THE

REPORT

If you are buying a home in New Brunswick this fall, there is a good chance it heats with electricity, and two pieces of news landed on the power bill in October. The 10% rebate on the electricity you use, the provincial share of the HST, applies to NB Power and Saint John Energy customers alike, and the energy minister told the Telegraph-Journal it will continue next year. At the same time, NB Power has asked the Energy and Utilities Board for 5.5% a year for the next three years. NB Power puts the first year at $13.25 a month on an average home, and by the third year that works out to about $500 more a year on the same home. None of it is approved yet. On an oil heated home, the maximum price for furnace oil delivered is $2.62 a litre as of November 4, below its September peak but still about half again what it cost a year ago.

A buyer cannot change the rate. How much heat the house loses is another matter. On one of my October thermal evaluations in Saint John, the camera showed an irregular cool area on the bathroom ceiling around the exhaust fan, one that did not follow the framing. A pattern like that can come from an air leak, from moisture, or from a fan duct that is not properly terminated, and the camera alone cannot say which. Elsewhere on that ceiling, cool patches with sharp edges showed a pattern consistent with insulation missing or pushed aside, and heat escaping there raises heating costs and in winter can help ice dams form.

My report recommended evaluation by a qualified specialist to confirm where the fan duct terminates, and to locate and correct the source before any repair to the ceiling. For the owner, that means having the fan duct checked and the insulation put back where it belongs, ideally before the coldest months, then repairing the ceiling once the cause is fixed.

The inspection connection

On a home inspection I look at the attic insulation, the bathroom fan and where its duct goes when I can see it, and any signs of frost or moisture, wherever the attic can be safely entered. Thermal imaging adds the camera, which shows where heat is leaving through ceilings and walls that look perfectly fine to the eye. For a buyer going into a first winter with higher rates on the table, it puts where the house loses heat on paper before closing.

A rural listing carries questions a town listing does not, and in the fall they tend to arrive together: what is in the well water, what the wood stove's report says, and when the septic was last looked after. Three things in the listing file answer them before a buyer's condition period starts.

A recent water test. The first question a buyer on a well asks is what is in the water. A recent result from an accredited lab, with the date on it, answers it before the offer.

A current WETT report, with the chimney top checked. On one stove I inspected this October, the rain cap was the only item I wrote up as needing correction: the cap had lifted at the end with age, so water could run toward the flue instead of away from it. It is the kind of item that belongs at the next chimney servicing, and it reads far better in the file already done than raised for the first time when the buyer's insurer asks for the report.

The septic records. When the tank was last pumped, and by whom, plus any permit or inspection paperwork the seller has. For a buyer moving out from city sewer, it may be the first septic system they have owned, and the records make it a lot less mysterious.

Why a pre-listing inspection earns its cost

A pre-listing inspection can cover the house, the wood stove with a WETT inspection added, and a water sample collected on the same visit, so the answers are in the file before the first showing. If you have a rural listing coming to market this winter and want to talk through what makes sense for it, call or text 506-651-9461.