What a Georgia inspection catches here, line by line, and which findings end a deal
Clay soil, termite letters, radon in granite country, polybutylene pipes: how to read an inspection report on a north Fulton or Cherokee County house.
Noted by Dana Whitaker, editor, towns field bookverified by Marc Ellison6 min read2 sources
Someone under contract on a 1974 brick ranch off Mid-Broadwell Road gets a forty page inspection report on a Tuesday and has until Friday to decide what it means. The report is not a verdict; it is a list written in a language of its own, and the work is sorting the lines that cost money from the lines that cost a Saturday.
Georgia does not buy houses subject to inspection the way other states do: the contract buys days, usually seven to ten, and the due diligence fee pays the seller for the right to walk away and keep your earnest money. Inside that window almost everything is negotiable. Outside it, very little is again.
The crawl space is where this county writes its findings
Piedmont clay is a shrink-swell soil: wet it swells, dry it shrinks, and the house on it moves. Almost every report on a pre-1990s house here has a crawl space section: most houses of that era in Alpharetta, Roswell, Milton and Woodstock sit on piers, not slabs. The inspector goes in with a flashlight and comes back with photographs of the piers, the framing and the soil.
None of that is unusual: the ASHI Standard of Practice asks an inspector to describe rather than prescribe, and on a brick ranch the crawl space is where the age shows. Read moisture before structure. A loose vapor barrier, a downspout dumping at the corner, grade sloping toward the house: cheap. Rot in a sill plate, or a pier settled off its footing: not.
What does a horizontal crack in a foundation wall actually mean?
Direction is the whole story. A vertical hairline in a poured wall, or a stair-step crack through the mortar of a brick veneer, is usually shrinkage and thermal movement, and here it is close to universal past thirty years. A horizontal crack running level along the wall at the height of the backfill is a different document: the wall is being pushed, and pressure from saturated clay does not stop on its own.
That distinction is worth an engineer: a letter runs a few hundred dollars and an afternoon, and turns a line everyone argues about into a finding with a name. If the engineer says the wall has moved and needs piers, that is negotiation with a number attached. If the engineer says it is performing as designed, that is a page you keep.
The termite letter is a Georgia document
Everywhere else the termite letter is a courtesy. Here it is paperwork. The report is issued on a Georgia Department of Agriculture form, dated, and signed by a licensed operator the department lists publicly. Lenders want it dated within thirty days, which is why a letter from last spring is worth what it is printed on.
The trap is the word bond. A treatment-only bond promises the company will treat if termites appear. A treatment-and-repair bond promises they will repair the damage too. Ask which one you have, whether it transfers and what that costs, and read the exclusions. A house with a repair bond is a smaller problem than one with a fresh letter and nothing behind it.
Is radon actually a problem in North Georgia?
Yes, and the reason is under the house. Radon comes out of uranium that occurs naturally in granite and in the clay weathered from it, and the northern Piedmont is granite country. North Georgia sits largely in the highest radon potential zone on the EPA radon map, which is where to check your county. EPA guidance sets the action level at 4 picocuries per liter, and above that line the recommendation is mitigation.
The test is the cheapest item in the transaction. A kit from a hardware store costs less than dinner, and a professional test with a continuous monitor costs a couple hundred dollars and must run closed-house, windows shut, for forty-eight hours. If the number comes back high, the fix is a pipe and a fan, or a membrane over the soil on a crawl space house. The credit for it belongs in the negotiation, not after closing.
The polybutylene question on a 1980s subdivision house
The gray pipe, usually stamped PB, went into an enormous number of American houses from the late 1970s into the mid 1990s, and the subdivisions between GA-400 and the Cherokee County line are full of it. It fails from the inside out, at the fittings more often than in the run, and some carriers will not write a policy on a house that still has it, or write it with a water damage exclusion you discover the day you need it.
The report will not always name it. Inspectors describe what they can see and disclaim what is behind drywall, so a house of that era deserves one question before the period ends: is the visible supply piping copper, PEX, or gray. A full repipe of a 1,800 square foot ranch is a known quantity here and contractors quote it constantly, so the number is obtainable in a day. That is what makes it negotiation instead of crisis.
Which findings are negotiation, and which are walk away?
Sort the report by what happens if you ignore it. Missing GFCI protection in a kitchen or bath, a double-tapped breaker, a handrail that does not return to the wall: handyman lines, and what the small credit at closing is for. Noise.
The walk-away column is shorter. A horizontal foundation crack an engineer calls active. A sewer scope that finds the lateral collapsed under the front yard, common in Roswell and Alpharetta houses old enough for cast iron or clay tile. Aluminum branch wiring in a house built before the mid 1970s, which insurers here treat the way they treat polybutylene. Moisture that has been painted over. And a seller who will not let the sewer scope or the engineer in at all, which is a finding too.
What about the roof on a 1980s subdivision house?
Three-tab shingles from that decade are at or past the life the manufacturers rated them for. The roof is rarely a walk-away, and it is the most predictable expense in the house: get a roofing contractor out inside your due diligence period with a written number for tear-off and replacement, then call your insurance before you close.
What the journal would do this week
Take the report you have and put every finding in one of three columns: negotiate, walk away, maintain. Then make two calls, one to a radon tester and one to a licensed pest control operator, and ask what a test costs and what a treatment-and-repair bond costs on a house that size. Both answers are free, and both arrive before Friday.
The journal walked two crawl spaces in the first week of March, one off Mid-Broadwell and one near Rucker Road, and both taught the same lesson about what is under the floor. If there is a street you want read this way before you sign, send the name and the date.
