Live video for construction inspections listed five moments in a build where a live look pays. The first one, before cover, is the one I hit most, and its most common shape is the day before drywall.
The owner is in Phoenix. She will not see this house again until it has paint on it. She has asked, in three separate emails, about the blocking for the grab bars in the downstairs bath, the outlet on the kitchen island, and whether the insulation on the north wall went in. The drywall stack is in the garage. Tomorrow at seven a crew of four starts hanging, and by lunch the answers to all three questions are behind half-inch board.
I could send her forty photos tonight. I have done that. She would call at nine asking which bathroom the third one was, and I would be describing a wall from memory in a truck.
What the owner actually wants to see
Three things she has named and twenty she has not thought of yet.
The named ones are easy: the blocking, the outlet, the insulation. She wants to see them because she asked for them, paid for them, and has no way to check they happened. Give her those first, in the order she asked, and say her words back: "This is the blocking for the grab bars, both sides of the toilet and the back wall of the shower."
The twenty she has not thought of are the ones that matter in year three. Where the water lines run to the second floor bath. Which stud bay the dryer vent is in. Where the low-voltage went. The height of the shower valve. Nobody asks about any of it until they want to hang a television or find a leak, and then it is the only question in the world.
Ten minutes a room, narrated by wall
The method is simple and it is the same in every room. Stand in the doorway. Say the room, then say which wall you are looking at and which way it faces. Then sweep that wall slowly, floor to ceiling, and name what is in it as you go.
"Downstairs bath. North wall, the shower wall. Valve at forty-eight inches, blocking for the grab bar from thirty-three to thirty-nine across the full width. Supply lines come up in this bay, drain goes down here."
Turn to the next wall. Say it. Sweep it. Four walls, then the ceiling if there is anything in it, then out. Ten minutes for a bathroom, maybe fifteen for a kitchen with a lot going on. A whole house is an afternoon, which sounds like a lot until you compare it with opening a wall.
Say the boring walls out loud too. "East wall, nothing in it but insulation, batts are full depth and stapled." An owner who hears that the empty walls are empty on purpose is an owner who believes you about the full ones.
Pre-drywall video the owner watches from another city
She gets a text with a link about five minutes before I start. She taps it and it opens in the browser she already has. No app, no account, and her own camera is never requested, which matters to somebody watching from an office. I see a count of how many people are watching. When it says one, I start talking.
She cannot talk back during the walk, and that is by design. What she can do is tap "I have a question about this," which saves the frame she was looking at, with a short note if she wants, and puts that frame on my screen while I am still standing in the room. Last time it was the island outlet: she wanted the other side of the island too. I turned around and showed it. Anything that needs words waits for a phone call after I end the inspection. On an iPhone a call during the walk suspends the stream, so I do not pick up until I am done.
If the architect or her husband wants to watch, the same link works on their phones. Up to five people at once.
A still of every wall before it closes
Along with the recording I capture a full-resolution still of each wall as I finish narrating it. One wide shot per wall, square on, and a close one of anything odd: a notched stud, a junction box that will need a cover, a pipe that runs where somebody will want to put a screw.
The stills stay attached to the inspection, not loose in a camera roll. That is the difference between finding the north wall of the master bath in year three and scrolling past four hundred photos of somebody's dog. How I name and order the shots is the same discipline as naming inspection photos so they make sense later: the room and the wall are the name.
What you open in year three
The live part is for the owner today. The recording is for whoever owns the question later.
Year three, the owner wants to mount a TV in the living room and asks where the studs and the wires are. Or there is a stain on the ceiling under the upstairs bath and a plumber needs to know where the drain runs before he cuts. Or she sells the house and the buyer's inspector asks whether the north wall was insulated. Every one of those is a ten-second answer if the recording exists and a hole in the wall if it does not.
The recording lands in the company dashboard on its own, with the stills, the flagged frames, and a timestamped record of when it started and when she joined. It stays private, reached through short-lived signed links rather than a public URL. How long it stays depends on plan, 90 days to three years, and the year-three question is the reason the pricing page is worth reading with retention in mind and not just seats.
What it does not do
It does not replace the municipal inspection. That is its own thing and this does not change it.
It does not check the work. If the blocking is at the wrong height, the video shows blocking at the wrong height, clearly and with a date on it. Somebody still has to know what the right height is.
And if the owner is across town rather than across the country, the answer is a Tuesday afternoon visit, not a link. Pull out the phone for the person who cannot come. The rest of the mechanics, including what the viewer sees when they tap, are on the how it works page.
InspectStream records what an inspector observed. It is not a public adjusting service and does not prepare, negotiate, or advise on insurance claims.