The drywall crew is booked for Thursday. It is Tuesday afternoon, the rough-in on the second floor is done, and the owner, who lives in Denver and is paying for this house, has asked twice whether the blocking went in for the towel bars. By Thursday at noon every one of those walls is closed, and every question about what is inside them becomes a question about my memory and a folder of photos on somebody's phone.
Every build has a handful of these moments. Something is about to be covered up, poured over, or paid for, and after that point nobody looks at it again without a saw. Construction inspection video is my name for the habit of putting a live camera on those moments, with the person who needs to see them watching from wherever they are, and keeping the recording. This post is about which moments, who watches at each, and what a camera cannot do.
This is not the walkthrough
Worth saying first, because the two get mixed up. How to run a remote construction walkthrough and the posts under it are about running a meeting on site: an agenda that holds, the owner and architect and sub on one feed, a punch list closed at the wall. A walkthrough is a conversation that happens to be on video.
This cluster is about the inspection points in a build. Not a meeting, a look. Sometimes the owner watches, sometimes an engineer, sometimes nobody watches live and only the recording ever gets opened. The camera is on the work, not the people. A walkthrough asks "what do we decide." An inspection point asks "what was there before it disappeared."
The five construction inspection video moments
Before cover. Framing, rough-in, duct runs, insulation, the pan under the tile. Everything that will spend the life of the building behind drywall. The most common one, with the longest tail: the question about where the pipe runs comes in year three, not week three.
Before pour. Footings, slab prep, rebar, vapor barrier, anchor bolts, sleeves. Concrete is the one thing on a job you cannot undo, and the truck is usually on the street while the last look happens.
Before a draw. Construction financing releases money in stages, and somebody from the lender comes out to look before each release. Between those visits the owner and the builder both want the progress on record, dated, with stills the owner can send to whoever they choose.
Before the next trade covers your work. The roofer's underlayment before the shingles. The waterproofer's membrane before backfill. If your work is about to disappear under somebody else's, the record of what you left is yours to make before their truck arrives.
Install verification for a rep. A roofing or siding system with an installation requirement a manufacturer's rep is supposed to see, and the rep covers four states. Put the rep on the link during the fastening pattern instead of waiting for a visit that lands after the work is buried.
Each of these gets its own post in this cluster.
Who watches at each one
Usually one or two people, not a crowd. Before cover, the owner, and the architect if there is one. Before pour, the engineer or the owner's rep who cannot be on a bare lot at six in the morning. Before a draw, the owner. Before the next trade, your own superintendent or the GC's. For install verification, the rep and the super.
Up to five people can watch one inspection at once on the same texted link. They open it in the browser they already have. No app, no account, and their camera is never requested. On my end I see a count of how many are watching, so I know whether the engineer actually tapped in before I narrate rebar spacing to nobody.
The viewer side is watch-only. The one thing a viewer can do is tap "I have a question about this," which saves the frame they were looking at, with a short note if they want, and shows it on my screen while I am still standing in front of the thing. It stays with the recording. Voice questions happen by phone afterward, and on an iPhone a call suspends the stream, so I end the look before I pick up.
What ends up on record
Recording starts on its own when the look goes live and lands in the company dashboard, not on the foreman's phone. I can capture full-resolution stills during the walk and they stay attached. The dashboard keeps the recording, the stills, the flagged frames, and a timestamped event history: when it started, when each viewer joined, when it ended.
Timestamps matter more on a build than almost anywhere else, because the argument in month eight is always about sequence. Was the vapor barrier down before the pour. Timestamps a phone clock cannot explain away covers why a dated recording in a company account is a different object from a dated photo on somebody's phone. Retention runs from 90 days to three years by plan, and a house that will be argued about in year three wants the long end.
What this does not replace
The municipal inspection is its own thing and this does not replace it. The building department comes when it comes and looks at what it looks at. Nothing here changes that.
It does not replace touching the work. A camera does not tell you whether the anchor bolt is tight or the membrane is adhered. Somebody on site still has to press on it, and the recording only shows that they did.
It does not replace the written log. The daily report still gets written. The recording is what the written version was based on.
And two places I do not bother. When the person who needs to see it is standing next to me, I point. When the lot has no usable data connection, common on a rural build before the utilities are in, there is no live stream. Weak signal steps the picture down rather than freezing, with a warning on both sides, but no signal means photos the old way.
Where to start
Pick the moment you hit most often. Pre-drywall if you remodel, the pour if you do foundations.
Setup is two minutes on my side: sign in on the phone, tap Go live, text the link. The link dies when I end the inspection or after twelve hours, whichever comes first. The viewer's side of that is on the how it works page, and the use cases page has the same territory sorted by trade.
InspectStream records what an inspector observed. It is not a public adjusting service and does not prepare, negotiate, or advise on insurance claims.