Yesterday's post was the day before the walls close, and drywall is at least forgiving: a saw and a patch and you can look again. This is the moment in live video for construction inspections with no way back at all.
Six-ten in the morning, a slab on grade for an addition. The forms have been set since Tuesday, the rebar went in yesterday, the vapor barrier is down, the anchor bolts are wired to the steel where the plan says. The first truck is idling on the street because the plant loaded it at five-thirty. The engineer who drew the footing detail is ninety minutes away and was never going to be here at six. The owner's rep said he would come and then texted at five that his kid is sick.
Twenty minutes from now this is concrete. Whatever is under it is under it.
The five minutes before the truck backs up
I do this look the same way every time, and I do it before I wave the truck in, not while the chute is swinging.
Text the link at five to six. Wait for the count to show somebody. Then start at the corner where the plan starts and walk the perimeter first, then the interior.
Wide from each corner so the whole form is on screen and the person watching can place themselves. Then down. Rebar size, said out loud. Spacing, with a tape laid across three bars so the number is on screen and not just in my mouth. Chairs holding it off the base. Laps at the splices, with the tape again. Clearance at the edge of the form. Then the vapor barrier: laps, seams, the tape on the seams, where it turns up at the edge. Then each anchor bolt, its position off the form, the height it sticks up, whether it is tied or floating. Sleeves and any conduit that has to come through the slab, with a landmark so they can be found later.
Five minutes for an addition. Longer for a full foundation, and worth every minute, because the next look at any of this is with a core drill.
Who is on the link at six in the morning
Whoever signs off on this steel and cannot stand on it. The engineer, most often. The owner's rep. Sometimes the owner, if the owner is the kind who wants to see the bones. Up to five people on one texted link, each in their own browser, no app, no account, and nobody's camera requested but mine.
The viewer side is watch-only, which at six in the morning is a mercy. But it is not silent. If the engineer sees something in the corner bars he does not like, he taps "I have a question about this." The frame he was looking at lands on my screen with his note, while I am still standing on the lot with the truck not yet backed in. I walk back to that corner and put the camera on it again, closer. If he wants to talk, he calls, and I end the look first, because a call on an iPhone suspends the stream anyway.
That flagged frame is the one thing that should stop a pour. It arrives before the concrete, which is the whole point of doing this live instead of sending photos at seven and hearing back at nine.
What a recording of rebar spacing does in month eight
Month eight, there is a crack across the slab in the family room. Not a hairline. The owner is upset and somebody suggests the steel was not where it should have been.
Without the recording, this is three people remembering a Tuesday in March. With it, there is five minutes of video, dated the morning of the pour, with a tape on the bars and the engineer on the viewer list by time. It does not tell anybody why the slab cracked. It tells everybody what was under it before the concrete went down, which narrows the argument to something that can be talked about. Records after a construction dispute: stop deleting is about keeping that kind of record when a job turns, and the pour video is the first thing on the list.
The recording starts on its own when I go live and lands in the company dashboard, not on my phone. The stills I grab of each corner and each bolt stay attached to it. The event history shows when it started, when the engineer joined, and when it ended, which on a pour morning is a ten-minute window that is hard to argue with. It stays private, reached through short-lived signed links rather than a public URL, and the security page has the specifics on who can open it.
What it does not settle
The municipal inspection is its own thing and this does not replace it. If the building department wants to see the steel, they see the steel.
It does not replace the engineer's own visit if the engineer wants one. Some do. What it does is give them enough to decide whether they need to drive.
It does not tell anybody whether the base was compacted or whether the ties are tight. A camera sees spacing and position. It does not push on anything. Somebody on the lot still does that, and the recording only shows that they did.
And a bare lot at six in the morning is where signal goes to die. I check it the way the sixty-second signal check describes, before I text anybody a link. Weak signal steps the picture down rather than freezing, and both sides get a warning, but if there is nothing to step down to, I take photos of every corner and every bolt the old way and send them before the truck moves. The steel does not care how it was recorded. It only cares that it was.
The mechanics of the viewer's side, from tap to watching, 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.