装修迷惑行为大赏！房屋检查员瑟瑟发抖……

Home inspectors go where none of us particularly wants to go—into all the nooks and crannies around our homes, both inside and out. So you can bet that they've seen it all. You know—all that stuff that you don't want to think about happening in those dark and creepy spaces.

房屋检查员去到了我们谁也不想去的地方，检查我们家里里外外所有的角落和缝隙。因此可以打赌：你知道的，所有那些你不想在黑暗和恐怖的空间里发现的东西他们都见过。

Wait, actually we do want to know. (Is it masochism?) So we asked home inspectors who've been in the biz for a long time—and boy, did they deliver, with stories ranging from Stephen King–level horror to just downright weird. Check out some of the crazy things these home inspectors have witnessed. It's all in a day's work!

等等，实际上我们想知道：这是出于受虐心理吗？所以我们问了在这个行业工作了很长时间的房屋检查员——天哪，他们真的在面对这样的事情，从斯蒂芬·金级别的恐怖故事到彻头彻尾的怪异事件。看看这些房屋检查员目睹的一些疯狂事吧，这就是他们每天的工作!

“Some of the nastiest stuff we find is animals—dead ones in attics or crawl spaces, which are always disgusting, and live ones, which are always scary,” says Reuben Saltzman, president of Structure Tech Home Inspections in Minneapolis. “In Minnesota, we usually find raccoons and squirrels, and inspectors in the Southern part of the country find a lot worse.”

明尼阿波利斯市结构技术房屋检查公司总裁鲁本·萨尔茨曼说：“我们发现的一些最讨厌的东西是动物——在阁楼或房屋夹层（屋顶、地板下面供电线或水管等通过的槽隙）里的动物尸体，总是令人作呕，而活着的动物总是令人害怕。在明尼苏达州，我们通常会发现浣熊和松鼠，而在美国南部，检查员遇到的情况要糟糕得多。”

Finding a live animal is much scarier than finding a dead animal — but both are equally unwelcome, says a home inspector. (iStock)

一位房屋检查员说，虽然发现动物都很讨厌，但是发现活的比死的更可怕。

There have been drowned frogs under water heaters, cooked mice in furnaces, frozen porcupines in crawl spaces, and dead fish on a roof. Was it a bird that somehow dumped it there, or something weirder, Saltzman wonders?

热水器下会有淹死的青蛙，炉子里有煮熟的老鼠，房屋夹层里有冰冻的豪猪，屋顶上会有死鱼。萨尔茨曼想知道：是有一只鸟不知怎么把它扔在了那里，还是其他更神秘的东西干的呢？

“We’ve also found wasp’s nests the size of basketballs inside of attics, and in the basement at the ceiling rim joist, and homeowners who didn’t know they had wasps,” Saltzman adds.

萨尔茨曼补充说:“我们还曾在阁楼、地下室天花板边缘搁栅处发现过篮球大小的黄蜂巢穴，而那些房主之前并不知道家里有黄蜂。”

Bruce Barker, founder and president of Dream Home Consultants, in Cary, NC, has collected close to 6,000 photos documenting things like fried lizards and mice inside electrical panels, snakes in basements and crawl spaces, and even a black widow spider.

北卡罗来纳州卡里市梦想之家咨询公司的创始人兼总裁布鲁斯·巴克收集了近6000张照片——这些照片拍下了电板里被烧焦的蜥蜴和老鼠、地下室和半地下室里的蛇，甚至还有一只黑寡妇蜘蛛。

“We’ve found termite tubes hanging down from the ceiling. Termites need soil to travel and live, so they build tubes out of mud," he explains. "It looked like there were stalactites hanging down.”

“我们也发现天花板上挂着白蚁管，”他解释道，“白蚁需要土壤来迁徙和生存，所以它们用泥土建造管道。因此，这些白蚁管看起来就像是钟乳石垂下来一般。”

Then, of course, there’s the mass quantities of bird poop, which is nasty, toxic stuff.

当然，还有人家里有大量令人讨厌且有毒的鸟粪。

One beam holding up an entire deck.(Reuben Saltzman)

一根支撑整个阳台的横梁。（鲁本·萨尔兹曼摄）

“One of the craziest things that I've ever seen was a boat trailer being used as the foundation for a home,” Saltzman recalls.

萨尔茨曼回忆说：“我见过的最疯狂的事情之一就是把一辆拖船用作房屋的地基。”

“In the crawl space, I saw a tire half-embedded in concrete. I had to stare at it for a little while to figure out what I was looking at," he says. "And I realized the whole addition was built on top of a trailer.”

“我在爬行空间看到一个半嵌在混凝土里的轮胎。我盯着它看了一会儿，才明白眼前的是什么，”他说，“我意识到整个扩建部分都建在一辆拖船上。”

Sometimes projects are half-finished, or half-baked, like a deck being held up by a single, wobbly post.“This puts the ‘can’t’ in ‘cantilever,’” Saltzman quips about one memorable photo featuring a doomed deck.

有时工程是半途而废的或是计划不周的，比方说用一根摇摇晃晃的柱子支撑着甲板。“这让悬臂变得很‘悬’，”在谈到那张令人难忘的照片时，萨尔茨曼打趣道。

Saltzman frequently discovers homeowners have tried to fix leaky plumbing with whatever materials they have on hand. Contrary to popular belief, duct tape does not, in fact, fix leaky pipes, shower wall tiles, or drains, he says.

