About the Company
Advanced Quality Inspections (AQI) is a 3-person home inspection company based in Clayton, NC. Founded by Randy Berry in 2020, AQI completes hundreds of inspections annually, with over 1,400 performed in 2022.
Randy is a Certified Professional Inspector (CPI) with InterNACHI and his company offers a wide range of services. Those services include residential home inspections, thermal imaging, mold testing, radon testing, insect inspections, pre-drywall inspections, drone inspections, crawlspace inspections, septic inspections, water quality testing, and 11-month warranty inspections.
Challenge
About 25% of homes the company inspects have crawlspaces, especially in older, more rural homes. Many of these older homes have small access areas and low clearances, some just 10” high, making it impossible for even their “young and skinny” inspectors to access. Additionally, these crawlspaces have dirt floors and are covered in debris because they predate building codes that require vapor barriers and accessibility requirements.
Solution
Advanced Quality Inspections uses a SuperDroid GPK-32 tracked crawlspace inspection robot that they nicknamed “Andy”. Andy lets their inspectors inspect hard-to-access crawlspaces, as well as share what they are viewing with the customer (usually the home buyer) in real time.
As an extra benefit, AQI inspectors provide customers the entire crawlspace inspection recorded using the inspection robot via a private YouTube video, which is usually about 10-12 minutes long. Comparatively, when the inspectors do not use Andy, the crawlspaces can take around 30 minutes to inspect, with the customer receiving only photos or snippets of video from the inspector’s smartphone.
Results
The crawlspace inspection robot has been a big win for AQI because it’s positioned them as the home inspection company of choice for many of their local real estate agencies. Pest control companies and several listing agents hired AQI because the buyer’s inspector could not access the crawlspace and the deal would have fallen through due to the buyer’s concerns.
Randy shows off Andy the Inspection Robot weekly for real estate agents in his area and considers the robot to be a “referral magnet”.
He also shares videos of different inspections on social media alongside stories of what they’ve found. One notable discovery was made after sending their inspection robot into a crawlspace too small for the inspector to access. They discovered substantial water damage that had been undetectable from the floor above!
Additional Notes
Randy states that a crawlspace inspection robot is both a great marketing tool and a solid inspection tool. He shared that most inspectors have a drone and a thermal camera, but they need to have a crawlspace inspection robot in their toolkit because it’s debilitating not having one in a home inspection business.
Note the mold covered wooden member at the 5:15 mark from a recently renovated bathroom. The mold would not have been detected without the crawlspace inspection robot.