textures and all that, we end up with uneven surface heating, right? So we have hot spots and cold spots and the parking lots hotter than the pond and all this, that and the other thing. So we end up with a temperature differential. And in our world, we have hot and cold and high and low pressure, and hot moves towards cold, and high moves towards low, and in so doing, we end up with things moving or motion, and that is wind, right? Plain and simple, that’s where wind comes from. It’s uneven surface temperature, which is ultimately more accurately defined as a pressure differential,

Sergio DeCesare: 4:22

right? Probably accounts for the turbulence you feel on an airplane.

Rick Kooyman: 4:25

Yeah, absolutely. And that’s just those are air current flows, which we’ll get into how those occur, and that’s going to play into how a thunderstorm develops and and how it ends its life, ultimately. But yeah, what we’re playing with is basically, we have surface heat going on and and once that occurs, it is going into an environment of that is constantly changing. So our atmosphere is constantly moving and changing. It’s never static. Sitting there. But we like to use some reference numbers as just a point of talking about to ease the confusion and all the the variables that play into the weather and make it so difficult to predict, right. So when things get hot, they expand right? Pretty fundamental idea physics, right? So let’s take a fixed parcel of air, just like a cube of air or a balloon of air, and let’s just say we put it out in the parking lot and we let it get hotter than the sun. We can assume that that air pressure is going to go up, right? Because is it getting hotter, the pressure inside the balloon is increasing, and the balloon is going to expand relative to the pressure outside the balloon, right? So hot and high pressure go together, and cold and low pressure go together, is the fundamental understanding here, right? So if we have our parcel of air, our balloon, right, and it’s at the ground, at sea level, and it’s at what we call standard atmosphere, which we’ll just say is, you know, we’ll just call it 59 degrees, which is where they like to start it at, right, and we take that balloon and we lift it up to 1000 feet, right as we go up into the atmosphere, there’s less above us of the atmosphere, which is less weight, which is also lower pressure, right? So just going up, it lowers pressure, right? Because you’re just you’re getting higher in the atmosphere. There’s less above you pushing down on you. That’s lower pressure. Okay? So if we take the balloon and we raise it 1000 feet, it’s in an environment that the pressure is decreased and it is expanded. When it expanded, it cooled, and it cooled at a rate that we have measured as a reference point. Again, we call it the adiabatic lapse rate. It’s just a rate of cooling, right? Big words, great things, whatever. But we just need to understand that as we take our balloon and we lift it up, it cools as the pressure goes down, but the standard is, say, three and a half degrees Fahrenheit per 1000 feet, right? If it’s cooling at a different rate than the the environment around it, it’s going to go up or down relative to what it’s doing, right? So if the balloon is hotter inside than the air outside of it, it’s going to continue to go up, right? Because it’s still warmer,

Sergio DeCesare: 7:47

right? Hotter. That’s the whole concept behind flying in a hot air balloon.

Rick Kooyman: 7:51

Yeah, absolutely, it’s fundamentally how it works. Hot air rises. So that’s all I can think of, right? We’re keeping it as basic as we can, so Right? Hot air is going to go up, right? So if, if we have our balloon in an environment that when we raise it 1000 feet, its rate of cooling is at, let me say this correctly now, if, if it’s cooling slower than the environment around it, it’s going to stay warmer, right? And then it’s going to continue to rise. And we can also call that unstable, right? So it’s going to continue to move in the direction of which it was going. Stability would be to suppress motion and to stop things, correct, right, right? So that would be the opposite side of that. If we took the balloon up and the outside air was at a higher temperature than our balloon, then our balloon is colder than the air around it, and it descends, contracting, right, right? So that would be stability, okay, or relatively higher pressure, right? So in in the environment has a lot to do with what happens during the day, when we have that uneven temperature heating going on, right? Because we have the diurnal cycle of night and day, and we have the differential of materials and colors and all that. We get the temperature differential, but the air environment keeps changing as like big oceans of air, basically, and and sometimes we’ll have a stable air mass over us, and sometimes we’ll have an unstable air mass over us. So we go back to what the balloon wants to do, and the unstable air mass, which is more typical of this tropical environment, and it has to do a lot with we get an excessive and our abundance of heating going on. So now our balloons get really hot, and they start to go up in the middle of the afternoon, right? Well, as they’re going up, they’re going up and cooling. And. Uh, at a rate slower than what the atmosphere is doing, and they’re still hot, so

Sergio DeCesare: 10:08

they can just what’s causing condensation, basically, well, this

Rick Kooyman: 10:11

is how we get the the clouds to form, right? So the temperature differential creates the uplift. Now we can have uplift created by mountains or whatever. But down here, we don’t have we don’t even have a hill, but we have temperature differential, and that’s our lifting force, right? So our lifting force is really temperature differential, and then it’s the environment stability. And we often have more temperature differential than we have stability. So regardless of how good the sky looks. We’re generally in a non stable atmosphere in the afternoon, sure, and we get afternoon thunderstorms. This is how this happens. So that whole cycle you just described, they just right. So as everyone is going up and it’s cooling down, eventually that parcel of air meets its dew point right, and condensation occurs, which is the same thing that’s happening in our homes and our AC vents, and causing the mold to grow on the ceiling. The local temperature at that vent is at or below the dew point of our local environment, and the water is coming out of gas state and becoming a liquid liquid, right? So as that’s transitioning states in the sky, it’s it’s actually attaching itself to dust particles. You know, the the water needs something to adhere to, to go from the gas state to the liquid state, and it becomes a little tiny particle of water on a piece of dust. And those build up, and they’re held up in the sky in a localized cold area, and that’s what we call our cloud, right? So we see what is the same as you know, the morning fog on the ground. That’s visual condensation. That is a cloud on the ground. That’s the same thing. Fog is a cloud, right? So it’s just moisture changing states. And then if we keep it in that unstable environment, which we generally have because of the excessive heat, then that uplift continues to occur, and the little white puffy cloud now becomes the towering white puffy cloud, which we call the towering cumulus cloud. And that towering cumulus cloud develops into the mature thunderstorm, right? And that just is water particles moving at a high rate of speed in a vertical air mass going up and down in the sky because of this temperature thing going on, and they create static. The static, you know, is more energy, and it in, we get A a net positive and a net negative building up in the clouds, and we have thunder and lightning, right? So this is all just this moisture moving around, happening the same thing, and it all came from that temperature differential, and just how the pressure changes affect and what the differentials are relative to each other, whether it goes up or down, and the stability of things, right? So as the thunderstorm develops and it gets big, it reaches its saturation state event eventually, and then it starts to rain, right? And it’s what we call the mature state of the thunderstorm. So basically, now we have up that drafts and downdrafts occurring in that cloud. The downdrafts are the rain literally falling out of the cloud, right? So they’ve, they’ve reached a mass that needed them to fall out. Gravity won the race, and now they’re falling okay? There can be a lot of dynamic stuff going on in that storm, and oftentimes that rain drop will get cycled through the cloud up and down. As it goes through a downdraft, it’ll get caught in an updraft, and then it will become what we call super cooled water, which is water below the freezing point, right? So it’s not even ice. It’s still liquid. Because, literally, it’s surface tension is stronger than the expansion force of the freezing of the water, so the water becomes super cooled, and as soon as something breaks that surface tension touches that water, it freezes on it, it becomes ice, and that’s how airplanes get ice on them. They fly through the the super cooled cloud, and it literally just becomes ice on the surface. Well, that same thing can occur in the thunderstorm without the airplane, and that’s a hailstone, right, right? So that’s those things around, and you can’t even believe it, but that’s that ice ball is literally going up and down in that cloud, you know, 30, 40,000 feet, and then it gets shot out of the top of the cloud, most of the time when it’s hail, because it’s finally ejected out and leaves that cycle. And you see the hail storms, and you’ll see the hailstorms. Arms, and they’ll be in sunny skies a lot of times. They’re outside of the thunderstorm. They’re on the the leading side of it. In fact, because the updraft is so strong, it’s like a cannon. It’s shooting them out of it. Literally, they’ve

Sergio DeCesare: 15:12

picked up so much mass from from falling and going back up and freezing and expanding and wow, wow. I mean, alright, well, that was 20 minutes

Rick Kooyman: 15:22

of holy cow, right?

Sergio DeCesare: 15:25

A semester worth of, you know, weather sciences in high school, but so being in this condition, what, eight or nine months out of the year at this point, it seems like I’m assuming that takes a major toll.

Rick Kooyman: 15:44

Yeah, absolutely. I mean churches we live in. That’s why the word harsh, I think, goes with Paradise very well down here, because our two biggest enemies to our properties are water and sun, whether it be water in a liquid form or the gaseous form, which is the local humidity, which is generally the biggest monster we fight down here, is the humidity coming into the environments and causing the mold problems. I was just at a customer’s house this past week, you know, and she was having mold throughout the house, and there was more ventilation bathrooms without, you know, exhaust vents, but they have windows, you know? And she says, Well, I open the window after I take a shower to let it dry out. Well, the that’s actually working against you, right? It’s more human outside than it is inside and inside, right? There’s this, this fancy word called psychometrics that says heat and humidity, move and and, yeah, you’re actually not helping yourself with that window situation. So yeah, water. Big problem the sun. Big problem it wears on things. Uv is a real thing, and

Sergio DeCesare: 16:54

I can tell you, that’s probably one or two of the things I hate most about living down here. Because number one, anything out in the sun, whether it’s your lawn mower, your fencing, nothing, nothing lasts. No. I mean, this sun just breaks everything. I’m actually surprised how well roofs last, how long they last. And that’s, you know, they

Rick Kooyman: 17:18

never last as long as they’re warrantied for organic. The biggest thing down here, that’s what confuses people so much, is they’re so used to 30 year warranty, yeah, so much longer, and they can’t conceive of it’ll only last you maybe a year, and then the the sun is going to destroy it, and it ain’t going to be heaven anymore, yeah?

Sergio DeCesare: 17:39

And it’s the same wood moisture. I mean, there’s not anything I can keep outside, and it doesn’t somehow find water into it. I I don’t get it. I was like, just going through this this weekend. I was like, you know, I have these buckets and these containers outside with painting supplies, you know, in the on the patio, you know, out of, you know, underneath the overhang. And I’m like, I open it up and there’s an ancient water in them. I’m like, What? What the How insane. Every I just, I mean, the rain here too. It’s just the rain will come down. It’ll go sideways, I swear to God,

Rick Kooyman: 18:14

like a liquid sky for Yeah,

Sergio DeCesare: 18:16

it’s just, it’s like, I Why don’t you just take whatever you’re putting outside and just for about 30 something, and that’s about two weeks outside. But Okay, so moving forward. I mean, so what do people need to know, and how do you work with something like this? Well, you

Rick Kooyman: 18:31

gotta understand that, you know, it’s a constant maintenance effort there. There is no golden bullet. There is no super solution. I mean, this is the whole cycle. You know, that thunderstorm that we have every day is the same motive and monster that is the hurricane that we’re all waiting, you know, to not happen, but is ultimately, you’re breaking my heart, Rick, I was waiting for but it’s just this isn’t my ever ending fight, and you have to acknowledge that if you want to be in this environment, you have to accept it for what it is. And part of that is is living down here requires different maintenance practices and understanding that buying a 30 year old house is probably in a different condition then you may think it may be, if you’re coming from, you know, the Midwest or right the southwest, for that matter, where time stops and things last forever. And

Sergio DeCesare: 19:30

it’s funny, you bring this up because there’s still quite a few wood frame houses out there. And I used to really like wood frame houses, because I felt like, well, the house, the house can breathe a little bit, right? It can contract and expand and but, you know, as time goes on, I realize that I don’t care if my house breathes or not.

Rick Kooyman: 19:55

Now, we’re not in the environment where the breathing house method that is a real now. Destruction methodology. But, yeah, it’s not a good thing down here. No, no, it’s

Sergio DeCesare: 20:05

not. And, you know, I come from up north, where it’s viewed very differently. But I mean, and I used to think, well, that’s a good thing. I mean, you know, people always used to say, well, with with frame houses, you have more incidents of termites Well, and that’s not necessarily true. You’ll get subterranean termites in, in the rafters, in the trust,

Rick Kooyman: 20:24

every season, anyway. So, right? So

Sergio DeCesare: 20:27

what I’ve come to realize is there’s nothing to do with termites. It’s all about the moisture. It’s all about moisture, the frame of that house, absorbing water over time. And it’s wood. I don’t care how much you pressure treat it, you know, short of ceramic coating it. And

Rick Kooyman: 20:45

then you gotta understand that those things are porous materials, absolutely, even when, even when concrete, even concrete, yeah, and they get mold on them, and people think that they can be treated or painted or cleaned. And ultimately, once it’s affected, it’s it’s never unaffected. If it’s not, you can scrape it off of hard, then it’s not gone. Unfortunately, it’s gonna either it’s gonna come back, it’s gonna create that odor. That odor is a mycotoxin. It’s a voc gas. It’s not gonna come up in an air sample, you know, like a spore, but it can still be in the airspace. You know, it’s a whole different thing to test for, to try to pull a gas sample out of airspace.

Sergio DeCesare: 21:27

So you just have curiosity, the house that you looked at today, what was, was, what was the proximate age of that house?

Rick Kooyman: 21:33

Oh, it was a late 90s home,

Sergio DeCesare: 21:37

which, there are plenty of them here, yeah,

Rick Kooyman: 21:40

I live in one, yeah, yeah. It was a classic late 90s construction home, flat Ranch, yeah. So,

Sergio DeCesare: 21:50

yeah. So you’re, you know, a late 90s home might seem like an old house here, but you go to other places of the state. You go to other places the country. No, that’s 30 year old house. Ain’t that

Rick Kooyman: 22:02

old? No, we’re not even starting looking at old at that point, right? But down here, it’s like that, that yard equipment, stuff. I mean, it’s these products. There’s very few products that will go 30 years in this environment. You know, I had this conversation with the the roof people all the time, the metal roofs, the concrete tile roofs, you know, the glass tile roofs, they got 5060, year life expectancies from the manufacturer. Well, that’s great, but they’re not the only thing up on the roof. There’s an underlayment and a roof deck, fasteners and all these other things and adhesives. And none of those things last that long.

Sergio DeCesare: 22:41

And you know, I raise poultry as a hobby. I have turkeys and stuff, and a lot of their devices to feed and water them are made of plastics and abs, all that stuff. And I’ll tell you what, none of that stuff, I never had any of that stuff last more than nine months to a year. Yeah, it’s out in the sun, getting here by three to four hours of sunlight a day.

Rick Kooyman: 23:07

I know, I know it’s crazy.

Sergio DeCesare: 23:08

I tell people, you walk out there, you pick it up, the handle just comes right off the snare, just, I mean, it’s amazing even, even, like, you know, I used to back in the day. I’ve been through like, probably three or four riding lawn mowers, you know? And just like the seats and every artist, any class, everything, even if you look at the cars, right, well, why is the plastic on these cars starting to crack and fade? I have a Land Rover out there, 2002 every piece of plastic on that car exterior, every piece of trim. Don’t even touch it. Yeah, brittle. It’s like eggshells. Yep,

Rick Kooyman: 23:47

it’s insane. It’s in crazy. It’s a crazy environment. People, you know, it’s paradise. It’s paradise, my friend. Now there’s a price, I

Sergio DeCesare: 23:56

guess, right, isn’t there, though? So you know, people, people need to be aware of this, and need to be aware of of the impact this stuff has in their exterior of the home. But of course, the interior of the home, because at some point, if the interior gets moisture, that that that mold, is going to get into the air system,

Rick Kooyman: 24:17

yeah. And the thing is, is that we are constantly in the state of all mold needs is a place to land, because it’s got everything else in the air. It’s so humid, the conditions are ideal for it. So, yeah, it’s the it’s always there. It’s always just waiting. I wouldn’t

Sergio DeCesare: 24:37

be surprised. I mean, just based on air conditioning units and the way they’re designed, I I mean, they’re drawing air from the outside. Most

Rick Kooyman: 24:45

often there’s our homes are not airtight. And then when we create on systems, we pump outside air back into the house,

Sergio DeCesare: 24:51

right? But that’s why you kind

Rick Kooyman: 24:55

of counterproductive, right? But

Sergio DeCesare: 24:56

you look at your grill on your AC unit, you. And own the air handler. Well, that mold came from someplace. He just didn’t decide to

Rick Kooyman: 25:05

appear. It came out of the air and it landed on right now you’re pumping it around the house and, yeah, fortunately, that coil is a metal surface, and if it’s maintenanced properly, regularly, you can get it cleaned and it’s not, yeah, and you can use ultraviolet light to repel it as much, and you gotta do all these things. Yeah, that’s the end of the day over bullet. There’s no magic. Yeah, we got it solved

Sergio DeCesare: 25:29

at the end of the day, though. I mean, if, if somebody suspects they even have mold in their home, or, you know, if you found it inside of vanity cabinet or something like that, you pretty much probably should get an air quality test, as my guess,

Rick Kooyman: 25:45

well, more than just the air quality test, because that’s why I mentioned the word mycotoxins, because the air quality test is for particles, and a mycotoxin is a gas. It’s the gas product that you are feeling and experiencing, right? That you smell that musty odor, yeah, that is more readily identified through a visual inspection of someone that’s practiced and knows what to look for and what the signs are and what the indications of that might be. In there, there are means of doing mycotoxin testing. It’s, it’s a little elaborate, and it’s, you know, in my opinion, not necessary, unless there’s some legal reason that we have to prove this. But people need to understand that a moldy environment is an unhealthy environment, and that if you continue to stay in a moldy environment over a period of time, it will have a neurological effect on you. It will heal. Yeah, it will change the way you behave. It will change the way the medications you take affect you. I mean, it has huge in the, you know, down the line, effects on things that people don’t even realize, and they’re just like, Oh, who cares? It’s just mold. There’s mold everywhere. Why do we even care? Well, to each his own, and if you can tolerate it, great, you. That’s fine, but in most cases, it is having a a health effect on us. Yeah.

Sergio DeCesare: 27:17

Do you care about your children? Do you care about your pets? Or do you care about

Rick Kooyman: 27:22

your employees? That’s another I often go into offices that have moldy, you know, air ducts and mold, smell it on the corner and and you got to understand that, as an employer, your employees function is going to be affected by that environment and that health effect, right? So their performance is deteriorating because you have them in an unhealthy environment. So it’s in everybody’s interest to deal with these things. Yeah, yeah,

Sergio DeCesare: 27:48

for sure. So I’m assuming you’re qualified to detect all this. And yeah, absolutely, that’s

Rick Kooyman: 27:56

what we hear to do and try to we, you know, we, we’re here to to share the knowledge and spread the truth, and we don’t do the work. You know, we’re not selling the remediations, we’re not selling the kitchens, we’re not selling the handlers. We’re just out there telling that it’s true or it’s not true. You know, every, not everybody, is a liar, and not everybody’s telling the truth

Sergio DeCesare: 28:19

right, right there. And I guess there’s different variations of the truth, I suppose, but for sure, right?

Rick Kooyman: 28:25

And, and like I said to each his own. You know, we all get to decide, ultimately, what our environment is we want to live in. But you gotta understand that sometimes disregarding things is not necessarily in your favor. No,

Sergio DeCesare: 28:38

not at all. Okay, great. So if somebody’s trying to get a hold of you, what’s what’s your phone number, give us your website address, give us all that pertinent information.

Rick Kooyman: 28:47

Absolutely, you can get a hold of me directly at 239-537-1186, anytime you can call me or text me. You can email me at Rick at trade secrets inspections.com and obviously that’s the website trade secrets, inspections, secrets and inspections within us.

Sergio DeCesare: 29:08

Com, well, and before you you sign off here, and I’m going to want you to get that information out again, but I want you to stay all the services that you are providing, because you’re not just a mold guy. You’re not just a, yeah, we

Rick Kooyman: 29:23

can help you with everything from your insurance inspections and your insurance documents to dealing with the problems in the spotting and the odors. I have test equipment for, you know, a dozen different various gasses, and we can be including radon, including radon absolutely, you know, we we run the gamut on trying to understand what’s going on with homes, helping people own their homes, helping them work with their contractors, helping them understand what contractors they need to work with, and when all these things. Are owning homes and not just selling homes and buying homes. Of course, we do that stuff as well. And you know, it’s like I said, if you want to go out and get fast food, you go to the franchise that sells the fast food. And you know what you’re getting. If you want good food, you don’t go to the franchise, right? You find the people that know what they’re doing, and it makes a difference, right,

Sergio DeCesare: 30:30

right? Very good. So, yeah, that’s, that’s Rick trade secret inspections if you’re looking to buy or sell real estate, I think you know, if you’re looking to sell real estate at this point trying to get some of these inspections done, because you’re competing in a market with an incredible amount of inventory right now,

Rick Kooyman: 30:47

you need everybody getting into a competition. Yeah, you’re you’re going to need

Sergio DeCesare: 30:51

every edge possible over your competitor to to close a deal as fast and as much money as possible. Rick does this. So one

Rick Kooyman: 31:00

more time before the listings, the pre listings. Great listing. Inspection, environmental, anything you need so you’re not caught off guard. You know what’s going on, and you know it’s not a it’s not a problem to have to disclose things. Sometimes it’s not a bad word. You want to make things happen faster.

Sergio DeCesare: 31:19

That’s right. Rick, one more time, phone number and website address, 239-537-1186,

Rick Kooyman: 31:28

and trade secrets inspections, com,

Sergio DeCesare: 31:32

excellent. Okay, until next time. And Rick is, Rick is a pretty regular person that we have on this podcast and this videocast, because Rick is full of incredible information. And if you are involved in real estate whatsoever in Collier County, Rick is a guy you’re going to want to connect with. So thank you again, Rick for being here, and until next time, all the best to you. Yep, it was a pleasure.

TSI Season 2 Podcast #4: How the Weather Affects Everything Read More »

TSI Season 2 Podcast #3: Navigating Insurance Demands

Podcasts / July 15, 2024

EP #3: Navigating Insurance Demands

All Podcast Episodes

EP #3: Navigating Insurance Demands

Sergio DeCesare: 0:00

Hi. Again, my name is Sergio Max business profits. I’m here with my friend and home inspector extraordinaire, Richard cleaning, also known as Rick Kooyman. He owns trade secret inspections. And we are on the third segment of our little talk. Today’s information is going to be insurance inspections and why it matters to everyone. So, Rick, take it away, where would you like to begin this conversation?

Rick Kooyman: 0:36

Well, it’s good to be back with you, Sergio. Let’s start there. And let’s go with man, I hope everybody out there is listening to this one, I really do this one comes up, I gotta say, every day, I have someone with this exact problem in my world of what’s going on. And it comes down to what you don’t understand about what is changing with the insurance world, what the significance of these forms. And these inspections. Now they’ve been around for a while they’ve had these forms since 2012. But they didn’t use them the same way. They didn’t really reference them the same way as they are now they didn’t rely on him as much. And now they absolutely are. And they’re absolutely the thing that is standing between you and your insurance. And that’s because when you get told to have these inspections done, your insurance is just about to expire, or has expired. And eight and 10 people have something that needs repaired in their house according to these horns. So what does that mean? That means that now you’re under the gun, to get to whatever spec you don’t understand, the insurance company is actually looking for you to be at. And now you have a time constraint. Or you’re looking at going with and the bank putting PMI on it. And you’d have to deal with that. And my message to this is why I say everyone is just because you call and ask for a four point inspection doesn’t mean you have to send it to your insurance people. You can use it for your own perspective, and go hey, is this a clean four point? And if not, why isn’t it and let’s take some time, and I need anywhere conditioner, I need a new hot water tank or I need repaved or I need a new panel or I need a new roof or, you know, the list is long. And it’s expensive. And, you know, I, every day I’ve got one today. They’re just like, I got the the four point you sent us. It’s it’s the insurance says that there doesn’t need approval. And you know, I’m like, Well, I told you that when we did it. And it’s all in what needs to be corrected. It’s all cited there. And there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s, you know, it is what it is their pictures. They they’re labeled. So before you get into

Sergio DeCesare: 3:17

the forms, and the four point inspection, which we’ll explain what that is, we have wind mitigation inspections on their roof certificates. I’m a little confused, right, because my insurance has basically doubled. I haven’t had any claims. You know, my roof isn’t a brand new roof. And you know, I’ve had this conversation before where I’m really fearful where they’re going to come back and say, Hey, we’re not going to insure you unless you replace the roof. Now mind you, I have no leaks, no matter no missing shingles I true I had the roof treated, protected, which they don’t doesn’t seem like they really care about. So I don’t understand because I’m only paying a little over five grand a year for homeowners. But I know people who are paying six 912 $1,000 Right? Yeah, sure, absolutely. But I feel like the insurance companies are either a trying to not write a policy on that property. Or just trying to basically just say, you know, we don’t we’re not going to cover all these things because you know, there’s hurricane deductibles and everything else that goes along with that, at the end of the day are really getting the coverage. So tell us how these forms kind of integrate with what we’re getting for what we’re paying for which seems like we’re paying a lot more now than ever.

