Home inspection and door compliance

If you thought a door is such a generic and basic product that it cannot be damaged, or that if it can, only in a minor and unnoticeable way, think again.

Various flaws and defects can form in doors, but only a professional, experienced eye, such as a home inspection (bedek bayit) engineer's, can identify most of them. As with much else in the home and in life, you need real expertise to know your rights: what looks like minor damage can turn out to be far more serious, and an issue you assume is not worth pursuing often turns out to entitle you to full compensation and repair.

A home inspection by a specialist engineer is your insurance policy: a gatekeeper protecting your interests against the contractor. Given how large an investment an apartment is, and how much is at stake, it matters to have someone looking after those interests professionally and ruling out dangerous construction defects.

The engineer's examination of the apartment is comprehensive, covering the building structure and construction defects generally. Checking the doors is of course only one part of it.

Parameters for checking doors

Here is a representative sample of what the engineer checks during the inspection. The team examines every relevant door: the apartment's entrance door, the interior doors to each room, and the exit door to a balcony or garden.

The entrance door

It is examined, among other things, against parameters such as:

• Sealing: the door must meet the sealing requirements set out in the standard.
• The degree of sealing must comply with the weighted sound-reduction index.
• The door must carry a standards mark; without it, the door automatically fails compliance.
• The mark must appear in the specific location and manner set out in the relevant clause.

Interior doors

Interior doors must meet different requirements suited to their function, though the conditions can of course overlap:

• Free of flaws such as paint defects, scratches or peeling.
• Hinges fixed firmly in place, with no looseness.
• A closing mechanism that works properly.
• No friction against the floor or against the frame.

In sum, the home inspection engineer produces a document describing all the construction defects and points examined, for the doors and for every other relevant detail of the house or apartment. The report describes the flaws and the standards not properly met, gives instructions for correcting them, and includes cost estimates for the repairs along with relevant photographs. That report is admissible in court.