The Walabot DIY Wall Scanner is essentially a glorified stud finder for Android phones. I've seen several online advertisements for it and I've been curious, but I wasn't willing to fork over $100 to find out. The price recently dropped from $100 to $50 and a couple of people in my company asked about it, so I ordered one to test it out. I made a video showing how it works, check it out: https://youtu.be/mxV3sofJm4s
I don't have any concrete at my home to test it on, but it worked pretty well on drywall. Not amazing, but pretty good. If you're only after a stud finder, I recommend buying a stud finder. That's a lot faster. Or you could just do what these people did and drill a million holes in your ceiling.
Haha, just kidding, don't do that.
If you have a need for the other features on this device, such as finding water lines and electrical wiring, it's a pretty cool tool. You can find the Walabot online here:Â https://walabot.com/diy
Reuben Saltzman is a second-generation home inspector with a passion for his work. Naturally, this blog is all about home inspections and home-related topics in the Twin Cities metro area. In addition to working at Structure Tech, he is also a licensed Truth-In-Sale of Housing Evaluator in Minneapolis, Saint Paul and several other cities.
FLIR has a relatively new pocket-sized infrared camera with all of the bells and whistles of the much larger and expensive E6. It boasts the same resolution as the E6 but it's a fraction of the price at only $699. With these features and benefits, this camera ought to put the E6 out to pasture.
I recently had an informative email exchange with a past client that highlighted the discovery of some especially nasty water damage behind the stone siding at her townhome. I was curious about the events that led up to the discovery, and it all came down to one person being very curious and very persistent. I thought she had such a great story to share that I invited her onto our podcast, which you can listen to below.
Stone siding might be the most problematic siding that we come across as home inspectors. This stuff is failing left and right all over the country, and most of time the homeowner has no idea when their wall is a rotted mess behind the siding.
Take a look around any room full of home inspectors, and you'll notice we look a lot alike. We are almost all white men with a lot of gray hair. It's as if there's an unwritten rule that you have to be an old white guy to be a home inspector.
