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     One of the most common areas for a Home Inspector to discover water problems is in the flooring and sub-floors, especially in bathrooms around toilets, tubs, and showers.  Water can infitrate into areas where the caulking has been compromised or is missing.  In addition, wax sealant rings on toilets can lose their seal, which allows water to seep under the floor covering.  Sometimes, this is obvious by a discoloration in the vinyl, linoleum, and grout lines in ceramic tile floors.  However, often the leaks will go undiscovered.  If undetected, over time leaks will affect the wood structure of the floor, possibly leading to decay and eventual failure.  As a general contractor for forty-plus years and now as a Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector, I have seen this many times and replaced many sub-floors, always to the chagrin of the homeowner and their wallets.  However, if the homeowner had monitored and maintained these susceptible areas, much of the repair costs could have been avoided.  A quality Home Inspection will aid the homeowner by discovering these areas of water intrusion, hopefully before any major repair costs will be required.

     Is it true that the presence of excess water must be visible in order to be detected?  Not always.  Which is the reason why most Home Inspectors will utilize moisture meters to determine the percentage of moisture in building materials.  Often, water problems can be detected before any major structural damage has occurred.  Perhaps the best place to look for moisture problems in bathrooms is in the crawlspace.  Water damaged sub-flooring is much more obvious from below, especially around toilets.  Often, damp sub-floors will have evidence of decay, mold growth, or various other wood destroying organisms.

     Broken or leaking pipes in walls can also lead to a host of other problems for the unwary homeowner.  Several years ago, I was asked by a very kindly elderly woman to investigate and repair a suspected copper water pipe leak in her bathroom wall.  She also mentioned that she had a recent invasion of cockroaches into her home.  The only access to the pipes was to remove a portion of the exterior siding.  I noticed that she had a large tree only a couple of feet from this wall.  I removed the siding and was surprised to see that trees’ roots had traveled up into the wall, all the way up to the roofline, taking with them quite a bit of soil.  These roots were packed tightly into three full corriders between studs, and were being kept warm and moist by a burst copper hot water pipe.  When I pulled these root towers from the wall, the ground came alive with literally tens of thousands of swarming cockroaches!  I had never seen so many cockroaches in my life.  It was like stepping into the Twilight Zone.  After my initial shock, I was able to commence repairing the now four or five major problems, all stemming from a small water leak which had gone undetected for quite a while.  I had to kill the roaches, repair the water line, rebuild the wall because of the rotted bottom plate, cut the tree roots back to a safer distance away from the wall, replace rotted drywall and baseboard inside the house, and recaulk and repaint everything.  So, as you can see, early monitoring and detection either by the homeowner or with a comprehensive Home Inspection can make a huge difference in repair costs.

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