萨尔茨曼经常发现，房主们试图用手头的各种材料修补漏水的管道。他说，与人们的普遍看法相反，强力胶带实际上并不能修补漏水的管道、淋浴墙砖或下水道。

“People will use caulk, radiator hoses, hose clamps, vice grips—just the craziest stuff—to keep water from coming out of a place where it shouldn't,” he says.

他说：“人们会用各种奇葩的东西来阻止漏水，比如密封剂、散热器软管、软管夹、老虎钳等。”

Definitely an electrocution hazard.(Bruce Barker)

肯定会有触电危险。（布鲁斯·巴克摄）

Perhaps the most alarming things home inspectors come across involve electrical systems and outlets in a home, Barker says.

巴克说，也许房屋检查员遇到的最令人担忧的事情是家里的电气系统和插座。

“I’ve seen people not putting the wire connections in boxes, and just leaving them hanging out. If I had a dollar for every one of those, I wouldn’t have to crawl through crawl spaces anymore,” he says, noting that this is a major fire hazard.

“我见过有人不把电线接头装在盒子里，而是把它们放在外面。如果每检查出一个裸露在外的电线接头我就能获得一美元，我就再也不用（当房屋检查员，）在狭小的空间里爬行了。”他指出，这是一个重大的火灾隐患。

Also in the "What were they thinking?!" department: Another home featured rows of Christmas lights strung directly over a pool (see image above). When the water fountain feature is activated, the swimmers beneath could get seriously injured from electrocution.

同样让人摸不着头脑的是，有个家庭把一排排圣诞小彩灯直接挂在游泳池上空（见上图）。当泳池开启喷泉功能时，池里的人可能会严重触电受伤。

One homeowner strategically placed a basketball net with its glass backboard leaning against the roof, making it the ideal magnifying glass fire-starter on a blazing sunny day. Saltzman has also seen a roof so covered in moss and plant debris, it should have been mowed.

一位房主将一个带有玻璃背板的篮球网放在屋顶上，让玻璃斜靠着屋顶，阴差阳错地制造了一个理想的放大镜起火装置，在阳光明媚的天气里很可能会引起火灾。萨尔茨曼还看到被苔藓和植物碎屑覆盖的屋顶，实际上这些植物应该被清理掉。

Barker has been amazed to see turbine vents in older houses that have lost their covers, unbeknown to the homeowners, or worse, have been covered with strange things—like an upside-down Halloween candy bucket.

巴克还曾惊讶地发现，一些老房子的涡轮通风口已经没有了盖子，但房主们对此却毫不知情，或者更糟的是，通风口已经被一些奇怪的东西覆盖——就像一个倒置的万圣节糖果桶。

Makeshift chimney repairs are often laughably ineffective, adds Barker, who has seen flammable asphalt material used to fix crumbling chimneys.

巴克补充说，（为了应付检查）临时维修烟囱往往是无效的。他曾看到有人用易燃的沥青材料来修补破碎的烟囱。

In older homes, it’s not uncommon to find wooden window frames that have seen better days, Saltzman notes. What's odd are the homeowners who think up outlandish ways to fix them.

萨尔茨曼指出，在一些老房子中，木制窗框（或腐烂或落漆，）早已风光不再，这种情况很常见。但奇怪的是，房主们却想出了稀奇古怪的方法来修复它们。

“One of my favorite photos of all time was taken 15 years ago: Somebody had taken spray foam to fill in all the rotted wood, and then cut the spray foam to match the profile of the wood, which they painted to match,” he recalls.

他回忆道：“我有史以来最喜欢的照片之一是15年前拍摄的：有人用喷雾泡沫填满所有腐烂的地方，然后切割泡沫使其与木头的轮廓相匹配，最后再涂上颜色（使其与木框融为一体）。”

Other head-scratching discoveries Saltzman’s team has made include a mysterious pile of leaves in the attic, scissors embedded in an electrical panel, a downspout aimed squarely at an electrical outlet, a roof fascia repaired with a hockey puck, and a bunch of unopened bags of insulation in an attic. (Pro tip: A home will always be warmer when insulation is actually laid out and not trapped in plastic.)

萨尔茨曼团队还发现一些其他令人头疼的做法，例如，在阁楼上放一堆神秘的树叶或者一堆未开封的绝缘袋，把剪刀嵌入电气面板中，让排水管直指电源插座、用曲棍球修复屋顶筋膜。（温馨提示：当你真正把绝缘材料铺设好，而不是把它包在塑料中时，你的家里总是更温暖一些。）

It's not just horrifying for the home inspectors—all this weird stuff could kill a deal. Once potential buyers see things like mushrooms growing out of a floor drain, a crawl space filled with animal excrement and spider webs, or frost in the attic, they’ll wonder what else hasn’t been maintained, Saltzman says. And often, they’ll be spooked enough to walk away.

这些奇怪的东西不仅会让房屋检查员感到害怕，还有可能会毁掉一笔交易。萨尔茨曼表示，一旦潜在客户看到像蘑菇一样的东西从地漏里长出来，一个充满动物粪便和蜘蛛网的夹层，或者阁楼上的霜冻，他们就会想知道还有什么东西没被维护过。而通常，（在看过这些之后，）他们会被直接吓走。

“We've got about 20 inspectors on my team," he says, "and between all of us, every day someone decides they're not buying a house based on what we found.”

萨尔茨曼还说：“我们团队中大约有20名房屋检查员，所有人都碰到过这种情况——每天都会有人根据我们发现的安全隐患状况决定放弃购买某所房子。”