People are not perfect.  Despite the name of my business, my inspections are not perfect, but I strive every day to make them as close as I can.  People build homes and no matter what there is always something that could be adjusted, maintained, or updated to help the home be more “perfect.”

These improvements can sometimes be debatable but some things, like the proper ducting and expulsion of bathroom exhaust, are not negotiable.

The little exhaust fans in our bath and laundry rooms’ ceilings are often forgotten about.  These little fans can collect and concentrate significant amounts of moisture.  If the vapor that they collect is not expelled out of the home it can cause moisture-related issues like deterioration, fungus, termites, beetles, etc…

Traditionally the fans are ducted with a flexible metal duct up to a roof vent.  Where the air that is leaving the attic carries the moist bathroom air up and out of the attic.  It is currently acceptable to vent the ducts to the soffit, but I am definitely not a fan of this idea because the soffit vents are intakes and all of the warm moisture-laden bathroom air that is blown out of these vents is usually sucked back into the cool attic.

I popped my head up into a new home’s attic the other day during a home inspection and noticed something was missing. The bathroom fans all worked fine, the ducting was routed properly up to the upper roof vents, there was just one key component that was not installed properly….

The hole for the roof vent, although cut through the OSB sheathing, had not been cut through the roofing shingles and building paper.

The home was so new there had not been any substantial moisture added to the attic and repairs simply involved cutting a hole.