When it comes to older homes that have 2 stories, it’s typical you’ll find the 2nd floor sloping or sagging. When you find it on a Brand New Home that was just built…that’s not so good.
I was recently called to perform a new construction inspection on a home that was $750,000 (3/4 of a million dollars). It was the final walk through and my clients wanted to make sure that the home was built to the standard the builder had promised.
As strange as it seems, one of my favorite tools to use is my handy dandy golf ball.
Yep, you read that right – my golf ball. You too can use this inexpensive tool to see if a home you’re looking to purchase has sloping floors. Of course, this works best if you’re not having to deal with carpet so keep that in mind.
Take a look at this video of the home I inspected where I not only found that the 2nd story floor sloped, it was slopping pretty significantly to one side.
As you can see in the video, looks can be deceiving because the floor looked perfectly level. Unless you had a knowledgeable inspector who also knows about building homes, this client would have been closing on a home that was not up to par.
If you’re having a brand new home built and are at the final stages where you need to have a final walk-through inspection performed, please give me a call Today!
I’ll get you taken care of!
Bill
I have the same issue and you went into great details for the same.
I’m finding alot more of it over the last 2 years. With the increase in construction It seems that the quality of new construction workmanship has taken a hit and its with multiple builders.
And so what do you do? Is this something that won’t pass a final inspection? This is a custom home and we just noticed a discernible slope on our second floor…when the doors went in something didn’t look right. Got out the level and the floor isn’t level. It slopes all the way from one side to the other of the house…we’re just now out the trim out stage.
I have a friend that went through this on a 1.5 million dollar house but it really only sloped in one room but the builder ripped out the entire second floor flooring and she lived in a construction zone and could not use her upstairs for 2 months. The builder was not very knowledgeable on how it should have been done. The superintendent should have caught it before the second floor walls were installed but like my friends house, it can still be rectified by manipulating the floor system where the sloping is occurring. In changing anything with the structure, the main concern is making sure the structural integrity of the home or area is not compromised.
Hi. It might be a silly question but I noticed that my first floor is tilted to the East side of the house, whenever there’s water on counter top or even when cooking, the oil would go to the same direction, East side of the house. I don’t have a golf ball to test but for a newly built house, would this fall under the one year workmanship warranty or would it fall under a different category? We’re past that one year warranty. Sorry for asking but I don’t know a lot of things on house as this is our first house and I don’t know what keywords to look for on the contract to find this info.