Rick Kooyman: 4:45

And you are you are you absolutely are. Obviously everybody can see what prices are in prices don’t double and triple is pretty obvious. What is going on is exactly what you said the insurance industry Free is doing everything they possibly can, to, in their words, get back on their feet, they need to recover money from you, and not write you checks. So that’s where this stuff comes in. So they’re very much paying attention to these forums. Like I said, they, they didn’t just create them, they’ve been around. They’re just now saying, hey, we want only yeses and satisfactory ease, no issues of any kind. And there’s definitely age limits that we’re looking at. It’s not conditional based on some things. It’s just simply it’s this, this is how old it is, and we’re not going to touch it. And that’s where, you know, like, your roof situation comes in, and you know, well, maybe the roof is fine, and you can come out and the roofers will say, well, there’s nothing wrong with this roof, there’s no problems, there’s no leaks, there’s no reason to do anything to it, except that you want to buy insurance. And insurance doesn’t want to write you a policy on an old product. They’re just not doing it anymore.

Sergio DeCesare: 6:06

So that’s an that’s very disheartening, because I can tell you,

Rick Kooyman: 6:09

and the coverages you’re getting are less and you’re not paying more. And you’re going to end there, the barricades between you and that claim are getting greater in the sense of, you know, House Bill 7052, where they amended all these things. And they said, No more assignments of benefits. And you know, now you’ve got to pay your own attorneys fees is one way the attorney fee things over with, well, those are game changers. That’s not just about, oh, we’re gonna stop the abuse. You’ve put the power now in the insurance company’s hands, and now they’re gonna abuse you. Well, you kind of took the words out of my mouth.

Sergio DeCesare: 6:49

I was sitting here thinking, Well, I happen to know that, that a lot of where the money’s going with these insurance companies is for litigation. Most

Rick Kooyman: 6:59

of it, the attorneys are make 80% of the losses are litigation losses. And then you have these users and I can make an argument in there. There’s, there’s truth to be had to these stories. And there’s truth on both sides of it. Right? So there’s no one place to point the finger and say, this is where it went bad. It went bad. When the weather changed, and there was catastrophic loss. That’s when he went bad. And then everybody went, right, you know, not me, you. And they were left holding the bag. And there was there was a lot of different languages in the coverage policies. In particular, after Irma regarding the roofs where there wasn’t a proration wrote into the coverage policy on your roof. So the insurance company got held responsible for the 100% cost of the replacement of that expired roof, they got damaged. And they’re like, well, it was 25 years old and expired anyways, but we didn’t catch up to it in time to pay for all those new roofs. And we’re gonna do that ever again.

Sergio DeCesare: 8:12

Right. Understood?

Rick Kooyman: 8:16

Yeah, I mean, it’s for real. And that’s why I say everybody is under the guise of how it used to be. And that, you know, insurance is here to help you out and we have this stuff to be our coverage. Right. And we still do, we just have to understand that it’s actually not an entitlement. It’s something that is an investment, and we have to work towards, and we have to make sure that we’re meeting our side of the agreement. Well,

Sergio DeCesare: 8:50

it’s worse than that. Even I think, because as a as a guy who has a mortgage on the property, I don’t have the option of insurance or no insurance or self insurance. Exactly. So I have to do it, basically pay 9000 miles a year for the benefit.

Rick Kooyman: 9:07

Yeah, for sure.

Sergio DeCesare: 9:08

And God forbid, put contents on my policy. You know, because I’ve looked at that too. I’ve taken contents off my balls, like crazy. It’s crazy stupid. And I don’t know, it’s I look when when you have in here 2030 years in our house, they only have 510 years left to pay on their mortgage, and they can no longer afford to even the mortgage payment because now it’s escrow the new amounts are escrowed into a mortgage payment. And there we go. We got a sack

Rick Kooyman: 9:36

stamp come south Florida. Yeah, yeah, we inflation is driving people, retired people, you know, at the end of the whole program, saying, Oh, by the way, we’re going to take your house now. Right? Yeah, like, there. That’s no joke. Yeah,

Sergio DeCesare: 9:56

no, it’s a serious, serious issue. So that being said, Tell us about the wind mitigation? Well, let’s start with the fourth point. Tell us tell us what the fourth point is. It’s so important. Well, let’s

Rick Kooyman: 10:07

start with Mike just changed. Now it’s gonna be okay. The four point is what insurance sees as their biggest expense risks. So it’s ROOF, ELECTRIC, PLUMBING, and HVAC. Those are the four points, if you will. So under each one of those content sections, there’s a bunch of what is it? How old is it? And what kind of problem questions and they’re basically checkbox stuff? It’s very specific to what they want. It’s not subjective. Right? So are there these things are there? Is there corrosion? Is there signs of leakage? Are there water stains on the ceilings? Is there water staining around the air conditioner, we have to provide a photo to them. So if you had an old condensate leak that got fixed, but you know, the standard of the air conditioners all stained out, and that looks like a mess, and they’re going to look at it and go, No, thanks. Yeah, that’s a problem. We think that looks like a problem. You know. So this is what I’m saying, you know, everybody needs to catch on, that these things need to happen for their own edification. So that they understand when they get asked these insurance questions where they stand, right? Because for so long, nobody ever thought that these things mattered. And now all of a sudden, all these things mattered. And everybody was like, I have that fixed. And I don’t care about this thing. I understand that you don’t care about the stain. But the underwriter looks at it. And all they do is look at the photo and go, Well, there’s a risk there. And I don’t want to bet on high risk stuff.

Sergio DeCesare: 11:56

Yeah. And so like we were saying earlier, they’re looking for reasons not to insure,

Rick Kooyman: 12:01

yes, they’re looking for any reason that might cost them money. Right. And yeah, ultimately, that means that they’re not going to offer you an insurance coverage for they might offer you a policy that right out that issue. Or you know, you get no water coverage, or you get no wind coverage, or you know, whatever it may be, but at the end of the day, what you’re doing is you’re paying a bunch of money, and you’re getting the right of saying you have insurance, but the actual end of the day coverage of what you’re getting back is unfortunate. Let’s just leave it at that. You’re making your mortgage company happy. But that’s about it. Yeah, you’re meeting your specific required obligations, obligations. But yeah, the industry, homeowners, just being a homeowner, as an industry is changing. And it’s changing because of the insurance industry. Right. And it’s actually finally starting to show stuff in the market leases. And these older people getting basically thrown out of their homes, because their fixed income won’t pay the property tax, and the property insurance, and by food. Medicine, they own a house, they’ve owned a house for 30 years. It’s true. Yeah, I’m seeing more and more of this. Right. And this is all inflation, every which way you look at it. But you know, at the end of the day, the ultimate cost of the what happened is someone had move.

Sergio DeCesare: 13:42

Yeah, I think a lot of it is inflation,

Rick Kooyman: 13:44

because obviously something needs to be fixed or replaced. There’s materials involved and the materials labor have gone up in price. But I think ultimately, too, I mean, a lot of this is just caused by the change in weather patterns. Oh, yeah. You and I talked about this in the last episode. I mean, there wasn’t even, you know, we never ever ever had hurricanes here. And it was it was like What? No, not here. The last major hurricane was like in 1965, Hurricane Donna. Yeah, the cycles are changing. Yeah, the cyclists changing and the city and the insurance companies are catching on. And the older homes are not going to be allowed to be put back to how they were post damage. There’s, you know, so you get a requirement now to do a full up to code renovation. When you only had to do a partial repair instead. Now, sorry, if you want to do your doors and windows, you’re gonna do all your doors and windows. You know, they’re there. They’re getting tight on things and every which way you go and you know, the property values go up your property insurance goes up. And again, the people on the fixed income side of things, you know, People see it as a when your property value went up? Well, they didn’t want to leave their fixed income didn’t make it to the property tax and the insurance requirement anymore. Right. Right. Right for the property value.

Sergio DeCesare: 15:15

But true. So going back to the four points, yeah. So

Rick Kooyman: 15:20

you know, going back to the four point, you know, that’s it’s just important for people to be proactive is the message. If you have had insurance forever, and you’ve got an older home, think about spending a couple 100 bucks to find out ahead of time, you know, and at the end, you still have the completed form. For when the day comes in, they ask you for it. And you’re like, okay, whatever here. Is a four point good for is there’s a ton of them. Yeah, unfortunately, the four point is technically only valid for one year, or if anything gets changed. Part of it is is the windmill is valid for five years. But technically, they made the four point valid for one power tool for the industry, so that they can keep every time they rewrite the policy, have someone come back through it and relook at it.

Sergio DeCesare: 16:18

Well, in all fairness, I guess things could change, like an AC can break down. I mean, that stuff happens all the time, especially down

Rick Kooyman: 16:23

here. Yeah, it just goes back to that presumptive coverage, you know, that we all grew up with, where you’re just like, I don’t know, you just call and get insurance and whatever. And now, insurance is difficult.

Sergio DeCesare: 16:38

Yeah, and you know, I don’t know what it’s like in other states. Actually. Do you know what it’s like in other states? I don’t know what it is. Well, I guess it’s a Florida thing more than anything else, because I can tell you owning property in North Carolina. Now, I sold that property a year or two ago. But I can tell you, I had a very similar sized house in North Carolina, is the one I have now. And my bill here is 5200 bucks. My bill there was 300.

Rick Kooyman: 17:05

Yeah, no, it’s very much a part of thing. And I can tell you in in defense of a much older veterans in defense of the insurance industry, and this is the reason it’s a Florida thing is the state of Florida by itself represents more in financial loss than the entire rest of the country combined. And it goes back to legal fees and all that other stuff. But that’s why it’s so intensely different down here. Because I mean, that’s a big statement. Right? That’s a that’s a yeah, that’s, that’s what they’re saying. That’s what they’re saying. This state by itself represents a bigger risk to an insurance company than the whole rest of the country. That all of it together, they don’t pay as much as they pay out down here, then you

Sergio DeCesare: 18:01

wonder at what point does it just get so economically unfair insurance in the state? You know,

Rick Kooyman: 18:10

we’re coming to and that’s why I talk about property age, and staying up with this insurance thing. And, and, and getting a little educated on why being a homeowner is a little bit more of a task than it is just a privilege.

Sergio DeCesare: 18:28

Now, maybe it’s the difference between the American dream and the American bad day, maybe a nightmare, but the real American I mean, I mean, look at Florida, it’s become really economically unfeasible? Yeah, yeah. Everybody talks about the migration and, you know, a two or 3% Oh, my God, the whole world is moving here, right. But nobody talks about the migration now with a just last year with 700,000 people. That’s a big chunk. So it was a big chunk.

Rick Kooyman: 19:06

The industry has the wind mitigation. And the whole program of the wind mitigation is a crediting system to try to reduce the rates based on that four point I asked premium that they assess that risk to be and then they go back and say, Well, according to the widmet, you meet these upgraded things that we would like to see because of this Florida weather. And you know, this this unique condition that we live in down here and these problems we have to deal with. So if you have these improvements and the structure is modified a little better than the original older stuff, is they’ll they will acknowledge and give you a discount on. But even on that end, now they’re getting way more strict on where those discounts apply and what right.

Sergio DeCesare: 19:55

Real quick explain to everybody what a win mitigation report is.

Rick Kooyman: 20:00

A wind mitigation report is a study that describes, basically houses assembled and what materials was it used? So they want to know what kind of doors and windows are there? Are they impact rated? If not, are there shutters? If there are shutters? Are they large missile rated they small missile rated? Are they not rated at all? Are they Florida approved? I mean, all these little nuances now suddenly matter. It used to be like, Oh, you got wood shutters that you handmade and you put up when the storm comes? That’s cool. We’ll give you a discount for that. And it’s literally on the form. But they have not given a discount out anymore. I can promise you that.

Sergio DeCesare: 20:42

Why do you think that is why when they give a discount for for a protective item?

Rick Kooyman: 20:46

Well, for the plywood thing, particularly because at this point, everything has to be like what we call a Florida approved product, meaning it has what we call a notice of acceptance, or an NLA. And that product went through Florida approval testing, where they stand. And they literally shot two by fours at eight times. Every product, every window, every door, everything that says it’s hurricane rated, goes through this testing procedure. And this is where a large missile comes from and small missile and blah, blah, blah, these testing standards. So at this point, they want the biggest and the best they want large missile. And that’s it. That’s the full two by four.

Sergio DeCesare: 21:35

That’s right. I think what they were they do is that what 90 or 100?

Rick Kooyman: 21:40

Our tests? Yeah, yeah. Basically, it’s an air cannon. That’s four out of it. Yeah.

Sergio DeCesare: 21:47

It’s in crazy stuff. Okay.

Rick Kooyman: 21:48

It’s basically 100 mile an hour impact.

Sergio DeCesare: 21:51

So the wind mitigation reports

Rick Kooyman: 21:52

the insurance, so yeah, it’s it’s windows and doors. It’s how is your roof attached? Meaning the trusses right to the walls? Because we want to keep the roof on the wall and the big thing. And then the second layer of the roof is the roof deck. So how is the roof deck now attached to the truss that’s attached to the wall? And then how is the roof covering? What is it? How old is it? And how is it attached? So we can start to see where this is all going? Right? We’re looking at durability stuff here, you know? And then it goes back to well, what building code is it built to? How old of a house? Is it? Exactly? You know, that’s a question. And all these things amount to discounts on this forum, or they amount to hire policies on your property, which is why I bring up these topics about each and four point and understanding these things. And I keep saying it over and over again, that what used to be is no longer the case. And what goes on North Florida is north of Florida. Right minutes will be another planet. Yeah, it might as well be because it doesn’t mean anything here. Let’s move on

Sergio DeCesare: 23:06

to roof certificates.

Rick Kooyman: 23:09

Yeah, roof certificates are almost non existent anymore. And that’s funny, because the roof certificate specifically is simply the roof section of the four point form. So taken out and made into its own separate form. It’s the same thing. It’s the same questions. And it goes back to that topic where you were talking about your roof, where we used to be able to go out and say, based on our expertise, that yeah, the roof is this old, but it’s in good shape. It doesn’t have these problems. We expect it to live another five 810 years? Well, one, we got to understand what numbers are defined as when we say those now because if I say it’s good for five years, the insurance industry goes Okay, we’re done now. And you’re like what I have for five more years. And they’re like, Yeah, with no insurance. Like, five years, your expectancy

Sergio DeCesare: 24:06

on your roof is not enough anymore. No, to insure it right now for a year, they’ll give

Rick Kooyman: 24:13

you one year on a five year life expectancy. They used to go they used to go to three, they were given a one they would write you a one year policy on something that we would say it’s at the end, but you know, it’s going to be in the next three to five years, this is going to be due to be replaced. And they go okay, well, we’ll write a one year policy, limited coverage on a roof side of things, of course, because you know, we’re not going to buy you a new roof on this old deteriorated roof, but we’ll write your coverage policy for the rest of the structure. And they’ve taken that now to five meaning they’ll do one year on a five year estimate. And honestly, that roof certification form it used to allow us to say that your metal roof that you know The product is a 50 year product, your roof chart says that the roof is 65 or 30 years of age. Again, it goes back to the underlayment. But they don’t they’re the assessments aren’t being read anymore, they’re not being heard. The roof certification thing is really just, hey, we want to know how old it is we want someone to actually go out, verify is anything missing from it, and write down with their license number. When was it installed? I want to know the math. And that’s the end of the conversation.

Sergio DeCesare: 25:39

So there’s not even a point in buying a 25 or 30 year shingle or even a 50 year shingle, I know they have those as well, there’s no point it because at the end of the day, the insurance company’s gonna make their judgment call. And even if you have five years left, they’re going to treat you like you got one year

Rick Kooyman: 25:58

left. Yeah, that’s crazy. Man. It is really unfortunate, but honest to God, it is mostly true to say that, while some super expensive metal roof, or high finish, you know, co coated tile roof that, you know, amazingly awesome. That should be a 50 year roof. There’s nobody on this date that will ever give you a policy to cover it for that amount of time. So as when we are i We love this I go I’m certified by the same people that the roofers get certified through so that I can go up and say, you know, I know what’s going on, just like you guys do. Okay, so I’m in the same room with them all the time for the trainings. And I asked, you know, they asked, well, what would you what would you put on your house? 30 years shingle. And this story, why would I spend any more money, right? I’m going to put the best product for the lowest cost that is going to do what everything else is going to do. You’re only getting virgin everything else that you’re going to give our Matt. That’s my polarity or shame. So if I buy the Taj Mahal, my 30 year shingles still the same value.

Sergio DeCesare: 27:17

Right? That’s

Rick Kooyman: 27:18

crazy. Yeah. It’s a shame. But that’s that’s just how this has come down to shake down to, in this whole gamut of who’s gonna pay for what?

Sergio DeCesare: 27:30

Okay, well, we’ve pretty much covered a lot of stuff on the inspections in the forums. So in a nutshell, what did the homeowners really need to understand based on everything we just said, put yourself now, where you need to be for the homeowner in this.

Rick Kooyman: 27:51

Yeah, this is my message. And most most homes I go into for the four point is the standard 20 year old house or whatever, and the valves aren’t really leaking in the house is in typical average condition, you know, dust in the corner person, whatever, camera from years of storing things here and there. And nobody ever looks at that. But the insurance industry there, it doesn’t need to be actively leaking to them. If it looks like it’s old, if it got blue on it, if it’s got mineral deposits building up on it, these are all indications of age, these are all the things that they’re not wanting to take part in. So, you know, over and over again, I go in and I see old air conditioners, water stains at the air conditioners, water stains, on ceilings, from old loop leaks that got repaired, whether it be a roof or a condensate leak, whatever. I mean, all these things that we all just thought it was my prerogative how I want to live. Now we’ve got this other party that’s coming in evaluating us in a way and saying, You know what, if you want me to put my money up on the board with this stuff, I’m going to ask for newer things here. And that’s what’s catching most people off guard. And that’s why I really want to get the word out to just you know, don’t wait, don’t wait. It’s only a couple of 100 bucks. Don’t you don’t want to find out when you don’t have insurance that you need to spend 10 grand to have new pipe put in or five grand to have a new panel or 17

Sergio DeCesare: 29:25

grand for an agent or square foot house on a roof Yeah, I mean 17 grand I mean that’s very low love oh my god I almost had a stroke when they told me was gonna be 17 grand like it’s very low. Go North Carolina. That house I talked about for the insurance. I replaced that roof how much it cost me Yeah, yeah know we’re panels building or something. Yeah.

Rick Kooyman: 29:58

Yeah. Typical shingle home roof is in the 20 1000s. And is in the upper 30s, low 40s. Something’s

Sergio DeCesare: 30:08

got to change because there’s a whole slew of people out there who can’t afford 20 grand for a roof just to get insurance.

Rick Kooyman: 30:16

Well think about I go into these neighborhoods, and the whole development is the same, you know, they all got the same. And everybody’s like, no, they’re fine. And I look at it, and I go, the whole neighborhood’s about to go. And that is, the whole neighborhood’s about to get reroofed. Because they’re all gonna go like dominoes. Like, they’re all the same age, they’re all gonna get the same notice, whoever it is their underwriters might be, it’s all gonna go down the same course. It’s just a shame. But yeah, I get it all the time where the you know, the homeowners are resistant? Let’s put it that way. No, it’s not my opinion. It’s not your opinion. It’s not anybody’s opinion at this point gets to write the rules, and how we get to play the game.

Sergio DeCesare: 31:10

All right, well, you heard it right from Rick. And Rick is probably more qualified than anybody I know, to make the statements and the advice he’s giving, we covered with mitigations, we’ve covered four points, we covered roof certificates. Rick, I’m assuming you can do roof inspections. If you go out there and take a look at stuff. I

Rick Kooyman: 31:29

do roof inspections on roof replacements, believe me. You know, just because it’s brand new doesn’t mean that they did a good job. And not only that, it’s so easy to, to do the minimum, they get they get it they say well, it may past it, we build it the code. Code is the minimum. Right? You can do better. It doesn’t mean that you had to spend a lot more. But you could have done a couple little things here and there that make a whole lot of difference. Right? And these steps are now being skipped. It’s just not there’s not pride, taking in numbers work when you’re doing high volume stuff, that you look around and you’re like, I don’t know, the roofs kind of don’t look the same anymore, that they’ve used to be prettier somehow. It’s probably true. Yeah, that our attention to detail is gone. And they meet the minimum standards. But yeah, roof inspections for sure. Old Ones new ones. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, lots of them. Please.

Sergio DeCesare: 32:33

You do the four points, you do the wind mits. So why don’t you tell them how they can get a hold of you.

Rick Kooyman: 32:41

You can find me online at trade secrets. inspections.com you can email me at Rick at trade secrets. inspections.com Or you can call text 239-537-1186. I will get to you as soon as I can. I don’t always answer it right away. But I call him right back. A great.

Sergio DeCesare: 33:03

So we’ve got a couple more topics coming to be sure to check in and the topics that are coming up. We’re gonna be very, very interesting. So stay tuned. Yeah, we’re gonna, we’re gonna dig into some real good stuff on the environmental side of things and our health issues and living in our homes. It’s more than just looking at it. Right. Hey, Rick, thank you. Take care. Great

Rick Kooyman: 33:26

talking to you Sergio till next time.

TSI Season 2 Podcast #3: Navigating Insurance Demands Read More »

TSI Season 2 Podcast #2: Building Codes and How They Affect Properties

Podcasts / June 22, 2024

mold in SWFL, mold, radon, indoor air quality

EP #2: Building Codes and How They Affect Properties

Sergio DeCesare: 0:00

Hey, Sergio here Max business profits. I’m here again with Rick Kooyman. From trade secrets inspections. As you’ve heard me say in the past, Rick is probably one of the best well qualified, thorough home inspectors I’ve ever met. And coming from a guy who flips houses or used to flip houses on on a regular basis, I can’t tell you how important it is to have a good spectrum in your pocket. In our last episode, Rick was talking about the difference between being in one organization or another being qualified to these organizations as a home inspector. And Rick actually belongs to an association Fabi, which FA BI is actually less than 3% of the home inspectors here in Florida. So it’s a higher bar, it’s a higher requirement and a more thorough inspection, I would assume. So going from there, we’re going to talk about the properties themselves. And a lot to say about that, because Florida is not an older state, when it comes to development and housing and building, it’s a newer state. Most stuff here is less than 40 years all which By comparison, the rest of the country, it’s pretty young. So Rick, why don’t you get right into talking about properties? By age? You know, tell us what the deal is. I mean, old, new, pre pre 2003. I know there’s some code stuff you want to talk about and get into. Go ahead and take over.

Rick Kooyman: 1:36

Awesome. Great to be with you again, Sergio? Yeah, let’s let’s delve into this issue and properties? And what is the difference between new old and what is new versus old? And, you know, how is it different here in Florida than what is more commonly known? And, you know, we see a lot of people coming down here from all over the country, and they bring their presumed what they’ve lived with for the last 30 years. And, you know, that’s what they know. And, and, you know, it’s a different the biggest thing I can say to everybody out there in regards to house age, and what’s the biggest deal? And the question is, on everybody’s mind, as soon as you own properties, how much does my insurance cost? And yeah, that’s, you know, this is basically what it is to be a Florida property owner is, you know, it’s expensive nowadays, and it’s basically only going to get worse as weather changes. And these claims keep coming. And, you know, as the insurance companies are being made to write these checks, they’re going to keep making it harder and harder on getting the policies. So it all goes hand in hand. But you know, we see people come down here all the time. And they’re looking at, you know, 1985, or 1991. And there’s an assumption that it’s still, it’s been taken care of, it should still be older, but you know, I don’t mind the way the old stuff looks. And as long as it works, it’ll be fine, right. And to some extent, that is true. But to a greater extent, things age a lot differently down here, for one, a big part of that is our water, and the water does to the materials. And a nother big part of it is related to water, but it’s really humidity and temperature. And those two things together will basically dissolve everything in between

Sergio DeCesare: 3:40

each state. When you say the water like are you talking about like a water that’s in the city water system,

Rick Kooyman: 3:46

or both? Out? Yeah, whether you’re getting it out of the ground through a well, or you’re getting it from the city that’s been treated. It’s all still pretty hard water. It’s all got a lot of contaminant. And it’s all very rough on the materials that are filled the faucets and pipes. And these things don’t hold up like they used to, you know, so probably, yeah, well, yeah, a big part by design and by, you know, cost of materials to produce. But there’s this this concept that this stuff used to last 20 years and now it only lasts five and that’s really the truth. It does. It doesn’t vary. There are quite a few products out there nowadays that are five to eight year products and they’re big dollar things or hot water tanks. It’s not a 25 year unit anymore. But more importantly what I want to talk about is how relative age on the market and what people are looking at can be thought of as your shopping. And you know you can do this from your desk at home and Kentucky wherever you are, I don’t know. But if you don’t know why It matters, then you just look at everything the same. And here in Florida, there’s been some stuff happen that have made things change that didn’t occur in the rest of the world or the rest of our country. And mostly, it’s due to storms. It started in early 90s. We had Hurricane Andrew came through and change the way that South Florida saw what mother nature could do. Men started it in Miami Dade counties. And they said, you know, we got destroyed, we can’t let things go back to how they were, we have to do something better. And they determined that they needed to separate themselves from the rest of the residential building code with which everybody uses and create something better. You know that that was that was acceptable. But we need more than that. So it’s not that there’s less it’s we’re meeting that and then a whole bunch more. So it’s the Florida building code. And back in the 90s, it was actually the South Florida building in the state of Florida didn’t adopt it. They didn’t actually adopt it till 2001. Politics cost of things. It’s basically just the insurance industry leveraging things. And they weren’t making payouts at that point. They were there was huge growth going on. So there was this big building boom happening. So there was there was revenue coming in, I grew up and pay for everything. Yeah. And that was the that was the good times. But when it went to the bad times, then things changed. And they changed their attitude about that. So in the early 2000s, like I said, in 2001, Florida, as a state said, Hey, this thing that Miami did, seems to be working out for them. And it seems to make sense. So how about we take that South Florida building code and make it the Florida bill. And they did. But they didn’t enact it till 2002. To just make things more complicated, I think but so here’s the bottom line, if you’re looking at a property in Florida, and it was built, prior to 94, it has no Florida building code to it at all, because it didn’t exist. It’s just built, like everything else was in some of them were built good. They knew they were on the coast, and they were, you know, well built homes. And that’s great. But those are few and far between for the most part, they were just building stick houses, like they build them everywhere else. And that didn’t make it. So in 97, it got a little better. But it was mostly down in Miami Dade and Broward counties that had improved. So really the cutoff line that people should reference is 2002. Right? So if you’re looking at property in Florida, and it’s built before 2002, it is very much built differently.

