Tales From the Crawlspace: Life as a Home Inspector with Austin Lang

In this episode of Clarksville Insider, host Josh Atkins sits down with former home inspector–turned–roofer Austin Lang to dig into the unseen stories beneath Clarksville homes. From wild crawlspace discoveries to the surprising details that make or break a home inspection, Austin shares what buyers should really look for, how small issues can turn into big problems, and why understanding your home’s “hidden side” matters more than most people think. Along the way, the two swap stories about trampoline floors, storm damage, and what it means to genuinely help homeowners—whether it’s spotting a leaky shower, climbing a slick roof, or just offering calm guidance during a stressful process.

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Transcript

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Well, welcome back to Clarksville Insider. And when I say back, I mean, we are actually back recording episodes in the studio. Thanks for tuning in, checking us out. My name is Josh Atkins, like the diet and what you can expect from today's episode and just any episode in general is we're trying to get connected to the area of Clarksville and not necessarily all. all the main things that you may know or hear about and already know about. Well, we may get to that at some point, but I'm looking for stories that you may not have heard before, from people you may not have heard from before. And today is no different. Now, what I've got and who I've got, his name is Austin Lang. He's in the house, he's in the studio. First of all, Austin, thanks for coming in. Oh man, thanks for having me on. Now, you have an interesting job, and I'm going to get... get to it here, but right now you're doing roofing, right? And so you're up on the roof where I don't want to be, but just not too long ago, you were actually in another place I don't want to be, like crawl spaces and all those kinds of things, and you were an inspector, like a home inspector, right? Absolutely. And like I said, you go where I don't and you do what I want. So I'm glad there are people that can do that when I'm out showing a house. I like to look in the living room. I like to show the porch and the deck in the front yard and go, all right, now we'll get an inspection and somebody else will be showing up to that. just getting into that, of all, like how in the world, how did you end up in Clarksville? Are you a lifer? Are you a guy that just moved here a little bit ago? I'd love to get just a little bit of your connection to the area. Absolutely. I think kind of like everyone else, um military is my first familiarity with Clarksville and Fort Campbell up there. I was never actually stationed here, but it was always the goal to get to Clarksville. Everybody knew Fort Campbell's the place to be. And so you were surrounding areas, different places, and you finally ended up here or you got out and then you just moved here? So I got out and moved here just to be close to family. My brother's here with his wife. They're looking to start a family out in this area. And we were super pumped just to have the opportunity. We both got out of the military at the same time. And he called me out and said, dude, Clarksville's awesome, come move out. We've got a good church, we've got a good community, and you're working in, I was doing home inspections out in Colorado and decided, hey, let's move the company and get close to family. Real estate game is sweet. So getting out of the military, how did you end up, because I imagine when you're getting out, you're surveying the job landscape, like, okay, now what? I assume it's something like that. So how, in the scope, All your options. Did you land on you know what I think I could do that I think I think you're pretty good at it man You talk about just kind of you get out of the military and everybody talks about how stressful that transition is So if you're going through it, you're not alone with that being said there are so many opportunities on the table And I was doing an internship in tech realized. Hey, maybe this is not the world for me I want to do something with my hands and had a a close Buddy of mine just reached out and said, hey dude, I'm doing home inspections. I really can't explain what that entails, but I'll train you how to do it, see if you like it, and we can go from there. And I tell you what, that got the ball rolling, and it was, it's just been an exciting ride for the last two years to just, you see some of the craziest things, and I look forward to getting into those. Yeah, that's really what I wanted you, give me all of that. oh So you moved from Colorado, you got to Clarksville, you're doing your home inspection thing. And just getting right into it here, what is the job of the home inspector? Because I feel like, as a realtor, I know what you do. And maybe I don't even know all of what you do, just the concept and how you enter the transaction and all those kind of things. But I imagine there's some misconceptions, or at least give me what is the job, the job description, as you would entail it. Think about it. So the