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Experience
All inspections are performed by Terry Carson, a Registered Home Inspector (RHI) of the Ontario Association of Home Inspectors. Terry is also a qualified member of the American Society of Home Inspectors (ASHI), and a Certified Technician with the Ontario Association of Certified Technicians and Technologists. Terry has inspected full time since 1984, built and renovated houses, developed courses, curriculum and examinations for Canadian and US home inspectors. Terry currently teaches home inspectors as well as real estate agents as a Continuing Education Instructor for the Ontario Real Estate Association. Few home inspectors have his level of knowledge and experience to recognize the issues and provide creative solutions.
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Equipment
A thorough inspection requires the right tools to access the problem areas, to confirm, quantify and document the conditions. The following list is some of the equipment that we bring to our inspections.
Palm-top computer and Printer to deliver concise reports with recommendations on site at time of inspection.
Digital-video with 40 X optical power to provide video highlights of the roof inspection to the client, to bring distant features into view and to document conditions for future reference.
Inside shoes and protective covers to respect the premises we are inspecting.
Ladders ( 28 ft extension and 14 ft articulating) for accessing roofs and attics.
Moisture meters (non destructive, resistance pin and extended pin type) for detecting moisture in foundations, structures and finishes.
Gas Detection sensors to detect and quantify carbon monoxide and combustion gases.
Thermometers (infra-red and electronic probe type ) to verify mechanical equipment operation.
Psychrometers (sling and electronic) to verify interior humidity conditions.
Electrical sensors to test connections and quantify electrical current and voltage.
Endoscope to see inside interior wall and ceiling cavity conditions when required.
Lights, smoke and mirrors for illuminating conditions, testing draft, and seeing around corners.
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Reports
Guardianıs on-site typed report, provided at the end of the inspection lists the specific issues according to the priority of repair and provides recommendations to help the client resolve any deficiencies noted with confidence. The report can be easily faxed, if the client so chooses. Photo documentation can be provided, if required.
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Testimonials
Your Home - Home Inspection is a crucial precaution
By Andrew Gorham, Town Crier, November 1999
We fell in love with the house the moment we walked in. High ceilings and hardwood floors accented unique layout, beautiful windows and lots of room to live. The kitchen was large, the basement dry, and a quaint winding staircase led to a bright third floor loft with adjoining balcony. The bathroom was a little worn and the garage was falling down, but this just offered us the chance to mould the house to our likings.
With a little work and imagination, my wife and I were going to make this, our first house, a beautiful home to raise our soon-to-be born child. The future was ours.
We put an offer in, it was accepted and , after the home inspector signed-off, we could begin our new life.
Enter Terry Carson, home inspector. Meticulous, professional and thorough, this ruthless bastard did not have a romantic bone in his body. Where we saw quaint, he saw shoddy. Where we saw potential, he saw potential for disaster. Where we saw room for improvement he saw room for demolition. Carson started on the outside and within minutes, while gingerly traversing the roof of the front porch found a problem.
AHH; we have tenants,he called down, referring to a family of squirrels living in the dormer.
It was the first of what would become a long list of faults with our dream home. Twenty minutes into the house we glumly followed Inspector Gadget (as we playfully called him) from room to room as he poked holes in walls, chipped at rotting mortar, peered into un-insulated and long forgotten cubbyholes, noted leaking toilets, smirked at amateurish wiring and generally turned his nose up at our little dream home.
Carson is used to the initial aggression directed at him when he turns his thumb down on a home. But, like the principal administering the strap, it's for the prospective home-buyer's own good.
Isnıt that guy a downer, joked a friend, who recently benefitted from Carson's inspection service and ran (as fast as his feet would carry him) away from a $200,000 money pit.
After a painful two hours, we gathered on the front lawn around Inspector Gadget's portable picnic table for a re-cap of the problems and some ballpark figures for repair. We were looking at a $30,000 bill to move in; plus cosmetic work.
The deal was toast. Carson saved us from years of misery. Our agent phoned the seller with the bad news.
The housing market in Toronto is booming, especially in Midtown, Leaside and North Toronto, where real estate agents will scare the hell out of you with tales of bidding wars, fierce competition and houses selling for thousands of dollars above list price.
A new and very dangerous tactic to snare a house away from other bidders in this super-heated market is to buy without the traditional home inspection. The perils accompanying this strategy are obvious.
We are still slavishly writing cheques that pay off our landlord's mortgage. Our kid is only months away and the apartment grows a little smaller each day.