Sergio DeCesare: 8:15

So I mean, when a lot of that be just based on local jurisdictional rules and stuff like that, like, I mean, my house is built in 92, I didn’t build my house. You know, I’m fairly secure and feeling that my house is well built. Now, of course, it’s black home, which is a completely different breed of animal than the stick home down here. But you know, it weren’t jurisdictional local jurisdictional building rules, kind of pretty good back then. I mean, good enough, let’s say, I mean, we can

Rick Kooyman: 8:51

code. The code was fine. But it wasn’t specific to wind resistance and uplift loads and stuff like that. They ended up products that were used, weren’t manufactured with those things in mind. So you’re built well, and they knew enough to put straps on the trusses. But did they put the straps appropriately on him? Did they use the right fasteners? You know, because at the time that was just going above and beyond and just doing stuff that made sense. Right? Right. Right. And that was great on those small build, you know, one off homes but the the the inner city track stuff that didn’t occur so much. And those houses have been retrofitted. And that’s why we have this my Florida Safe Home Program, the wind mitigation programs. These are all retrofit programs to upgrade these older homes to meet some of these requirements to resist these storms to meet the wind resistance in the windows and the roof stay on

Sergio DeCesare: 9:56

and in quite honestly up until Hurricane Andrew I mean, even here on the west coast where we are in Naples, we hadn’t seen a hurricane, what, two decades at least, it was a very long time. Well, last time anybody talked about a real hurricane Danny was Hurricane Donna, and that was in the 60s. Yeah,

Rick Kooyman: 10:14

I mean, and that’s what’s that’s really what’s changed is it was a once in a decade event, if that, you know, it was a lot. And now it’s more like in every other year, we’re gonna see heavy tropical storms, you can count on it every year, I would expect it. Yeah, well, things are shifting. And you know, every year now, they make it even better. So every three months, the city is updating the codes. And the newer stuff is far superior than the older stuff, it just simply is I mean, and it goes back to the manufacturing side of things where they, they now have protocols, they now have testing standards they have, they’ve been through it enough, they’ve written the checks enough times to say, Hey, this is what we need to pay attention to, let’s make sure we build these products that actually can resist this stuff. You know, so when you’re looking at those early 2000 homes, when they were just implementing these techniques in the early 2000, building, boom, was pretty big down here. It was pretty kind of shotgun style building. And, and a lot of the stuff was done poorly. And it doesn’t meet the requirement. It’s there. But it wasn’t done correctly. And it does the requirements. In and

Sergio DeCesare: 11:33

this point, you and I both agree at this point. I mean, the codes have changed, but we’re, you know, we’re seeing a lot of shabby workmanship anyway, I think for sure. It’s human nature to curse and do whatnot. I mean, that’s all great. Yeah, the roof will stay, the trusses will stay on the blocks. But everything else going on in between the walls sometimes are just not. You know, that’s, that’s just a function of being human. So okay, so you’ve got your pre 2003 code, you got your pre 1992, COVID, you know, beyond what 2003 To 2007 type of thing.

Rick Kooyman: 12:10

Where, yeah, in 2007, there was substantial changes made again, because it’s in to between 2005 and 2007, Florida got hit several times by storms. And they said, wow, we really need to get the industry on board of this meeting this code, and they really improve the product quality, you know, so 2007, things actually started to get better. Right? So when we’re looking at houses, if it’s, you know, pre 2010, in my mind, when I go out there, I’m looking for specific things to make sure that those codes were done. And those specific things were met, because they weren’t thought of as much at that point. Yeah.

Sergio DeCesare: 12:55

And that brings up a great point that I want everybody to understand, you know, you’ve got home inspectors down here, cuz I know a bunch of them. They’ve been inspected, and I’m struggling a couple of years, they do not know what it’s supposed to look like or what to look for, for some of the stuff that isn’t up to code beyond. You know, when you’re, you’re going further back. So I’m in you

Rick Kooyman: 13:17

know, this is a great compliment, it brings up something that just occurred today, it was really interesting. And this is the perspective thing again, like the I was out to do an inspection. And the customer wanted to have a roofing contractor come out and check the roof. Because they had big concerns about the roof. And that’s fine with me, I’m perfectly okay with you do what makes you comfortable. I’m perfectly qualified to do it for you, that’s fine. But what I’m getting at is when the roofer got done, telling him about how he viewed the roof, which didn’t know was how, what he does as an industry is seen by the insurance industry. Because after they don’t deal with that side of it, they’re gone. It’s after the fact that these insurance documents get filled out. And they don’t know it until they themselves get the letter for their house, about their roof and they’re like, What are you talking about all this and everything. But it’s this is the point is the industry people aren’t being exposed to what is relevant to the homeowner in regard to their specific industry. Right?

Sergio DeCesare: 14:39

Right. It’s one thing to say yeah, your roof is pretty good. But it’s another thing to say. Okay, according to the insurance company, here’s what it’s lacking or here’s what it what it needs, right exactly not affects the pricing insurance. In any case, whether or not they pay out right.

Rick Kooyman: 14:55

There you go. Exactly. So you have that. You have that coming from Have the so called expert, the certified license holder in that industry is lacking that knowledge. So you think the average inspector knows it? I can promise you that those guys that are just getting started that don’t, they don’t

Sergio DeCesare: 15:15

know for sure. For sure way, way. Interesting stuff there. So okay, you brought up roofs. So we’re going to talk about, like, the useful expected life span or cycle of some of these products. Let’s start at the top I mean roofs. I mean, I go through the state like with my roof, I mean, I buy a 30 year shingle. Am I getting 30 years now? She’ll probably not Because Florida is like Mars, right? But the Insurance insurance companies saying, Oh, no, no, no, no, no, here’s how we’re going to do this. We were just talking about this in the network group today. If I referred you to a bunch of people in there, because they’re like, Well, you know, I’m not really sure why. Why is my insurance company telling me I only have three years left to life, on my 20 year shingle roof I only bought five years ago. So right now, you need to talk to as down pat. Yeah.

Rick Kooyman: 16:09

That’s what I call Florida math.

Sergio DeCesare: 16:11

Florida math.

Rick Kooyman: 16:13

It’s definitely related to the Oh, my God, this, this gets really deep into the weeds. Because, you know, when we were asked to predict life expectancies for the insurance industry, like they want to know, when you go out and look at this roof, do you expect it to be here in five years, 10 years? You know, they want to know these things. But you know, it’s very hard for us, you know? How am I supposed to see into tomorrow and know that, right? So there’s, there’s reference charts. Because you know, that makes everything easier, right? Like actuary tables, right? But now we have different places to get reference charts from and they have different numbers on it. So you get different answers from different people, depending on what chart they’re going to use. But when it comes back to is the underwriter and the underwriter is always going to pick the lowest number, right? They’re always gonna pick a smaller note. If I say the roof has five to 10 years on it, they don’t hear a 10 day or five, direct, right? And if they hear five, from their perspective of risk, they’re only going to want to bet on that roof for one more year.

Sergio DeCesare: 17:27

One more year, not five, oh,

Rick Kooyman: 17:30

no,

Sergio DeCesare: 17:31

this is what I’m trying to explain.

Rick Kooyman: 17:33

Right. So this is where you got a 30 year roof product. Right? The chart says it’s only going to live for 25 years, because it’s in southwest Florida. And it’s pretty harsh environment. And that’s reasonable to say that things age quicker. And then someone else has to predict a life expectancy. So your your you pick a window, right? It’s going to be, you know, in this realm, well, the realm doesn’t exist, the only the little number exists in the insurance person’s eyes. They don’t they don’t live in the realm they live in the risk. So yeah, the roof age matters. But here’s where it gets complicated. Because you can go out here and you can buy a product, you can buy a metal roof product, a clay tile roof is an 80 year roof product, right everywhere else in the world. You know, they’re like, What do you mean, this is stone? It’ll last for 150 years? It’s you know, slate roof. Right? No, because the roof that we’re talking about, isn’t that one, we’re talking about the one that’s just under that one, which everyone refers to as the underlayment that in Florida is your primary roof covering that material is only going to live 20 to 25 years. Right.

Sergio DeCesare: 18:55

So it doesn’t matter what the Yeah, right. So that’s great. But the the media this is where

Rick Kooyman: 19:01

the argument gets really weedy because now I believe a good 35 year old metal roof that’s got no issues, except for the age. And the insurance industry in the past used to say, well, we have this great roof certification program, we’re going to send out a qualified person to come out and evaluate the roof and give us an expected useful life on based on their professional opinion of that. Well, not really anymore. No, because they’re just going to look at the chart and the chart stops at 2530 years. And at that point the conversation is over.

Sergio DeCesare: 19:45

So in essence what you’re saying is if we were going to insure somebody for their shoes, we wouldn’t be looking at their shoes. We’d be looking at their socks. The socks will tell us how Well, the feet are gonna hold up because I mean, look, I mean, go in the slate and doesn’t stop the water. We know that right? That’s not what it’s for. It’s for decorative purposes and maybe hail and stuff like that. It’s what’s underneath that. That’s

Rick Kooyman: 20:15

right. That’s right. And that’s because of the storms. Right? And that’s the question. People from up north always say, Well, what are you talking about? I’ve been a roofer all my life up north, of course, the shingle roof, it’s a waterproof layer. If you put it together correctly. Of course it is. Well, that’s true, until it gets 140 Miles blown on it. And then it’s not in the same configuration anymore. So it’s not waterproof. The waterproof layer needs to be the one that’s underneath that. And what happens when that covering fails due to that exposure? We’re trying to minimize that water intrusion. Because we expect that to occur. So this is where it’s different down here. Right? If you do things differently, plain and simple.

Sergio DeCesare: 21:04

Yeah, yeah. Let’s imagine there’s something to be said there about Windows as well.

Rick Kooyman: 21:09

Oh, absolutely. Oh, my gosh, not only is it about the glazing is, but I mean, it’s it’s everything. It’s not just the glass that is approved and tested. It’s the frame. So there’s approvals for frames, there’s approval for glazings. And then there’s approval for the fasteners. Right. And oftentimes, the attachments are so involved, that the average crew out there, they’re not even paying attention to such things, right? Because what was what was in the what we call the Ta s, or the testing standard, rank, the testing application standard, because there had to be a program to assess things by they said, Well, we bolted this thing in with six inch screws that went five inch into a substrate, and we put them on 12 inch centers. Did you do that?

Sergio DeCesare: 22:04

More or less? Yeah. Know, more or less, more or less? Yeah, well, we use here.

Rick Kooyman: 22:15

Yeah, but I mean, nowadays, these things are getting done much better nowadays. But these are the things that in the past, weren’t on that way. We never used a six inch screws putting windows and we always use the three inch Tapcon. Right. That’s not that doesn’t meet that. That does not meet the testing standard.

Sergio DeCesare: 22:32

I was reading something not that long ago, where somebody had said it to me. And I can’t remember the exact percentage it was somewhere like 90, where they were saying 90% of most of the water intrusion in a home is going to be around the windows after a storm. I don’t know how accurate that was. It depends

Rick Kooyman: 22:50

on the windows and how it’s done. But yeah, again, and they’re getting better at this because they’re absolutely right. For the longest time we build a masonary wall. Right. And then we shoved a window in the hole. We put sealants all around it right. But the masonry was still masonry, it was still porous, right? And yeah, there’s always elevated moisture, we call it around windows because of that. So now the newer thing is if you look around and you drive around, you’ll notice that around all the windows, they’re sealed. They’re painting. There’s a sealant put on the masonry. It’s a waterproof, then you have right, so right, so these are the things that get changed. These are the updates that happened because Yeah, absolutely. The windows, the older Windows that don’t seal Well, for one. Yeah, I think about 100 mile an hour when separating the seals between the two windows. And yeah, of course, water is gonna go right through it. And

Sergio DeCesare: 23:52

that’s what you know, people don’t realize too in the store, I mean, I’ve been down here enough to see enough of them. The water doesn’t come straight up and down. It’s like, it’s I never said ways. You know, just picture a firehose against the wind.

Rick Kooyman: 24:09

That’s what you got to think about when you’re actually assessing. How do you think this is going to handle it? Seriously, think about how it’s going to sit there and take a tremendous amount of water, like a fire hose for a few minutes. Because, yeah, it’s abusive. It’s a big deal. Yeah. You

Sergio DeCesare: 24:28

know, not to mention, you know, you’re talking about the same firehose, blowing up the shingles and, you know, and whatnot, I don’t care what you say you’re gonna have here. Here’s what water’s gonna find a way to get in

Rick Kooyman: 24:41

which which you need to understand in a high wind situation, when the wind is gusting over your roofline. You have a lower pressure inside than you do outside. So the house is literally like a balloon trying to expand because of the lower pressure. So not only only is it expanding but to lower pressures our vacuum, it’s a lower pulling those things in as well as the wind, penetrating and pushing it in, because it is truly in a lower pressure situation. So you’re literally sucking the roof off the house is what happens in hurricane. Okay,

Sergio DeCesare: 25:21

well, we can’t really wrap up. But one more question before that because I was just thinking about this. I see a lot of these roofs they have these cap fins on the top of their ridges. So I can’t imagine that’s a good thing as far as when you’re talking about a storm.

Rick Kooyman: 25:39

Yeah, ridgeline vents, very particular to wind driven rain intrusion. And it goes all the way across the house, like right in the middle across from one wall to the other. It makes a water intrusion waterfall. And yeah, is sometimes it’s really bad on metal roofs if the cap off incorrectly, you got a slick metal surface, that water is just being rushed up that surface and it goes right up into the attic. And we see it quite often. And it’s devastating. For sure. So

Sergio DeCesare: 26:18

and being you know, being the Inspector, I know you are I mean, that’s kind of probably one of the things you’re looking for up in those rooms. And whereas another inspector might go, yeah, it looks good to me. I mean, there Look, I’ve I’ve we had enough houses to know what I’m looking for when I get it.

Rick Kooyman: 26:36

Yeah, it’s not enough for me to go up and say that it’s vented great. But we’re baffles. Right? What are you talking about? I’m like, well, they’re optional. But they shouldn’t be.

Sergio DeCesare: 26:49

You, representative. Okay, we’re going to wrap up this session. I’m Rick, let’s tell everybody how they can get a hold of you. And again, Rick is available for home inspections, whether you’re buying, if you’re selling, you may want a home inspection, I firmly believe before selling, because especially in this market, this market may be changing. You don’t want to get hit with a surprise. You know, prior to closing, if you’re trying to sell your house, you kind of want to know what’s wrong with it, you know, because these are going to be points of negotiation on the contract. So

Rick Kooyman: 27:21

if you want to older home, if nothing else, think about getting a four point done ahead of being asked for it. So that you know, before you have a 10 day deadline to get all the stuff done that makes it insurable thing done. Because, yeah, people have seen this all

Sergio DeCesare: 27:39

the time, I’m seeing people scrambling for sure. You know, and then getting hit with a 678 $9,000 bill, because they didn’t have the foresight to take a look at the stuff prior.

Rick Kooyman: 27:54

Now, we’d love to help homeowners, we help homeowners as much as we help buyers. So everybody out there can benefit from a great inspection to help. Warranty everything so you get covered for having spent the money on it. So you can’t lose. Yeah, but yeah, you can get a hold of me anytime.

Sergio DeCesare: 28:15

I tell everybody what a PowerPoint is real quick, because we use the term some people. Yeah,

Rick Kooyman: 28:19

absolutely. The four point is what the insurance industry calls an inspection involves your electric, your plumbing, your air conditioning system and your roof. Those are the four primary things that they pay money to. They want to know what is the condition of those things. And there’s specifics they want to know about. And it’s not an inspection that makes a lot of sense to a homeowner. But it’s a it makes it makes all the difference in the world to what that rate is. Absolutely.

Sergio DeCesare: 28:51

Rick, tell me your website. It’s a great website. I’ve been to a many times

Rick Kooyman: 28:55

trade secrets inspections.com And you can give me at 239-537-1186.

Sergio DeCesare: 29:02

Enter your email is Rick at trade secret.com You got it. Very good. Excellent. Okay, until our next episode, and next episode, we’re going to talk a little bit more about insurance inspections if that’s okay, Rick, sounds great. Once we’re talking about the wind, man, we’re probably gonna get a little bit into the four point inspections, and why all this stuff really matters to everyone now that

Rick Kooyman: 29:25

people are getting caught off guard by this left and right because it’s affects every homeowner in Florida at this point. If you haven’t gotten if you haven’t been woken up with the insurance letter yet. You’re you’re going to your time or time doesn’t matter.

Sergio DeCesare: 29:42

Okay, Rick, thanks a lot, and we’ll catch you on the next one.

Rick Kooyman: 29:46

Awesome. Thank you

TSI Season 2 Podcast #2: Building Codes and How They Affect Properties Read More »

TSI Season 2 Podcast #1: What Sets Me Apart From My Competitors

Podcasts / May 15, 2024

EP #1: What Sets Me Apart From My Competitors

All Podcast Episodes

EP #15: What Sets Me Apart From My Competitors

Sergio DeCesare 00:09

Sergio here, Max Business Profits certified profit and growth expert certified business coach, business broker and business real estate broker as well. I’m here today with Rick Kooyman from Trade Secrets Inspections. And he’s going to talk to us a little bit about what he does and why he does what he does as well as he does it. I can tell you, I’ve worked with Rick in the past, and being a real estate investor myself, I can tell you having a good home inspector is worth his weight in gold. And Rick’s gonna tell you some of the differences between him and other inspectors, and why you need a really good inspector. So Rick, go ahead and take it away. Where would you like to start?

Rick Kooyman 00:53

Well, first of all, thank you, Sergio, for a wonderful introduction. I’m excited to have this one with you. But yeah, you know, I got into this business of inspections. Basically, because I came from construction, I have all the background to build nice houses and doing all these things. And hence the name basically trade secrets. You know, it’s basically a 35 year background of doing the work in the trades and bringing it to inspections, basically. So my approach is totally different from most of the people in the industry to start with just based on my experience. But more importantly, we got started where we started trade secrets, specifically, because there was a lot of complaints I was hearing from home buyers and home owners about bad inspections in particular. And I found that interesting. And I thought, you know, it would be a great opportunity to bring what we can bring to the market and try to change things for people. So that’s kind of where we started. And, you know, we started just like everybody else, and kind of figured out how to do it better.

Sergio DeCesare 01:58

Yeah, well, that’s a great way to start. I mean, anytime you can better an industry. That’s that’s a great reason to the industry. So I’d like to know a little bit more about how you do it. You mentioned about how you do it, you come from a completely different point of view versus how some of these guys are doing it down here in southwest Florida. I mean, I know quite a few of them down here. And sometimes for from what I’ve seen, it’s a lot of this in and out stuff, get it done as quickly as possible. Because, you know, some real clutter is at the back end tugging on the strings on this one, we get it done as quickly as possible. So tell me, tell me, what’s the big differences between you and some of these other guys I see down here?

Rick Kooyman 02:37

Yeah, absolutely. I get this all the time from people like, especially from the really, from the realtors, one side or the other is going well, how come they got away with doing it so poorly? And how do they manage to write such a thin inspection report and still be in business is a common common I hear? But yeah, essentially what it comes down to is how the industry is set up. The whole industry, basically, we’re a standard, that’s a national standard. In particular, the biggest group, the Training Agency, that pretty much 99% of the people are working under is called Nachi. It’s the National Association of Home Inspectors. And it is literally what it says it’s national. So it has a very general fundamental standard of practice to it. It is kind of like what we call the basic beginnings of what it should be, you know, it’s the bare minimum. And when everybody in the industry is operating by the standard that is really set up as the bare minimum, and it’s not specific, particular to where you are. I mean, we’re in Florida, and and particularly my mouth. Yeah. You know, it’s everywhere in a country really, because it’s it. It’s very standardized, right. And it’s very limited. And it says a lot of things. It says more things about what I don’t have to do that what I do have to do just that way. Yeah, it is interesting. So, you know, we we, we started there. And of course we went above the standard, but in the process of trying to figure out a better way of doing it. I came across another group, which is Florida based. It’s literally what we call Fabi or the Florida Association of building inspectors. And it is ironically small because it is a challenge and it is a higher standard. And it is the industry base of Florida. It is the people that fundamentally are involved in the rural writing and producing the forms that the industry uses. It’s Florida based. It’s Florida focused. It’s Florida centric.

Sergio DeCesare 04:57

So you’re so you’re saying that a lot of The Other Guys we’re seeing around here doing these inspections, more than likely their members and not so much Fabi.

Rick Kooyman 05:08

Absolutely, there’s less than 3% of the inspectors in the state of Florida are going to be Fabi. Associate hitting,

Sergio DeCesare 05:15

that doesn’t even make any sense to me. Because if the standard is so low that it applies to both a place like Boise, Idaho, Boise, Idaho versus Naples, Florida, where you have two completely different climates, two completely different set of challenges. I mean, it seems like you’re almost if you’re just working off of Nachi, you’re almost shortchanging the people down here. And we’re calling for an inspection if those are the the sets of rules you’re using.

Rick Kooyman 05:45

In my opinion, I agree. Absolutely. I think you are. And I think that’s exactly where the complaints come from, of, you know, how did they get away with doing what they didn’t do? In particular? And what are they referring to. And oftentimes, it’s not even pertinent to what we do down here. And in a lot of ways, what we do down here building Eiseley, backwards from everything else, everywhere else. And a lot of that incorrect information gets shared. Because, yeah, if you’re not specifically looking at being accurate to your area, you’re not going to be

Sergio DeCesare 06:23

Wow, that’s, that’s incredible. I understand also, there’s some other things that separate you from your competition, not just the, the Nachi in the lobby thing. But there’s some other programs you have that I I’ve never seen them from any other inspectors around here. And to me, it seems like you almost are holding yourself accountable. To an extent where some of these guys, they just want to be magic. Yeah. Right. And they just they’re like, Well, you know, that’s really kind of drag this on to kind of dragon type of thing. So explain a little bit about like, what your warranty is, because I was fascinated by that when you were telling me about it.

Rick Kooyman 07:02

Yeah, I love that word. You said just their warranty? That’s almost like a bad word in most industries. But right, yeah, you know, it kind of goes along with the FABI thing where we want to, we want to do better for everybody in the industry. So first of all, we stepped up our standards, and we went with, you know, a higher bar of achievement. And we operate at that higher bar of expectation. And then the other side of the industry, I always heard was after the sale, you know, so we go in, and we do a great inspection, we produce, you know, an amazingly detailed report. And ultimately, that only represents that moment in time when I was there, right? So tomorrow is going to happen, it’s going to be a couple of weeks, at least till closing. And over that course of time, things change. And ultimately, people end up moving into the house that they think corrected, according to the report. And lo and behold, there are other things that come up, that are issues to people and they become expenses. And, you know, there gets to be some time some arguing over these of these things. So, you know, we took it one step further, and we found a program to partner with, to provide our customers with an After inspection warranty, literally, we we actually will provide you with a 100 day warranty program that will cover most of the things in the house to you know, it has the small limits of coverage, it’s not going to buy the house from you, but they’re trying to do is bridge the gap. So if I can give you a $2,500 limit policy for 100 days, it goes along with our inspections, that basically pays for the inspection for you to begin with. And secondly, it’s such a peace of mind. I mean, this whole game is a game of Risk and how much risk you can tolerate? And where are you willing to put your money upfront? Or at the end? You can pay at the back door at the front door? Which way? Which way do you want to deal with this problem that’s going to come about so well, and

Sergio DeCesare 08:59

the backdoor payment is probably going to be a hell of a lot more.

Rick Kooyman 09:04

Hence the fact it ends up not being favorable in most cases. So yeah, you know, and it’s not only just the 100 days, it goes past that because you know, a lot of people don’t want to incur the unknown expenses. We all have warranties on our cars so that we know that we don’t have these, you know, transmission bills coming due next week that we didn’t expect. So you can take the 100 day policy we’re going to give to you and purchase the full year coverage from it. And it’s not the average industry policy either. It’s not the average home warranty policy out there, that’s not going to really pay you back. You know, again, we went the distance to partner with the people that are actually going to provide you a product that makes a difference. So we are definitely

Sergio DeCesare 09:54

set up. So to be clear, you’re going to do this inspection, which is going to be a thorough inspect. And while it’s owned by party a, then once a closing takes the new owners pretty much covered for the better part of 100 days. And at some point after that they have the option of extending that coverage to what a year, two years or whatever.

