If you're a home inspector, I recommend you add a glass suction cup to your tool list. This is a great little tool to keep in the tool bag that you bring into the home. Even if you're not a home inspector, you might find value in this.
Every experienced home inspector has surely come across dozens of crank-out windows that wouldn't crank closed properly. Sometimes this is caused by a window that doesn't fit in the frame properly, sometimes damaged hardware, or possibly missing hardware.
In these cases, I usually team up with my client to get the window to close properly. I run outside the house and push on the window, and I have my client crank the window and lock it while I push.
This isn't terribly annoying if there are two people at the inspection, but it can be a time suck when a house has a bunch of them. During the winter, I have to get my big boots on, bring a ladder to the offending window, get it closed, go back inside, and repeat. It's just part of the job, and nothing I've ever whined about.
I guess I've always been lucky, however, because I've never come across a window that I couldn't access from the ground. Until recently.
Storytime
While doing a one-year-warranty inspection recently, I opened a casement window that absolutely would not fully close. The child safety lock on the window didn't line up properly, and nothing I did would work. This was particularly frustrating because it was a two-story home with a walkout basement, potentially putting the window out of my ladder's reach.
I was doing a team inspection on this house with Joe, who happened to be in the backyard. After watching me struggle with the window, Joe told me to grab a glass suction cup out of his bag. He brings it along to inspections just for this kind of situation. Genius!
