Building Code Tips for Homeowners

Building Code Tips - The ground slopes away from the house in both directions as it should. The siding is level and you can see how there is more exposed foundation on the left than on the right. Copyright 2024 Tim Carter

Building Code Tips - Code Officials Should Do More

I’m helping my son on the weekends finish the basement in his 3-year-old house. He’ll be adding 1,300 square feet of finished living space.

A few days ago we met with the local building inspector. Donna gave us the thumbs up on the framing, plumbing, and all the electrical rough installations. She’s been doing inspections in Nashua, New Hampshire for eighteen years. Donna and I exchanged some building code tips. Later, after she had left, I thought of a few more things she might want to share with her peers.

At the end of the inspection, she discovered I was the Ask the Builder guy. “Oh, I read your columns and watch your videos all the time!” I thanked her and mentioned that if her small four-person building department ever needed a speaker, I’d be happy to stop by and share some stories.

Donna thought that might be a good idea and said she’d talk to her boss about my suggestion. As I drove north back to my home, I thought about what might be the most helpful thing to share with building inspectors.

Building Code Sections Ignored by Builders

The thought crossed my mind to talk about the top three problems I solve week-in-week-out. You might be one of the many homeowners I’ve talked with on the phone or I might have answered your email. The top three problems I deal with each week are:

• wet leaky basements, crawlspaces, and soggy yards
• roof leaks
• water leaks under doors and leaks caused by inferior deck attachment to a house

You may not know this but your local building code enforcement officer has the ability to make the building code more robust in your city or town. The building code you see online is a model code. Most cities and towns adopt it because they can’t afford to invest the time to develop their own code.

A one-size-fits-all building code works for many things, but not for all things. This is why local officials can modify the code to suit their housing stock, the local conditions, and ingrained customs.

Foundation Height Often Wrong

Foundation height is addressed in the code. There’s a small section that talks about how high a foundation must be above the ground next to it. Keep in mind the distance the code mentions is a minimum. I feel the distance should be double what the code says.

The building code also requires the ground around a house must slope away from the foundation. Try to visualize your house being at the top of a hill. In reality, it’s easy to achieve this requirement but too many builders put foundations too low into the ground causing major drainage issues.

The issue is these mission-critical items don’t seem to be enforced in many situations. Based on the number of houses I see that don’t have the ground around the house at the right height and sloping away from the foundation, it’s clear to me inspectors all across the USA are not holding builders’ feet to the fire in this area.

Roof Leaks Caused by Poor Flashings

Roof leaks in a large majority of cases can be traced to defects in the installation of flashings. Flashings are roofing products that connect a roof to something that’s not a roof. You’ll find them around chimneys, skylights, plumbing vent pipes, turbine vents, dormers, valleys, etc.

This is a typical flashing found around chimneys that poke through roofs. Photo credit: Tim Carter Copyright 2024

I feel building inspectors should do some heavy lifting in this area. I know they can’t be up on the roof acting as quality-control folks as the roofers work, but maybe it’s a good idea to force builders and roofers to take continuing education classes like other professionals.

Leaks Under Doors & Windows

I solve water seepage under door thresholds many times a month. Once again, the root cause for this, in my opinion, is that builders and carpenters don’t receive bullet-proof training in this skill. The required flashings to make door thresholds waterproof could be installed just after the roof is completed. Building inspectors doing the rough-framing inspection could verify if the door and window flashings are correct at this time since they’re already looking at the framing.

A house is the average person’s biggest investment in their life. People need to know that the most problematic areas of a house are built correctly. There has to be a way to get building departments and inspectors to help out in this respect since they have the power to issue a certificate of occupancy once the house is complete. I’m open to your suggestions and will pass them along to Donna.

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