I spent 20 years building houses in NH. Now I inspect them.

Alstead Is Home

Resonant Homes is based in Alstead. Most of my location pages start by explaining how I serve a town — this one starts with the fact that I live in it, in an 1800s farmhouse.

My wife Kayla and I run Resonant Homes from here, and we’ve been part of this community for a long time. Before I was a home inspector, I spent years serving on Alstead Fire Rescue and Alstead Ambulance. You learn a town differently when you’ve been inside its homes at three in the morning. You learn the roads, the families, and the way houses here have been added onto, patched, improved, and occasionally improvised over the generations.

Our own farmhouse is a running education. Every owner over the last century and a half left something behind — some of it beautiful work I’d be proud to have done myself, and some of it the kind of repair that makes you set your coffee down and just look at it for a while. Living in a house like that keeps me honest about what old homes are: sturdy, adaptable, and full of decisions made by people working with what they had.

Inspecting Homes in and Around Alstead

The homes here don’t come off a production line. A single day of inspections might include a farmhouse with a fieldstone foundation, a log home tucked off a gravel road, a modest ranch from the sixties, and a camp that somebody winterized in stages over thirty years. Between them sit barns, workshops, sheds, and additions built by owners with varying levels of patience and supervision.

Rural property here comes with its own set of systems. Private wells, septic, propane, wood and pellet stoves, long driveways, and drainage across large lots are all normal parts of ownership in this part of New Hampshire. None of that should scare a buyer off. What matters is understanding how those systems are performing today, and where something deserves a closer look before you own it.

The climate does its part too. Snow load, freeze-thaw cycles, spring runoff, and ice dams all leave evidence behind on roofs, foundations, and grading. Part of my job is reading that evidence and telling you plainly whether what I’m seeing looks like routine aging or something that should factor into your decision.

Why My Background Makes Me More Useful as a Home Inspector

I owned and ran a general contracting company in New Hampshire for more than twenty years. Not just swinging hammers — writing bids, managing subs, communicating with customers, and standing behind the work when something went wrong. That last part matters. When you’ve had to fix your own mistakes on your own dime, you develop a very practical understanding of how houses fail and what it actually costs to make them right.

That contracting business is still active today. My knowledge of materials, methods, and pricing isn’t frozen in some earlier decade — it reflects what’s being built and repaired right now. When I look at a foundation crack, a ceiling stain, or wiring that doesn’t look quite right, I’m not just noting a defect. I’m thinking about what likely caused it, what else it may have affected, and whether it’s the kind of thing that warrants another specialist’s opinion before you sign anything.

What a Home Inspection Can and Can’t Tell You

A home inspection is a visual, non-invasive assessment of the readily accessible parts of a home. I don’t open walls, I can’t see through finished surfaces, and I won’t pretend a few hours on site reveals a building’s complete history. Any inspector who implies he’ll find every problem is writing a check the profession can’t cash.

What a good inspection does is give you a clear, honest picture of how the home is performing today, which issues are routine, which are significant, and where further evaluation makes sense. Sometimes the most valuable thing I can tell a buyer is that the alarming-looking thing is normal. Sometimes it’s that the innocent-looking thing isn’t. Knowing the difference is the job.

One of the tools I use for that is a thermal camera. It rides on my hip through every inspection, and I pull it out anywhere I think it can add evidence — scanning a crowded electrical panel, where a breaker running ten degrees hotter than its neighbors is invisible to the eye but obvious in infrared, or checking whether a ceiling stain is old history or an active leak. It’s part of every inspection at no additional charge. Some inspectors sell thermal imaging as a separate paid service, and I understand the temptation, but I think it sets the wrong expectation. A thermal camera isn’t x-ray vision, and charging a few hundred dollars for a “full scan” implies a certainty no camera can deliver. In my hands it’s what every good tool is: another source of information, useful when conditions are right, and no substitute for careful looking.

When something falls outside my scope — a chimney that needs a specialist, a structural question for an engineer, a septic system that deserves its own evaluation — I’ll say so directly and point you toward the right people.

Radon and Water Testing

Radon is common throughout New Hampshire, and there’s no way to know a home’s levels without testing. I offer radon testing as an add-on to your inspection, using a continuous monitor that records levels through the entire test period, so you have results while your contingency window is still open.

Water testing is also available for homes on private wells — which is most of Alstead. I collect samples during the inspection and submit them to a certified laboratory for analysis. Clear water tells you nothing about bacteria or other quality concerns; the lab does. Adding both radon and water testing to your inspection saves $100 off the combined total.

Who Is Buying in Alstead

Most buyers here are year-round residents — people moving within the region, first-time buyers priced out of larger towns, and families looking for land and quiet. There’s also a steady trickle of buyers from out of state discovering that a farmhouse on a few acres costs less here than a condo where they’re coming from. Both groups benefit from the same thing: a clear-eyed understanding of what rural New Hampshire ownership actually involves, delivered before closing rather than discovered after.

Independent by Policy

I don’t perform any repair or contracting work on a home I’ve inspected for twelve months after the inspection. If I tell you something needs fixing, you can be certain I’m not angling for the job.

Pricing

Inspections start at $600 for homes up to 1,500 square feet and step up in $100 increments by size tier. Homes built before 1950 carry an additional fee, because they take more time to inspect. Multi-family properties, estates, and homes with multiple outbuildings are quoted individually — send me the address and particulars, and I’ll give you a number.

Speedy Reports

You’ll receive a detailed digital report with photographs, plain-language explanations, and clear recommendations — typically the same day.

At the end of the inspection, I’ll walk you through the most significant findings in person so nothing in the report comes as a surprise. If you can’t be there, no big deal. The reports are meant to stand on their own and I’ll be happy to do a call to review my findings.

Schedule Your Alstead Home Inspection

Whether you’re buying your first home, your fifth, or you’d just like a better understanding of the one you already own, I’d be glad to help.

Call or Text: (802) 289-0025
Email: connect@resonanthomesnh.com