New House Wood Framing Inspection For Homeowners

If you don’t know anything about home building or new house framing, I would like to give you a few tips on things to look for. Don’t get carried away on your new house wood framing inspection, but it’s not a bad idea to have the ability to inspect the house your cell for construction defects.

1. Make sure that the right post and beams were installed? This would require having a basic understanding of the building blueprints. Examine the blueprints, locate certain sized posts and beams and make sure that they match the sizes of the ones called out for on the building blueprints.

2. Check for large gaps between framing components. Look for large spaces of a quarter of an inch or more between all framing components. Structural framing components shouldn’t have more than 1/ 16th of an inch gap and should be relatively tight or there could be problems as the house settles.

3. Your framing contractor shouldn’t use any defective lumber. Look for lumber with large knots and cracks. If these pieces of lumber are holding up other sections of the house, you could have problems, if you don’t already. All construction lumber grades should match the building plans.

Obviously we don’t want large gaps between framing components like structural beams and posts. These are usually the easy ones to find. However, defective lumber that’s covered up by plywood or other framing components might be a little more difficult to find.

The best advice that I could get any home owner or new home builder is to take as many pictures with a digital camera as possible. Try to take these pictures on a weekly basis, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to stop by the job every other day after the workers are gone.

Pictures can also be used later after the house is built to locate structural beams, electrical, plumbing, heating and air-conditioning ducts.