New Home Wood Framing Inspection for Homeowners

If you don’t know anything about home construction or building new homes, I’d like to give you some tips on things to look for. Don’t get carried away with inspecting the wood framing of your new home, but it’s not a bad idea to have the ability to inspect the home for construction defects.

1. Did you make sure the correct posts and beams were installed? This would require having a basic understanding of the building plans. Examine the plans, locate posts and beams of a certain size and make sure they match the sizes indicated on the building plans.

2. Check that there are no large gaps between frame components. Look for large gaps of a quarter inch or more between all framing components. Structural framing components should be no more than 1/16-inch apart and relatively tight or there could be problems as the house settles.

3. Your framing contractor must not use defective lumber. Look for wood with large knots and cracks. If these pieces of wood are supporting other sections of the house, you could be in trouble, if you aren’t already. All grades of construction lumber must match construction plans.

Obviously, we don’t want large gaps between framing components, such as structural beams and posts. These are usually the easiest to find. However, defective wood that is covered by plywood or other framing components can be a bit more difficult to find.

The best advice I can give any homeowner or new home builder is to take as many pictures with a digital camera as possible. Try to take these photos weekly, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to stop by work every other day after the workers have left.

The images can also be used later, after the house is built, to locate structural beams and electrical, plumbing, heating and air conditioning conduits.