Rick Kooyman 10:16

Yeah, it ups the limits, of course, from our, you know, coverage policy, which is, you know, essentially a gift from us. Right. It gives you the standard home warranty policy that the program offers, you know, which is much higher coverage limits, you know, and I believe it’s $42 a month. Wow, geez, you know, it’s under 450 bucks a year. Yeah, the whole home warranty, for the whole year, that gives you you know, something like $15,000 worth of liability coverage on all your isn’t utilities? And, you know, it’s a, it’s a big risk coverage.

Sergio DeCesare 10:55

Wow, that’s really

Rick Kooyman 10:56

helps people.

Sergio DeCesare 10:57

I don’t know, any other home inspectors that are offering something like that. So to me, that’s, that’s, that’s a value proposition that can’t be beat. I want to, I

Rick Kooyman 11:06

think it works for everybody. I think it helps. I don’t I don’t think it just serves the homeowner or the buyer. I think it serves everybody involved in the process,

Sergio DeCesare 11:16

servicing transaction, it’s absolutely an action. So speaking of transactions, I want to get into the the elephant in the room when it comes to having a thorough inspection, which is the realtor screaming? That, you know, you put too much on the report or, or, you know, this this, you know, inspectors, home inspectors have the the the name of actually being if they’re good, they can be regarded as deal killers. And, you know, before and, you know, we laugh about it, and, you know, coming from the real estate world, myself, and I bought and sold many houses of my own and I’ve never ever bought a house would never ever, and for the longest time they’re like, especially during COVID We used to laugh about it and shake your head and look at each other. Like what are these people thinking? You know, all cash deals above asking price and you don’t want to talk about an inspection? Holy cow, what’s wrong with you? Right, you got an order. So talk, talk to me about why it’s not true. Inspectors are not really deal killers. Because, you know, we both know they’re not because these things are just being notated. It doesn’t. Just

Rick Kooyman 12:36

because I found it isn’t mean that I made the problem. Ultimately, I didn’t kill the deal. The deal got presented in its light, is what happened. And the exposing of the truth is what killed the deal.

Sergio DeCesare 12:53

Or the realtors. The Realtors inability to present that correctly.

Rick Kooyman 13:00

Yeah, and you know, oftentimes, it’s, it’s just a lack of what it means to have an aging property in Florida, and how that is going to happen down the road. And you know, time and time again, I deal with realtors, who just simply had no idea of what was going on currently in today’s market, and they’ve been selling homes for 20 years. And ultimately, the insurance world is running over everything. And if you don’t understand what that means, you are going to find out the hard way.

Sergio DeCesare 13:41

The hard way being an AC needing replaced six months down the road, or I very

Rick Kooyman 13:48

often see homes that could easily get a report written form that will overlook 75 to $100,000 worth of stuff and it won’t get reported on. Wow. And you’re gonna like that that’s going to be painful with it. It’s literally going to add up to more than 50 grand to get it back to an insurable state. And ultimately, it’s just not being presented properly. Yeah, there’s anger coming down the road from a lot of Yeah,

Sergio DeCesare 14:20

so now more than ever, I mean, if you’ve been in Florida, five minutes, you know what kind of insurance issues we have here. So it seems like now more than ever, having a good inspector would pay for itself. You know,

Rick Kooyman 14:36

and you know, it’s not just a good inspector for doing your property purchase. It’s a good inspector to help you own the home. It’s a good inspector to actually do the insurance inspections for you. Because if you hire that cheap inspector that comes out there and incorrectly fills out the form. Ultimately when you go to make a claim on that policy, you’ve given the the insurance company, the reason not to pay for it, you’ve already done it when you tried to save money.

Sergio DeCesare 15:05

Great point. Wow. Yeah. So you know, and we’re gonna get into this in a later in the later broadcast, but, you know, kind of going along the lines of what other inspectors do I hear a lot of them basically say, to the people buying the home or whatever it’s like, hey, you know, radon, never never ever saw it never smelled it, never seen it. And, you know,

Rick Kooyman 15:35

agree you never smelled it? I totally agree. Never seen

Sergio DeCesare 15:38

it never smelled it. Right. And, you know, there’s a lot of people out there who are like, Yeah, you know, what I need rain on for the support, you know, radon for basements up north. And yeah, really quickly, just kind of, we’re gonna get into a depth later on with statistics and stuff. But tell people why that is such a false play by other inspectors.

Rick Kooyman 15:58

Yeah, radon is part of our world, radon is a natural component of our environment, it comes products in the soil, in our building materials, in the things we buy at the store and bring home. It’s just constantly present. So it’s not about where you are or where it is. It’s about how much is accumulating? Where you are staying and spending the most of your time? And is it doing it to an extent that ultimately will be the leading cause? Cancer for you. So yeah, it’s not something that should ever be overlooked. And honestly, I find it in the penthouse. And I find it on the slab, it can be any, you can find it seven eight storeys up, Oh, for sure, all the time. And I’ll find it in one unit and not the one next to it. And you know, and it can be that way in a big home, you know, you can have high radon contents in the bedrooms, where you spend the most of your time and then if you test it in the living room, it’s really not that bad. But you don’t sleep in the living room. Right? Wow. Wow, you know,

Sergio DeCesare 17:08

Rick, you’re you’re constantly surprised me with the information that you turned up. And I highly recommend you and anybody listening, if you’re, if you’re going to sell your house, maybe you might want to think about an inspection prior to selling. So you don’t get these surprises at a sale. If you’re buying clearly you’re gonna want to know what’s going on in that property. And you’re gonna want someone to tell you exactly what’s going on. So you know, if you have a high tolerance for risk, hey, get the cheap guy out there. He’s in and out. Hey, no,

Rick Kooyman 17:41

no contingencies, no unspoken thing. Just face roll the dice. Take your chances. Yeah, and we all go to Vegas. If you

Sergio DeCesare 17:49

Yeah, if you really, really want a good inspection, inspection done thorough. It doesn’t have to be a deal killer. A lot of these things actually, for a lot of buyers end up being points of negotiated. Negotiate Yeah, for real.

Rick Kooyman 18:02

And then in the end, it ends up making the deal work out and everywhere, at the end of the day, because the arguments are avoided. But I really would like to make the point that, that our service isn’t just limited to these transactional deals, really what we want to do is present our industry, to the homeowners, we want you to have a resource that isn’t selling you any kind of we’re not selling you a new air conditioner, we’re not selling you a new hot water tank. We’re going to tell you the truth about those things. And we’re going to help you own your house and keep the most value in it. And at the same time, we can do it while mitigating some risk for you at the same time. So I can use

Sergio DeCesare 18:44

beautifully put beautifully put. Okay, we’re gonna wrap up this session right now. So Rick, if somebody wants to get a hold of you, what’s the quickest, easiest way to do that?

Rick Kooyman 18:54

239537186 Online at www.tradesecretsinspections.com.

Sergio DeCesare 19:02

Very good. Excellent. Okay, and until next time, and part two of Rick and his education for would be investors and would be home buyers. This is Sergio from Max Business Profits signing off with Rick Kooyman from Trade Secrets Inspections.

TSI Season 2 Podcast #1: What Sets Me Apart From My Competitors Read More »

Trade-Secrets-Home-Inspection-POST.jpg April 16, 2021

EP #14: Mold in SWFL

Podcasts / April 13, 2024

EP #14: Mold in SWFL

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EP #14: Mold in SWFL

Charlie: 0:00

Welcome to the trade secrets inspections podcast because you need to know, here’s your host, Rick Kooyman. Welcome back, awesome listeners. And viewers, Charlie McDermott, co host producer of the show here, as always with Rick Kooyman and Rick, how you doing?

Rick Kooyman: 0:18

I am excellent and awesomely happy to be with you again.

Charlie: 0:25

And, and, you know, I think we’re all doing excellent because so far so good. It was a close call with a recent hurricane. And I hate to even say it after last year, but so far, it’s

Rick Kooyman: 0:43

just got to be prepared and expected I think Florida is a wet place

Charlie: 0:54

the good certainly outweighs the bad. And speaking of the bad, the big bad mold thing. I mean, it gets a lot of play during the hurricane season and right after Hurricane, you know, certainly leaks and all that. But you know, it’s just, it’s just always out there. Right?

Rick Kooyman: 1:11

Yeah, it really is. And, you know, the big part of the topic or what I wanted to talk about it again today is it really affects us health wise. And it’s awesomely around us all the time in our homes, and we don’t even realize it. And because it’s you know, just part of our daily exposures. We don’t realize that it’s the thing that’s causing the irritations respiratory distress and headaches. Everything from hair loss to depression.

Charlie: 1:40

Dang hair loss too Holy moly. Yeah, you know, our our environment plays along it being cheese, the recent wildfires fires, I guess they’re still going on. But you know, we were not we down here in Florida. But folks up in northern part of the country were told to stay indoors. Right. Yeah. And because of the air situation problem, unhealthy. Right, right. But we could be in a home in southwest Florida, not even knowing that it’s possibly worse than what folks are dealing with. Up north and they knew about it see the unknown, right?

Rick Kooyman: 2:20

Yeah, you know, people don’t even think about it, we we really live in our homes down here close up most of the year. I mean, everybody comes down here for the wonderful environment. But you know, ultimately, it’s hot and humid. And really, you don’t want to keep your interior your home in those conditions. So ultimately, it’s closed up most of the time. And that’s the, that’s where we spend the majority of our time, especially sleeping, we don’t realize a large percentage of our life is spent just resting in an ambient environment that’s a player and how we feel throughout the day. Yeah, it’s a big deal.

Charlie: 2:59

So what do you recommend, you know, whether you’re a homeowner or or condo or whatever, you know, because my daughter is in a condo, her and her husband, and they just went through a situation where the roofing company kind of messed up. And they’re three, three storey building, they’re on the second floor, and they had water issues, and mold was a big question mark, and no one really seemed to find it. Interesting. Yeah. And, you know,

Rick Kooyman: 3:32

it becomes a dirty word literally. And honestly, that’s, that’s a big deal. Because, you know, our exposure over a very short period of time becomes its own issue. You know, most of the items in our homes, the stuff that we build our, our residences with, we basically say that they come prepackaged with the mold pre installed, it’s just because it’s basically around us everywhere. I mean, unless you’re in you know, a sterile environment, which is basically a hospital kind of condition. It is around us it is there, it’s just waiting for the conditions to come together for you know, to become the life form that it wants to be but basically, you know, you start with, you know, even not even a roof leak, but a clean water leak, you know, you can have, you know, your your source of water from your sink, that you drink, you know, become an issue in your cabinet or on your floor or you know, your your refrigerator, icemaker line leaks. And, you know, legitimately after 24 hours of that water being on your surfaces, it’s no longer clean situation. It’s considered a category two water or you know, like a grey water beginning of the sewage stage of things. So, yeah, within within a day, you’re looking at a possible problem begins so it often doesn’t get realized that quickly. And, you know, it’s it’s weeks or months later, and people are like, Oh, is it a problem, it was a problem a long time ago. So it’s a, it’s a latent issue that it just sits there dormant, and then it gets kind of triggered, and people don’t quite pick up on it right away. Especially in our human environment here, I would say, one thing to pay attention to is your air conditioning system, I mean, take a look at your, at the grilles on your ceiling ducts on your supply side. And the return, you know, when you’re changing your air filter, stick your head up under there and look at the condition of that heat exchanger that coil in there. It’s not shiny and clean. It’s, that’s what you’re breathing. Right? That is you that is your air source coming through there. That’s past the filter. So after that, it’s kinda like what we say about water, you don’t filter it, you are.

Charlie: 5:54

Interesting. Interesting. So, recommendations. Yeah, I think it’s semi obvious, but I don’t think extremely obvious, you know, if we’ve had water in the home or in the residence, sometimes we cleaned it up and go, well, we should be good, you know, put a fan on it and, you know, looks dry now. You know, is this in situations, like you said, homes come you know, prepackaged with all the you know, it’s like, just that water, and maybe it’s water, we don’t see, this is something we shouldn’t be doing on an annual basis. I mean, just just as part of like everything else, you know, we go to the dentist on a regular basis to keep our teeth in our mouth and, and all that.

Rick Kooyman: 6:43

And not only just in the mold area, but interested in your indoor air quality, you know, and adding radon to the conversation. Another podcast here we can dive into what Radon is. Yeah, this stuff changes, you know, year after year, and the conditions of, you know, everything from the water table to the air. You know, what is, you know, ultimately hot and dry year or cool and wet year? You know, those things all affect what’s going on in our interior source or interior environment. So, yeah, I mean, you go in for a yearly physical, I would say that every, you know, at least every couple of years, you should have your interior evaluated. Even if you don’t have radon, you could have radon develop over a couple year period and the conditions change.

Charlie: 7:33

And I’ve heard stories of and here we go talking about radon now, but the was it the marble cabinetry or the sleet and rain? That can be a

Rick Kooyman: 7:46

source of radar? Yeah, radon comes from uranium and uranium is basically a stone. Right? So any of your earthly stone products, you know, whether they’re processed or granite polished, the other potentially radioactive

Charlie: 8:05

stuff for sure. Not funny, but holy moly, yeah, you

Rick Kooyman: 8:09

just don’t realize it, but we live with it, you know, and it’s kind of like why we moved out of caves, ultimately wasn’t a healthy place. So

Charlie: 8:17

what do you do? I mean, if you find, I mean, one, is that something that you should test before you invest it? It just goes out, you know, a stone top? It’s not cheap. I mean,

Rick Kooyman: 8:29

all right. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it’s it. It’s incorporated in the new construction to some extent, and the builders won’t let you test for it until you own it. But yeah, absolutely. It’s your home, it’s your interior source, your space, and you should absolutely know what you’re living, for sure. If you have water issues in your home, and it’s been there for a while, and all you did was put a fan on it, or you know, put a dehumidifier in there and dry things up. You most likely have a hidden or latent mold issue in there, that is probably have some bit of an irritant or you know, an allergen is a better word to put it as people kind of respond better to saying, Oh, it’s kinda like an allergic reaction. Yeah, it is. And you know, some people are more sensitive than others to it. But basically, that’s what’s going on. It’s a response to what’s in the air.

Charlie: 9:26

And then we see that black area, and probably the knee jerk reaction is grab a bottle of bleach and

Rick Kooyman: 9:40

you know, tonics is a wonderful product. It’s basically a dilute bleach, which is a great cleaner and is effective. The problem is, is that it doesn’t get rid of what is going on that you don’t see. So it’s kinda like, you know, cutting the flowers off instead of pulling the weeds right So you got rid of the black stuff on top. But the fungus, which is what mold is, is a fungus, it has a root system, that that root system was probably developed into the material. If it’s any kind of a semi porous or a porous material, it’s very difficult to get the most out of it. It’s a hard surface a tile, a metal product, a porcelain, you know, a non porous, that bleach product is a perfect item to remove it, get it off, and it should absolutely do the job for you. The problem is, is that we mostly have semi porous materials, which includes the grout, and there in lies, you know, the mold in our showers or the car, it’s, you know, it’s in there, and you’re not going to get it out, or you’re not going to treat it to make it go away. And that’s kind of one of the big problems that goes on down here in Florida with the houses that the damage is they get dried out, and they get chemically treated. And now they’re actually toxic from what is pesticide applied to the surfaces, right, because you put on an antifungal instead of actually a bleach. And that’s a pesticide product. And now, you’ve ever contaminated surface, chemically, you know, so there, there’s a, there’s a lot of missteps to be had in the way that mold is dealt with. And people don’t understand why it’s such a big issue to get rid of it. And really, if you have it, the only way to deal with it is to get rid of it. So most of the time those things, those items are best removed and replaced. And you disturb it, you’ll spread it around. And if you spread it around, it goes to the places it wasn’t, and you made it worse. So their incomes remediations and all the protocols and the importance of how you do it, and why we have this industry and why I have this special license to go in and do these assessments and these testings, and to be the independent voice, that’s not actually out there telling you, hey, you got to get rid of this. And that because it’s, you know, beneficial to me financially to have you have me do that for you. I’m not doing that. I’m just telling you, this is what you got going on. This is how it happened. This is what needs to be done to correct it. You know, have whoever you want. Do that. And when they get done, have someone else come and make sure that it was done properly. Don’t have the person that did it tell you that they did it perfectly. And then move on because all you did was spend money and you just push the can down the road. Yeah.

Charlie: 12:40

So that’s, that’s really great advice. So the and I don’t know how mold companies work, I’m assuming that maybe they could do an inspection don’t know. But to get an independent company, individually,

Rick Kooyman: 12:55

for no other reason, do what we call the final clearance test. Third party. Ideally, you want to separate it from beginning to end so that you have some oversight in what’s going on. But typically, no the remediators come in, and it’s not wrong for them to come in and find the source of where the water is and remove the damaged areas. Florida law says that there’s required to be a final third party test. But there’s a loophole in the law that says you know, you as the customer can say that you’re satisfied with the outcome of the project. And if that contractor can convince you that hey, are you happy with what we did? And we took the samples and our test came back good. And they go yes, it’s great. We trust you. We believe you. But you don’t know what you don’t know. You don’t know that? They didn’t include a whole portion of the job that just wasn’t included. And if you don’t do it all, then why do anyone?

Charlie: 13:56

Wow. Wow. Good, good advice. Speaking of which, anything else that we should know when it comes to, to mold

Rick Kooyman: 14:06

are we basically say, to give it a little bit more respect than most people are generally willing to understand that it’s present in all of our environments. It’s just to what extent it is. And it’s not that it’s the cleanliness of your house necessarily, but sometimes it is, but you know, independent third party, just come in there and tell you what’s going on. You know, it’s kinda like that physical things you go to yearly just to have someone say, Hey, you should think about this.

Charlie: 14:43

Love it, love it. So once a year, add it to your list folks. Get the mold situation. I get peace of mind. I mean, if nothing else, and more importantly, it’s those invisible invaders And she’s you think about I mean we eat three times a day but we breathe every so many seconds you know? So yeah. All right. I

Rick Kooyman: 15:12

love the line of no filter be a filter.

Charlie: 15:17

Yeah wreck for those who want to talk to you more about mold maybe getting you over to to do one of those tests what’s the best way for folks to get in touch?

Rick Kooyman: 15:30

Oh simply give us a call 239-537-1186 You can tax me you can email me at Rick at trade secrets inspections.com I’m pretty easy to get a hold of. Awesome.

Charlie: 15:44

Well, thanks again, Rick for your knowledge and sharing really important. Yeah, really important topic. And we go get out there and get them. I mean, keep keep homeowners from being a filter, and condo dwellers and everyone else and we’ll talk to you soon see, right.

Rick Kooyman: 16:05

All right, you too. Thank you, Charlie.

Charlie: 16:07

Thanks for listening to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast. To learn more about Trade Secrets Inspections go to www.tradesecretsinspections.com or call 239-537-1186

Thanks for listening to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast to learn more about Trade Secrets Inspections, go to www.TradeSecretsInspections.com or call 239-537-1186

EP #14: Mold in SWFL Read More »

EP #13: Got Mold?

Podcasts / September 19, 2022

EP #13: Got Mold?

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Episode #13: Got Mold? Welcome to Florida Mold Assessment

Charlie

Welcome to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast because you need to know, here’s your host, Rick Kooyman.
Hey, Charlie McDermitt here back in the studio with Rick Kooyman. And Rick, how you doing today?

Rick

I’m doing excellent and great to be here again, Charlie.

Charlie

Yeah, you kind of tease me on a bit here. And I can never get enough of this topic more. So from a knowledge standpoint, not necessarily do the you want this four letter word. So let’s get into it. Right what do you have in store?

Rick

Yeah, we’re gonna revisit mold and living with the fungus in Florida, you know, we’ve got all this hot, humid, and all this plant life around us. So it’s something that we got to live with and know about. It’s all it’s among us, whether we like it or not, as a business, we’ve expanded a little bit and are starting to specialize in in the field of mold and bring a little bit of information to the public here. Let everyone know what’s going on and what they can do, what’s available for them and what to look out for.

Charlie

It’s awesome. And congratulations. I know, just as our listeners know, from your previous episodes, you you don’t stop. I mean, you’re always learning and growing and finding the best way to help your clients. So well. Yeah. Congratulations. So fill us in. Let’s talk about mold.

Rick

Yeah, that’s okay. So in the state of Florida, as we all know, here, mold is definitely an issue for us. As far as the state goes and dealing with it. They’re very specific on who and what and when can deal with it. Specifically, like you said, the four letter word are as a home inspector, I’m literally not allowed to use the word mold unless it comes from a laboratory test result. So really, yeah, it’s that litigious have a topic of that. If I say the word mold, I need hard evidence that that’s actually a mold, right?

Charlie

I had no .. I just assumed that was part of the process. Wow.

Rick

Yeah, really, it’s really that touchy. So we wanted to get into that a little bit more as a business. And we went ahead and got what is called the Florida State Licensed Mold Assessor, so that we can actually use that four letter word now. So when I see that stuff, I can say, hey, you’ve got a mold problem, let’s talk about it. And let’s talk about why it’s here and what we need to do about it in that world. There’s all these terms, then. And then now we have all these different companies that get involved, and they’re going to come to the confusion right away. So right from the beginning, everybody asks, as a home inspector, don’t you look for mold? Or don’t you test for mold? Or isn’t that involved are included in the general home inspection? And as a general answer Yeah, absolutely, we do always include whatever we visually can identify, in all inspection reports, that inspection is a more generalized inspection that covers a vast number of areas and topics and, you know, systems. So it’s not very specific on any one thing, but it’s a broad overlook of the whole entire structure. If we find a moisture problem, that’s our typical big clue there, in the world of mold, what we are actually looking for is water, if you can generally get an idea of where water might be in Florida, you might understand why there’s so much mold, all this is around us, it’s everywhere, it’s you know, it’s friends with the forest, you know, trees, mold go together. There’s symbiotic nature they live together. It’s just part of the world. And it’s all the way it’s always around us.

What’s the difference here is when we start to have an issue in the house, and, and then we want to deal with that. So when we notice we have a moisture problem, or we notice we have a dark staining or you know, some kind of evidence of something out of the norm growing on, on really anything, mold will grow on basically any surface, it can find a food. So if there’s dust on inorganic metal, it’ll have mold on you know, the mold is going to find its way the, mold and the food are generally always ready and there, it’s always just waiting for the right moisture, and then it’s going to grow.

So again, we go back to the hunt for water in our environment in that which we live in to try to find where these moles might be. And that’s where the assessor comes in. So as an assessor, what we’re going to do is come in and we’re going to specifically look for any kind of temperature variations, condensation points, saturation levels of materials, we’re going to specifically focus on studying what is the moisture level of the different areas of the home and let that lead us to where there may or may not be a problem. air sample testing is great and identify stuff that’s growing and in off gassing and admitting spores. But that doesn’t identify everything that could be. It’s very common that you’ll have mold growing on a surface, and you won’t have spores in the air until you disturbed the mold growing surface, right. So there, there’s this is where we get into trouble in our homes, is it seems like oh, well, there’s mold on that wall, we’ll just go over there and tear that drywall down and throw it in the trash and get rid of it. The moment you start moving, whatever that is, that has the mold on it. It’s like baby powder, think of it, you know, like squeezing a bottle of baby powder that you can’t see. But those spores are just poof into the air. And now that’s going to travel all around, and it’s going to land basically everything like dust, right. So now, personal possessions, the interior of the other rooms of the house, the AC system, all these things can get inoculated with the spores now.

And then if you have a, if you have some kind of a leakage, say you have a plumbing problem, or a roof leak, you have basically 48 hours to get that water cleaned up, before the molds will come in and take over. I’d seen homes basically go into what we call bloom, which is where there’s a fuzz across every surface as you walk in on everything. Because there was a spore release, and there was high enough humidity in the home, that everywhere it landed, it grew.

So you literally have mold on 100% of surfaces, it gets out of hand really fast. So when that happens, that’s where we have these difference of professions and separation of licensing. The re-mediators, obviously are the people that come in are going to do the isolation methods, and remove the contaminated materials without exposing the other parts of the environment to that contamination factor. So it’s a bunch of different specialty fans and pressure isolations and isolation methods. And it’s a very specified method of removing things. And then cleaning up what was after the contaminated materials get removed. And people love bleach, right, they just put bleach on the mold. This is always a point of confusion for everyone. Bleach will kill mold.

Let’s let’s start there. But that doesn’t remove the mold. Dead mold is still an allergenic, it will still have the same effects on you biologically as the living mold. It’s just at the moment not reproducing and growing in size. But it’s still present and you actually haven’t killed the spores. So when you walk away, and if that moisture level is still present, or it comes back, that mold will come back. You’ve done it temporary visual improvement, let’s call it when bleach on it, the remediation process, we tend to try not to use a lot of chemicals. Our basic best friend for cleaning mold is the soap the sufectant, a good a good detergent, and a HEPA vacuum. What does it mean, it means you’ve got to remove the mold, it’s the only way to get rid of it. And you got to do it in a way that doesn’t allow it to spread as you’re doing it. So it’s a it’s a scrubbing and vacuuming of all the surfaces and high speed dry out. And then we let them sit and then we come back in after we think it’s all cleaned out. And we need to retest it and make sure that that area is done clean and sanitized prior to opening it back up to the rest of the environment. You know, obviously we’re trying to keep a small problem from becoming a big problem. But it might have already become a big problem. And and really it’s about coming up with what we call the protocols for how to deal with the situation.

