When a Home Inspector Flags Your Recent Work

Why this matters

You installed a water heater, a panel or a roof four months ago, the owner is now selling, and the buyer's home inspector has written your work up as defective. The seller forwards the page with one line: "Is this true?" What happens next decides whether you keep the customer, whether the buyer's agent asks for a credit with your name attached to it, and whether your reputation with that agent's office goes up or down. Some of these flags are wrong, some are right, and some are an opinion dressed as a defect. The job is to tell which is which from facts you can show, and answer in writing, calmly, in a way the buyer's side can accept.

What a home inspector is, and is not

A home inspector performs a visual, non-invasive survey of a house for a client, usually the buyer, against a standard of practice: the state's, where inspectors are licensed, or a professional association's. Two features of that standard matter here:

• It is not a code inspection. Most standards of practice state in plain terms that the inspector does not determine code compliance. An inspector who writes "not to code" is usually offering an opinion beyond the standard, though often a well-informed one.
• It is a generalist's look. The inspector sees one house in two or three hours across every system. They may not know a regional exception, the code edition your jurisdiction adopted, or a manufacturer's installation allowance.

The authority having jurisdiction (AHJ), the local building department, is the body that decides code compliance, and a passed final inspection on a permit is its record that it accepted the work. For permitted work, the code edition in force when the permit was issued generally governs, though how a jurisdiction treats later editions varies; confirm with your building department if it is in dispute.

The report belongs to the inspector's client. You are usually seeing it second-hand, through the seller and the listing agent, so your reply is written to the person who hired you, for forwarding.

Sorting the flag into one of three

Before you answer anything, put each flagged item in one bucket, using only what you can show:

1. The inspector is right. The work does not meet the code edition that applied, or the manufacturer's instructions, and you can see it in your own photos or on a return visit.
2. The inspector is wrong on the facts. The thing is there and was missed (a sediment trap hidden behind a jacket, a bond that is present but out of sight), or the requirement they cite does not apply in this location or under this edition.
3. The inspector is stating a preference. A recommendation that is good practice but not required: "recommend expansion tank," "consider surge protection." Not a defect, but not a reason to argue either.

The bucket decides the tone. Bucket 1 is a correction and an offer. Bucket 2 is evidence, offered without heat. Bucket 3 is "not required; available as an option."

What you gather before writing a word

• Your job record: date, scope, the tech, materials, and every photo with its date. Photos of finished work before it was covered or enclosed are the most valuable thing you own in this situation.
• The permit: number, the date issued, and the final inspection result and date. A passed final is the AHJ's acceptance, not proof the work is perfect, but it changes the conversation.
• The code section you rely on, in the edition your jurisdiction adopted, read from the text itself, not from memory.
• The manufacturer's installation instructions for the equipment, which often govern clearances and venting and are adopted by reference in most codes.

If a return visit is needed to see the item, offer one, at no charge for a look. Go with the seller's permission and through the listing agent.

The reply, and what it does not try to do

Write it to the seller, with a request that the listing agent forward it. Lead with the outcome for each item, then the evidence, then any offer. Keep it to facts you can attach.

What the reply does not try to do: decide what the reply means for the sale, argue with the inspector's competence, or promise the buyer anything. Whether your letter settles the buyer's repair request is up to the parties. And whether a statement in it binds you later is a legal question for your own attorney; the operational fact you can bank is that you have stated your position on a date, with evidence, in writing.

A phone call to the inspector, with the seller's permission, often resolves a bucket 2 item in five minutes. Most inspectors would rather correct a report than defend an error. Follow the call with the written reply anyway, because the call leaves no record.

Worked case: three flags on a four-month-old water heater

A plumbing shop replaced a 50-gallon gas water heater in a garage, on a permit, four months ago. The final inspection passed 9 days after install. The buyer's inspector flags three items:

• "No drain pan under water heater. Recommend correction by a licensed plumber."
• "Gas supply lacks sediment trap. Safety concern."
• "Temperature and pressure relief valve discharge pipe terminates approximately 14 in above floor. Should terminate within 6 in."

