Building Inspection Services

Building Inspections Adelaide - What do I get?

Thorough And Systematic Building Inspection

We inspect the building and the site, starting from the perimeter fencing and working inwards, looking for faults and defects that could impact upon your purchase decision and cost money now or in the future.

Much cannot be seen, but experience tells us where faults may lie or have been covered up.

The building inspection is non-destructive and great care is taken to avoid any damage to the property or disturbance to owners' effects.

Instant Summary of all the Major Points

Your inspector can show you the main issues, right there, on site. Ask questions.

If you cannot attend the site, the inspector will phone you instead.

The quality of the summary is vital when time is short - for example if the cooling-off period is about to end or an auction is soon.

Typewritten Photographic Building Inspection Report Emailed In 24 Hours

Our reports are professionally-designed with defects photographed and each accompanied by relevant notes and advice. Our reports are easy to understand and navigate, with a table of contents and a one-page summary (a great tool for negotiations).

Discovered defects are summarised into these 3 categories: 1 - urgent items, 2- costly items, 3- maintenance items for the future.

What Do We Check?

We carry out a thorough visual inspection of all accessible areas inside and outside the building and over the site up to 30 metres from the main building. This includes fences, drainage, walls, roofspace and underfloor areas.

Where reasonable access is available to the inspector, our Building and Pest Inspections cover all the items in the list below.

List of Inspected Items

Site around the building
Building exterior
Interior rooms
Extra checks for kitchens and wet areas
Staircases & balconies
Inside the roof
Under the floor
Electrical
Timber pests
Miscellaneous ... Clothes line, Letterbox, TV antenna, Phone, Alarm, Intercom

A Structural Inspection will deal only with those items which are affecting the building’s structure now or are expected to in the future.

MAKE A BOOKING for homes in Adelaide, hills & suburbs

Pest Inspection During Purchase...

... but for which pests?

A pest inspection can be for possums, rodents, bees, wasps, spiders, ants, termites, borers, cockroaches, bedbugs and more. A Licensed Pest Manager can help you deal with all of them.

Because we are a building inspection service, we are only concerned timber pest inspections - pests that attack buildings: specifically subterranean termites (also known as "white ants").

Termites are the pest of greatest economic significance to buildings. They cause more damage to buildings than fire, flood and all other causes combined.

See the doorfame pictured below? Our pre-purchase Timber Pest Inspection helps buyers avoid such an alarming discovery.

Where are termites?

Termites (aka "white ants") are widespread, almost everywhere that their food can be found, which is cellulose from wood, grass and plants. That includes most things made from wood such as paper and cardboard and of course timber in and around buildings.

Termites are an essential part of the ecosystem, for their role in breaking down dead wood.

Termites are colony insects. When foraging for food, they are able to move underground and unseen for distances over 50 metres from their nest. Their home may be inside a tree trunk, underground or inside a building, located on your property, across the road or further away.

So do I really need Pest Inspections?

Most houses built in the past 30 years are timber-framed. The outside may be brick but the structural frame is likely to be timber that is susceptible to termite attack.

It is very important to read and understand the limitations of the Required Termite Management System on a new home and what you must do to maintain its effectiveness. Otherwise, the building may be at risk of termite attack. For example, the Required Termite Management System provided by the builder may depend upon you being vigilant in noticing the presence of termite workings then calling a pest controller if you do.

Concrete Slab ... Protection Or Not?

Most houses are built on a concrete slab which is an effective barrier to termites. However, if termites are able to get to the house, they can still crawl up the outside and enter unnoticed unless the perimeter of the house is clearly in view and you are vigilant in identifying the tell-tale muddy appearance of termite workings. Their mud tubes can be thinner than a pencil.

Our pest inspections explain what you can do to protect your investment...

This House Is Steel-Framed

That’s good. Termites don’t eat steel. However, there are other parts of the house typically containing the cellulose they eat, such as doors, windows, skirtings, doorframes, cabinets, pergolas and your own possessions, such as furniture, papers, books, cardboard and musical instruments.

What we do during a Termite Inspection?

During our building and pest inspections we search carefully for evidence of termite damage, previous activity and previous treatments, reporting and advising you appropriately. We also advise you about "conducive conditions" - things that make your property attractive to termites - and how to manage these.

Our knowledge of termite behaviour helps us search in the right places for those signs. We use the standard tools of the pest industry: sight, smell, touch (including percussion) and moisture measuring equipment. The 'Tramex' meter pictured is standard pest industry equipment.

What if we find Termites?

If we find termites we will advise you on several different treatment options. We give this advice impartially, because we aren't selling treatments nor receiving any incentives for recommending them. If live termites are discovered, you will be advised to leave them alone and call a pest manager to eradicate the colony. Use the advice we give you and that of the pest manager, to put in place a termite management plan.

Learn More To Reduce Risk

Like any new investment, if you don't already understand a risk, then learn about it or ask someone you can trust for impartial advice.