way I explained it to my mom is I am the generalist I'm the person who has kind of seen a little bit of everything and it's my job to go in give you a thumbs up green light of all your general things. Hey, this looks awesome or Maybe we bring out the subject matter expert because I'm seeing some some red flags and it's typically very obvious red flags once you've been doing it for about six months ah but the process of learning every single trade to give it the checkmark to say we're great or To see maybe there's some red flags that are there. You just kind of have to learn the whole uh Gambit of what goes into a house. Oh It's got to be a little stressful too um knowing that there's some liability in there, like people are going to look at that and go, hey, you said this was good or you said this was bad or and knowing, you know what, I got to rely on my training. I got to do what I know I'm supposed to do and how to do it. Like, I'm sure there's some level of not fear, but just like responsibility kind of thing that you feel when you go out. Absolutely. And I think that's one of the massive appeals to being a home inspector is you realize like, hey, I play a critical role in the real estate transaction. uh And there's some intensity when you go into a house, especially you go into a house where you can tell that the homeowner liked to do a lot of work themselves. uh It puts you into some scary spots when you realize, there weren't permits on this one. Maybe we look into it deeper. You can get uh some unique situations, especially if you're in a crawl space and you're in the crawl space, you realize, hey, this homeowner decided they would do their own foundation work. ah That can be a fun time. I've got a story about that one we can talk about later on. But you have, there's really also um a really cool spot to be in as the subject matter expert to coach home buyers and to talk with agents about where they're at. And you have the privilege on really good houses, and the majority of houses on the market are just awesome houses, but you have the ability to reaffirm a decision. It is sometimes people's biggest purchase they've made to date. Yeah. And sometimes, like... There's got to be some percentage of the people that you work with that have never even seen a home inspection report. And so when I'm coaching buyers, I'm like, OK, now what you're going to see is 10, 15, 20, 40 pages of PDFs of pictures and descriptions. And you're going to wonder, how is this house still standing if you've never seen one before? And then you're like, Loose outlet cover recommend replacing like it's down and so You do have that that cool uh Opportunity to like a lot of those first-time homebuyers like getting into it and going I'll take listen like and kind of helping ease some tension some fears and saying look I I understand that and what I see and I know you've still you've got like things that you can't I can't say but ultimately like if you if you have the opportunity you can kind of help them and coach them through what you're looking at. Do you have that opportunity too? Yeah. For real, my favorite kind of group to work with in the real estate transaction are the first time home buyers. And that, the initial inspection report sometimes reads like, I mean, a slap in the face where you'll open up the home inspection report. It's 30 pages of every possible thing that you could think is wrong with a house. um And to be able to talk through with a buyer, hey, most of this stuff is not stuff to worry about. There are things that I'm pointing out that I want you to be aware of. A lot of those things are items that will end up on the honey-do list, if you will. uh You work all week, you've got a cool house, and you come back in, when you're first buying it, I like to kind of build that inspection report with, hey, here are the critical things. that we wanna bring in an expert for. oh Sometimes you'll see some plumbing issues that just need to have a plumber out to realign some small stuff. Other times you'll go in and you'll say, hey, it's rare, but you'll sometimes see like, you need a structural engineer to just look at the foundation and give us, make us feel confident in the foundation the house is sitting on. And then you get really simple things of, hey, the outlets, aren't firmly in the wall. It's not something to worry about. It's not a big deal. But it's something that as an inspector, you want to make a buyer feel confident that you have looked through everything there is to look at. And when you can do that and get that, you're like, oh, OK, I'm not to be over. It's like, OK, I can do this. I can help people. And I'm into it. And on to the next one, almost. Absolutely. got to check those things off. As of today, it is the 29th of October. I mean, we've had battery powered electric shaking ghouls and nonsense at Lowe's since flipping 4th of July. So we finally reached that point, Halloween time, the time for scary stories and movies all over my dang streaming service, even when I'm just trying to watch like home improvement or something. It's like, so. So I want to get into some scary stories, some horror