Rick,

The only way Tony, or any other home inspector for that matter, can do a purely "visual" inspection is to *take no tools* with him during the inspection.

The home inspector would need to walk in, hands in pockets, and "*LOOK* around". That's it, nothing more.

Beyond that, the home inspector begins to get "intrusive" (a word some like to use), and from that point on to carrying the greatest and best tools becomes a personal decision that the individual home inspector must make in defining "visual".

Here is a challenge for all home inspectors on this board: define what you consider to be your "visual" inspection. What will you use and still fall in your definition of "visual" and what will you not use because you would fall outside your definition of "visual".

Anyone willing to contribute to the definition of "visual"?

We (home inspectors) need to stop calling what we do a "visual" inspection. It may have been a visual inspection at one time, but the standard of care that is routinely set by many inspectors goes beyond being a visual inspection.

I'll use the moisture meter as an example since we are all familiar with its use. If I see something that looks like a water stain or some other sign of a current or past moisture problem, or even a bad flashing job on a roof, and then I use the moisture meter as a tool to provide more information to me about the thing that I observed, then I think we are still in the realm of doing a visual inspection. But if I start routinely scanning the walls below windows or the floor around toilets in the bathroom with my moisture meter, because this is where I find a lot of leaks at houses I inspect and not because I observed something at this house that lead me to believe there may be moisture present in these locations at this home, then I'm no longer doing a visual inspection.

Here's another example. When I open up an electrical panel and report my findings, I'm doing a visual inspection. When I stick a three light tester into a receptacle and report my findings, I'm not doing a visual inspection on this portion of the electrical system. If, instead of using the tester, I remove the cover plate and report on how the receptacle is wired, I'm doing a visual inspection. In this case, the cost of the tool is cheap and it speeds up my inspection process, because I can use the tester to decide which cover plates I want to pull for a visual inspection, instead of pulling every one of them or relying on a "representative sample".

I'm leaning toward noninvasive or nondestructive. Noninvasive has a good parallel to the medical field, and I think more and more people are becoming familiar with that term and have an intuitive grasp of what it means -- to examine without breaking the skin or penetrating a body cavity. Nondestructive is similar but not quite the same, and comes from the engineering world.

When you go to the doctor, the doctor wants to learn as much as possible about you without causing damage to your body. The doctor runs you through a battery of noninvasive tests and examinations: looks you over, pokes and probes, measures your temperature and weight, listens to your heart and breathing, measures your pulse and blood pressure, looks in your ears and throat, checks your vision, tests your reflexes, etc. Beyond that there are a whole host of noninvasive diagnostic tools available for use: x-ray, ECG/EKG, MRI, radiology, ultrasound, and yes, infrared imaging. The doctor might order some minimally invasive tests such as drawing blood, a biopsy, or even a colonoscopy -- although those who have had that last one might disagree that it is "minimally invasive"! Thankfully, technology has pushed "let's grab the scalpel and see what's going on in there" way down the list!

Over in the engineering world, many of those same techniques and technologies are being used on physical objects in a process called NDE or nondestructive evaluation. NDE refers to methods used to examine and evaluate an object, material or system without impairing its future usefulness. A small amount of damage is permissible as long as the usefulness is maintained.

A house is a bunch of objects and materials that are assembled into various systems. I think nondestructive is better than noninvasive as a description of the kind of inspection that HIs do. It's that "examination without impairing future usefulness" part that is the key. Using a pin-type moisture meter, probing for wood damage, or dismantling equipment in order to get a better look are all invasive methods but they are still considered nondestructive techniques.

When I am working to define and shape the client's expectations of the inspection, I don't say "I'm going to do a limited visual inspection of the readily accessible areas of the home". I say "I'm going to spend several hours here trying to find out everything I can about the condition of this home without damaging it." Then I'll mention some of the things that might limit my inspection (e.g., not visible, not accessible, not safe).