Getting a professional inspection done when buying a home in St George, UT is just common sense. There may be a couple of items missed during the inspection that you should be aware of. 

These two items are:

  1. The age of the the hot water heater.

  2. The age of the heat pump or air conditioning unit. A working heat pump or air conditioner is super important in the hot St George summer months. Summer is almost always the time when they’ll die.

Of course these two items will be covered by your home warranty, but if one of these systems goes out you will be annoyingly inconvenienced for a while. Plus, you will have to “arm wrestle” the home warranty company to do expensive repairs (which they hate doing).

So, if your home inspector doesn’t provide it, you will need to find out how old the hot water heater is in the home. Nowadays most hot water heater manufacturers make it easy to find out when the hot water heater was manufactured. If you can’t find a manufacturing date, you will want to locate the serial number on the hot water heater and then use that number to look up the manufacturing date on the manufacturer’s website.

Now it’s a simple matter of comparing the age of the hot water heater to how long the hot water heaters warranty is. For example, if there is a warranty of 7 years on the water heater and you find out that it’s 8 years old you might want to discuss this with your agent.

You will also want to know how old the heat pump or the air conditioning unit is. The average lifespan of a heat pump or air conditioner in Southern Utah is only about 17 years. If the home you’re buying is older than 15 years you need to know the age of the heat pump or air conditioning unit.

It’s possible that the seller has the paperwork from the install of the unit showing the installation date or purchase date. If not, you need to hire a heating/air conditioning repair person to find out the age. Have him inspect the unit to make sure it’s working properly while he is doing this. 

If the age of the unit is coming up on 17 years this will be another discussion to have with your real estate agent.

If you have these two items checked before your home purchase, your first few years in the home should be easier and less stressful. 

Posted by David Ellis on
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