stories, some versions of Friday the 13th. mean, this is like, give me some things. Now, I've thrown out some parameters here. And I don't know if you've got one for all of these. because that's the part I don't see. And I usually see them in pictures or we've talked. like, hey, this is what I'm seeing. But you are just going in blind. to these houses. You're just like, oh, you just get a dang address. And you just show up and go, all right, here we go. And I imagine you've walked into some things just on a general sense. mean, what is it like to show up to a house and go, huh? Because to me, I do that when we do showings, but we're just kind of walking around in the main. I mean, you know you're about to get into it. Oh, yeah. Any house you walk into, you know there's a surprise waiting for you. At some point, there's gonna be something that either jumps out to ya, that you're gonna put your hand in something you didn't want to, ah not a big fan of reaching behind refrigerators for obvious reasons, and you're always gonna find something interesting in an attic. eh Yikes. And so, something interesting, that's probably a good way to put it. You're gonna find something interesting, whatever that means. so. As long as, because what I've, what I've found is people get very skittish, is that, is that a, people, uneasy, they get that weird feeling, you know, like they're in the movie and there's some guy watching, like in the distance, like coming up, you get that, like that sixth sense. People get wild when there's an animal involved. Like the presence of, or if there ever was like, It could be presence of an animal at some point, maybe. And it was like, all right, hold on. Do we even want this house? it's, it's, yeah. And so, so thinking, thinking animals wise. So for, for animals, I've got a couple of stories. Thankfully, most, most of the animal stories are cute. Um, it's not like you're walking into just seeing a 150 pound dog coming after you. Homeowners generally give you a heads up. ah I will say one of the cutest stories that I had with animals was getting in an attic ah In the very corner of the attic we started just you kind of listening for everything while you're up doing your inspection and I just heard these squeaks coming from the back corner It's of course the hardest place in the attic to get to And after about you know, four or five minutes of just trying to crawl over not fall through the drywall You know, make sure you're being careful the insulation found a whole nest of raccoon, I don't even know what you call raccoon babies, but a whole nest of those. And so that was an interesting experience to come down and tell the buyer and the seller, hey guys, we need to really humanely move these things out. Now that's not something I'm gonna take on, because mama was, I'm sure, coming back. But that was an adventure. um I will say one of the grossest experience I had was thinking. Okay, there we go. because let me just say to all of you, I set this up like, all right, give me your horror, give me your scary, it's, and it's like, all right, well, here's the cutest story I've ever heard. Oh, I know, I know. I was like, yes. And the funny part is I was all in. Give me those raccoons. I'll work them back to health. Put them in the backyard and all that kind of stuff. so getting, so said, we're talking gross. Sometimes the nastiest thing in an attic you don't always find while you're in the attic. I remember looking through thinking, OK, this might be a roof leak. I'm just in a closet seeing some wet water stains or what I thought at the time was water stains. And you really. You don't want to go poking around too much, but I'm a tall guy. You see water stains in an attic or in a closet. Natural thing to do is just kind of explore more. The second I touched that ceiling, I probably took a shower and I had at least 15 different mice and rats, some type of rodent. And instead of like that, eh instead of sticking together, oh yeah, instead of the ceiling sticking together, it was so um damp. I had to go change clothes afterwards, because I took a full, and then that's a hard place also to call the agent, let an agent know, hey, um you're going to need some drywall guys to come in here, and it's really not my fault. I didn't want to be there, I didn't want to be in that, but it was... It was like something out of the old Fear Factor show of just standing in there you pull the lever and you take a rat shower The rat shower. All right. That is the official title of this episode the rat shower and other assorted stories from the crawlspace. well you mentioned 150 pound dogs I imagine like you've probably got plenty of situations where you just show up and say oh they have a dog I hope you're nice like Loose like oh forgot to put him away. He's fine like he probably just again You don't know what you're walking into with you know you never know I mean, thankfully my dog loves it because he knows there's always treats in the truck um but yeah, you just kind of keep them in your pocket because you sometimes you walk in and you got a really skittish cat and other times you have a New four-legged best friend that's