Tag Archives: home inspections

home inspections

William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC is Now A Home Hardening Certified Provider via The Santa Barbara County Fire Safe Council’s “Design for Fire Resilience” Training Course

Bill Leys, President of William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC recently completed the Santa Barbara County Fire Safe Council’s “Design for Fire Resilience” Structure Hardening Course for Architects and Building Designers at the Council’s headquarters on State Street in Santa Barbara. The day long course, led by nationally recognized wildfire expert Dave Shew taught participants about techniques and best practices to harden homes in the WUI.
As recognized home hardening building designers, we can now help SLO and Santa Barbara County homeowners with strategies to reduce their homes exposure to wildfire and survive.


We are now offering home hardening assessments for home owners to help you increase your homes ability to survive fires via a variety of preventative methods, including your landscaping, installing ember resistant vents, ensuring that your roof is ember resistant as well as any decks, windows, siding and doors.


Reach out today to learn more about our latest service we offer to help our community survive and resist wildfire!

Call Bill Leys today at 805-801-2380!

Reach out today for a home evaluation! 805-801-2380

Download the Santa Barbara Fire Safe Council/Cal Fire’s free GUIDE FOR HOME HARDENING here at this link below. We bring this guide to you as a public service to increase community safety. No infringement of any copy rights owned by any  entity is intended.

Guide For Home Hardening Download

Roof Inspections and Consulting

Buildings Don’t Come With “Maintenance Required” Warning Signs That Automatically Pop Up

I started up our company vehicle the other day, and on the dash popped up this warning “Maintenance Required”. We have a Toyota Tacoma, a vehicle that’s legendary for going 300,000+ miles or more. However the taco still needs maintenance, repairs and replacement of parts to get to 300,000 miles. Oil changes, flush the transmission, rotate the tires, a new battery. Take care of your Toyota™ and it will take care of you for years and years.

Why don’t buildings have this?

So I checked and sure enough it’s time for the next oil change. So easy, I don’t have to think about when it is time to change the oil, the vehicle tells me it’s time. And I wondered, why can’t buildings have this built into them? Unfortunately no one has figured out a way to have maintenance required warning signs pop up on a building, at least not yet.

However it’s important to remember that buildings do need required maintenance. Maintenance like roof inspections, cleaning out gutters, repainting, cleaning and repainting the decks,… Stuff like that plus more.

That’s why we here at William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC are here; to tell you that your building needs maintenance. We offer various services such as roof inspections, deck inspections and building inspections. We do inspections so that you can schedule maintenance when it’s required.

Don’t let your valuable asset deteriorate, keep up on maintenance and inspections and your building will last and last. Call us today at 805-801-2380 for a free conversation about your buildings inspection needs and how we can help your building be the Toyota™ of the construction industry!

Bill Leys on the job inspecting the building for needed maintenance and repairs!
leak investigation

San Luis Obispo Contractor Selects William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC To Investigate Leaks at Santa Maria Medical Offices

We Will Be Investigating the Source of Water Intrusion on This Medical Center in Santa Maria

William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC is pleased to announce that we’ve been selected to investigate the source of water intrusion into a medical building in Santa Maria CA by a well respected local contractor.

The building has been subject to water intrusion over the last several years and is now ready to undergo repairs and upgrades to the facility. As a local consulting firm, William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC offers competitive pricing, building envelope expertise and 20 years of experience in the construction industry.

Continue reading San Luis Obispo Contractor Selects William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC To Investigate Leaks at Santa Maria Medical Offices →
home inspections

A Recent Home Inspection Shows Why a Seller Provided Home Inspection Report is Essentially Worthless

The other home inspector missed this “little” issue

A recent inspection we performed for a prospective buyer of a condominium in San Luis Obispo demonstrates perfectly, why you as a buyer need to have your own inspections done at your own cost. This particular inspection found many issues that were glossed over as simply needing patching and painting rather than complete replacement of major components such as windows, doors, decks and subflooring under a shower.

The seller had a pre sale inspection done at their expense and provided that report to the prospective buyer. He had questions and doubts about the report and reached out to us after searching for a waterproofing and building consultant.

