Commercial Building Inspection Home Inspection Blog

You’re a real estate professional and a new couple has contacted you regarding one of your listings.  These prospective buyers are absolutely in love with this house.  So you set up an appointment and take them in, showing them all the wonderful features of the house.  It almost seems like this house was built for this couple.  It’s absolutely perfect.  As the couple looks around for a bit, the wife looks up and notices some paint peeling on the bedroom ceiling near the air conditioning vent.  The husband reaches up and touches the peeling paint and it’s wet.  There was a rainstorm last night so the husband immediately believes it’s a roof leak.  The couple informs you that they don’t have money for a new roof, and they would rather just keep looking then to waste time and money on continuing with this house.

I’m sure many real estate agents have seen similar situations to this more than once.  But a bit of knowledge could mean the difference between this couple walking away immediately, or at least waiting until a professional home inspector can fully evaluate the situation.

Finding moisture around air conditioning vents is extremely common in South Florida, especially in older homes.  While the cause of the moisture could be anything from a roof leak, plumbing leak, or some other deficiency; it is more commonly caused by condensation of the vent or the ceiling box (also known as the boot, or ductwork boot).

Condensation occurs on a surface that is below the dew point of the air.  The temperature of the cold air in the ductwork could range from 50 to 65 degrees (depending on many different factors).  During our summer months the temperatures can reach upwards of 100+ degrees which dramatically raises the dew point of the air.  The temperature is even higher in your attic which raises the dew point of the air even more.  When the cold metal on the ceiling box or the vent register gets below that dew point, condensation will occur.

Repairing this is often very easy.  All that needs to be done is to prevent the hot air of the attic from touching the cold metal surfaces of the ceiling box or vent register.  There is a wide variety of insulation or ductwork sealants that can be used for this.  The problem is usually an inadequate seal between the ceiling box and the vent register due to improperly cut drywall.  Hiring a contractor for this repair could cost anywhere from $75 to $150 per location.  This is a huge difference from a roof repair that could cost $500 or worse, a roof replacement which could cost tens of thousands of dollars!

I was at an inspection the other day in Boca Raton and I found something very interesting.  Frightening, but interesting.  The property was consisted of a class A office building that was just over 100,000 square feet.  The building was originally constructed in 1985 but was completely renovated in 2007.The electrical system for the entire 100,000 square foot building was fed through one main service meter.  When I was performing my electrical inspection on the service meter, it looked like there was an explosion in the meter can.  One of the reasons this is such a big deal is because, without getting to technical, it takes some serious electrical components to power 100,000 square feet of office and it is all feeding right through three wires inside this box. 

Luckily, the buyer of the property hired an inspector because the owners and the property manager had no idea about this problem.