So that involves two things. One, what is the problem? What is the extent of that problem? And more importantly, number two, what is the rejuvenating factor for it? You know, how do we prevent it from reoccurring? Which again comes back to where does the water come from? It becomes a basic forensic investigation and trying to figure out what’s going on with the structure and how it needs to be fixed. So that’s where the assessments come in, we come in, and we specialize in finding, identifying and coming up with the methods for the re-mediators, to use to resolve the problem. And then when they’re done, we come back and clarify, or verify that the project is clean and ready to be reopened, so that you don’t just go around in this constant circle, thinking you’re clean, re exposing, and it grows back and you just end up in a cycle of, you know, the dirty shower. Yeah, yeah.

Charlie

Wow. Wow, that really explains a lot. .

Rick

Okay, so, in not so many words, let’s just say, if you have a mold problem in your home, if it’s less than what we say is nine square feet, you know, three foot by three foot, and that’s a total area. So if it’s behind the baseboard, let’s say that that amounts to 27 feet of baseboard. So on long living room wall, you pull off a baseboard, and you find that it’s black behind that baseboard, is a very typical thing in Florida. That is putting you at the line of where you need to get involved with the professionals, okay, it’s very easy with that amount or more, to really cause yourself a great deal of trouble. That’s where you want to reach out, find yourself a competent, licensed assessor, that you know, is associated with a good remediation cleanup company, or vice versa, we work hand in hand together. So oftentimes people will call the you know, the biggest deal is one, get the water cleaned up right away. First move you got to make is to the dry out company, get the water cleaned up, get it out of there. And then we got to figure out, did the mold become a problem and start the assessment process?

Charlie

Good stuff good stuff. Now, I if you know, because obviously you work a lot with with new homeowners and you know, you do the inspection. I remember back in Pennsylvania where you had basements and you would go into a home or basement and just smelled moldy. You know? Is that a sign down here? Like if you walk into?

Rick

Yeah, and yeah, those are what’s called volatile organic compounds, or VOCs. That’s literally the the off gassing of the, of the growth of the plant, you know. So yeah, that musty odor, that is the smell of mold, it for sure is telling you. So there’s so many different kinds of molds out there that you can, you can’t say what it is until you really send it off. And then even when you send it to the lab, it’s a matter of how much information do you need to know, you know, as per how much money you’re going to spend on testing at the lab, you only need to know enough to get rid of it properly. If you really want to specifically get into exactly what it is they’re gonna have to put it in a petri dish and grow it. It gets pretty expensive at that point, but it’s not necessary. But you know, what’s, what is necessary is getting in front of it, and not letting it get out of hand. And if you do and you live in it, you’re going to notice health effects. That’s the biggest thing we’re always not aware of is it does definitely affect your health, everything from your respiratory system to your emotional state. And the Depression is an is an associated effect with living in a moldy environment, you know, as much as lung irritation and sinus infections. And, you know, these we always tell people, when we get their lab reports back from the lab reports that we do for mold to take up reports directly to their family physician and go this is what toxins are living on our environment, and how could that relate to what health conditions we have? It really changes the way you know, people are being treated because that I’m seeing unknown complication in our lives.

Charlie

Wow. Wow, man, I’m so glad you covered this certainly an important topic and, you know, again, opened my eyes to certain situations I’ve seen or heard of and taking some of the mystery out of mold, because I know that’s a scary kind of touchy subject for a lot of people and to know that. Yeah, there’s an answer. But the biggest answer is you want to do it right. Or you don’t want to make a small issue into a major issue. So

Rick

exactly, you know, My biggest advice to people is just don’t ignore a problem. The best thing to do is reach out and ask questions, make a call, give us a call. We answer questions all day long. We’re here to help.

Charlie

Awesome. Well on that note, I will look forward to your help and expertise in the next episode and then in the meantime and keep keep us homeowners and business owners. mold free out there,

Rick

we will do our best.

Charlie

Thanks for listening to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast to learn more about Trade Secrets Inspections, go to www.TradeSecretsInspections.com or call 239-537-1186

EP #13: Got Mold? Read More »

EP #12: How Much Risk…

Podcasts / September 5, 2022

EP #12: How Much Risk Are You Taking When Skipping a Home Inspection?

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Episode #12: How Much Risk Are You Taking when Skipping A Home Inspection?

Charlie

Trade Secrets inspections podcast, because you need to know. Here’s your host, Rick Kooyman.

Hey there, Charlie McDermitt back in the Trade Secrets Inspections studio with none other than Rick Kooyman. And Rick, how are you?

Rick

I’m excellent. Today, it’s great to be with you again, looking forward to another topic of discussion to help people with their purchasing.

Charlie

Without making that big mistake with this crazy, crazy market. There’s a lot of not only is the market crazy, but the actual decision to purchase without doing maybe maybe checking all the boxes that we normally would do in a market that hasn’t been as insane as this one. So love this topic today, Rick, and looking forward to you guiding us so that maybe we don’t regret or at least suffer from the “Oh, my gosh, what did I do” , that buyer’s remorse after you sign the dotted line, right?

Rick

Yeah, exactly. You know, the, like you said, the market is really hot today, prices are skyrocketing. Demand is crazy high and supply levels are at like, all time lows,.It’s a calamity of impossibilities coming together to create this storm of buying that’s going on. So people are out there. There’s lots of people that want to buy. So you know, there’s lots of competition. And that brings on the rushed processes, essentially. So what used to be a 15 day offer period has now been cut back to, you know, as little as three days.

Charlie

I was gonna say 15 minutes?

Rick

Yeah, really, if that’s what you could get away with a with with that. You know, and to some extent, maybe we can help with that. So I wanted to talk about that a little bit today, and, you know, help people out with some of their options on how they can better make buying decisions, I guess, you know, yeah, yeah, that’s great, because it really is a product. So

Charlie

a fine line, because I know a lot of folks have, have made many, many, many offers. And, you know, I probably each time you get more and more aggressive, but, you know, I there, I’m sure there are things that can be done to kind of help mitigate the risk, right?

Rick

Yeah, for sure. You know, and like you said, you know, after you looked at 10 houses and, and put in offers on them all and lost them all the frustration level gets pretty high. And, you know, people are going way over asking prices, they’re doing, you know, escalation clauses in their offer. So, you know, that it’s a perpetual bidding war, I mean, it’s really kind of insane. You know, so if you’re gonna make those moves, and you’re gonna do it without an inspection, there’s, there’s a good bit of risk you’re taking there. And I got a couple examples of some things that I’ve seen happened to a few clients that were bout to go down that route. And then at the last minute, had a few minutes to get us in there in a day or two. And, you know, we found out some stuff about those properties, and they ultimately walked away. So you know, these things can affect you. And then, and then there’s some options for what we can do to kind of expedite things and maybe help people out a little bit. So, you know, just just a couple of examples of some things that I’ve seen, I went and did an inspection on a property that looked conditionally beautiful, it was clearly an older home that had been remodeled and all fixed up, and, you know, great showing beautiful house beautiful lot, lots of people making offers on it, you know, they were really, really excited to buy this house. And we went in and went through it. And ultimately, there wasn’t much wrong with it, except for there was not one building permit on it from its original construction back in 1986. You know, and it was like, wow, there’s only one permit on file for this home that’s been renovated, added two new roof, you know, pool, you name it. And it’s just, whoa, whoa, on here. Second, maybe you want to think about that again, you know, and they didn’t appreciate it at the time, but after they took some advice and made some calls and our, you know, couple of days later, they decided that that was, well, too much risk to take for what was a beautiful property, you know, so it was kind of like, an unseen issue, you know, really, really kind of closet issue, if you will, but not often pointed out until it’s too late. You know, maybe, maybe you get it in title. You know, your title agent might bring it up when they’re going through but I really don’t think they will either because they’re just looking to make sure there’s no black things, there’s nothing hanging open or unclear or stuff like that. So,

Charlie

and even if they did, they may not explain the significance of

Rick

yeah, they probably don’t even know themselves exam. So everybody involved was kinda in the blind about that, right? You know, until I said, Hey, guys, hold on, let’s talk about this for a minute.

Charlie

Yeah, I mean, personally, I had no idea and and I didn’t learn about that until we started doing this podcast and I’m thinking, holy cow, I would have never, never asked never thought of it. It’s one of those things you’re buying a home permits why,

Rick

right? And then ultimately, you know, insurance gets involved in you’re like, What do you mean, you don’t want to insure it, because I can’t prove anything’s age or anything like that, or, you know, there’s just, there’s all kinds of problems that lie with that one. Another one we’ve seen was, you know, the same idea of, of a nice looking house, nothing to see. But when we did the air sample tests, you know, it came back with mold all over it, which is, you know, toxic mold. So, just because it was cleaned on, you know, and painted, painted, being now tomorrow there doesn’t mean that the problem was resolved. And again, you’re going to buy something that’s going to cost you a large amount of money as soon as you get into it and remediation costs. And, you know, a simple $250 test reveals, worlds have changed opinions on things. Let’s put it that way. Another good one down here we see often is insect damage, wood destroying organisms, you know, people are pretty wary about termites, and they are a big deal down here. But you know, there’s, there’s all kinds of stuff that can be invasive to a home other than a wood destroying organisms, you know, you can have invasion of ants, and roaches, and animals, raccoon, I mean, you name it, I’ve seen it in an attic. So, you know, necessarily want to buy those things, I don’t think. They can be cleaned up, I guess.

Charlie

can you charge him rent? I mean, the raccoon, Are they alright?

Rick

That’s good. So a couple of things we can do, you know, a simple, we can do an abbreviated inspection, you know, if we have a real short time window, and you just want to have a basic kind of breakdown of what’s important to insurance, we can do essentially a four point inspection for you, instead of the insurance company, which is going to tell you what it is insurance is going to think about that property. So that’s one of the primary important steps I think, is understanding the risk of how difficult it is to get insurance and keep insurance in Florida, as well as finding the property and getting the offer accepted. So there’s, there’s kind of another page to the purchasing process there. That, you know, we can point out those things in an abbreviated inspection or the four point inspection. One other option you have, that is not real. Well, honestly, it’s kind of a new thing in the industry. Because across the country, you know, the markets gone crazy in real estate. So the inspection industry’s been trying to adapt, and, and help out in whatever ways we can. And we came up with a means of doing what we can call a walkthrough inspection. So essentially, you can schedule with us to go on open house visits or on showings, and we’re going to go through with you and we’re not going to open anything, we’re just going to do a visual inspection. But it’s kinda like, Wouldn’t it be cool if you knew what your home inspector did when he was going in buying a house? How would he look at it, you know, just when he was going through it, so we can kind of do that for you. So we’re going to go through it, take a look at it through our eyes and just say, Hey, this is what I see here, there, you know, nothing written down. It’s not about saving you a bunch of money on inspections, costs, it’s just about getting the risk lowered in a timely manner. So, you know, maybe you can make the offer. After you know, we’ve gone through and discussed it. So yeah, you’re a little safer when you go ahead and say, well, we’ll do it. No contingencies, no inspections, , you know, there’s no guarantees in anything, but it definitely can be helpful. And yeah, you know, and if you think you’re out, and you’re looking for an advantage in the buyer side, you know, think about scheduling ahead of time for you know, when you’re going and looking and spending, you know, two 300 bucks on essentially renting our time for a couple hours and taking us out and seeing what we think about a couple of houses you’re interested in

Charlie

Good idea.

Rick

That’s those are options for you. One thing people need to know about when they’re buying, or they’re going into these contracts that are what people like to say, as is, you know, the house is as is, and we’re not going to do anything to it. Well, okay, that’s fine. You don’t have to. And we can agree that that’s the case. But you still want to have what what is in the legal world called the right to void. So before you go through closing, while you’re in escrow, you should still have the right to exit the contract without losing your deposit. So they might not agree to change anything. But you might come across things like no permits on file, and say, No, we changed our mind over the last 24 hours, you know, so big thing to keep in mind, if you are going to do an As-Is contract is make sure you do have the right to void, it is pretty well standard in most purchase agreements. But it can be excluded. And there are devious people out there who do try to tie people up as much as they can. So just want to point that out to people. So keep in mind, you can do those aggressive offers, you can plan for it, you can give us a call ahead of time, you know, and get some time on a schedule, and we’ll help you out or you know, even if you’re on a three day contract, offer, I’ve done many inspections next day, and you get your report that day. So if you’re on a 72 hour, contract, offer contract, you know, give us a call right away, and there’s a good chance we can get through it. And even if we got to squeeze in and just do an abbreviated four point inspection and get some information to you, then you know, by all means, I encourage you to do those things.

Charlie

Awesome. Great, great ideas, suggestions. Way to adapt, Rick, love it.

Rick

We’re here to help people. So you know, we just want to be here, let people know, you know, give us a call and let us let us help you out. Yeah,

Charlie

yeah, you know, again, I go back to the for most folks, it’s the number one biggest investment and to be rushed into such an event and even if it’s a second home, I mean, still it ranks up there as one of your I mean,

Rick

really, still a high percentage worth investment. So you know, it is one of the higher risk things and oftentimes people are really surprised by what’s hiding. What they didn’t know to think about.

Charlie

Yep. Alright, thanks again. We look forward to doing this again in our next episode.

Rick

Awesome. Great speaking with you again and can’t wait till next time.

Charlie

Thanks for listening to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast. To learn more about Trade Secrets Inspections, go to www.TradeSecretsInspections.com or call 239-537-1186.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

EP #12: How Much Risk… Read More »

EP #11: Don’t Turn a Home Inspection Down!

Podcasts / August 16, 2022

EP #11: Why is It a Good Idea to Have Your Home Inspected?

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Related blogs:

Do I Need A Home Inspection?

Episode #11

Charlie

Welcome to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast, because “You need to know!”. Here’s your host, Rick Kooyman.

And what a conversation we’re gonna have today I mean there’s some crazy things happening in the marketplace. And, you know, some Off mic conversations we had before we got hit the old record button here. And I don’t know, you know, one of the craziest, is this, rush into buying a home and not, you know, checking all the boxes of like, what could happen down the road? If you don’t do it right? So I’m setting you up here…

Rick

Absolutely, you know, there’s, there’s definitely a rush to move to Florida, it seems like right now. And I hear that the markets hot everywhere. But in general, in our areas, there’s a really high demand for new or for people wanting to become new residents of Florida. There’s a shortage of homes listed, and a huge supply of people willing to buy, and it’s creating some really crazy things happening in the market. And I just wanted to take a few minutes to talk to, you know, the realtors and the buyers out there that give a give you some ideas and some options on what you can do in this competitive market and some of the risks you might be taking that you may not be aware of. So yeah, a few minutes. You know, recently and I, when I say recently, I mean, in the last year, 18 months or so, the market prices have increased by more than 50% in some cases 100% House values have gone skyrocket, you know, properties are selling 10, sometimes hundreds of 1000s over appraisal value, you, people are willing to take, they want, they want to be here bad enough that they’re willing to spend that kind of money, and that’s fine. But there’s so much competition that the sellers are being put in this power position, where they get to say, well, you know, I have so many people offering me to take this right now, I can make some demands that otherwise wouldn’t generally happen. We’re getting offer periods, you know, people calling in with three to five day inspection periods. And, and that’s in the cases that they’re not waiving the inspection completely. And that’s what’s really concerning, you know, people from other parts of the country moving down to Florida, in particular, not familiar with, you know, the environment and what we live with down here and how it’s different. And then just stepping into a high risk, huge investment like that, when you have some options. And, and I’ve seen a few inspections just recently that I wanted to speak of, just to let people know of some of the risks they’re going through.

So, you know, let’s just talk first about what we can do for you, in the short offer periods. If you don’t have the time necessarily, or you’re not in a position to do the full due diligence inspections, there are possibilities you can call in. And there are this thing called and an informational only inspection or a walkthrough of inspection. Essentially, we go with you, if you will, on, when you’re when you’re doing your initial, you know, walkthrough of the open houses or whatever it is like that. And instead of doing an actual written inspection, we’re just walking through it with you. And going well, this is kind of what I see here. And you know, we got 10 minutes to go through this, let’s talk about it for a few minutes and give you sites but it’s not gonna save you a lot of money. This isn’t something to, you know, think you’re going to get out of spending money on buying an inspection report, it’s essentially going to cost you the same thing. We’re just getting something done for you in a quicker timeframe, or in a window where you otherwise wouldn’t be given the permission to do the inspection.

One of the other options we have, or we tell people is, you know, put in your offer. If you’re going to offer what is generally more than asking, put in a bonus offer for allowing the inspection, you know, if you let us do the inspection, we’ll put an extra 2500 bucks on top of the offer. Well, let me tell you, that’s a great, do too many inspections, that the report doesn’t come back with at least $2,500 worth of findings. So even if you’re not going to get that money credited to you, or accounted for you in the offer, you just need to know what it is you’re purchasing. So, you know, a few dollars today could save you 50 grand tomorrow and not, and just knowledge. So, you know, we have options, we can do short inspections. We’ll talk about that here shortly where we just do, essentially, what is the insurance requirements, you know, you’re gonna buy a property, if you’re looking to insure it, you’re going to probably be asked for these documents anyways, they’re documents meant for the insurance companies, and they’re hard to interpret for the layman. But we can do those documents and, and do it as sort of an informal inspection and say, Well, based on the what the insurance is looking at, these are your risks that they see, you know, it’s not going to cover the, the little stuff, but it’s going to cover the primary things.

In your offer, you can, you should have a right to void regardless of whether the customer is saying they’re selling the property as is I hear that all the time now? Well, they’re selling it as is, Well, honestly, everything is being sold as is it’s all just a negotiation.

That’s fine, they all they’re saying to you is is is their firm on their price, and they’re not willing to do anything, they just want it to be, here’s that house, and this is what we want for it. But you still have the right and the need to know what is in that package you’re buying, you know, it can be a mystery box, like a game show.

So we want to we want to put the word out there, you know, just give us a call. And let us know what the situation is. Even if you’re not in it yet. And you’re looking at, hey, we want to go look at houses and three, four days, we’re coming down next week, we’re looking to get in an advantage situation, you know, we can schedule with you early and do these, you know, pre emptive inspections, where you know, we’re not doing a written inspection. But we’re going out with you essentially and saying, you know, I advise against this property or not. And then to talk about that a little bit, the insurance stuff, you know, it basically is the four fundamentals again, you know, your your HVAC, your roof, your electric and your plumbing. These things collectively accumulate into hundreds of 1000s of ballots, roofs in particular in Florida, or they were difficult a year ago, two years ago. And they’re harder today than they were six months ago to get insurance for. You know, it honestly, people don’t quite understand that it’s not that the roof has a problem. It’s that nobody wants to take the risk to cover it or insure it. It’s brand new. Yeah, I mean, if you got a roof that’s a century older than let’s say 15 years right now. Yeah, it’s almost not. There’s almost nobody out there willing to offer you a coverage policy on it. They’ll give you insurance on the house, but the limit the coverages more coverage, water intrusion, or they won’t cover the roof, or, you know, in some cases, most of these are cash buyers right now. So the mortgage requirements aren’t necessarily coming into play.

Charlie

Yeah,

Rick

You’re still you’re still out there. $100,000 on a roof. And in today’s market are these tile roofs. So, you know, that’s, that’s not a small thing for most people.

Charlie

Wow.

Rick

Right. So, a couple. Okay. So there’s a couple of examples. I went on an inspection a couple of weeks ago. They didn’t think they were going to do the inspection. They talked to me they decided, well, let’s let’s get you in because I could get in there quickly. They were convinced brand new, you know, great. New, newly remodeled home looks beautiful. There can’t be anything wrong with it. You know, we go in there. And honestly, the workmanship is fine, you know, the places in Okay condition is small repairs here and there, whatever. There’s only one problem. There are no permits on file.

Charlie

Oh, geez.

Rick

Right. And at the last minute, you know, they’re like, well, is that a problem? I’m like, it’s probably going to be a huge problem. But really, what I want you to do is invest some time in finding out exactly what it is you’re stepping into. Before you proceed any further. And they did, they did. And after a couple of days, they walked away from that property, you know, and wisely so, but my point is, is, you know, three days before that happened, they were willing to hand over, you know, a half million dollars blindly.

Charlie

And, Rick just so for those who don’t understand what happens if they had moved forward with that sale, you might just going through through though,

Rick

oh sure if you in that case situation, you know, where the city really does get involved in these big, you know, construction projects that weren’t done correctly, or legally, let’s say with permits, basically, what the city does is they say, Okay, well, you need to buy all the permits, and we’re going to charge you triple. And here’s the real hardship, we have to do all the inspections, which often means you have to take everything back apart, because they want to do the rough-in inspections, and you’ve buried all that stuff. So essentially, you’ve got to remodel that house again.

I mean, that’s a big deal. Okay, here’s another one, I went to a beautiful big home, you know, 5000 square foot home, pest control went through, and everybody said it was great. They didn’t, you know, it was fine. And I needed inspected, I talked to man to let me go through it. The back wall of the house was completely infested. And, and what was called big headed ants. But they essentially needed to take out what in the game room, the whole back wall, which was all cabinetry and big windows and it all to be stripped out because it was all full of these, these ants that were living in, what was a wood decay situation in the wall from a window leak, and nobody had picked up on it. But I went in there, and you know, I do what I do, and I look in places most people don’t. And I was like, Oh, my look at this.

And again, we’re looking at, you know, well, here’s 25 to 50 grand, before you move in, and stuff you’re gonna want to do to this house, you’re not even gonna want to come in here until all this insect stuff is dealt with. And they didn’t even know the owners had no idea.

So again, it’s just, it’s not always what you think you’re looking for. It’s actually there. So the risk is high. It’s often the case in new construction, I hear this all the time, it’s brand new, it’s got to be what could be wrong. In today’s world of these that the supply demand, the slow edge on weird things that are coming in and making it incredibly hard on the builders to get things done. Let her get the same people that started it to finish it. I mean, the complications that arise, and the things that get overlooked, because ultimately one person goes, well, I didn’t do that I’m going to do what I came here to do. And things just get compiled down. And then, you know, it’s all shiny on the outside until you start to live with it. And you’re like, well, this doesn’t work very well. And this has fallen apart. You know, it’s brand new. Do you really want to move into a brand new home and deal with a bunch of headaches? Or do you want it to be right when you move in?

That’s the kind of I mean, I’m not saying anything bad about the builders, everybody’s human out there. And it’s not really the builders or the supers or the trades. It’s the compilation of everybody’s experiences coming together. And what it takes to complete that that structure, and sometimes the challenges are huge. And you know, unless someone third party is looking out for your particular interest.

Charlie

Yeah, you Yep.Yeah, you know that.

Rick

That’s that’s the message I’m saying.

Charlie

that that peace of mind they did really provide or, you know, any home inspector worth their salt provides the homeowner or the potential homeowner, you know, it’s like you said, you buy this new house and then all of a sudden, weird things start happening. And you just you’re going Oh, my goodness, you know, is this just crazy? The beginning of you know, a nightmare.

Rick

Here, let me add one more thing. Here’s the other thing in the hot market. People want to find like the they’re like, oh, I want to cash out of my house now. Right? So the homeowner improvements. This is what I just saw. So an attic was reinsulated blown in insulation look beautiful. The only thing problem was the trusses were completely annihilated by termites, but they were covered by insulation. So ….

Charlie

oh, man,

Rick Kooyman

you know, and it was just like, is that shady? I’m not gonna point fingers. But it’s a problem. You know, I’m not saying that someone was trying to sell off a problem, but, you know, if you don’t know what you’re getting into, yeah, find yourself in a world of hurt. And we’re here to help. Give us a call.

Charlie

this has been great, Rick. I mean, I, again, continue to learn from your episodes and I just I never even thought nor heard of. Yeah, you know, in a market like this. Bring the inspector with you when you’re looking at homes and protect yourself, my lord. Great stuff.

Charlie

Thanks for listening to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast. To learn more about Trade Secrets Inspections, go to www.TradeSecretsInspections.com or call 239-537-1186.

EP #11: Don’t Turn a Home Inspection Down! Read More »

EP #10: New Construction

Podcasts / April 18, 2022

EP #10: New Construction

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Do I Need A Home Inspection?

Episode #10: New Construction New cpnstruction, 11^th month warranty.

Charlie

Welcome to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast, because “You need to know!”. Here’s your host, Rick. Hey, welcome back to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast. I’m back Charlie McDermott here with Rick. Rick, how you doing? New cpnstruction, 11^th month warranty.

Rick

Excellent. Great to be with you again, Charlie, looking forward to a new lively conversation.

Charlie

As always, as always said today, we’re gonna delve into the new construction market. At least you teased me a little bit. And I’ve heard some interesting things. I mean, the whole just building experience has completely changed, I guess, because of the, you know, whether it’s inflation or shortage of products, and you know, we just start building a home today, and God knows what it really costs months down the road here. So yeah, there’s a lot happening. Yeah, yeah. So take it away, Rick, fill us in! New cpnstruction, 11^th month warranty.