gonna accompany you for the whole inspection. Yeah, like oh oh you're gonna inspect also Well, come along. We're going to the bathroom. That's it. You got a really dog that likes to lick you, and suddenly you're in the crawl space on your hands and knees, and the owner decided to let the thing out in the backyard with you. That's an experience. Oh, he's nice. I understand that, but I don't want him right here, right next to me. You learn really quick to bring a change of clothes in between inspections. You learn really quick. Well, especially after rat shower. We'll be right back with rat shower. Holy cow. can, ugh, I'm just imagining. Like, you're, sorry, I can't move on from that. uh It's a visual that's probably pretty accurate to the experience. How long, how long did it take for you to like, understand what was happening? Was it like two seconds of? oh It was pure horror from the second that like, my finger broke through the ceiling. You know, because you're being as gentle as you can and then there's just nothing there. And it was as if somebody had soaked a piece of paper um in water for about a week and you touch it and I mean, you're looking upwards too. So you're looking into that thing and it just drops through and it's the level of horror of how do I extricate myself from this situation without dragging everything through the rest of the house. Are these alive? or not? they were alive. I mean, 50 50. I as I was asking that just now, I'm like, I don't know which would be worse. I don't know if like alive or not alive, unalived in the tick tock world. But like, I just I can't imagine a best case scenario. Touching touching a squishy ceiling like I'm sure that wasn't even on your list of things that Might have been coming through like oh, especially when dirty water. I can deal with dirty. I can deal Nope, no, not that it's just full-on like a rat's nest. Yeah, that's insane I don't know. This might be our first episode that gets uh Gets a warning at the front leg. Okay folks just so you know if you're yeah, if you're not okay with conversations about that just just be ready you have like a disclaimer that's well thankfully that's that's about my worst that's my worst animal related one I think that's anybody's worst fear night I mean you said it with the show I mean just imagine going going over your head all right now who can stand there the longest Joe let me out of here so I don't think I'll ever be able to top that with anybody I talk to. Well, yeah. Well, can you beat Ratshauer? No? OK, great. He wins. But at some point, too, you got to show up. Or I would imagine you show up to a house and you even get some surprises, where you're like, this is a good looking. Like, oh, this is pretty great. And then you get in there and go, oh, oh. Oh, like it's the do you have have some some times where you thought you were walking into a solid ten and once you got in there you're like this is a one and a half so the truth is um The more expensive the house the more that you're kind of like I Don't know logic would say the fewer issues you're gonna have the truth is Every house is gonna have something there are a few things when I first started um The guy that my mentor was training me, he's like, hey man, the more expensive the shower, the more you have to check it. Like they get fancier, they get more um features to it. You know, you get the wall shower, the overhead rain shower, you've got the steam pump, you know, everything. And when you're in those, your gut is to say, it looks so nice. I bet you we're set. And then you suddenly, you turn it on and you're thinking, all right, we are good to go. uh Everything's warming up. I go in with a thermal camera as well as like a thermometer kind of gun that I can tell and everything's checking out and About the time you get the shower really hot you let it run you turn it off It can be scary where you see the heat going. It's not necessarily down the pipes and that's when it's like, alright Hey, we need to get somebody out here. You know, you do your best to pinpoint where that leak is coming down the wall um Showers are just one of those things that you have to always check the plumbing because it can get that can get terrifying as well you think man we're set we're good to go and I always leave the the water stuff kind of towards the end especially if you're in a house where You know it they've had the the water heater turned off you show up the first thing you checks the water heater the last thing you check is everywhere that there should be hot water and you get in there and You know your showers are fun Because not every shower is different, but those expensive houses come with some really cool setups. And you get into them. And just sometimes, complicated things have complicated issues. I guess that's the best way to put it. That is a good way to put it. I've seen just like, oh, there's a shower sticking out of the wall, and there's two knobs hot and cold. That's it. And it's like, okay, well, it's one of these three things if there's an issue instead of, all right, where do I start? Like getting into that. so then, like after you're doing that, you