After spending the last two days getting ready for the inspector to come for a 4-point inspection of Gladys, I was a little taken aback when a older, balding man climbed out of his car this morning. I don't know what I was expecting, but he was not it.
However, he introduced himself and turned out to be more technically advanced than I thought. Looks, indeed, can be deceiving! The first thing he did was take digital pictures of the air conditioner at the side of the house. He informed us that he always documents everything through digital pictures so no one can question what he has seen.
He took pictures of the roof, the nails holding the roof on (as seen in the garage), the windows and doors, the plumbing under the sinks, the water heater, and the electrical box. Ironically, he did not look at the GFI outlets that we installed, and he said that smoke alarms "were no longer a part of the form." Although I am not sorry that we added GFI and smoke alarms, basically what we did for the last two days had absolutely zero impact on the inspection today.
He climbed up to look at the roof, and he said that we should be able to get nine more years out of the roof. I do not know that I really believe that, but I guess Gladys' hat is not as ragged as I thought. He did say that if we ever open up the soffits, we should add hurricane strapping to the roof rafters to get more of an insurance break and to better keep Gladys from losing her hat in a bad storm.
The inspector used the Citizen's Insurance 4-point inspection form, but he was far from a fan of Citizen's Insurance. We did, however, learn the following from him:
1. If anyone wants to change insurance policies or get new insurance on a home in Pinellas County, no sinkhole insurance will be offered. A person can get a sinkhole inspection, but virtually no home in Pinellas County will pass the inspection, even if no evidence of sinkhole activity is found.
2. If a homeowner has sinkhole insurance through Citizen's Insurance, the company will fight any claims and the homeowner will be lucky to get 50% of the claim actually covered. For the couple of hundred dollars a year one pays for such coverage, one might be wiser to put that into a bank and draw interest on a sinkhole contingency fund.
3. Citizen's Insurance will probably stop offering sinkhole protection soon, and, in fact, they can pull that option at any time.
4. The inspector said he did not know of any homes in our neighborhood that had sinkhole problems. Actually, that is not true since a couple of homes bordering Lake Sperry, the lake across the street from us, have had sinkhole claims. That being said, trying to find out if a home is sinkhole prone is useless unless a person is willing to dish out $10,000 for a conclusive test. Even then, such a test will only predict a percentage probability, not a certainty. Sinkhole insurance is like flood insurance; it's there, and chances are you will never need it. If you do, its; great to have, but don't count on it in a real disaster.
5. A homeowner should look for other insurance other than Citizen's since any catastrophe will cause global rate hikes and if the claims are numerous enough, the company will not have the capital to cover the claims anyway.
The inspector was pleased with what he saw. He gave Gladys an A+ rating for having everything in place, so I guess all of our efforts these past three years have resulted in a home that is strong, tight, and able to withstand most of what nature can throw at her.
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