Rick

Yeah, well, let’s just start with kind of what’s going on today. I mean, like, as there’s, as we see that, you know, there’s lots of people in town, it’s that time of year. But generally, in the real estate market today, What’s odd is that there’s a serious shortage of houses for sale. Essentially, there’s, there’s just not that many listings out there. There’s far more people coming in looking to buy than there is anywhere near the availability for them to buy, which is driving prices up, obviously. But just a statistics from the real estate market is the number of listings this year compared to last year are down, we’re at 1/10. Of what was generally on the market. There is virtually nothing to buy, essentially, I mean, it’s crazy. And what that’s doing is pushing people towards the new construction market. So I wanted to talk about that a little bit today.

But you know, before we get to that,…New cpnstruction, 11^th month warranty.

…you know, just think about these numbers a little bit. Collier county, we have just about 400,000 people in Collier County as of 2020. And Lee county, we have over 800,000 people in Lee County. So just between Lee and Collier, we’re over a million people. Right. And that’s growing every year, of course, and it actually is growing fairly steadily. I mean, it’s not like there’s this huge spike of people, all of a sudden coming down here. I mean, if you look at the numbers, they’re pretty consistent growth numbers. In our county, we see about 7000 new residents a year. As far as permits go, the county permitting office is doing about 5000 permits a month right now,

Charlie

For new construction?

Rick

…for new construction or remodel. So yeah, residential building purposes on an average month in Collier County, but you know, it’s half the size of Lee County, they’re doing on average 5000 permits a month now, there’s, you know, less than 50 inspectors that work there. So you get this really matter where the time goes, but just you know,

to bring it to the construction side of things,

you know, the, the builders side of it is also a struggle, like you mentioned on on various things, supply lines, one of the bigger problems we’re actually having is, is skilled trades. Yeah, actual people to do the work when we can get the materials. There’s just not enough skilled labor out there. There, there are people willing to work, but they don’t have the skill level yet. Or there’s not the same pride in workmanship anymore. So there’s various reasons why third party inspections can help you in new construction. Obviously, I’m here to tell you how we can service that new market.

But you know, a typical new new home build is going to it six to nine months is what the builders average is looking to be. Like he said right now it’s kind of random. It’s more like nine to 12 months. I talked to some of my contacts last week. We’re currently about eight weeks behind on block delivery, and about 16 weeks behind on doors and windows, you know, so and then you add the scheduling changes to the shortage of trades that you can get scheduled and change the scheduling around with that short supply. You can just see how it all just kind of falls apart. I mean, one can’t match the other one at the same rate and you end up with a whole bunch of people being upset and the trade workers is forced, you know, to do whatever they can do to get the job done, essentially, or meet their obligation.

So unfortunately, you’re getting a lot of people sent out there to do work that they may not be trained yet to do. I’ve been sent some crazy pictures of stuff that, you know, the builders have come in and seen that, you know, has been installed. And just like, You can’t be serious, you know, that’s, and fortunately, some of those things were caught by the county. But you know, the county is so overwhelmed that you can’t count on them to police, the industry like that, that’s just not what they’re there for.

Builders gonna keep up with the process as much as they can, but to the same extent that they’re under the gun of the contract, and they’re under pressure from the customer. To finish the product, they’re going to let things slide to whether it’s knowingly or unknowingly, which is more the case than the former, you know, it’s generally it happens unknowingly, and gets overlooked and covered up and then down the road, you’re in the home. Hopefully, within the first year, you notice it, well, you have your warranty, and you can get it corrected.New cpnstruction, 11^th month warranty.

But oftentimes, it’s not the case, you know, it’s three, four or five years down the road, when an inspector comes along, like myself for whatever reason, insurance or whatnot. And something fundamental gets pointed out to him at that point. And now, now, it’s a very difficult situation. So we just want to get the word out there to all those people that are coming down here hoping to buy a home, and are finding that there isn’t a home to buy right now. But there’s certainly builders out there willing to sell them, a new property that doesn’t exist yet. is very much in their interest to have someone other than the county look out for them.

And in that regard, we offer what’s called phase inspections, we offer several different construction inspections. So depending on what kind of oversight you want, we can do anything from a final inspection only to a full phase one, two and three inspection. So we’ll come out and see the site prep and the slab pour will come out and see the shell when the house is dried in as we call it. So you have the exterior, the roof and the doors and windows and, and you’re not going to the interiors yet to be done. So you know, we come and check and make sure that we’re all on the same page, and everything’s coming along. And we’re not getting those oversights occurring.

Often what I tell people, by their, you know, what they really, really need to have done. And unfortunately, many of the builders try to get us out of the mix, because they’re trying to just move on to the next thing. Basically, they don’t want to come back or have someone point out all the problems right away, and timeline. But you know, I say to people listen, before you sign that final COC contract, when you do your walkthrough, you want to do what you want that walkthrough to have a final inspection with it. So ideally, you should be doing your walkthrough with an inspection report in your hand. And then those things can all get addressed. And at the final signing, we can do a final inspection and make sure that everything is correct. And then you move into a home that you’re confident in. And then you still have your 12 month warranty to you know, test drive everything, make sure everything’s working.

And on that topic of the 12 month,

which is your average builder’s warranty, you know, they’re going to give you a 12 month warranty on a home at 11 months, please call an inspection company to know, in and out that what you bought is what you want, and it’s all functioning properly, before your warranty period is up. And even if it doesn’t get corrected before that period is up. If we can get it documented that it existed under the warranty period, then then we’re okay and you can if it takes over the next year to get it fixed. That’s what it takes. But it’s still covered under the warranty period. You see, if you find out 13, 14 months after you moved in. It’s your problem now. Yeah. So spending $500 to find out that you have you know a $10,000 problem.

Charlie

Yeah, that’s it’s a it’s huge. And like you said, peace of mind you You know, oh, my goodness, you know, as you’re going through all that brought back memories of our first home that we had built. And I remember going out to the site, and this is back in the early 90s. Before, I mean, Home Inspection really wasn’t a thing back then. And, you know, looking at the foundation that was poured and putting the basement in the framing, but I had no clue. They could have been using toothpicks instead of two by fours. I’m not sure I would have figured that out, you know? My goodness, you know, it, there are so many little things that can happen, you know, before the drywall was put up, and, you know, whatever. Why wouldn’t you bring someone in with that kind of expertise and experience?

You know, the other challenge, I ran into the guy that built my home back then, I went to high school with, and so there’s that kind of icky and, and so, so this is the crazy part. I mean, you talk about a punch list and stuff, and, and I just felt bad, you know, hey, the house is done. I don’t want to call him over. I mean, Rick, literally, we had, like a section of our ceiling in two different parts of the house that that just had the primer paint, they never put the finish coat on. And I’m like, oh, you know, I’ll take care of what, whether you have relationship with the builder or not, it takes it removes all that awkwardness, It’s like, I’m not a professional, I hired Rick to to make sure that we’re all protected.

Rick

Absolutely And that’s okay, you can blame me, I don’t mind. I’m here to be that guy for you. I’m here to you know, be the guy that comes out and looks at it and all those different stages and knows what I’m looking at. So, yeah, it’s absolutely true. I mean, it’s an intricate process. And when you come out there as the lay person, you’re gonna be overwhelmed with what you’re looking at. And you can be told everything is great. And even if you think it’s wrong, you just don’t know enough to stand up for yourself, essentially. So yeah, we’re here to help.

Charlie

Yeah. And I think the worst case scenario is is time to sell 10, 15 20 years down the road. And yeah, that inspector finds an issue that was never uncovered, right?

Charlie

Surprise!

Rick

Often in that situation

Yeah, they’re like, but how did this ever happen? And well, this is how it happens. It’s it’s one little step on top of another that doesn’t get looked after. And then here we are.

Oh, very insightful record. Really appreciate you. You’re covering that topic. And yeah, we’ll reconvene.

Awesome. You too. It’s great talking with you again, Charlie.

Charlie

Thanks for listening to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast. To learn more about Trade Secrets Inspections, go to www.TradeSecretsInspections.com or call 239-537-1186.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

EP #10: New Construction Read More »

EP #9: Empowering Through Knowledge

Podcasts / March 15, 2022

EP #9: Empowering Through Knowledge

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Episode #9: Empowering Through Knowledge

Charlie

Welcome to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast, because “You need to know!”. Here’s your host, Rick. Empowering through Knowledge.

Hey, welcome back to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast. I’m back Charlie McDermott here with Rick. Rick, how you doing?

Rick

I’m doing well, Charlie, it’s very good to be with you, again, always enjoyed doing these podcasts with you. Empowering knowledge

Charlie Empowering knowledge

Now I, I’m the one that really benefits in our listeners again, I always, gosh, with your knowledge and your research and your continual passion to learn more and more and stay up to date with all the codes. So I know today, you’re going to get into another important topic. So once again, I’m going to turn the microphone over to you what do you have in store for us today? Right?

Rick

Empower Yourself through Knowledge

Today, what I want to share with people is about how to empower yourself and finding out some information that’s publicly available. I’m often asked a question about contractors and how to find someone, or how to to discover what’s going on with somebody, or better yet to file a complaint, you know, and what can people do, if they’re in a situation where, you know, they’re not happy with how things are going? So we’re just gonna dive into what’s available in the wonderful world of online searching, which is, you know, a wonderful tool we now have available to us, it makes things much easier, but

CharlieEmpowering knowledge

it can also be overwhelming, right?

Rick

Yeah, right, you can also definitely lose yourself. Overwhelmed in that, you know, so just to start off with in the state of Florida, if you just search Florida public records, there’s, there’s a state of florida.com public records page that you can go to, and it has everything under the sun in public records that you would want to ever find. So if you’re ever just looking for a starting point, I would always suggest to just start with Florida public records, and go through the list there and see if there’s something that looks for the you know, the topic of what you’re trying to find. What I want to focus on today is mostly about contractors and how to, to reference what’s going on with a contractor or their licensing. This is something that most people may not know about.

There’s a department in Florida… Empowering knowledge

…that deals with the licensing of contractors and other professionals, it’s generally referred to as DBPR, or the Department of Business and Professional Regulations. So that is a very good place to go to if you go to Florida DBPR. Or it’s actually http://www.myfloridalicense.com/dbpr/, is what the website is. But if you do Florida DBPR in the search, it’ll take you to my Florida license, comm essentially. And on that page, you can search for contractors, you can search for them by the contractor type, by their personal name, by you know, where the city or their license number. And it’s a powerful tool, because you can look up and see you know, just exactly what’s going on. So just for an example, I’ll search myself. So just as a general info, I go in and I do a name search, and I’m just going to put my last name in there.

Charlie

And is this something that you would recommend before you hire someone?

Rick

Yeah, it is a good way to get an idea of who you’re going to hire. You know, a lot of people do like some shopping around and like to do some research on stuff if they’re not getting a good referral from someone. So you know, it’s just a tool that’s out there. And if you have as a name, you can start there. I just put in my last name, and you know, there’s several Kooyman’s in the area and different things, but I come up under Home Inspector and you can click on my name and it’ll tell you all about, you know, where my business is what our addresses, you know, what my license status is. And at the bottom of the page is this wonderful tool where it says View related license information and view license complaints.

Charlie

Hmm.

Rick

Which is also which is which is a question I get asked commonly for people that are you know, they contact me oftentimes because something’s not going right. And they want to know what kind of recourse they have or you know, where they can be be heard essentially. And you can do this you can go to, you know, the Department of Business and Public Relations and file a complaint on a contractor and and have the the enforcement agents look into what’s going on with that contractor. And it also stays on their record so that if someone wants to go in search, they’ll find out about it.

This kind of practice is also true for properties.

You know, when we’re looking at buying a house, oftentimes, what’s going on with that property as far as the neighbors is an important thing to look up. There are code complaints that you can look up, if you do a public record search for permits by your county, depending on which county you’re in. So here in Collier County, you just go to the https://www.colliercountyfl.gov/ site, and there’s options for doing property search, code enforcement’s Contractor Licensing search again, if you’re buying a property, this is a good place to go to see the history of the property and what what the previous owners have, who they have been, what they’ve done with the property, what the tax department has done with the property.

And also, you know, again, what kind of complaints have the neighbors been making about, you know, what’s been going on at that property? It’s kind of entertaining, actually. Because when you look him up, they put him in there verbatim to the complaint. So you can call code enforcement and make a complaint over the phone, or you can do it online. But when you when you look them up, if you look up a specific property address, and you see code enforcement, and you look up the stuff in there, it will say exactly what the person said, when they were making the complaint. So it’s, it’s comical. Often.

Charlie

I had no idea!

Rick

Yeah. Yeah, that’s it. So I wanted to bring this up as a topic today, because these, these tools are out here for us to you know, make use of in this new online world we live in, but you know, we often don’t know, they’re there.

Permit Trackimg

Permit tracking is also a big thing, you know, to make sure that when you’re buying a property, open permits can be an issue when you transfer a property. Because if you take ownership of a property that has an open permit on it, now you own that problem. So you probably want to address that before you buy it to make sure that you’re not responsible for someone else’s trouble.

Charlie

Wow.

Rick

Wow. Right.

Charlie

Right, that would be an unpleasant surprise.

Rick

Yeah, wow. I particularly like the DBPR contractor stuff, because you know, I can I can, you can see what their training histories are, you know, like, you can look up my, my ces or continuing education requirements and see how active your contractor is, in staying current on you know, updated stuff. It will show you exactly what their activities are in accordance with their license, you know, pretty well to date. So it’s a good tool to make use of, yeah.

Charlie

Love it.

Rick

Yeah, short and simple this this month, but, you know, it says it’s a good place to start. Yeah,

Charlie

yeah. Short and simple. But you know, when you get into it, you could you could spend the day just just looking at it.

Rick

You’ll get lost in it.

Charlie

Wow, if only houses could talk, oh, they can just go there

Rick

how about that.

Charlie

Well, terrific. All right. Once again, another eye opening episode. Really appreciate you spending time with us. Now go out there and help those homeowners or homeowners-to-be by the right home with a peace of mind knowing they made the right choice.

Rick

Yep. Yeah. Just the the two words that keep you know, state of Florida public records, and Department of Business and professional relations. DBPR those, those are very powerful places to go to look for records. Terrific.

Charlie

Rick, well, we’ll end here and get you back in here in the near future for your next episode.

Rick

Yeah, absolutely. Look forward to it. It’s a pleasure talking to you again, Charlie. I’ll do it again soon.

Charlie

Thanks for listening to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast. To learn more about Trade Secrets Inspections, go to www.TradeSecretsInspections.com or call 239-537-1186.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

EP #9: Empowering Through Knowledge Read More »

EP #8: Building Codes

Podcasts / February 13, 2022

EP #8: Building Codes

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Episode #8: What’s the Scoop on Building Codes?

Charlie

Welcome to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast, because “You need to know!”. Here’s your host, Rick Kooyman.

Hey, welcome back to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast. I’m Charlie McDermott here with Rick Kooyman. Rick, how you doing?

Rick

I’m doing excellent, Charlie, it is fantastic to be back with you again, and sharing some knowledge and some information to help people out.

Charlie

You are the best at sharing knowledge, you’re so not only insightful, but talk about you know, you just, you just know the ins and outs and the in-betweens. And today, I know you had mentioned we’re gonna talk about building codes, which is, you know, hold on, don’t Don’t, don’t let anyone fall asleep on us. As you know, if you’ve listened to previous episodes, Rick, has a way to really pull us in. And in Rick, when it comes to building codes, it’s probably not anything that your clients have, like, you know, gone to the local jurisdictions and read all the language, but I know you were deep into it. So this is really important when it comes to, you know, buying Heck, even selling a home, I’ve heard some nightmare stories and things all of a sudden pop up out of nowhere. And so I’m really excited about this. So I’m going to turn the microphone over to you and let’s get into it.

Rick

Fantastic. Yeah. Today I want to talk about building codes. Why do we have building codes? Where did they come from some of the history? Why is it important to us the average person? How does it relate to me in my profession as an inspector, a home inspector? And really What is the general gist of what it’s doing for us and the general population out there in our homes and our apartments and condos and all that good stuff. So just to start way back in the beginning, let’s look at where did building code begin? And who do we have to thank for it. And our first known ritten building code, we have record found , Actually, it’s carved in stone! Evolved, 1758 BC, ci, a mama Robbie, wrote the first building code. And it basically laid out a guidance as to how a structure was to be built. And it stated, if a builder has built a house for a man, and his work is not strong. And if that house has building failures and kills the householder builder shall be slain.

Charlie

Wow, that’s a code.

Rick

There you go. Right.

Charlie

You know, that we could really simplify life by having codes like that. That is just like, you know, okay, don’t mess up focus when you’re at work. And yeah, exactly.

Rick

Let’s get right to the end. You know, it’s funny. It really kind of cut to the gist back then. And you know, it kept most people honest. And the only thing it really didn’t cover was for the homeowner or family member that did it for themselves.

Charlie

Yeah, I guess

well, yeah, you know, might have

Rick

been part of the rules.

Charlie

That’s crazy.

Rick

Wow, that that’s where we have a history to begin with. And then as we went on, and we got more civilized I guess you could say or we started living in greater depth cities. We all look back at London in the London fires back in 1666. to level the city, and then more locally, we can look at Chicago and the Chicago fires of the 1800s, late 1800s 1870s and they started looking at building codes and asking how can we address risk and more importantly, how can we address the risk to the adjacent building? You know, it was one thing if you wanted to do it to yourself, but when we lived in higher densities, it started to affect our neighbors and now we had responsibilities we had to uphold so they went with regulations that dealt with just that thing you know, common walls between buildings that became a code dangerous practices such as wooden chimneys, you know, back when everybody was burning. You couldn’t have a wood chimney, can you believe it? In a rule Wow. And then, you know, saying does that seem like such a great idea. It went on to deal with such basic things as you know, having needed light and ventilation and you know, well, let’s have a fire escape and let’s talk about potable water and toilets and sanitary drains and stairs, railings, basic safety stuff. So that’s basically where it originates. And then of course, you get into the late 1800’s and early 1900s, and we start talking about insurance. Insurance begins with basically fire, you know that that’s the primary the big risk, you know, this stuff are all started with cities burning down. So again, the fire Commission’s became where these rules started to originate. And it started with the National Board of fire underwriters. And they originally created what we call and still have is the National Building Code. And the whole purpose was to minimize risk to both the property and the building occupants. So so the, the gist of things are, why do we say we have building codes, it’s simply for safety. And to maintain, you know, some standards so that we have some consistency of expectation between each other as we live as neighbors. Wow. So these codes developed over time and got more complicated. And the fire commission started these original codes. And they developed three different organizations, essentially, they had an international code, they had a residential code, which we still use the international IRC, which is the standard code throughout the country. And then they have an International Energy Commission code that deals with conservation of energy and power. And we have plumbing, electrical, and all those other things added to it now to the big difference here in the United States is that none of these codes are federally enforced. This is all left up to the states. So even though the IRC exists in general, it’s not a federal mandate, such as in other countries, there are federal codes. So everybody is the same no matter where I’m here we we like to leave it up to the states and states rights because the United States. And so as we go from different states, there’s different rules in different jurisdictions, again, have different rules within the state. There are some jurisdictions that have no rules. To this day, there are some areas you go there no building codes, really. Yeah, absolutely a rural rural America for sure. Yeah, there’s no, there’s no overseeing body established to create the code. So it still doesn’t exist, doesn’t mean they can’t go by the IRC. And that’s generally what does happen. So we just default back to the basics of, you know, the International residential code. But the jurisdiction doesn’t exist, if the infrastructure doesn’t exist, and it’s it’s basically people policing themselves in the community level. In Florida, we have developed specific codes, Florida, and California, in particular high risk areas that led the country in development of code. The first codes to come to Florida started in 74, when the state adopted what we call the SBC, which was the southern Building Council, or the southern or the standard building code. And it was created by the southern building code Congress. Keep all that straight . Right. And in Canada, it was based on that international residential code that IRC that started way back from the fire commission in 70, floor 74, the state enacted and adopted the use of that SBC, that standard building code. And it was loosely enforced, but not really applied, but it was there as a reference almost, if you will. In 94, they formed the international code Council in Florida and they formed what we call the FPC which is the Florida building code. The Florida building code that was developed out of Miami and again it was the result of devastation as you know this stuff started with firing and in Florida It started with Hurricane Andrew. Again Hurricane Andrew came in to South Florida and homestead and basically erased it from the surface and the city said Wow, that was painful. It was one of the biggest hits to the insurance industry nationally. Insurance as a industry became not available which was a problem for development of Miami develop they took the IRC and said okay, we’re gonna change things and we’re gonna make it again local jurisdiction to withstand the storms so that we can build back better. And that’s what they did. They develop that FBC it became the ES f bc the South Florida building code because The rest of the state didn’t want to adopt it. They, they didn’t want to take part into it. It didn’t become a state enacted thing until the late early 2000s. So, in 2001, the state finally adopted it from one end to the other. But even at that point, North Florida still refused to participate in what was the FBC code because they insisted that they were not prone to hurricanes and storms. We’ve learned from them, I would hope that that was not the case. But it is still that Miami Dade is considered the high velocity hurricane zone. It’s just Miami Dade County, and anything outside of that is still following the FPC code. So there are specifics that maintain the highest standard, but they’re only pertinent to those two counties still. House over here in Collier, we live in what’s called the high wind area or the 140, which is the step down from the high velocity zone. So that essentially means that in the next up, change from underwriting, they’re going to include us in the high velocity hurricane zone, or the high risk zone. But basically anything on the coast right now within 10 miles of the water is considered a high wind zone. Okay, so we develop the South Florida building code, and it became the law in March 1 of 2002. So prior to March one 2002. If you weren’t in Miami Dade County, you were not generally building to that FBC code, you might have been following the international residential code, or you might not have enforcement was very loosely followed. And again, it was handed out by the local jurisdiction. And it varies from county to county, literally, I mean, there’s some in jurisdictions, you know, each town binita, Fort Myers Beach, a stero. each county will have their own building department within them. And they all answer to the FBC in the end, but they make their own codes and they make them a little stricter or do whatever is in the interest of that city’s board. And it’s constantly changing, because you know, board members changing, they make the rules up as they go.

In general, the building code is updated every three years. The IRC, and the associated codes that follow under it are changed on a three year cycle. We just changed. We’re currently in the 2020 code cycle, which is the seventh edition. On these changes over years, there’s usually a delay in implementation of the changeover stuff, just because trying to get all the contractors on the same page and up to speed with the changes. That’s not to say that the code doesn’t change every year, though there are yearly amendments that come out. So there’ll be an amendment to the 2020 code every year, until we get to the 2023 code. And then the whole thing will start over again. So it’s an ever changing world of rules. And it is very much like reading tax code. It is hard to follow. It’s very specific. And this is where the confusion comes in for the homeowner and the city. And the like of well, the city inspected it so why isn’t it fine? That that’s that’s all well and good. And the purpose of these codes was just for safety and standard. The problem is the numbers. Okay, so if you look at it from the standpoint of what the city is doing, a city code employee, an ICC code worker, as we call them, and international code Inspector, they basically are tasked with about anywhere between 25 and 50 stops and an eight hour schedule. I mean, you do them when you expect a code inspector to come in and he has basically not more than 10 minutes allocated to that single stop. And it’s sometimes there’s not even 10 minutes. So he’s got a list of stuff in his head that’s important to them. And that cycle that they’re looking to bring everybody up to, you know that they come in and go, Hey, this guy changed and you didn’t do it. And all the rest of the other stuff falls under the idea that the contractors are licensed. And their license is predicated on them following the code. So it’s kind of an after the fact assumption that they’re doing it out of being a professional in their industry. So there’s no way for you the homeowner to hold the city responsible for missing something in their code inspections. They’re doing it for their own purposes, essentially, which is really to keep contractors all on the same page with the city they’re working under. So you’re asking too much, basically, of your city code Inspector, to come out and make sure that your house is everything that you expected it to be, if your builder or contractor came up short, or didn’t know the updates or went his own way, and something. That’s where we come in as the private home inspector, we fill that gap. I don’t go out to do their job. I try not to reference code for this specific reason of attorney saying, well, you’re acting as a code Inspector, then not a code inspector. I’m a home inspector. But the basics of what these things are supposed to be our reference back to code. So yes, I have to follow and reference the code. But I am an independent contractor who references overall safety, I look at workmanship they don’t, I’m concerned with the overall product, they have no concern for how well it was done. They just want to know that it was done according to the rules. That doesn’t mean it was done right. Then just mean it was done according to the rule.

on the sly, if you will, the the word on the street, as we call it, if a builder told you that they built your house to code, another way of looking at that is saying they built you the minimum quality product they could build you right or the biggest POS on the block. There’s a lot to be said, just assuming that the city is looking out for you. And when you have what we call a CRC issued for your brand new home which is your certificate of occupancy certificate your CRC. And that basically means that the city’s done with it, they’ve done all their due diligence on their part, they’ve sent out all their inspectors to the extent for the purposes that they want, not you want and they’re done with it. That has nothing to do with how well they met your sales contract or your expectation or their due diligence to their warranty. I go in and see new builds all the time that you know right from the get go are seriously in need of repair. Currently, with the market the way it is product line supply lines chains are hit and miss. There’s a lot of struggle to get doors and windows right now. Which is holding up the progress that leads to contractor being pushed to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do. Such as Let’s finish the interior without the doors and windows installed. Wow, wow. Yeah, that’s gonna lead to some issues. Right? We’re starting off with a mold filled building. And then we’re finishing it. These things are not accounted for by the city. The city is not concerned with these things. The way in which a contractor does his job is not of their concern. That’s not to say that if you are dissatisfied with your contractor, there’s no way to go to the city and hold them the contractor responsible because the contract driver’s license through the city and that’s where the power comes from the homeowner you have an ability and a right and a means of making a dispute or putting a lien or some kind of complaint on a contractor’s license holding up their additional permits so that they can’t proceed with other work there’s means to deal with these things and that’s why the city does exist but it’s not generally what most people think of well they’re here to make sure that all these things are done for me that’s not the case. So that’s that’s Yeah,

Charlie

and I know you’re just wrapping up but just just something comes to mind because because over the years I’ve done my share if you know not me personally and that’s where I’m going with this you know bringing contractors in to do work on the Home Renovations you know adding additions and all that and I have no clue of the quality work I mean I obviously I trust my contract and and all that but you know as you’re talking and thinking well you know, it probably would make sense to bring in a home inspector just to make sure that the work is done not like you said not just to code but you know to the standards that I’m expecting but I would have no clue if it’s really done to that level is that do you find yourself doing a lot of that work as well?