got to figure out where the water's going. Like, absolutely. And it's always down. Like it's never. It is never where it's so, so, you know, cool best case scenario. And that's not why we're on here to talk about best case scenario, but. Nine times out of ten the water is going to go where it's going to go and and it's going to go through the plumbing It's routed that way. It's designed that way when you start to develop an eye to see hey maybe the shower pan is not looking the way it should or It's got the really fancy tiles that I know you have to double check the seams at the base and you get in there You realize okay? I mean, there's one house that comes to my mind immediately doing for a first time home buyer, super excited. It was a flip. And as I'm running the shower, I'm realizing, OK, this thing is not as watertight as it should be, which it should be 100 % watertight. ah But so it's There's no range. It's like, if it's somewhat watertight, we're good. And we need absolute on that. No, and then it was like, OK, this shower is not up to par. And it was on the first floor. which always means you're gonna have a unique time. So turned off all the water, ah go through, I try to save the crawl spaces for last because they're never gonna be as clean as you want them to be. And it was just on the back corner of the house from the crawl space entrance. And so you get down on hands and knees, wiggle yourself into this little two foot by three foot hole, fight your way through, I mean, it's Clarksville. So we get some massive spiders out here. which I guess is in keeping with the Halloween season. Crawl through all your spider webs, get to the back corner, and as I'm just looking through the crawl space, you just start to hear the drip. And that's when your gut sinks. You're like, oh man, all right, I was right, I called this one, but now let's identify it. And identifying is one thing, correctly documenting with photos is a whole nother beast. When you're just trying to, you you got your, I take all my photos on a tablet. I've got my tablet there. My flashlight is, you know, Velcro to the tablet. It's kind of its own little rig. And you're just trying, how do I get the right context for a photo? So people know where this is. Cause somebody's got to come out. How do I get the photo to like actually document the leak? And then simultaneously in the back of your mind, you're like, okay, now how do I communicate this? It's not the end of the world, but it has to be resolved and you need to communicate. you know, with the buyer, like, don't ignore this, please. And I don't know, you just see it a lot where you'll be in there, you'll think, man, this is the coolest setup of a shower I've ever seen, and then you're in the crawl space five minutes later listening to a drip. And like, there's no good scenario for a drip. That's it. That's it. The best case scenario is probably like kitchen sink. Like, OK, somebody needs to tighten something. But. in a spot where there shouldn't be water, it's like, all right, somebody's gotta get out. Somebody gotta get out of Inevitably. Yep, yep. Have you ever been surprised, like, in the positive? Like, where you walk in and go, all right, well, let's see what this house has. And you're like, oh, all right, like, looking pretty good. Because I know you always find something. Yep. And so just even going in. I imagine there's some times where it just even like, oh, all right, well that was not what I expected. It's awesome. um Sometimes you'll never judge a book by its cover and then you start to judge houses. You're like, OK, cool, I'm walking into a bomb. I'm walking into a disaster. And you get in and you realize, OK, no, the house has probably just sat for a couple of weeks in the middle of grass season. All the graft, the lawn has grown up. kind of everything, you're just looking on the outside of it and you get inside and you realize like, hey, no, like the homeowner really cares about what they've got. They put some work into getting it on the market because they, you know, don't want complications. And that's exciting. You know, when you go in, now as a home inspector, you always think like, okay, am I missing something? And there are nights I will lay in bed and think. Okay, just go through a mental checklist and I've got software that, you know, is a safety net. I can look through that and make sure, I've checked all my boxes. um And it's just really cool though when you walk in, especially some of the smaller houses that we have in Clarksville and you can tell that owners, they did their due diligence to get on the market. um You know, who cares if I cared what the external color of the siding looked like? Yeah, that's all. Change and updated. Yeah, yeah So as far as as far as like because there's there's plenty of other things that can go wrong in a house Yeah, like I've been in one where it felt like you were walking on a trampoline It's like oh, yeah Oh this floor is way squishier and just like the water thing like it should be no squishiness nothing like there's no like threshold of squishiness on a wood floor or and And as far as like, are the most, maybe, and