The office pulls the job: 22 photos, the permit with its passed final, and the install instructions.

Drain pan: bucket 2. The heater sits on the garage slab beside a floor drain. The pan requirement in the residential code's water heater chapter applies where a leak would damage the building, such as an attic or a floor over finished space, and the jurisdiction's adopted edition reads that way. A slab next to a drain is not that case. The shop also notes it would install a pan on request.

Sediment trap: bucket 2. Photo 14, taken before the jacket was closed, shows the trap (a capped vertical drop of pipe that catches debris before the gas valve) installed below the tee. It is now hidden behind the heater's insulation blanket, which is why it was missed.

Relief valve discharge: bucket 1. The photos confirm it. The pipe was cut short. The relief-valve discharge section of the residential code (P2804.6.1 in recent IRC editions; check the edition your jurisdiction adopted) requires it to end no more than 6 inches above the floor, so a scalding discharge is directed down rather than outward at someone's legs. The inspector is right, and the final inspection missed it too. The shop offers to correct it at no charge within the week.

To: seller, via listing agent            Apr 22
Re: inspection items, water heater, installed Dec 14
Permit B-24-1187, final passed Dec 23

1. Drain pan: not required here. Heater is on the
   slab beside a floor drain; the code applies the
   pan rule where a leak would damage the building.
   We will add one on request, priced separately.
2. Sediment trap: installed. See attached photo 14
   taken before the jacket was closed. It is behind
   the insulation blanket today.
3. Relief valve discharge: correct finding. Our pipe
   ends about 14 in above the floor; it should end
   within 6 in. We will extend it at no charge.
   Available Apr 24 or Apr 25.
Attached: permit card, photos 9, 14, 17.

The correction. The tech extends the discharge pipe with the same material and size as the valve outlet, ending within 6 inches of the slab with no threads on the open end. A relief valve can open at any moment on a heater at temperature and discharges near-boiling water, so the tech never lifts the valve's test lever during the work, keeps hands and face out of line with the outlet while the pipe is off, and does not remove the valve itself without first shutting off the cold supply and relieving pressure at a hot tap. The tech photographs the finished termination with a tape measure at the floor and sends it to the seller the same day.

What would change the answers. If the heater had been in an attic, item 1 moves to bucket 1, and the shop owes the pan. If the jurisdiction had amended its code to require pans in garages (some do), item 1 also flips, and the final inspection's approval would not save it. If photo 14 had not existed, item 2 needs a return visit and a look behind the blanket before anyone replies, because "we always install one" is not evidence. And if the work had been done without a permit, there is no AHJ acceptance at all; see related: Open Permits and Unpermitted Work in a Sale.

When the inspector is right, all the way through

Bucket 1 needs three things, quickly. Say so first, in the first line for that item, without qualifying it; a shop that concedes the real defect plainly is believed on the items it disputes. Fix it at no charge if it was your workmanship, whatever your written warranty period says, because the cost of the correction is small against the cost of your name in a buyer's credit request. Document the fix as you would any pre-sale repair: before and after photos, a one-line description, and the date. See related: Documenting a Pre-Sale Repair for the Buyer's File.

Then take it back to the shop. A cut-short discharge pipe on a passed final means two checks missed it, the tech's and the AHJ's. Add the measurement to the install checklist and the closing photo set for that job type, so it is recorded on the next one.

How to know you handled it well

Within a day of the forward, did the seller have a written answer for every flagged item, each in a named bucket, each with a document or photo attached? Did the bucket 1 item get a dated offer to fix, and was the fix photographed? Did the reply avoid any comment on the inspector or on the sale? And did the job type's checklist change, so the same flag cannot appear on next month's install?

References

• International Residential Code, water heater chapter (pan and relief-valve discharge provisions) and fuel gas chapter (sediment traps), in the edition your jurisdiction has adopted, with local amendments.
• The manufacturer's installation instructions for the equipment.
• Your state's home inspection standard of practice, or the inspector's association standard, for what the inspection does and does not cover.
• See related: Reading a Home Inspection Report as a Trade
• See related: Documenting a Pre-Sale Repair for the Buyer's File