Last week my husband made an appointment for the engineer Mr. Bob Mason from Reliable Structural Engineers to inspect our house. According to the business's website, Mr. Mason holds a Bachelor of Architectural Engineering and Master of Architectural Engineering from The Pennsylvania State University (our alma mater, too!). We had purchased the house only a couple of months ago, and we had a regular house inspector do an inspection, but my husband wanted peace of mind about certain aspects of our house. A few days before the appointment, we had to reschedule because my husband's grandma passed away, and her funeral was during the appointment time. Mr. Mason rescheduled the appointment for a couple of days later. On the day of the appointment, Mr. Mason showed up a few minutes early. We had never before hired a structural engineer so felt a bit unsure of what questions to ask, but Mr. Mason answered all of our questions thoroughly. My husband probably asked the same question about the bouncy floors dozens of times, and Mr. Mason patiently answered the question each time. In about one hour, Mr. Mason inspected part of the exterior of our house, our basement, our two floors of living space, and our attic. Because of Mr. Mason's feedback, my husband and I learned a lot about the structure of our house and how to remodel it in the future. For example, we might add a trench drain between our driveway and garage, we know which load-bearing walls to leave alone when we remodel our kitchen and full bathrooms, we might add a roof vent and aluminum ladder in our attic, we will make sure that our front stoop has sufficient footing to add a portico, we might add sister joists to our floors to reduce bounciness, and we might add sister joints to our roof to support solar panels. In the future, we will use his recommendations to ensure that our contractors correctly perform their jobs. Because our house has no major issues, Mr. Mason gave us the option of purchasing a verbal report instead of a written report, which saved us a few hundred dollars. read more