this is completely unscientific, all anecdotal, but like, what are the things that you saw uh that are like most common? Like it's usually floors, it's usually like wall issues or ceiling, shower, you know, like what, uh so like, you when you're going to like, that you've seen that are most typically. Like it's probably, if there's an issue, it's probably gonna be flooring or it's probably gonna be electrical or it's probably gonna be this or that. So a lot of that comes down to the age of the home. In some of your older homes, electrical is typically gonna come up. We just have more experience, you know, and I guess I could say the technology has come further. And so, you know, there are a few panel boxes that you look for that you're like, hey, we're not about that. That's in older homes. Electrical is one of the big things I'm looking for um in newer homes. There's It's the showers, you know, we kind of kind of talked circles around that, you know um But new homes you definitely want to check your showers older homes. Just do a base check and the big thing um Coming out from Colorado you had a lot of basements and you want to talk about horror stories We can get in ask me about that one once I'm kind of off this tangent um But you've got basements. In Clarksville, you have crawl spaces. And the big thing that I'm seeing in the market right now is doing the encapsulated crawl space, just because it's doing a lot of protection. um It saves those subfloors. You walk through in some of these older homes that have some thinner subfloors, and you might as well be walking like it's like a trampoline park through your living room. um I've been to a couple trampoline park houses. You know what? Let's keep looking. Yeah, do you feel that? um Now most of most everyone I've worked with on the buy side and sell side but um Buyers always want to know and buyers parents always want to know they always want to know it's always what's the what's the what's the age of the roof? Yeah, what's what's the what's the roof look like and When I'm out there, and I'm ready to be corrected right now, but this is what I usually say, so feel free to guide me in my verbiage, but I'm usually saying, okay, I'm no expert, because I'm not, but I'll say what I'm looking for, I'm looking for missing shingles, like just my, what I can see, and I'm looking for like rippling or like waviness. Those are like the two things that you can just kind of see from the ground. And I'm like, oh, there's a missing shingle there. Or you can see kind of the waviness. I mean, is that kind of as we transition? Because you transitioned into roofing not too long ago. It was kind of like uh probably in the last year or so, right? Yeah, in the last eight months, uh my brother owns a roofing company and was like, hey, dude, you're doing a lot of home inspections. home inspections sometimes pull up the roofs. Why don't we kind of look at this? um And then the more I got acquainted with roofing, the more I was like, man, roofing checks the same exact boxes. um There's more friction in roofing just because you work with insurance a lot. And so that's kind of where I exist. But as an agent, as a home inspector, you're looking for different things than a roofer. And I think that was a hard transition for me um as I went from just home inspections and roofing. What you want from your home inspector when it regards a roof is to just give you the general thumbs up or thumbs down if insurance is gonna cover that roof. I think that's the biggest thing. When I was on roofs just with the home inspector hat on, you're wanting to make sure no missing shingles. You really want to make sure there's no crease shingles. In Clarksville, hail is a thing. And then, Kind of the overall build of a roof. It's interesting, you get some really ornate, awesome looking roofs that have all the different gables, all the designs, and you'd be shocked at what those roofs channel water into. Kind of like a shower. exactly. The more twists and turns, the more possibilities for something to go wrong. Absolutely, and that should never deter you. Obviously your curb appeal like that's what you you pull up the Zilla listing when you're shopping for a house and you see like oh man that house looks awesome I can picture myself in there the family and the kids We just look great the more complicated the roof there's an inspector the more times you want to like spend your time making sure that you don't have leaks inside and You want to make sure that you know that the outside what we call the envelope of the house you know, the roof is the most critical part of that external seal to keep the elements out and making sure that there aren't any visible issues with it, with the priority being if you have something wrong that would keep insurance from covering that roof, that's, I mean, worst case scenario is you go up as an inspector and you say, hey, the roof looks great. And they come back to you and say, well, insurance said otherwise, you know, that's a bad place to be. I can imagine. OK, well, this guy said, and that guy. But you say, and you're like, all right, hold on. Get me out of here. That's