But next time we fall in love with a house, we'll call the home inspector for a rude dose of reality. His medicine is bitter and hard to swallow. And it will save us years of heartache and pain.
Editor's note: Two days after writing this, Andrew and his wife entered into a bidding war over a house, waived a home inspection to get an edge on the competition and are now a bona fide home owner. An ultra sound has shown the babyıs fingers are crossed.
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Globe and Mail (March 4, 2000) Leah MacLaren
Inspecting the skin-and bone house-the cladding might be dusty, but if the foundation's strong, who cares what your fitness trainer says?
The modern medieval torture chamber is staffed by chipper girls in pink sweatshirts, either named Krista or Kim. Your complimentary tour of the facilities seems benign: Krista shows you the free weights, the cardio zone, the steam room and her new diamond-cluster engagement ring. Swiping your credit card, she bitches cheerfully about her daily commute and you find yourself humming along to the Mariah Carey tune being piped in from nowhere.
Then she ushers you into a small, windowless office for your mandatory Microfit Fitness profile. You are informed that for insurance reasons" this is not an optional procedure.
In a lame attempt at discretion, I had decided to write this story in the second person, but screw it. As you've no doubt guessed, I recently joined a gym-one of those chintzy, corporate health clubs with a bathtub-sized pool and aquamarine carpets in the changing rooms, the kind of place people join for no other reason than its convenient proximity to the office.
Iım five-foot-seven and weigh 135 pounds. Just over a week ago, during my aforementioned Mandatory Microfit Fitness Profile, a sadistic and visibly pregnant trainer placed electrodes on my ankles and wrists and informed me that, based on my "body fat percentage," it was recommended that I loose 17 pounds.
"This puts your target weight at approximately 118 pounds." she said. I pictured 17 foil-wrapped pounds of butter stacked on a butcher's block and slumped against the water cooler, suddenly dizzy. I could afford to shed a few, sure, but 118 pounds? The last time Iıd seen those digits on the doctor's scale I was 15, eating nothing but cigarettes.
I suggested to Kim that perhaps her computer was on the fritz. How could I be so grossly overweight when I scored well above average in my flexibility, heart rate and blood pressure levels? The trainer displayed a calm, pregnant-lady smile and began babbling about all the "goals" I could achieve with the help of a "certified personal trainer."
I'm not a complete idiot. I recognized this for the vile sales technique it really was, but the words had been spoken. And just like the guy who doubts himself after a spurned lover mocks his performance in bed, so I doubted my poor bod. The "goal" throbbed in my head as if those evil electrodes had jolted it into the rhythm of my blood: 17 pounds, 17 pounds, 17 pounds...
Then, over the weekend, I attended the inspection of a brick-front rowhouse, 100 and something years old, in the gut of the city. The inspector was a cool, a nerdish kind of James Bond, and I immediately trusted him. Handicam in hand, he scaled the pitched Victorian roof and videotaped the contents of the eavestroughs. He pointed out cracks in the foundation, looked for drainpipes in the basement floor and knob and tube wiring in the ceiling.
He worked with an utterly disinterested eye. His concerns were not cosmetic, but structural. He put that smug pregnant trainer to shame. At the end of two hours, he typed his findings into a palmtop computer and printed off a rolling pin sized printer. Then he produced a collapsible four -seater picnic table from his back pocket and invited us to sit and confer on the sidewalk.
The news was good. The little house had passed the test. At 100-something years of age it was fab, it was fine, it was to use the inspector's word "satisfactory."
So the crooked old house was fit, but the 20-something girl was fat? I fretted privately as the inspector packed up his gadgets. "Inspect me!" I wanted to scream as he got into his van and drive away, but it was too late.
Since then, I've started to think of body as though it were a house. (I actually see it as a rambling neo-gothic farm-house with a wraparound porch and a haunted attic, but never mind that.) If we encounter our bodies with the same sense of romance we adopt when looking at a building, the mirror would be a much happier place. Repeat after me: Ooh, look at those original molars, how gorgeous. And that exposed cellulite, that's got to be -what?-45 years old? Those hooded eyelids add so much character. And so on.
As for my dreaded 17 pounds, what idiot would tear off a perfectly good addition? Call it Oprah-ish if you like, but it's a technique that works. Krista and Kim can kiss my booty. So long as the foundation is sturdy, Iım feeling perfectly satisfactory.
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