Davis/Unes Professional Inspections

Curt was great with the home inspection process. He made sure to explain things to me that needed repair by sellers vs things that weren’t a huge deal. He was always very responsive with any questions/concerns I had!

When we considered buying a house, it was discovered that at least some areas on the house were finished with Dryvit artificial stucco. We reached agreement with the seller that all Dryvit would be removed and replaced with convential hard-coat stucco. Following this work, we had The Unes Co. inspect the house, with particular emphasis made that they would confirm that the Dryvit had been removed and replaced with hard stucco. Their final report, which included a special section on this request, stated, "The exterior finish system is not a Dryvit material. It is a hard-coat material which is different than Dryvit. This is a concrete cement plaster on hardboard. It is not an insulation and then a thin coating of material." On the basis of this report, we purchase the house. Two years later the surface of the finish started to flake off. I hired a craftsman to examine all the areas which had the stucco-like appearance. Some places had been reworked with the hardcoat stucco. But the most complex structures, two projecting dormers, were left with the Dryvit surface still intact, a insulation panel of styrofoam covered by Drvit. When it was eventually removed, the substructure of the dormers was found to be damaged and had to be rebuilt, presumably because of problems with the Dryvit coating. The Unes Company did refund their charge for the inspection, But that refund did not come close to what it cost me to repair the dormer substructure. Under threat of lawsuit, the original owner did replace the remaining Dryvit with true stucco. The mistake that the Unes company made has no good explanation. Did they just take the word of the owner or the crew that was removing the Dryvit that all of it was being replaced? I don't know. But what I do know is that the reason you hire an inspector is to get a competent and independent evaluation of the construction. One or both of those obviously did not all happen in this case, and it cost us a lot of time and money that would have been avoided if the inspection had been done correctly. This happened nearly 10 years ago. It may not reflect the current quality of the Unes company. Readers should evaluate current capability.