it. And Clarksville has some big storms. That's just kind of the nature of our location, um we get routinely. We get hail, and we get some pretty fast winds. And so you always want to make sure that you don't have any issues in that purchase process. Have you seen any on the roof side? it mostly, I you said, missing shingles. Is there anything that homeowners can do on their own? I feel like you can do certain things. And you even mentioned, uh-oh, you can tell when somebody's done their own work. It seems like, and I don't do much work around, just because I don't know how, but. Like it seems like roof is like, know what, let's call it guy. Like is it more, actually you can kind of do this because it's really just up, you're dealing with heights, you're dealing with pitch of the roof, like all those kinds of things. Is it really just a don't go up there unless you're like maybe getting a branch off, like just kind of doing some general clearing? So I think it depends probably on how athletic you are and how comfortable with heights you are. um Like if I was like a JV basketball player in high school like oh man you should be You definitely want to do routine checks your gutters not a starter I mean more of like a eighth guy off the bench Oh, man, if you have if you've got probably a 12 year old comfortable with ladders, they could go clean your gutters for you. Awesome I did hit a double a game-winning double in JV baseball. So there you go. Maybe I may be good to go, right? Yeah, 100 % 100 % That's what I was looking for and I'm going up this afternoon. There you go. There you go. But it does does seem like when it when it when it comes to probably doing shingle work and shingle repairs, you know, I could drive down the road and I could point out and my girlfriend gets so frustrated because I do it. Oh, oh they probably did their repair themselves. They probably did their repair themselves. And then you can have other times where it's like, man, You know, you get off a roof after a repair and send photos in and you can't tell a difference and that's the goal. Yeah You can probably you're probably looking at like lines You're looking at like straightness and like how much it's hanging over the side like I'm sure you got all your all your stuff It's the Wizard of Oz once you see behind the curtain. You can't you can't unsee it. Yeah, it's like oh yikes and catching your your eye on that but um Is there Did you ever, like, do you have like a roofing story that could kind of fall into this category? mean, it's kind of weird because you, I would imagine, first of all, I haven't been doing it that I know you just recently transitioned to it, but I imagine it's very like, there aren't many surprises. It's like, oh, we should call a guy. Like, oh, there's a spot on our ceiling. Like, there's not a lot of hidden roof issues until it's like very prevalent. Yeah, there it is 100 % um, you know, typically we were talking I think before we came as we were walking to the studio Nobody needs a roofer until they have water inside their house, you know, and and you know, I don't know it's it's Wet days for us tend to be extra wet days Just it's raining outside right now and the number of calls that you get that's just like hey Can can you come out here? We've got water in the garage and and so you show up at 730 in the morning, it's raining outside and it's just cool like One plus one plus one is got to equal three and so let's just kind of identify What's the design of the roof? You know, where's the water coming into the house at and just trying to connect dots and that's it's always an adventure It's a puzzle especially identifying leaks. I Don't know it for some reason it has me thinking of of I guess we're talking about leaks crazy crawl spaces and crazy basements. And it all ties in to having a good looking house and knowing where the water's going. um But you get on these roofs and you just see, typically you get a call out, you get a bunch of wind, and it'll pull off one of your vents. Whether that's your ridge vent up top or some of your turtle vents, you've got something weird out there and it's just cool, like, let's tarp this and let's take care of... uh the immediate situation. it seems like the cool part about it is, do you feel like you're working more alongside a homeowner, like a home buyer? Sometimes you might not even do anything other than just send a report. these people, you're out, and they're like, hey, we need help right now. And you're like, I'm here to help. Absolutely. That seems like you probably have more interactions like that. Yeah. would say I thrive on that. Kind of just my personality is the, you know, I'm gonna find value in helping. And so I know down in Sango, cause I live down in Sango, um we had, you know, kind of, I think it's technically an EF zero. So you have like the funnel cloud forms, shows up, at least gets close to the ground, does a ton of damage with trees, and then picks back up and is gone. um What that leaves with is a ton of damage on roofs. I, you know, we, the Clarksville roof guys, all of us are in a text chat and it's like, hey, like, and from the boss, it