When booking a snagging inspection with HomeSnag, you will be prompted whether to have your cavity wall insulation checked. The importance of this is to consider that fact that a lot of customers booking us post-completion are experiencing heat loss, and as per the recent example shown above, it is often due to poorly insulated walls.
Cavity wall insulation in a traditional block and brick build is not there to provide 'warmth' to insulate the house in the same way there is wool insulation in most lofts; it is actually to prevent air circulation. This is why some builders use other materials such as Polystyrene balls, as the objective is to blow in material that will prevent air circulation as efficiently as possible.
The installers should strategically drill and blow in insulation in various areas of the house, but of course this always doesn't happen as efficiently as needs be. We drill test holes and use a borescope camera to inspect areas in several parts of the house and often find a severe lack of insulation as shown above.
One common area for the builder to miss is insulating above a garage, leaving customers wondering why their bedroom above the garage is colder than the rest...

We conducted a snagging inspection on a house today for a client who managed to get the builder to grant us access in haste of completing. It is a good example how, whilst all may appear fine at first (as this house was aesthetically good to the untrained eye in terms of paintwork and so on) it presented some red flags on closer examination.

On arriving it was clear that the balcony flashing was failing as the wall was completely saturated, efflorescence in the brickwork indicating it was long-standing and the moisture meter was almost off the scale.
Having checked that the gutter was not overflowing using our specialist camera, it became clear that the balcony drainage was failing; not an easy remedy.
Not only this but there was evidence of fairly strong subsidence, with the brickwork cracking in a stepping formation all underneath the coping stones.
As shown in the last picture, the bathroom also had no form of heating, as the unfloor system loop practically stopped at the door and with no wall-mounted radiator it will certainly be unwelcome in the cold winter months to come.
The house was overall a very good standard of internal finish, with only approx 100 items raised on the report. But it goes to show, a snagging inspection raises not just minor improvements but also fundamental issues that could question whether to proceed with the plot at all...