How to Inspect a Home Garage

Inspecting a home garage is comprised of many different aspects—don’t forget to inspect an important component. Doug Hastings, Kaplan Real Estate Education Instructor and home inspector for over 20 years, will teach you the ins and outs of inspecting a garage. From the outlets to the flooring to the garage door opener, Doug will show you how to look at several different features of the garage.

Video Transcript:

Although we haven't completed the outside part of our inspection, we're coming across a door that enters into the garage. In order to keep the flow around the home consistent so we're not running around, I would want you to come on in the door. And now, what we would do is we'd shift gears just a little bit, and we'd start looking at the interior of the garage. Now, there's both detached and attached garages. This happens to be an attached garage, which has a few unique things that wouldn't apply to a detached garage. But basically, what we're looking for is do we feel it's structurally sound. Do we feel that the fire barriers are in tact? Do the doors operate well? So, as we start passing around, a couple things I'd point out.

Number one: Do the rollers look secure? Are they in the track? Number two: Push on the track a little bit. Make sure it's secure. Pay attention up here to the springs. Now, if there's a broken spring, you would never want to test the door for the automatic opener, for fear that you would break it. So, look at the physical condition of the spring itself. Continue walking around, just like we did outside. We're kind of walking around the perimeter of things. As we do, we kind of look back and make sure that ceiling lines, corners, beams above doors are all in tact. So, always, always, always look behind as you're moving around.

Now, it's important when you're looking at the slab to judge it from this basis. Number one: A garage slab is not a structural part of the house. That means if the slab has a little wear and tear, it's not going to have an impact on structure. I'm not trying to imply that it's good to have a garage slab that's all cracked and deteriorated, but I am trying to say that it isn't a structural flaw if it is. So, if I were to take you over here and show you at the slab a little bit of the deterioration, we call that spalling. Some people will call that pitting. Pretty common and typical. It's not something that a home inspector is going to be worried about. Now, if you'd like to comment on that, it would probably be a good idea because what we've always talked about is to tell people what did I see. I saw some spalling of the garage floor. What do I think about what I see? I don't think it's a big deal. At best, it's a little bit of maintenance. Alright.

Now, you've explained things pretty well to the customer. Continue looking at the other door the same way that you looked at the last one. Springs, rollers, et cetera. As you begin to make the corner, you have to be aware of where you're at. So, example. As I start coming down this corner, at this point, I am now a part of the house. So now, this fire barrier that's a common wall becomes important. So, as inspector, I need to comment on any breaches or any holes in that fire barrier. Example. This vacuum, believe it or not, is a break in the fire barrier. So, you would want to point out the fact that that's something that should be covered up. Now, they do make vacuum covers now that are fire rated. This just doesn't happen to be one of them.

As we continue to look around, notice that there's a register cover in the middle of the ceiling. We're going to want to verify when we get up into the attic space that that's not connected to a heat duct. Because if that's connected to a heat duct of our furnace, we'd be talking about a break in the fire barrier again. Also, notice when you go back up to the ceiling that we've got an attic access with the cover off. Now, it may just be somebody left the cover off. If that's the case, we'll put it back on when we come out of the attic space, and the fire barrier is reestablished. However, if that's a plywood cover or if it's missing or broken, that also would be a breach in the fire barrier. So, once we've begun to assess the fire barrier issues, the last part of the fire barrier is the door.

As home inspectors of existing homes, we require a minimum 1 3/8 inch door. It either has to be solid wood or metal. So, this meets that intent. It seals shut. It doesn't have to self-close anymore. It used to, but the code has changed on that matter. So, this is an acceptable fire barrier. Now, it's time to take a look and see how does that garage door or garage doors operate.

I want you to be aware of how I'm not jumping around. Did you notice how, just like on the outside of the house, I flowed around the garage? Prior to closing and testing the garage door for its safety reverse, what I'm going to do is I'm going to grab my ladder and set it up at the attic access. Then once I've got that set up, we'll test the automatic opener. When you're setting up the ladder, again, you want to be careful not to damage anything, and you also want to make sure that you get it set nice and secure. Garage attics sometimes are a little trickier than the ones in the house. Sometimes, the ceilings are higher. So, you need some sort of flexible ladder that's going to be able to change its dimensions periodically in order to get where you want to go.