Electric: GFCI outlets in bathrooms, kitchens, exterior outlets and garages. I often find that portions of concrete patio slabs have settled while other portions stay intact. Don't even think about buying a home without a thorough inspection by an experienced inspection professional. Add a wet ground and you have a recipe for a disaster.

Garage Door: Your door may open and close just fine. However the furnace filter may also be two years old, which is a potential carbon monoxide issue.

Shower Door: If the door is made of glass that is non-tempered material, you have an extremely serious safety issue that you need to correct immediately. Do you know if your outlets are grounded? Is your service equipment capacity adequate? If you don't know, forget about adding any more electric appliances until you find out.


Stair Railings: They always look safe and secure from a distance.

Exterior: Uneven patio slabs. These grounded outlets help protect against electric shock should someone come into contact with water when operating an electrical appliance. Call an electrician and your utility company immediately. When a well cover is in place it locks from the inside near the basement window with a pin type mechanism. Don't assume that the current homeowner changed the filters as required.

Exterior Doors: Do you have a nice secure deadbolt installed that you lock from the inside before going to sleep? How are you going to get out of the home should there be a fire and you can't find your door keys? Even if it's during the day, don't leave your keys in the lock. If you don't have optical motion sensors they would be a very worthwhile investment. If someone fell in because you failed to cover it, injuries are likely to occur.

Clothes Dryer: Did you know that in many homes the dryer exhaust vent is made of vinyl that can melt and cause a fire? The vent material should be flexible metal.

Being a long time resident of the home, you may have become so used to your surroundings "as they are", that you may not recognize an issue even if you were looking right at it. Test regularly. Possibly live wires in direct contact with water. My goal is to hopefully prevent someone from being injured at home whether it is a prospective buyer, seller or current homeowner. A fatal charge may await you.

Furnace: Nice looking two year old furnace in your new home? Good for you.This article is not intended to scare the witts out of someone looking to buy or sell a home. Window well covers provide additional security for your home. Once I barely touched a railing and it fell off. My comments are based on extensive experience in home and building inspections.

I find safety hazards in many homes that I inspect, new and old. But if you have a well that is not covered, it is a serious safety issue you need to correct
immediately. That's what burglars look for if you have a small window next to the door. Lower the heat setting on your water heater if needed. So are water faucet temperatures exceeding 130 degrees, which is an extreme scalding hazard especially for children. If you needed to escape your home from the basement window, would the window and well cover mechanisms release as intended? How do you know? Did you ever test them?

Roof: Feel like cleaning tree branches off the roof of your new home? Before you placed the metal ladder against the side of the home, would you have checked to make sure that overhead electrical wiring is not in contact with any portion of the gutters?

Attics: If for some reason you must venture into this area of your home, one bad step may send you crashing to the ground. But would it reverse if it came into contact with someone who might be underneath when closing it? Reverse features sometimes fail and cause severe, even fatal injuries. The attic floor (which is your living space ceiling) is usually nothing more than a thin sheet of drywall.

Please let me share some straightforward advice. Not buying or selling? Then if you're a homeowner who has no plans on moving, a safety/maintenance inspection would be the best home investment you can make
. Here are some of them:

Plumbing: Hot and cold water lines reversed are more common than you think. Are yours firm China rubber seal for sale and securely fastened?

Crawl Space: Besides the long list of maintenance issues that are common especially in unconditioned crawl spaces, many have wires strewn across the ground or dangling overhead. Secondly, if you are thinking of selling you should strongly consider a pre-listing inspection before placing the home on the market. Would you have known to stay out of the crawl space? Same goes for the basement.

Deck/Balcony Balusters: Are you aware that a very young child can squeeze between balusters that are more than four inches a part?

Stairs: Any stairway with four or more steps without a handrail is considered a trip hazard and depending on the municipality, may also be a code violation. This a serious trip hazard that often goes unnoticed until someone gets hurt. Don't eve go into a basement that's flooded