Rick

Yeah, I in particular that’s that’s one of my niches in the industry I come from building my background is you know 30 years of doing the work with the various trade industries so I know the exact answer to that question. I know that the sleazy ways to get things done to hide things with you know what looks good but you know behind the first layer isn’t and that’s exactly what we’re getting out there. What is the workmanship? What is the quality of the product and you know, just because it looks shiny doesn’t mean it’s going to hold up and and yeah, absolutely that is exactly what we are here to help with. Part of getting the word out there to the consumer is that the home inspector not all but there are us qualified home inspectors with the knowledge base and background that will be that person for you to do just that that third party Hey, I’m just here to tell them how it is and this is what’s going on and I know that takes

Charlie

you know the awkwardness out of you know for me to you know not confront but even just say ask questions. One what the answer is I’m not going to get because I’m not in that world but also just that relationship side of the equation when you bring you in to have that conversation you get it you can ask the right questions and I’m out of that maybe awkward situation if something that we should come up that doesn’t meet you know,

Rick

exactly you know, a prime example is when I just did for a customer of a new bill they had an inspection of some nature done that reported issues with the roof they’d brought it up with their contractor the contractor denied you know, said no, then I don’t agree whatever, left them in limbo, they didn’t know the home inspector wasn’t very knowledgeable of what he was speaking of in that regard. I guess they admitted that at that point other than they deferred it for further evaluation and they found me listed through the tile roof Institute because that’s one of my specialties so I go through the training just like the installer contractor knows so you’re not getting when you tell me something you’re not going to follow me I don’t know you know and I looked at it and I did you know my fair assessment and in my opinion there was nothing wrong with it you know, I came down on the side of the contractor and there’s no harm done there. So again, the customer is brought back home to the contractor with the warm fuzzy feeling um you know not being slighted yeah you know, so it there’s a win on both sides. Yeah,

Charlie

it is. Wow. Great, great stuff Rick. I know listeners really appreciate the time you spent in you know, weekly daily just staying on top of this and all the changes that will probably hit tomorrow and next week and next month and you know, that’s the wonderful thing about what you do you know, I know our listeners should they use your service can depend on you being on top of everything and and serving the role of making sure that whether we’re buying a home or selling a home or adding to our home that it’s it’s done the right way so awesome, awesome stuff.

Rick

impartial third party. Yep, always here to help.

Charlie

Terrific. Well look forward to the next episode. Rick, you have an awesome day.

Rick

You too it’s great talking with you again, Charlie, and we’ll do it again.

Charlie

Thanks for listening to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast. To learn more about Trade Secrets Inspections, go to www.TradeSecretsInspections.com or call to 239-537-1186.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

EP #8: Building Codes Read More »

EP #7: Radon

Podcasts / January 22, 2022

EP #7: Radon

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EP #7: Radon

Charlie

Welcome to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast, because “You need to know!”. Here’s your host, Rick Kooyman.

Hey, welcome back to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast. I’m Charlie McDermott here with Rick Kooyman. Rick, how you doing?

Rick

I’m doing excellent Charlie, it’s great to be with you again.

Charlie

Great to be with you and I’m looking forward to another really important topic. I know Radon is something you and I have kind of discussed off—I was gonna say off camera- off microphone I guess technically with a podcast, and you know coming from Pennsylvania Radon was a big big deal because we had basements and air quality and all that and so that was an important test. I got down to Florida and I didn’t I didn’t think Radon was a thing here I didn’t realize it until I you know we started talking so I’m really happy you’re going to get into Radon and actually touch on some water quality points today so I’m going to turn the mic over to you because you’re the one should be taught by Radon man that me so listen what’s going on with Radon in Florida here?

Rick

Yeah, let’s discuss Radon. First, let’s talk about what Radon is to begin with. So we kind of are on the same page here. And when we when we say the word Radon, what we’re referring to, is a gas that’s actually produced by the disintegration of uranium, essentially, it’s a radiation gas, it’s pretty much found everywhere. It occurs naturally in the soil and the earth, you know, all over the place. So it primarily comes out of rocks, essentially, because that’s where we’re going to find the uranium products in and depending on where we’re at geographically, it does matter.

Absolutely, there are places where it’s more prevalent than others and as a lot of people think here down or down here in Florida that that it’s really not prevalent in the soil. And that’s true to some extent, we do find it in the soil to a degree and there are pockets where it’s more prevalent than others but more importantly where we find Radon coming from is it actually comes from the building products that are being used so when we’re using a lot of concrete products in the state, you know a lot of things are built out a block and slabs and stones and all those things contain those radiation products and so depending on where they were sourced from and what we’re putting in to the home.

Radon levels vary greatly from location to location

so honestly the only way to know what you got in that regard is to test for it because Radon is ubiquitous in its nature. It doesn’t have any taste or odor or color there’s there’s really no way to perceive it. To know that it’s around. And you know the government monitors it. There is currently a rating for Collier County is sitting at 20% of the homes right now or 20% of the land in Collier County is rated at above the safe level of what they measure of for picocuries liters; picocuries liters is a weird unit. It’s just a measure it’s a very small like it’s a trillionth per two radiation units per minute. It’s a weird science unit but they do have a standard essentially and we can measure to that unit and the standard is for the cutoff line is 4.0 picocuries liters.

Okay. Anywhere in that area is going to be you know a risk zone to say that 3.9 is safe and 4.0 is not is kind of silly but somewhere we got to draw the line so at 4.0 they say you must put a mitigation system in to accommodate for it but below that we’re not required to. Personally I find it in testing in the area about one in five homes we test come up positive for it. Like I said there’s no real rhyme or reason to it. I’ve seen it in multiple story condos you know 10th floor unit, the one unit will have it and the adjoining unit will not and again it’s very dependent on you know, pipe chases and materials used in in the unit. You know things like granite counter tops can be very protective.

And Radon.

You’d be surprised you know if we put a Radon unit a testing unit in a home and we set it near a granite counter top. It will come back positive every time so placement of the devices are our key knowledge on how you’re supposed to set these things up is also you know, it’s it’s part of why they’re licensed you know state licensing is required to do Radon. I myself am not Radon licensed, I use third party contractors I have several environmental companies I work with that allow them to do the Radon testing.

You know, the crazy thing about Radon is is that it’s, it’s it’s one of the leading causes of cancer in the country. You know, especially if you’re a smoker it’s very dangerous for people who smoke and it leads to lung cancer at 4 picocuries liters It’s said that 62 out of 1000 people who smoke will end up with lung cancer and if you don’t smoke it’s going to be about seven so it’s not as prevalent in the non smoking community but it is the leading cause of cancer in the world you know so wow for something that most people don’t even realize to pay attention to it’s it’s pretty prevalent they say 21,000 people per year die from it countrywide you know, which is more than get killed in drunk driving.

That’s an interesting number right?

Um, so what can we do about radar and doesn’t matter the age of the home or any of those things a factor? And the answer to that is no, actually we the ground is constantly changing what’s going on beneath us and what’s in the house is pretty consistent generally unless you do remodeling and then absolutely you probably want to retest after you do any kind of remodeling but generally they say you should retest every two years. Testing takes a couple of days for professional tests, we put a unit in the house, it sits for 72 hours and the idea is is to keep the home as closed up as possible because Radon accumulates over time so essentially, you know we generally sleep in it is what we think of it you know the house gets closed up and you spend all those hours just laying in there fermenting and whatever’s collecting in the house and if you’re not accommodating for higher Radon levels then you’re saturating yourself in Radon while you sleep so that’s where the health effects come from.

New Construction

there is means by which they can do things to mitigate the allowed Radon to come from the ground if there’s barriers that can be put in under the slabs, plastics, different techniques we don’t really do that down here in Florida so much it’s mostly coming from the building products is the reason why so we just say you know let’s just test every unit and if it’s there we’ll contend with it and there’s you know, 3 to $5,000 is typical price range for Radon mitigation system.

And essentially all we’re doing is is cycling air in and out of the home so that the stagnation doesn’t occur you know, so it’s essentially just a ventilation system that’s being put in that’s constantly running in the background at a very low pressure so that we reduce the accumulations in different areas get the airflow get the thing exactly there are tests on the market you can go to the you know your local hardware store and you can pick up a do it yourself test for Radon they’re generally little charcoal packages that you leave sitting around that stuff is effective it’s not nearly as accurate as the high quality testing units that we bring in from the environmental companies those things are super fancy they record air pressure temperature you know if you open and close the door while the units are in the home, it records the pressure changes and the temperature changes and it’s measuring the gas levels. So it’s a very sophisticated test that’s being done that way. So you get a real accurate result.

Charlie

Wow, okay. Wow, this is fascinating, you know, it all all now makes sense to me. And the fact that building products…is…

Rick

Yeah, that’s, that’s really the interesting part of it. The one thing we get get Radon from outside of the building products which is odd in a lot of people’s mind it actually is in the water, especially if we’re using well water, the prevalence of Radon it’s actually dissolved into the water and it actually comes out of the water in a gas form.

To some extent we do ingest it into the water.

If it’s in the water in a saturated level. You know, so when We’re drinking it, we can be drinking the Radon in the water and there hasn’t been any recorded high redolence prevalence of ingesting Radon being a problem, it’s it’s the gas, Radon that’s causing lung cancer, that’s the, that’s the real problem. So things like when we take a shower, you know, and there’s all this evaporation from the hot water, high levels of Radon in the water will accumulate, obviously, whenever that’s occurring, so water can be a very big source of where Radon comes from. And again, there are ways to mitigate the Radon in the water. Oftentimes, well systems out here we use air aeration tanks to begin with because of the sulfur content and odor in the water. And that’s a great way to help mitigate the Radon as well because it gives it time, and it’s literally aerating the water. So you’re literally taking the gas out of the water, which is exactly what we’re trying to do for that, you know, so that’s a good move.

But you know, on the topic of water, which is why we were going to mix today’s Radon topic with water testing, and what’s in your water. You know, it’s kind of a great segue there, you know, well, water and city water are kind of two different beasts. When we drink from our public water, it goes through a treatment plant. There’s requirements of testing and levels of all kinds of different things to be monitored. In fact, water is a very touchy subject with the health department down here. And you’re always allowed access public access to the testing results.

But you know, testing public water isn’t really necessary,

because it’s constantly tested by the government. And if you test it yourself, and you think you’re going to come back and report something to them that you found, you’re going to have a fight on your hands. We don’t often get into the world of testing city water, but you can test city water if you’re concerned with, you know, particular problems of the building, you’re looking at, like lead pipes or something like that localize. So in that regard. Absolutely. You want to test all sorts of water, the VA, if you’re doing FHA or VA loans, they specifically require water test for part of the loan package because they want to know what they’re writing alone on in particular, there are several different water tests that we can perform for you. We do these ourselves, we don’t do the test, but we you know, we do the sampling and then provide it to the lab and they do all the fancy work for us. There are different ways and different tests out there. There’s a simple what we call the bacteria test. If you’re on a well we recommend that you have your well tested yearly, the water table is constantly changing down here and you can have the bacteria move into your well. Generally if you’re on a well you also have a septic in your yard. So depending on how the water tables moving around, you could be bringing bacteria from your septic into your well. So you should keep an eye on those things. That test in particular is not a big deal.

As a homeowner, you can actually do it yourself,

you can get a hold of the Department of Health go down to the water department they will give you the equipment you need to take the sample you bring it to them and they’ll test it for you for I think $50 or something like that. The test we do is basically the same. If we do it on site while we’re there inspecting it we just charge $75 for the simple well test and it’s going to test for E coli and coliform bacteria. And you know that’s just basic health stuff so you don’t get intestinal diseases and constantly have intestinal problems from basically the water you’re drinking. Outside of that test. There is a full panel test that we can do.

That’s more of what’s called the FHA /VA test. That one gets sent to Orlando lab there’s actually only a few labs in the whole country that do the full panel water test. So that one that one is quite expensive and in fact that one goes it’s it’s in the $300/$400 range but it’s going to test obviously for the bacteria it also test for leads and nitrates and nitrates turbidity our urine magnesium pH like I said it’s a full panel test but it gives you the full spectrum of what’s in your water and then you can get really carried away with water testing as they’re gonna call it out for specific items and that’s where these these central labs come in and you name it we can test for it and it comes with dollar amount essentially the lab fees are expensive. The laboratory stuff gets pricey. So when we do lab testing and all these, you know, Mold Testing and Radon testing, most of the cost of that stuff is science cost labs, lab fees.

Charlie

Yeah, yeah. Wow. Interesting, interesting stuff here. You know, I’m I’m completely fascinated again, by your knowledge, Rick. And I know we have listeners who may have questions, you know, may want to just learn a little bit more about what you cover, although this was very, very thorough. Would it be possible for some of our listeners to get in touch? And if so well?

Rick

Yeah, absolutely. Please, at any point, you can reach out to me I’d love to just talk to you and give you some info. If you think you’re having issues, we would gladly come out and help you out in any way we can.

You can reach me on email at Rick at www.TradeSecretsInspections.com. You can call me at 239-537-1186 that’s direct number to me, call me anytime I take calls whenever I’m available to answer the phone

Charlie

Alright, thanks again another awesome episode in the can and more importantly out there helping folks and we look forward to getting together in the next episode.

Thanks for listening to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast. To learn more about Trade Secrets Inspections, go to www.TradeSecretsInspections.com or call to 239-537-1186.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

EP #7: Radon Read More »

EP #6: Perspectives…

Podcasts / December 20, 2021

EP #6: Perspectives…

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This time of year can be hectic with the holidays, and once you add in the COVID-19 crazy, we all probably need to stop, catch our breath. and gain some perspective…
Please enjoy Rick’s tour of Perspectives…
We hope that you find joy, peace, love and understanding while we celebrate the holidays and move into 2022!

Charlie

Welcome to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast, because “You need to know!”. Here’s your host, Rick Kooyman.

Hey, welcome back to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast. I’m back Charlie McDermott here with Rick Kooyman. Rick, how you doing?

Charlie

Welcome to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast, because “You need to know!”. Here’s your host, Rick Kooyman.

Hey there. This is Charlie McDermott, the producer of the Trade Secrets Inspections, podcast. And as always, my partner here Rick Kooyman, the owner of Trade Secrets Inspections. Rick, how are you today?

Rick

I’m doing excellent, Charlie, and it’s great to be with you again.

Charlie

Thrilled to have you. And I always enjoy our sessions.

Rick

Yea we have a good one today.

Charlie

For our listeners, Rick has been teasing this episode, he has something real special. A little bit out of the box. Is that a good way to yet you give me a lot of details that a good?

Rick

Yeah, we’re going to talk about something other than real estate today we’re gonna we’re gonna enjoy understanding or appreciating ourselves and today and, and what’s important to us.

Charlie

Oh, man, I love that. Well, let’s, let’s hear it, man.

Rick

All right. So what I’m gonna start talking about is how we, how we live our lives, how we measure ourselves, and you know, the history of where that comes from, you know, we all follow basically, a week a calendar, you know, we chase the clock around all day long. And it’s just kind of something that goes unobserved or where did all that come from? You know, how did that how did that stuff come to be? Yeah, yeah. So, so let’s look at the history of calendars to start with. Okay, so let’s talk about real primitive stuff, you know, way back when there was, you know, no, no scientific instruments. So, as a primitive being, you had basically two ways to measure time, right? You had day, the time between the two nights? Right? And you had essentially what was the month, or the lunar cycle, the time between the new moons and that was pretty much what you had to observe. There were other nuances to be seen. But in general, for the average person, you, you saw the sun come up and go down. And that was your day. And then at night, you saw this other thing come and go. And it changed every day, throughout the month. And that was the other measure of time was the lunar month. Okay, so the stars in the sky appear in different locations, depending on where the earth is in its orbit around the sun. But you know, that wasn’t really known at the time. But through observation, it became pretty obvious if you paid attention that, well, there was a CYCLE occurring, you know, and you could predict that this was going to happen, or this was going to rise at this location. Because it did this once before. Right. Okay, so way of measuring or our, let’s create a cycle, right? The Egyptians, we all know, we’re lovers have the night sky. They, the priests really studied the night sky. And they essentially watched what was what was called the Dog Star or Sirius, okay. And they watched and were able to notice that Sirius came up at the same point, every 365 days.

They took that, and we’re able to use that measure to measure the number of days in the year as opposed to the lunar cycle. Because if you look at the moon, the moon cycles are 29 and a half days. So it’s out of sync. Right. Right. And, and a lunar year is actually 354 days. Okay, so if followed the lunar calendar, which was what early people did, because it was easier to track the lunar cycle, and people live by the moon cycles. This shifted, because you were missing a few days in your year, you’re essentially you were 11 days short, while you followed the lunar cycle, right? Since figured that out by rocks and Sirius or the Dog Star and said, Hey, there’s actually 365 days in this rotation. And that helps us keep our seasons in line. Okay, so they switch to the solar calendar at that point. Right. And it came about from watching the stars. But they moved to a day cycle calendar of watching the sun. Okay, so it changed that irregularity or that shift. And historically we have a record of when the Dog Star gear was first recorded. So this is kind of an oddity in AD 139 was recorded in Egypt as a dog star here. And based on the relative shifting of time, you could calculate when they first originated their calendar based on the shift because they’re, they’re still missing a little bit of time and their count of the days, because our earth actually orbits the Sun in 365 days, and approximately six hours, so that six hours is still an air for them. And they weren’t accounting for it. So their calendar also drifted a little bit due to the six hours, but instead of drifting on like a 32 year cycle, it shifted on a 14 160 year cycle. So it was less noticeable, if you will, right. Okay. But as we got more and more civilized, these shifts in times started to become more noticeable because civilization was prospering, you know, people were starting to travel and alignments were becoming more important. And then we got into the Roman era. And Julius Caesar comes to power and says, you know, this is, this is all out of whack. I need this better.

So he employs someone to figure out how to make it better, and they figure out hey, we’re missing the six hours. So we end up with what we call the Julian calendar. So he left the Egyptian Calgary went to the room and calendar, the Julian calendar. So essentially, he said he they figure this out. And in 46 BC, he says, Alright, we’re going to start over, I’m going to add 99 days to the this year 46 BC to correct for the slippage and we’re going to start January 1, 45, BC, with the new calendar, the Julian calendar. So they add that six years and, and doing it, they create leap year. Okay, so we all here to leap year, which is basically every four years, we add one day to the shortest month of the year, to compensate for the six hour shift. So Feb 29th occurs every four years, essentially is a leap year.

Now, this is kind of I found this interesting, at the same time that the Romans were figuring this out and making their calendar on the opposite side of the world, independent. The Maya, were doing the exact same thing. They created a 365 day calendar, as well. They divided it up into 18 months, and they had 20 days in a month and they created a calendar round. Is that is what they called it. You know, it was intriguing that similar things were happening in society development on completely opposite sides of the earth when they were fully not in contact with each other, or as far as we know. Right. Right. Right. Right. So that’s intriguing that, and that worked for a very long time. Wow. As we advanced into the new modern times, though, and we started to record and measure time more accurately, I guess, blocks. Again, it was realized that 365 days and six hours wasn’t correct. And there was still an error there. Really, really. So the actual right thing was 365 48 minutes and 46 seconds. So that’s three, it’s 365 days, five hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds.

The correct two from the Julian calendar, to what we live with today. And today’s calendars actually known as the Gregorian calendar. Where do you get that name? Well, it was created by Pope Gregory the third, who again said, Hey, we have an issue in shipping and scheduling. And we need to figure out how to solve this problem. So he employed a mathematician, Christopher Claudius to resolve that issue. And they decided that that missing little bit of minutes there amounted to an extra three days every 400 years. So they had a simple solution. They were like, well, how are we going to figure this out? Well, Pope Gregory the third had a moment of genius. And he said, You know what, let’s take the centuries ending in 00. So you know, 2000, whatever, just your zero ending centuries. And if they’re divisible by 400, then we’re going to make those leap years and if they’re not, then they’re not leap year. So this simplify that. So like the year 1600 There is a leap year any year 2000 is also a leap year. But in the year 1700 18 119 100, we didn’t have a February 29. Leap Year, those years skipped the Leap Year to correct for the time.

Charlie

So is is that in addition to the every four years?

Rick Kooyman

Yeah, exactly. That’s it’s the correction to the Leap Year principle. So there’s a little bit modification to the four year every four year thing. And in that if the century ends in zero, and is divisible by 400, then it’s not a leap year. Oh, my goodness, well, actually, it is a leap year. And if it’s not 400, then it’s not a leap year. So it’s kind of interesting. So there’s a calendar. Okay. So now we know we live with our Gregorian calendar, and it came through, you know, all of its developments. And then we’re like, but really, we live by the week, right? Well, geez, the week is fully subjective, isn’t it? Well, China developed a five day week, which was basically established for work privileges. And then on the fifth day, was the day of bathing and hair washing. So work your servants to the bone for five days. On the fifth day, you allow them to take a bath. And then they actually moved that to 10 days. And I guess she took a bath every 10 days. We have a seven day week. So where did the seven day week come from? There’s two general kind of ideas where that might come from. One is the biblical story of creation, which we all know, you know, God created the earth. On the seventh day he rested. Or, there’s the more likely story where the Romans created in the first century, the seven day week, and they named it after the seven known planets. So it started with the Roman names of the planets. And it got a little bit taken over by the Norse and the Norse gods. And they changed half of the days of the weeks to Norse Gods name. So you have the beginning of the week with Roman planet names like Marty and Mercydie. And then you have Tui, Wote Thor and Frig, which is actually Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. So they’re just they started off as these names of planets and names of gods and the words have just been changed through dialects. And, you know, they’re kind of not exactly what they started with, but they have their roots and in the names of planets and gods. Okay, so this is arbitrary stuff right? Now, now we got this calendar that we’ve taken, I don’t know, a couple 1000 years to figure out how to get right. And we made up this arbitrary week that we all live by, and we divided that up into hours so that we can all meet each other for lunch accurately. But what does all this mean? We’re talking about numbers. So this is where I want to really take you for a ride. Okay, so let’s look at numbers mean, one to 10, we all know, you know, we can we can conceive of one to 10. Or you know, the zero in the one, you know, so it’s pretty easy to get ourselves from one to 10. But when we start talking about big numbers, it’s hard to wrap your head around it. Okay, so let’s take a look at money, because we all can conceive of money. And let’s look at Mr. Gates. So let’s say Bill Gates is worth $56 billion. Okay, so if we looked at that in a different way, we could say that he earned $3,000 a minute, or $50 a second. For his time, he worked at Microsoft. A pretty good hourly rate.

Charlie

And not too shabby.

Rick

I mean, it literally, it says if you took if he took five seconds to stop and pick up $100 bill off the floor, he was literally not using his time wisely. But again, this is the power of numbers. Okay, so we’re trying to conceive it. What does this stuff mean? All right. So we take one to one to 10. And we had, you know, billions and trillions and all that. So let’s make sense out of that. So, instead of money, let’s look at it in time. We have one second. It was one second, right? Well, if we take a million seconds, how long is that? It’s actually 12 days. That’s a nice vacation, right? Okay. million seconds is 12 days. It gives you something to conceive of, right? Right. Well, what’s up billion seconds. Long is a billion seconds. It’s actually 30 years. Right? So when you go from a million to a billion, it’s hard to conceive of how big that step is, you know, you went from 12 days to 30 years. Well, geez, trillion. You know, we keep talking about this new number with, you know, to me, I’m like, man, we’re talking about money and trillions. Now, I can’t even conceive of this. What does this mean? Right? So what is a trillion seconds?

Okay, it’s 30,000 years. Right? So you went from one second to a million seconds being 12 Days to a trillion seconds being 30,000 years. That’s longer than the historical record of human civilization. I mean, there’s some relevance, or archaeological evidence that say there might be societies of 100,000 years or whatever. But you’re still talking. A trillion in seconds is 30,000 years. That’s a huge number, right? So right, we’re getting there. We’re getting there. Okay. So now let’s, let’s take this one step further. All right. So we all measure ourselves according to this earth, year, day, hour period thing. Right? Completely relative to ourselves. So how do I mean that? Let’s say you meet an alien, this afternoon, you go out have lunch, and you’re gonna have it with the first extraterrestrial you ever met. Now, the first thing you want to know is you’re going to eat you, when we figure out that they’re not a threat. Okay, let’s see what we can learn from each other. So what would you want to ask your first alien friend? What would you want to know?

