Rick Bunzel's (rickbunzel) Blog

 As a home inspector I am frequently identifying old smoke detectors (10+ years) and recommending new ones be installed. Many clients want to know which ones which ones they should buy. Something is better nothing... As a firefighter I have been to numerous calls in the past 10 years where a work...

 I follow an Indoor Air Quality group on Yahoo. This post came in recently: On 4/1/08 12:00 PM, "midsouthbuilders" wrote: I am a builder and as such, no stranger to mold contamination. We just finished a large custom home and within three weeks of occupancy, the new ho...

  by Rick Bunzel   In a slower market we all have less money to spend but in the Home Inspection Industry those that don’t market dry up and move on. If you’re marketing budget is too small your going to lose...

Kids and Smoke Detectors Don't be so sure that your smoke detectors will wake your sleeping children if there is a fire. Recently there are been several reports that show that sleeping children do not respond to smoke detector alerts. Based on these reports the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commi...

   A new year, a new goal. Every January we get to take stock and make a new begining. Some of us are more successful and accomplishing our goals then others. I want to make this year simpler, so I decided to work on one goal. To get there I thought of 7 essential tips for accomplishing this goal...

On another post I saw an new inspector set of goal of dominating the web with his site. Thats a great goal but you need to figure out how you want to be found. For example, if I say I want to dominate all searches for "Anacortes Home Inspection" then my goal is to have my website come up in the f...

You can't see it, smell it, or taste it. Yet there's at least a chance it's in your home if you have a furnace, a fireplace, a water heater, a generator or anything else that burns fossil fuels. After the December 2006 windstorm raged across the region, more than 300 people were sickened, and eig...

Why do inspector's say my client's furnace or water heater needs to be replaced when they are working just fine? Answer: Most inspector's (like Realtor's) are trying to protect their client from having to deal with expensive component replacement . When we estimate the particular component is at ...

There has been a lot of discussion lately over the terms we use in the home inspection industry to express an individual’s competency. Certified, Master or in some states, Licensed are terms commonly used. The first two can freely be used to describe anyone while the later is regulated and award...

 In today's Wall Street Journal - Real Estate Journal site June Fletcher talks about disclosure and how the home inspector should be calling out code violations. Home inspectors do not inspect for code violations. Building Codes are ever changing, no two city codes are the same and variances are ...