Recourse against inspector-boiler is a complete hack job

[Kelly Conrad]

Hello! So long story short, I had a boiler specialist out to our property (closed last Thursday) to see why it wasn't getting warm. They opened it and said it's very, very obviously a hack job and they even had speaker wires in there to make certain connections. They bypassed a variety safety items, and so while we can get the boiler to turn on and heat if needed, it absolutely would NOT pass a city inspection, and I would 100% not be comfortable with it the way it is for tenants living in both my units.

So, we DID have the home inspected before we purchased and the inspector didn't say anything about the boiler. They took a picture of it, and had no notes or anything about the boiler being a problem (and we were present as well, he didn't say anything personally either). He took a picture of the front plate being off so you can see the wires and that was it.

The picture itself clearly shows that the boiler is not up to code, and our specialist is going to get a letterhead explaining this. Once we have that, our agent is going to be calling the inspection company.

My question is, because their inspector absolutely neglected to properly mark that boiler as being a problem, could we hold the inspection company liable for not inspecting it properly? The parts for the boiler will likely end up costing more than buying a completely new boiler, and that was absolutely not something we were expecting when our inspector said the boiler is completely fine. Ideally, we would want them to pay for the fix or a new one, but what would be realistic in a situation when we have proof that the inspector didn't inspect something properly?

[Russell Brazil]

Like @Mindy Jensen said, standard home inspection contract limits the liability to the cost of the inspection.

Also just for future reference....there is nearly 100% chance on every property you close on in your life that there will be problems discovered after closing on the property. Its just a fact of life that everyone has to deal with.