Inspection Of Bathroom Is Crucial
Home inspections are meant to disclose any existing and potential problems in the home you are considering buying. Many people make the mistake of avoiding home inspections. They later repent at leisure, once they have bought the home, and find a number of defects for which they have to foot the repair bill. Home inspections are not expensive, considering that you are buying a home worth, say, $300,000 and the home inspection costs only, say, $600, depending on the type of inspection you wish to carry out. This works out to only 0.2 percent of your purchase cost!
One of the most critical places to inspect in a home is the bathroom. This is one place in your home you visit the first thing in the morning, and the last place at night.
If the home you are considering has a bathtub in the bathroom, let us start with that. Bathtubs come in a variety of materials, such as porcelain, acrylic, fiberglass or cultured marble. Check out the condition of the tub. After years of use, the bathtubs could be stained, scratched, and generally discolored. Bathtubs may be chipped, cracked, or may have burn marks.
Bathtubs made from porcelain get chipped or cracked. Those of fiberglass often crack, and have weakened bottoms. Of course, the bathtubs can be restored to their pristine condition, but cost money. You can discuss this with the seller, asking him to restore the bathtubs.
The inspections look at the condition of the various pipes and the drainpipes attached to the bathtubs. There is a need to check out the condition of the faucets attached to the tubs. Check to see whether the stopper in the tub is working properly. Also check to see whether the water drains out efficiently, and there is no clogging and leakage. Do the drains in the tubs come with an over flow arrangement, and is this contraption working properly? This, in case, the faucet keeps running.
Check to see the safety features in the bathtub. The bathtub is one place that has many accidents. The biggest danger is slipping. Check to see whether the bathtub has a non-slip mat. If there are elderly people in your household, you may need to make the bathtubs safe for their use. Of course, you may have to do this at your own expense, as the seller has no responsibility towards making the tub child or elder safe.
You need to talk with the seller about repairing the existing faults in the bathtub. If the bathtubs have doors affixed to them, they should be checked to see that they open and close properly. Check to see whether they have been maintained properly. Metal/aluminum frames can have scratches on them. Check to see if there are hard water spots on the glass. These could have been avoided with diligent maintenance.
You can negotiate with the seller to either have all these defects rectified, including any leakages, drain pipe faults, etc, or adjust the cost toward repairs from the price of the home.
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