Home inspection: doors

Home inspection (bedek bayit) is, as most buyers know by now, a comprehensive, thorough check whose purpose is to give a realistic, objective picture of a house or apartment's condition, not a rough impression.

Checking the doors, windows, railings, infrastructure and piping is only a small part of the full set of parameters the check covers, from the smallest fitting to the building's structure. The point of all of it is the same: to give the buyer a clear, honest picture of the apartment's real condition, sharpen their awareness of it, and help them avoid future surprises and unnecessary expense.

The report that follows an inspection lists the construction defects and hazards found, and it is exactly what a buyer of a new apartment needs to confront the contractor and demand repairs, or financial compensation, for falling short of the technical specification the contractor committed to. For a resale apartment, that same kind of inspection tells the buyer whether they are getting a property in reasonable condition or one that hides serious problems and defects; and if repairs turn out to be necessary, the buyer can pass those costs on to the seller rather than absorb them alone.

Repair costs for any defects found in the home fall on the contractor if it is a new apartment, or on the previous owners if it is a resale apartment. In a building under shared ownership, it is worth ordering an inspection not only of the apartment itself but also of the building's common areas, since problems there can affect every owner, not just the one buying.

A home inspection, or building inspection, works through a long list of parameters: specific issues and general ones, functional matters and purely visual ones, questions of safety as well as ordinary wear and tear, so that in practice no element, however small, escapes the check.

Checking doors as part of a home inspection: among the many elements a home inspection engineer and team check as part of a building inspection are the doors, including entrance doors, and other openings. A door is a protective element, but it also carries a visual role, and it matters at two levels at once: the individual apartment, and the building as a whole, through its main entrance door.

Checking entrance doors or interior doors means a long, thorough look at their various aspects, measured against the relevant standards. Entrance and exit doors in residential buildings, for example, must meet acoustic-insulation standards, must meet protective requirements, and must be marked accordingly to show that they do. Repairing or adjusting a door that falls short, naturally, is the responsibility of the contractor, or of the previous owner in a resale apartment.

Part of every door check is devoted specifically to damage, defects and flaws. Entrance doors can suffer many kinds of them. A flaw is simply a deviation from the Israeli standards set for doors, and it has to be corrected to bring the door back into compliance; fixing it, like any construction defect, is the contractor's responsibility, not the buyer's.

Some flaws are visual: peeling paint, scratches, fingerprints, stains, or an inconsistent color or shade between the door and its finish. These call for a repair, or in some cases replacing the door outright.

Other flaws are functional or mechanical: a loose door, or a door or frame that has come out of alignment. A fairly common flaw is friction between the bottom of the door and the floor; the opposite problem, a gap that is too wide between the floor and the door, counts as a defect too, since it lets in drafts and pests from outside.

These are only some of the parameters an inspection checks when it comes to doors, but together they show why a check that looks this closely at something as ordinary as a door is worth having before you sign anything, whether the apartment is brand new or already has a history of previous owners behind it.