Herr inspektor

After watching several inspections conducted by different inspectors, I realized two things:

1. It is impossible to pass an inspection on the first try, and 
2. You may not pass an inspection even if you follow the pre-approved plan and everything other inspectors told you to do.

As a home owner, I don't care. The more things inspectors find, the better. I may have missed the mean ones, but the inspectors I met were pretty reasonable. I heard them explaining why certain things needed to be fixed and they made sense. The bad thing was that they all had different ideas of what and how things needed to be done.

The last inspection was a good illustration of the case. Our regular inspector gave us an idea what he would be looking for, so my contractor followed the suggestions to the letter. For some reason, that inspector could not come, so the guy who came instead found a couple of minor things and one not so minor: he said we needed to install a ventilation grid in the ceiling of the laundry closet. The door to the laundry closet is already vented, but still, he said a ceiling vent was a must. Which was fine: if it needed to be there, it should be there. But why hadn't anyone mentioned this before? Not when the plans were approved. Not when previous inspections were done. So out of the blue, parts needed to be purchased and a vent made. For me, it was fine, even better, but my contractor had to go to a store to buy parts and spend time installing the vent.

Okay, my contractor fixed everything that needed to be fixed the same evening, so come next day, and the third inspector shows up. Guess what happens next. He finds out that some electrical box was installed incorrectly.

Again, his explanation of the problem made sense, but why in the world had this not been detected by either SMUD or the county both of which approved the electrical plans? Why hadn't anyone mentioned it before?

The inspector said it was their fault and he was sorry that this had slipped through the cracks, but we had to fix it anyway and fixing it required calling an electrician who spent several hours rewiring the electrical thingies. (Ironically, the electrician ended up doing what my contractor had originally wanted to do, but not having much experience with solar, he consulted some solar "expert", and the "expert" told him to wire things differently.)

NEXT: MY OWN PRIVATE CHERNOBYL

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