Protecting Timber from Termites

There are several methods of chemically-treating timber that would otherwise be susceptible to attack. If you have a recently-built house, you should endeavour to obtain the construction documents to see what parts of the building have been made using treated timber and what sort of warranty and effective life may apply to the treatment.

Protection of buildings is the work of Licensed Pest Managers, who have at their disposal various physical and chemical-based systems for keeping termites out of your house and eradicating their colonies.

After Buying a Property

After you have purchased your property, we recommend that you engage a Licensed Pest Manager to conduct an invasive inspection and advise you further about on on-going termite management plan. Sometimes the vendor will already have a plan in place that you can continue.

MAKE A BOOKING for homes in Adelaide, hills & suburbs

Artekton. We are Building Inspections Adelaide

We are a local, Adelaide-based business, not part of a large franchise operation. When you call, you will be speaking with someone who knows the region, its conditions and its building traditions. It's a building inspection process you can trust.

Expertise

We are not part-timers or 'newbies' to this field. Our inspectors are the best in the business with decades of 'on-the-tools' building experience in all kinds of domestic construction, repairs and restoration. Our inspection and reporting methods are the most up-to-date.

We Know Local Conditions

Adelaide's older homes are unique so we report about them in context. A broad-brush approach intended for all Australian houses would not be the right approach.

In a pre-purchase building inspection, we advise our clients about the defects we find in the context of the building's age and type. For instance, a 5mm crack in an old villa with broken downpipes usually has different origins to the same crack in a recently-built timber home, so each will be reported differently, with appropriate advice for our client. We can also advise you on energy efficiency improvements to give you greater comfort and economy.

Reports In Language You Understand

We discuss and explain the summary in person, aiming to educate and inform our clients, not bamboozle or scare them.

There are Australian Standards for pre-purchase inspections. Over many thousands of inspections, we have learned that people want more than what the standards call for, so we have developed reports to be reader-friendly, readily useful and easily navigable.

‘Properly Qualified’ Inspector

In SA, a pre-purchase building inspection does not require a licensed, registered or insured inspector.

Inspecting houses for sale, especially older ones, then reporting to buyers and doing both well, takes training and lots of experience, but...

With a smartphone app, anybody can make a professional-looking report.
So it is crucially important to qualify the inspector - but how?
Do they have a few or a few hundred previous inspections?
Are they members of building professions - like architects and engineers?

Licenses and Memberships ... what are they really worth?

Holding a builders license, or being a member of an industry association, does not, in itself, qualify somebody to carry out pre-purchase building inspections. Some builders licenses are highly restricted, having nothing whatsoever to do with inspections.

Membership of the main industry associations, HIA and Master Builders, is open to most people, irrespective of their ability to inspect and report on building matters.

Building inspectors must have local building knowledge about many ages and types, a keen eye and good communication skills.

Our building and pest inspector is David Bodycomb. One of Adelaide's most experienced building inspectors, he is a career-long building industry professional with over 30 years working around Adelaide, including 15 years 'on-the-tools' building, restoring and renovating houses for himself and others.

You will benefit from his thorough understanding of local buildings and plain-language explanations.

David has 40 years working with home owners in Adelaide as Licensed Builder 1984-2002 then Architect 2002-2022

MAKE A BOOKING for homes in Adelaide, hills & suburbs

Quality, Integrity & Value

Building Inspections Adelaide

Like most small businesses, satisfied customers are our best salespeople. You deserve honest, impartial advice, but when choosing a service provider, there are a few things to remember about building inspections and building inspectors.

There are some things others might do but we don't...

We won't tout for building work - Some building inspectors use inspections as a sideline activity for getting building or design work for themselves or their associates. Inspections are all we do - not a sideline activity - and our advice is impartial and objective.
We won't sell your report to others - Some building inspectors, even large national franchise operations, will on-sell your report to anybody. So the information that you paid for - that you thought was yours - is made available to the seller, the agent and competing purchasers. Is that right or fair? ... we don't think so.
We aren't cosy with the agent - Some service providers seek building inspection work from real estate agents. Potentially, there are several problems here: 1 - The agent acts for the seller yet the inspector is supposed to be acting for the buyer. 2 -The agent wants the inspector to speak favourably of the property and smooth the sale, otherwise that inspector won't get any more referrals from the agent.
We won't behave unethically - Some building inspection providers will routinely "rubbish" every building they look at, hoping the buyer will move on and call them again soon. Some inspectors have no license, no insurance, no time and little knowledge, yet can continue to operate legally in SA.
We won't cut price at the expense of quality - You have an ever-increasing number of building inspection services to choose from. This means cheaper prices but like anything cheaper, there are risks to quality, for example . . . Price-cutting leads to less time on-site, increasing the risk of missing something important. There may be little or no time left for you to talk to the inspector afterwards.

We all love a bargain, but the appeal of saving a few hundred dollars on a building inspection report is simply not worth the risk.

Look for quality and integrity first and you'll probably find value too. When it comes to Building Inspections in Adelaide, the name to remember is Artekton.

MAKE A BOOKING for homes in Adelaide, hills & suburbs