was, we're not doing anything to charge. We are just, this is a community event. We all live in the community, show up with ladders, tarps, know, hammers and nails. And that's for real, what we did is we spent five or six hours just tarping roofs until, you know, we couldn't do it anymore with headlamps in a safe way. And that you talk about meeting and like my own need to help people was I was like cool like this job is awesome. Yeah It's cool how Like it can kind of take like just the job in general that you you fall into can take you into those Situations that you're not necessarily expecting you're like, oh I can I can do that can do that and then you find yourself in that situation You're like, oh, I'm glad I said yes to these things that allow me to be helpful in a situation where people need it. Absolutely, absolutely. And I would say home inspectors do the same thing. Agents do the same thing of you think cool, especially with young, we're in a military town and so you have young couples that are looking to buy themselves a house, it's their first purchase, they go in and there's just this level of terror. And typically the parents are offering all their advice on how to do it. you know, what mistakes you should make. Your parents are sending you the list. You're also on chat GPT, Googling, hey, what are all my things that I should look for? And you did a good job. It's all part of the tapestry. It's all the tapestry. Yep. And so it gets so complex and so overwhelming. ah You find a solid agent that can just serve as that coach and talk through, hey, here's the things and complicated terms. Let's make it simple. And so you have awesome agents that just do that. As a home inspector, sometimes you're the one getting calls and texts for a month and a half, two months after the deal has closed. hey, you know, the number of times I get called for GFCI outlets that just get tripped and first time home buyer, they don't know that. And you just, hey, I'll show up and coach you through that. That's awesome. And then to jump into the roofing side and to, to coach buyer or coach homeowners through, hey, Here are the issues you have with your roof. ah A lot of the stuff that I do is insurance consultation of talking through, hey, here's how to communicate with insurance. ah Here's what your policy will cover and help you out. I take pride in being the guy who's not always advising a claim. I think you run into that a lot with roofers where everybody's like, hey, file a claim, file a claim, file a claim. And that's not always the best scenario or the best situation. very unique. um And so you go out there and you can help somebody. Just this week, I got a call. um It was like 730 in the morning and it was, hey, I came outside, my garage is soaked. And to go out, you know, I think I was driving to the gym. said, well, I'll just quick divert over, head to you. And to just give a homeowner confidence that one, we stopped the immediate leak. for the rest of the, you know, it's been raining all week. That's not going to get worse. we'll come out and talk through options. There's no need to panic. And that's huge. That, to me, is is fulfilling about the job. Just to be a calming voice with some direction and some wisdom with steps forward. Well, man, feel like we hit some good stories. And I truly had no idea what I was walking into when I said, me an animal story. So you uh came through on that. uh But Austin, man, I do appreciate you coming in. Just thanks for doing that and giving us some time today, especially on a rain day where I'm sure you're getting ready to get out and get wet and get up on the roof there. And so most of your time is, I understand, doing roofing now. You kind of made that transition. How can people reach out to you? How can they find you? Do you have what the best website or phone number or anything like that we can do? For real, just Google the roof guys. We are the Clarksville roof guys, local, family owned. ah I work for my little brother, which is super cool. Not many people can say like their kid brother is just awesome at what he does and have the privilege of working for him. But any of us, we're all veterans out of the military and love taking care of people. any of the roof guys. But if you ask for Austin, I'll show up. Great. Well, cool, man. And thanks for... Thanks for doing that. And I'll put that in the show notes so people can find you, maybe try to get a link in there. um But ultimately, man, thanks for tuning in to another episode of Clarksville Insider and getting to know somebody who lives in Clarksville, works in Clarksville, and wants to contribute to people's homes and lives and doing it the best they can. And so I'm your host, Josh Atkins. You can check us out on Facebook. You can check us out on Instagram. We are at Clarksville Insider. You can find oh just episode info and usually try to post that on there. But if you got a question or you've got maybe a guest suggestion or anything like that, feel free to reach out. Shoot a message my way and we can maybe look into that, get some conversation from them. Thanks again and we will catch you next time on The Pop.