Alternatives to Walking a Roof
There are roofs that, for one reason or another, you will not walk. Almost any roof can be examined from the rooftop but, sometimes, that examination requires measures that exceed the scope of the general home inspection.
When a roof has special inspection requirements, you may need to make arrangements to meet a roofing contractor at the property. This might be the case with an especially high roof needing a very long ladder. It might require placing ladders to climb especially steep roofs, or it might require fastening sheets of plywood across the surface of especially fragile roof-covering materials.
These measures exceed Standards of Practice. The Standards specifically exempt inspectors from having to walk roofs at all, but many inspectors walk roofs anyway, both because they’re comfortable doing it and because they feel that it provides their clients with better service. It can also give them a business edge against any of their competition who don’t walk roofs.
The bottom line is: To perform a home inspection to the Standards of Practice, you are not obligated to walk a roof. You have srcernatives.
You can examine the roof through binoculars from various points on the ground, or from the top of a ladder at the roof edge.
Some inspectors don’t think they’re giving their client a full inspection unless they walk the roof. The fact is, you’re performing a general home inspection. In most situations, your inspection of the different home systems will not be as complete as a specialist inspection. Just as you won’t be pulling a furnace apart to get a good look at the heat exchanger, you won’t be laying tall ladders across very steep roofs, or suspending plywood across very fragile roofs. That’s a specialist inspection.
If you’re qualified, you can offer specialist inspections as ancillary services, but you should understand where to draw the line between what you provide in a general home inspection and what constitutes an ancillary inspection. If you are using methods and equipment that are usually used by a roofing contractor but not by a home inspector, you’re performing a specialist inspection.
This is one of the more unusual srcernatives…
…a remote-controlled video camera mounted on a telescoping tripod.
The tripod extends up to 35 feet. Some are available that extend up to 70 feet.
When you’re finished, it folds up and rolls away.
Recommending a Specialist
It is not necessary to walk roofs to be successful in the home inspection business. If an inspector feels that a roof is not safe to walk but believes that it cannot be adequately inspected from the ground, by using a ladder at the roof’s edge, or from some other vantage point, the inspector should recommend further evaluation by a specialist. A qualified roofing contractor has access to specialized equipment that allows him to safely and closely inspect roofs that are dangerous or may be damaged by inspection using the conventional methods described in this section.