Our inspection found that many items the other inspector glossed over in his report as needing “patching and painting” or minor repairs were far from the real situation which was that all the doors and windows were past their useable lifespan and needed to be completely replaced. We found dry-rotted framing on decks, open and exposed framing on columns, dry-rot in the substrate below a shower floor which requires the substrate to be replaced due to fungus infestations.

Continue reading A Recent Home Inspection Shows Why a Seller Provided Home Inspection Report is Essentially Worthless →
Deck Inspections

A Video Message In Time To Help Keep Your Thanksgiving Safe!

Watch this quick video about using fire pits, turkey fryers and grills on combustible decks… To ruin the plot line, do not use turkey, fryers, fire pits or grills on any decks.

Please be safe this Thanksgiving holiday and don’t grill, use a fire pit or fry the turkey on your deck!

Roof Inspections and Consulting

William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC Helps Clients Whose Property Has Been Damaged Caused By Construction Defects Recover Financially

Even before William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC was formed, President Bill Leys has been assisting clients throughout California recover financial damages from contractors who caused construction defects that led to water intrusion and property damage. As an expert waterproofing consultant serving San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura, Kern and Los Angeles counties, we’ve helped clients recoup hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past few years.

Our expertise in building technology and waterproofing methods, investigative skills and ability to document and report on the problems, the causes and suggested repairs needed have allowed our clients to convince the Contractors State License Board, the contractors at fault and their Bond companies to act. We’ve seen great success with the CSLB investigating complaints, contractors agreeing to repair defective work and have bond and insurance carriers pay on claims made by our clients.

Some recent success stories include helping a client in San Bernardino recover 5k+ in damages caused by faulty deck waterproofing work by a contractor from Palm Springs. Our investigation found that the contractors “expert witness” actually had business ventures with his client, leading to the Judge concluding the contractors witness had implicit bias in favor of his client. In other words, his testimony was rejected by the Court. Our client got a court order that the contractor had to remove a lien on their home and could not collect $5,000 they claimed our client owed.

No blocking between the old and new plywood is a defect that will cause any waterproofing to eventually fail.

Another success story found us assisting a client in Avila Beach whose recent kitchen addition was apparently leaking. Our investigation found windows were leaking from faulty installation, deck flashing that leaked from faulty installation and as a result of our testing and report, the client was able to successfully initiate a claim against the contractors general liability insurance and recover funds to repair their damages. The client made a confidential settlement with the insurance company for well over 6 figures.

Continue reading William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC Helps Clients Whose Property Has Been Damaged Caused By Construction Defects Recover Financially →
Quality Assurance Observations

William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC Investigates Leaks on New Addition in Avila Beach

We are pleased to announce that we have been retained to investigate leaks on a new addition on an Avila Beach residence by the owners of the property.

The owners of the property had hired a local contractor, who with a team of subcontractors built a dining room with a deck above to expand the living space and take advantage of the views that they have. The contractor completed the project shortly before last winter’s rains started up and the owners quickly realized that there were leak problems in several areas of the new construction.

We have performed visual inspections as well as rudimentary water testing that has found several areas of concern that will need to be further investigated via destructive testing.

Water testing a window in the search for leaks

If you’re building is leaking reach out to us today for assistance in investigating the cause and devising a solution to repair the problem. The longer you wait the worse the damage can become with water intrusion issues into structural elements.

We’re ready to reach, call us at 805-801-2380.

SB 326 Balcony Inspections

Halloween is Coming, Watch Out for Contractors Masquerading as “Deck Inspectors”…

Watch out for monsters that are disguised as “Deck Inspectors” but are really contractors out to steal your HOAs money.

It’s almost Halloween and soon children will be out ringing doorbells for candy by saying trick or treat… And we’ll smile and admire their costumes and fill their bags with some treats and send them on their way.

HOAs are at risk every day of the year however from “trick or treaters” that are disguised as deck inspectors but are really contractors looking to empty your bank account. We’ve seen an uptick in complaints from several HOA managers and HOAs that the deck inspector they retained is now giving them a contract to repair the decks and it seems very high in price and has clauses in it that are onerous and very one sided.

How can you weed out these characters from your bid list and protect your HOAs from being fleeced? While nothing is guaranteed, there are ways to stop these hoodlums in their tracks. To start with, ask your bidders if they have any ownership or other interest in a construction or waterproofing company (we don’t). Ask that they sign a no conflicts of interest guarantee ( we do) and if they do have an ownership or other interest in a contracting company, decline to accept their bid.