Charlie

I don’t know.

Rick

Where are you from? Mm hmm. Okay. Maybe How do you measure time? Or how old are you? What scale? Would you use them? You can’t measure it in Earth years. He’s not from our solar system. Right. So how do we relate to that? Do they die? Do they have a life cycle? What do they know about how the universe was created? Or is there a god? I mean, these are deep thoughts, right? Okay, but we can all say that we can all ask these questions, whether we’re from Earth or not. So how do we look at the scale of things? Well, in an alien representation, we can look at it on a solar timescale. Right. So now that we’ve got an idea of what billions and trillions sounds like, our solar system that we live in, is about 5 billion years old. Okay, the Earth was created about, you know, we’re about three points. 13 point. Well, I misspoke there, our solar system. Present day, we’re at 13 Point 7 billion years since the Big Bang is what they say, Okay? Now, if the sun was created, somewhere after the Big Bang, but before the earth, and all that the sun is about 4.5 billion years old. And it’s said to be about halfway through its life. So let’s say that the sun lives to be 10 billion years old, at which point it’s supposed to go into become a red giant and absorb the earth and all that and the earth will be gone. But that’s not what we’re looking at. We’re looking at solar timescales. So if we measure the universe, according to solar masses, at the end of the energy being consumed in the universe, it is estimated that all the stars will burn out in about 15 trillion years. Okay, so that’s a really big number. But it’s a really big universe, right? So think about it. In 15 trillion years, there will be no stars left in the sky, the universe will have gone completely black. Well, then what? Well, then you have all of eternity. So you’re in you’ve lost, you’ve left the solar era. And now we’re into the next era of the universe or the dark era, which we can’t even begin to conceive of. Right. So So, I guess the end of the story is or where I’m taking on all this is, you know, just recognize the absolute value of your actual personal existence, your actual time here. You know, that I think, therefore, I am position, you know, this moment right here right now. And it’s absolute relevance or you know, the specialness of it, and appreciate its for its full value, you know, and the irony of what we think of is important to us, is often not really what’s important to us, what’s really important to us is our recognition of our time. And, and appreciating the value of being able, being able to recognize it. And appreciate it while we’re here.

Charlie

So from this point forward, I now address you as Professor Rick Coleman, number one, and we’re poorly I mean, my goodness, you You really did a nice job. Going through the history i had 90%. Of what I had no idea I snooze through that class, I guess, or I just never heard of it. So that was insightful. But, you know, to put this all in perspective about, like you said, our time here and the power of now, right, really appreciating, you know, every day every moment.

Rick

Yeah, and our loved ones and, and what’s important to us and what’s, you know, maybe, relative to the moment, important to us, but not overall important to us. And in the grand scheme of things, and yeah, yeah, the power of numbers is it’s an interesting thing, the zero and the one, how far they can go.

Charlie

And amazing how that was figured out so long ago without computers, and you know, all that stuff that we just take for granted.

Rick

Wow, yeah, it all starts with watching the sun, and then watching the night sky, and then figuring out the difference between the two. And then trying to make sense out of what a trillion means. Alright, goodness, I still can’t wrap my head around man. But man, it’s such a leap. And then if you take those concepts and yet you apply them to something that they actually hold relevance to, which is kind of soldiers timescales. And there’s a finite period to that even.

Charlie

Alright, we have Yeah, blew me away today. So thank you for cheering i I have no idea what’s next man. This is uh, this is great stuff. Yeah, yeah, it was fun. So thanks for the ride. And we look forward to the next episode.

Rick

Till the next time, Charlie.

Charlie

Thanks for listening to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast. To learn more about Trade Secrets Inspections, go to www.TradeSecretsInspections.com or call to 239-537-1186.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

EP #6: Perspectives… Read More »

EP #5: Why So Much Mold in SW FL?

Podcasts / October 11, 2021

EP #5: Why So Much Mold in SW Florida?

All Episodes

Today Rick explains how the temperature you set your thermostat on can directly affect the mold in your home. Listen in for some clarity on the subject!

Charlie

Welcome to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast, because “You need to know!”. Here’s your host, Rick Kooyman.

Hey, welcome back to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast. I’m back Charlie McDermott here with Rick Kooyman. Rick, how you doing?

Rick

I’m doing excellent. It’s great to be back with you, Charlie. Looking forward to having a great discussion today.

Charlie

Yeah, and I love today’s-well… it’s a love/hate, relationship today. Anyway, I don’t love mold. But I love talking about mold and how to make sure one, you don’t end up in a situation where you have an existing situation with mold. And but that’s a hot topic and important topic for Southwest Florida. And so glad you’re going to share a lot of information that you have today. This might be one of those longer episodes, which is fine, because I think this is well, well worth it. So Rick, let’s start with the old topic. You take it away.

Rick

All right, excellent. Yeah, that’s uh, let’s discuss one of the hot topics is Southwest Florida, really all of Florida but yeah, mold is huge., and an issue and a definite concern. We often jokingly call it the “fungus among us”, but you know, we’ll talk about why that is and what we can do about it. So how’s that sound?

Charlie

I love it. I love it.

Rick

Alright, so, like I said, mold actually a fungus. In general, when we look out on the planet, there’s basically three things out there that we see. There’s a little more than that. But for our purposes, there’s animals. there’s plants, and there’s fungus. Yeah, well, mold falls under the fungus family, but not all fungus is mold. So we could clarify that now. But there’s basically three types of molds that are really of a concern to us. And we consider them either allergenic meaning that they’re irritants to us. They’re pathogenic, that they’re, they’re a little more than an irritant. They make us sick. They cause lung irritations and sinus infections. And then we have toxigenic molds. And those are the ones that can actually kill us. You know, and they make us really sick. And we call them toxic mold.

So we’ll get to that topic here shortly. But yes, so what’s going on with mold, and what happens is, it’s always around us. So mold is always out in around us. It’s, it’s in different levels, because it is a plant of a nature, and it responds to the environment. So depending on the time of day, the season a year what the weather’s doing, you know, all those environmental factors will attribute to what molds and to what level those molds are present around us. So people always say, Well, is there mold in my house? The answer’s yes. Yeah, there’s definitely your house, there’s mold everywhere and includes your house, that’s what we really want to know is, is are we creating an environment for that mold to grow? And okay, so when we look at mold, when I look for mold, I’m doing a comparison, I’m looking at what’s outside in the environment, and what’s inside in the house. And they ideally should relate, right. So there should be some correlation to what’s seen inside and outside. And if we see something going on inside, that’s what we call elevated or, you know, substantially different from what’s outside then we can say, well, something’s growing inside that house.

So we take it to the next step and try to figure out what that is, and how to correct it. But typically, with any mold, you generally need really basically, a few things for it to grow. You need the spore, obviously, you know the seed, you need a food source for it, which can be any organic material, wood, dirt, you know, skin, dead insects, any organic material will grow mold, and that includes any synthetic material that has organic debris on top of it. So we often see mold growing on plastics and metals and all kinds of things you wouldn’t think are organic, or a food source, but they have a food source on top of them, because they’re not sterile, if you will, right. So if we have those environments, and we give it a little bit of water, okay, so generally humidity is all it needs for water. Typically humidity levels above 60%. And boom, it’s it’s in its zone. You know, if the temperatures between, let’s say, 40 and a 100 degrees, that’s its ideal range, it’s going to grow. So

Charlie

as chilly is 40 degrees?

Rick

Yeah, there’s actually molds that are grow sub freezing. And there’s many that’ll live above 120. But you know, for general reasons, general topic of, you know, discussion is 40 to 100. So, anywhere inside your attic, you know, even if you’re up north in a freezing environment, it can happen. So the biggest thing we look for then is the water. Because the spores are there, there’s probably a food source there, because it’s not a sterile environment. And humidity, that’s something we control can control. And that is the variable in which we play with basically to mitigate what’s going on. And so water intrusion, humidity levels, you know, like I said, 60% or above, you’re, you’re itching for mold to grow, you know, so down here, we have a lot of part time residents. We often see thermostats get set up at 80 degrees, or even they turn the ACS off. Yeah, you’re, you’re just looking for a problem, in my opinion, right. So you really need to keep the thermostat set to about, I would say, 77, a lot of people will go to 78. But what we’re trying to do there is drop the humidity, it’s not the temperature, because obviously it’s in the 40 to 100 degrees zone, it’s the humidity, and it’s the air conditioner that’s drying out the interior. So as it’s cooling air, it’s pulling that water out, which goes down the condensate drain, hopefully that’s not blocked. And it goes outside. And then in turn, the humidity in interior is lower than the humidity outside. And we hopefully are at 60% or lower. Me personally, I run a dehumidifier in my house, in addition to the air conditioner. And in doing so, it drops another 10% of the humidity in the interior. And in 1500 square feet and 24 hours, I’ll dump five gallons of water.

Charlie

Wow. Yeah. So the water that’s in your house that you don’t… amazing. Isn’t that incredible? Yeah. And

it’s already a condition.

Rick

Yeah, yeah. And you know, it’s in the mid 70s 75/76 degrees. Yeah, five gallons a day routinely.

Charlie

So yeah, you can see how quickly, mold can just take over. Wow, yeah,

Rick

I’ve seen horrible things happen. I’ve seen mold takeover cars, you wouldn’t even imagine, you know that you’ll leave your car locked up. And it might have a little moisture leak in the floor. I’ve seen those bucket dehumidifier products left in a cars that collect supposedly, the moisture in a bucket, if you will. And it turns the inside of the car into like a big, fuzzy, growing green thing.

Charlie

You know, it’s interesting, you brought back memories, you know, when I first got down here, yeah, I saw these heard about these air conditioned garages in these places actually, place was just built off of Bonita Beach Road that has air conditioning. Auto storage garage, you said and now I get it, you know, you just you can’t leave her car garage, just sit there.

Rick

No, it and you know moisture and heat down here contribute to the deterioration of all our products as well. So not only invites an opportunity for molds to grow, but it also is causing the components to basically off gas and decompose at a rapid rate. So we see things get gooey and fall apart a lot down here. That’s a part of the environment, if you will..

Charlie

on a paradise. Yeah, right. So even. Yeah, negative side. Yeah,

Rick

yeah. So so just to get back to the mold for a second here. There’s basically well let there’s four major types of molds. We have aspergillus, which is one of those irritant kind of ones we see all the time. And then penicillin, which is very common, and it’s also what we call the pathogenic where it can make us sick. It’s definitely an allergenic it’s not toxic, though. So we get into the toxic molds, and we call those stachybotrys. There’s a few others, but those are the ones that the common name is black mold. But not all black mold is stachybotrys. So that’s kind of the misnomer there. And that’s why just because we see something growing we don’t say that it’s mold right away. We call it a microbial growth. It needs to be tested and determined what exactly microbial there is growing. And maybe it’s a fungus, maybe it’s a fungal mold. It could even be a bacteria product for that matter. But depending on what type of mold we find there, the kind of anticipates what practices, we’re going to need to mitigate it or remediate it. And it will also you can also take these results straight to your doctor, because this has a direct effect on our health, because we’re living in it. And you would be amazed that when a doctor sees what’s in the air, and you’re living in it, and they go, Oh, aha, this or correlates to this other, we didn’t even think about it. And oftentimes, you know, it’s sinusitis, or lung disease, or something of that nature. And we’re trying everything else. But really, it’s the house we’re living in, that’s really aggravating the situation. So what we do is we come in with our various tools, and we look for oddities, if you will, we’re looking for moisture, discolorations, musty odors, using various tools from, humidity readers, temperature gauges, and thermal cameras, if we can, because most of what we try to do is non invasive, borescopes, to see kind of in walls and behind and look at plumbing fittings, you know, but air conditioning vents, here’s a big thing, because you know, metal is cold, and it condensates and you often see mold growing on the vents. And you just, if you just leave it there, you’re you’re inviting the condition to be blown around in the house. So you know, areas like that we should keep an eye on and don’t be afraid to take those vents down and put them in the sink and clean them. Let them dry. Put them back on the wall. It’s there’s nothing wrong with that. Take a vacuum clean up the vent hole, you know that those things are good practices for homeowners to do if they can do it. And it’s not 20 feet in the air because it’s a big, huge vaulted ceiling.

Charlie

Wow. Wow. So it’s a it’s what you don’t see that could be a real problem, obviously. Yeah,

Rick

yeah. And you know, going on that topic, that’s a good transition for us, here’s what’s safe for us to deal with and what’s not. And what’s the law say? Again, molds a very sensitive topic here in Florida. Really, nobody unless you have a license is allowed to do mold work if we use that word. So there’s basically two people with that license. There’s a mold assessor and a mold remediator assessor is the guy that goes in and finds the degree of the problem and writes the protocols. And says, This is what needs to be done. And this is how it needs to be done. And then the remediator comes in and follows that protocol. And then when they’re done, the assessor comes back and test to make sure that it’s all clear. And then the project can be put back together. Those people are, must be involved, if we have a condition that’s greater than 10 square feet in total affected area, which isn’t a big area. So basically something a little bigger than three foot by three foot. And it’s a remediation project. You know, so behind the bathroom cabinet that’s been leaking for 15-20 years. You know, that’s typically enough area that that’s a remediation. And why is that important? Because if you open that, and don’t treat it properly, you’ve just exposed the whole rest of the house and every nook and cranny and like a big burst of spores when you open it up and it just goes airborne, and you’ve contaminated now the whole rest of your house. Wow. And, you know, so the environment is what we’re trying to protect. Like I said, mold is around us it’s always outside when it’s growing outside, there is no remediation practices because it’s outside. We just remove it and clean it up and and in that regard the remediation practices for inside is just that there’s no real easy way to just spray treat it and move on. It physically has to be removed. So it’s about treating it with a biocide. Sometimes a bleach mix of products but bleach by itself will not solve the problem. It just kills the stuff on top and bleaches the spores that are still alive and it just comes right back. Right so we got a we got to physically remove it and then it’s gone and that’s why you know encapsulation prop processes and you know negative air processes are all used contained, so that we’re not spreading it around. So 10 Square feets the rule. Under that, you know, any homeowner is allowed to deal with that issue. Technically, they could do it and test it themselves, if they could get, you know, a self test for maybe a DIY store or something. Our lab tests are very high, accurate. You know, they’re PhD lab tests. So they’re, they’re a little expensive, but they’re worth the money. Like I said, they’re definitive in nature. And you can take it to the doctor basically.

Charlie

So, so the obvious is, you know, before buying home equal to make sure it checks out as best you can. So certainly, that’s, that’s where you come in. But I know we have listeners who have no intention in moving/ buying a home, but maybe in the back of the mind are going, geez, you know, I’ve had some sinus issues, or I just want to know, just from a health standpoint, is, is that something that you can help them with? Is that something?.

Rick

Oh, absolutely That’s absolutely what we do. We do everybody from the buyers and the sellers, you know, to the people that are living in their house, and have no intention of moving, you know, that that is a good portion of what we deal with. Because when you when you’re moving, you generally move all the belongings in the house and expose things that are kind of hidden, non visible, you know, when we live in the house, and we build up our collection over 20 plus years, or whatever, we become a little bit not aware of what’s going on. And it gets a little out of hand sometimes. So yeah, a lot of it is dealing with just that. Right there. And we welcome all kinds so yeah, we’re here to help everybody.

Charlie

Awesome. Well, this was a great, great episode, like all of your episodes, but really, I think important for a lot of different reasons for for our listeners, and folks in Southwest Florida, like you said, all over the state of Florida, cuz I know you’re, you broadcast this podcast all over the country, for that matter. So good for you. Any final words on mold, Rick, that that you want to circle back around and emphasize and maybe something we forgot about?

Rick

Yeah, absolutely. Let’s just remember that mold is everywhere, it’s always going to be around us. And the way we remediate and treat for it is to, you know, keep our environments clean and control the exposure of water and humidity, and, you know, and the food which is the debris and dirt in our environment. So we control these things, and it’s within our realm to to deal and live with this product. It’s always going to be there.

Charlie

Well, hey, thanks again. Look forward to catching up in the next episode.

Rick

Absolutely. It’s great talking with Charlie, I can’t wait to do it again.

Charlie

Thanks for listening to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast. To learn more about Trade Secrets Inspections, go to www.TradeSecretsInspections.com or call to 239-537-1186.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

EP #5: Why So Much Mold in SW FL? Read More »

EP #4: 4 Point Inspections and When You Really Need one

Podcasts / August 25, 2021

4 Point Inspections and When You Really Need One

insurance report 4 point is what we call it.

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In this edition of Trade Secrets Inspections Podcasts, Rick explains the purpose of an insurance report called a “4-Point Inspection” and how it relates to your insurance coverage. Especially if you own an older home, listen in for some clarity on the subject!

Charlie
Welcome to the Trade Secrets Inspections podcast because you need to know, here’s your host, Rick Kooyman. Hey this is Charlie McDermott, I am back in the trade secrets inspection studio with none other than Rick Kooyman. And Rick, how you doing today?

Rick
Excellent, Charlie, great to be with you, again.

Charlie
Great to have you and your your knowledge, I just just hear far and wide how every time I talk about your show, oh, my goodness, I always learned something new from Rick. And then you have a great topic for us today. And that being the four point inspections, I couldn’t even tell you what one point is. So I can’t wait to hear all four. So, Rick, let’s start with that. Tell us about the importance of the four point inspections and what they even are for that matter.

It’s more for going to get insurance, and it’s generally used on older properties.

Rick

Yeah, right. The four point inspections is is one of those insurance documents in a sense, and people often get that confused right off the bat, because they think it’s just another form of inspection for a customer. And it really isn’t for the customer in that regard for them to interpret. It’s more for going to get insurance, and it’s generally used on older properties. So it’s a way for underwriters to get the details, basically.

Charlie
Okay, so is the concept that, you know, obviously, insurance is all about risk. And they need to understand the risk level of older properties is that kind of the point?

Rick
So they’re they’re looking at when they come up with a four point, the four major systems that they’re evaluating the risk of, they want to know what their general conditions are, when they were last serviced, you know what they are, you know, they have some very specific questions. So I was actually going to go through each each of the sections, because as a homeowner, there’s stuff you can do with this to kind of prepare for when this actually comes out. And it’ll affect how I have to record it. And you know, that some a little preparation ahead of time, a little cleaning up a little paint here, and there can go a long way, in a great world a lot better off.

Charlie
Awesome, awesome. Yeah, go ahead.

The 4 Systems Inspected During a 4-Point

Rick
Yeah, so let’s just start with what are the four systems, right? So we can look at is the electric system, your air conditioning, heat, your hvac, your plumbing system, and your roof system. Within those four components, they want to know a bunch of information. So when we get hired by the insurance company, or you the customer to come out and do this for you, we’re essentially made to ask a whole series of questions, you know, they basically checkboxes and input data kind of thing on a form, you know, so starting with the electrical panel, they’re looking for manufacturer, and then conditional wires, and what kind of wire systems are used, specifically is aluminum involved because they want to know, aluminum can be a high risk activity.

In older homes, you often have wire that is not insulated, we call it knob and tube wire, or there’s even the older style cloth wire, that actual cloth line wire gets, especially down here, it gets really brittle, and it becomes a fire hazard just in itself. So they they look for things like that. And then we take pictures, everything. So if we find something wrong, or something that needs to be reported, we have to show a picture of it. If it you know is presented in one of the topics on the form, you know, such as blown fuses or you know, corrosion or scorching, or something like that, we’ve got to show the proof of it. And then if we find nothing wrong, well, then we just take a picture of it is one big shot and the underwriter can see it and we check it off is satisfactory, we’ll move on to the next section. You know, so electrical, we don’t ever encourage people to get involved with themselves, because it’s often hazardous.

But people often ask, why does it matter that these things get corrected? And I always say, well, it generally matters for insurance forms. So when we do the other inspections, and we’re like, hey, you’ve got a you know, these double taps in here. And it’s not really a huge issue, except for the insurance underwriters won’t give you a policy if they know about it. Right. So this is why those things got to get corrected. And again, this is why I say you know ahead of time, then you can prepare and then instead of me coming out there and saying oh there’s this problem in here. And if I say there’s a problem, they’re immediately going to disqualify it and say yeah, we don’t want to be involved with that until there’s no problems we want to clean form essentially.

Charlie
No surprises right.

Rick
There in there in comes the next section of the hvac you know, and this is one where people can definitely help themselves out especially in Florida with all this moisture and humidity and rain and heat using using the air conditioning excessively. They specifically ask is there indications of water staining from you know, condensation leaks or interior air handler condensate tray leaks, you know, water staining on your ceiling. Those kinds of things matter when we come out and do this inspection because they’re specifically asking those questions. And then we have to show a picture of it clear if it’s not. So it’s not about just our discretion. It’s literally about checking the boxes and then showing the proof, you know, so if in the past your drain line has gotten clogged up, because you know, who hasn’t neglected your condensate drain and Florida. And it backed up and made a stain on your ceiling, and you got it fixed three years ago, and it’s never been a problem. And there’s just a brown spot there. Well paint the brown spot before we come out and do this inspection. Otherwise, we got to report that there’s a stain on the ceiling, and that’s unsatisfactory, as silly as that might sound.

Charlie
Wow, that’s great. Yep.

Rick
Well, it matters keeping, you know, making things look good, I guess, in a way actually does matter, to some extent more than some people would like to think it does. Right. And then the next section, they talk about plumbing, and this is sometimes more about conditions of equipment. Again, water is their biggest concern when they’re writing risk policies.

What kind of the pipes? Are they specifically they want to know what are your drain pipes made out of where your supply pipes made out of? And then they want to know about valves are they functional, or they show signs of leaking,again this question of leaks, they actually asked, Is there an indication of a prior leak Yes, or no? Water staining again, you know, it goes to that point, I got to put a picture around the toilet if the toilet leaked A few years ago, and the floors all messed up because of it. Well, they’re not going to want to be part of that. So yeah, those occur and those things are going to need to get taken care of, but they go as far as wanting to know about the kitchen appliances, they you know, dishwasher, refrigerator, washing machine, of course, your water heater, and then all your fixtures, your bathtubs, your toilets, your sinks, you know, any of your main valves, if you have a sump pump, which you probably don’t in Florida, but they want to know about anything to do with water, essentially, any of those things where you have those those past issues that guy got taken care of, but never got cleaned up. toilets and around air handlers. Yeah, that’s some that’s some, some a few minutes with some paint that can really go a long way for your insurance coverage and your rates and stuff like that.

And then the last one we talk about is roofs, because, you know, of course, the roof in Florida is one of the most important things and it’s one of the first things to go and when the storms hit. So again, they’re just looking at conditions. Is there damage? How old is the roof? What kind of roof is it? You know, has it been partially replaced or fully replaced, you know, different kinds of roofs they ask different kinds of questions about you know, if it’s asphalt shingle, is it, you know, sun worn and cracked and cut and all that kind of stuff? And if it’s tile, are they cracked and missing? You know? And again, are there any indications of leaks past or present? That question comes up in all four sections. So you know, these matter, as far as you know, taking care of your home, and when the insurance appraisers come out, and when they send out us to do these inspection reports. You know, conditions make a difference is the is the note for today.

Charlie
Wow, that’s great, great stuff. I mean, it reminded me I have a closet, of course in the ceiling, if you look up, which is right below the HVAC unit from spill over years ago, it’s like, you know, who’s ever gonna look in the closet is a good reminder. You know, it’s worth getting a paintbrush out, right?

Rick
Yeah, right. I mean, you know, you can wait until the insurance tells you you need to have this done. But most people don’t even know that. And they don’t tell you ahead of time. And oftentimes, I don’t get to speak with the customer, necessarily when it gets scheduled. I mean, if I’m talking to somebody, I always try to give everybody a heads up on what’s going on. But you know, everybody’s different. A lot of people are out of town. Most of these homes are not occupied. So that’s where I just get sent in and report what I see.

Charlie
Yeah, yeah. Well, this is really helpful. Besides the fact that I now know what a four point inspection is. our listeners also know some of the things that they can do to ,yeah,. Make sure the process goes a lot smoother without any surprises.

So this is awesome, Rick.

Unknown Speaker
Excellent. Excellent. Yeah. And this goes hand in hand with the last episode we went, we did together on the wind mit form. So wind mitigation goes hand in hand with insurance and as the homes get older, they ask for this four point inspection and depending on who The underwriter is depends on how old the home is when they ask for it, it might be 10 years it might be 30 years. So it’s all over the spectrum. Wow.

Charlie
Wow. Great stuff. Rick, really appreciate you spending time with us again today and I look forward to our next episode.

Rick
Excellent speaker with you again, Charlie.

Charlie
Thanks for listening to the Trade Secrets Inspections Podcast. To learn more about Trade Secrets Inspections, go to www.TradeSecretsInspections.com or call 239-537-1186

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

EP #4: 4 Point Inspections and When You Really Need one Read More »

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4 Point Inspections and When You Really Need One

It’s more for going to get insurance, and it’s generally used on older properties.

The 4 Systems Inspected During a 4-Point

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