John Martino's (looksmart) Blog

As a home inspector in New Jersey, one thing that I have to be aware of when performing home inspections is the presence of lead paint an older New Jersey homes. Lead was a common component used in paint until the late 1970s. Lead paint does present significant health risks even to this day. It i...

New Jersey home inspectors should be familiar with the components and the operation of private water wells. There are over 400,000 private water wells in New Jersey. There are more than 23 million households that have private water wells for providing potable water in the United States as indicat...

New Jersey home inspectors should be looking for improperly installed or missing chimney flashing details. The chimney flashing is the set of sheet metal details that keeps the area between the chimney and the roof watertight. Chimney flashing is often poorly installed or missing altogether. With...

Home inspectors in New Jersey often inspect properties with wood retaining walls. As home inspectors we often find problems with these wood tie walls such as wood rot, water damage, insect damage and inadequate construction.  Often these walls are built over masonry, pavers, or stone walls becaus...

As home inspectors in New Jersey, we still come across electrical panel boxes that are made by the Zinsmeyer company. These panels were installed in homes in the 1950's to the 1970's. Zinsco electrical panels were both used in residential and commercial applications and their appeal was their low...

New Jersey home inspectors should be on the lookout for powder post beetles while performing the wood destroying insect piece of the home inspection. Termites and carpenter ants get most of the attention however we can't forget the powder post beetle which can cause havoc to a wood stricture over...

NJ Home inspectors often discover mold growth in attic of the homes they are inspecting. Attics are an important portion of the home often being used for storage and sometimes having the homes mechanicals such as furnaces and water heater units. Mold in attics can be a significant health hazard f...

NJ home inspectors should inspect for and identify moisture or water entry into a home's electrical panel box. The home inspection standards of practice in NJ indicate that we as home inspectors should remove the panel box cover and inspect the interior of the panel box for defects and safety haz...

As a home inspector in NJ we are always learning. One of the things I learned about recently was that the insurance claims history for a home is available to potential buyers. These reports are called CLUE reports. CLUE stands for Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange. This is a claims data ba...

One of the great frustrations that home inspectors in New Jersey have is that sellers don’t often properly prepare their homes for the home inspection. Home inspections would proceed much more efficiently if the seller would take some time and get their home ready for the inspection.  Here are so...