Bidding on work after doing an inspection is a gross conflict of interest in our opinion and managers agree with us. Tell your CLAC representative that SB326 needs to be amended to eliminate the loopholes in the current bill. Tell them to ban inspectors from providing bids.

If we find work is needed at your Association, we assist you with writing scopes of work, qualifying 3 contractors to bid and ensure that you are receiving apples to apples bids.

We are open and upfront, if your deck inspector sends to be cagey or avoids answering your questions, you may be getting set up by a contractor.

Have questions? Send us an email with the contact box to the left and we’ll get started on giving you a free EEE evaluation and proposal for your deck inspections. Don’t wait, the deadline is fast approaching.

Deck Inspections

Another Day, Another Preventable Deck Collapse…

By now many people have read the story of a deck collapse in a vacation rental in Georgia…9 people were injured, including several senior citizens. Fortunately no one died.

The pictures of the “accident” show a typical deck collapse scene, the rotted wood at the house to deck connection, the furniture and deck spilled all over the ground, rescue crews giving first aid and transporting victims to the hospital.

A typical deck collapse with multiple victims caused likely by a poor connection to the house with rotted wood failing and sending the deck crashing to the ground.

As a professional performing deck inspections I can say that I see this typical scene over and over, particularly on single family homes and it seems, very often that they are on rental properties. After viewing this picture above I tweeted out to Airbnb and VRBO that they could help lead the drive to deck safety by requiring owners to have professional inspections signed off before they can rent the property and let people use the deck. Very often on rental properties there are a number of people visiting having a party on the deck and then they go over to the edge of the railing where the view is to have a picture taken of the group and that’s when the decks framing becomes overloaded and the deck crashes to the ground.

Influential and powerful companies like VRBO and Airbnb have the ability to drive owners to have inspections performed on the deck. Insurance companies can also start requiring inspections of decks before they insure a property.

As a professional inspector whenever I am at a party or someone’s house with a deck on it I will walk underneath the deck and take a look at the connections between the house and the deck, the framing the posts etc., to make sure that I am not going to be the victim if the deck comes down. That may make me sound like a Debbie Downer but I’ve seen the results of too many deck collapses hospitalizations, death, long-term injury. The Berkeley deck collapse should have been a wake-up call Nationwide but we just ended up going back to the usual and typical shrugging and saying not much we can do…

Well there are things we can do, we can require inspections on vacation rentals where it’s likely that large groups of people will gather in the deck. We can stop or severely reduce deck collapses by requiring owners to have their decks inspected yearly. A typical deck inspection might run $250 to $350…

To paraphrase Rage Against the Machine, “It has to start somewhere, it has to start sometime
What better place than here, what better time than now?” It’s time to start fixing this preventable problem.

SB 326 Balcony Inspections

Palm Springs HOA Selects William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC To Perform SB 326 Inspections on Their EEEs

We are pleased to announce that we have been selected to perform inspections under SB 326 for a property in Palm Springs CA. With over 70 EEEs to inspect, the association sought inspection quotes from some of the best inspection companies in California. We are honored to be thought of as highly as Sigler & Associates, A7 and Focused Inspection Group and asked to bid this job.

The Board of Directors interviewed each company after reviewing their proposals. I specifically told the Board during my interview that if our company lost the job, that I knew they had competent bidders that had no conflicts of interest and that I could sleep soundly knowing that they would be in good hands if they selected another company. I continually warn my managers that there are unsavory deck inspectors that are only seeking to take advantage of unsuspecting HOAs that are easy marks. We guarantee that we have no conflicts of interest. Some deck inspectors own waterproofing companies that want to do the repairs without you getting three competitive bids…

People say I’m crazy to talk up my competitors, but I don’t look at these companies as competitors, I look at them as peers worthy of respect and that they represent our industry well. I’m happy that we were awarded the job… And look forward to bringing your Association competitive bids against my worthy peers. May your association win the best inspection it deserves.

Your association deserves the best inspector who has zero conflicts of interest.

Call me, Bill Leys the Deck Inspector at 805-801-2380 for a fast free quote on your SB 326 inspection. We’ll be happy to bid against our peers and so will they.