A photo report after every cottage visit: what exactly is it?
Updated
You’re in Montréal, freezing rain has been coming down on Sutton all night, and you’re wondering whether the cottage is okay. A photo report answers that question: a visit report that shows you your house instead of just telling you “everything’s fine.”
What a report contains, section by section
1. Date, time and the day’s weather
Every report opens with when the visit happened and the weather at that moment. It isn’t a detail: a visit during a mild spell reads differently from one after a bitterly cold night. The weather helps make sense of what’s seen — frost on a window, say, or water at the bottom of a downspout.
2. The same checklist, in the same order
The heart of the report is the checklist, identical every visit: heating, water main, plumbing, roof, windows and doors, basement, electrical, exterior, mail, pests. A plain finding for each point. Because the list never changes, you can lay two reports side by side and compare.
3. Time-stamped photos of the sensitive points
Some points are photographed every visit, problem or not: the thermostat, the main shut-off, the water meter or well pressure gauge, the roof edge in winter. Others are only photographed if they need attention. Every photo carries the date and time. A photo of a thermostat showing the agreed setting beats a sentence promising it.
4. The “keeping an eye on” section
Not everything gets settled in one visit. A small ceiling stain that hasn’t grown, a hygrometer creeping up, a propane gauge dropping before the next delivery: those go into their own section. We follow them from visit to visit, and you see how they change.
5. When it arrives
The full report is sent within 24 hours of the visit. If something is urgent, you don’t wait for the report: we call you the same day, with photos.
Why a report instead of a quick text
Because numbers and pictures are easier to compare. “All good” doesn’t tell you whether the water meter moved since last week. A logged, photographed reading does. Many slow problems only show up when you compare.
Because memory isn’t enough. Deep into winter, nobody remembers for sure what a ceiling stain looked like on a particular visit. The report does.
Because your insurer may ask. After a loss, an insurer may want to know when the house was visited and what state it was in. Dated, archived reports make up a visit log you can show them. What counts as proof depends on your policy and your insurer: conditions vary, and your broker can tell you what applies to your cottage.
Because the Townships make distance harder. A cottage in Potton or Frelighsburg often sits at the end of a road you can’t check at a glance from the city. After a storm, a Hydro-Québec outage or a thaw, the report replaces a two-hour drive just to go look.
Getting the most from your reports: what you can do, and what belongs to the pros
What an owner can do:
- Read the “keeping an eye on” section first: that’s where things are changing.
- Keep every report in one email folder, and don’t delete them.
- Reply when an instruction needs to change: a new heat setting, a valve to leave open, a delivery on the way.
- Forward to your broker whichever reports they ask for, if they need them.
- Flag anything that looks different from the house you know: you know it better than anyone.
What belongs to professionals:
- An RBQ-licensed contractor: assessing and fixing a problem flagged in a report. A photo shows a symptom; it isn’t a diagnosis.
- Your insurer: deciding whether a loss is covered. The report documents; it doesn’t rule.
In an empty house, how long before anyone notices?
The report doesn’t shorten the time between visits — the frequency you chose does that. What it changes is what you know between stays. Instead of a silent house, you have a run of dated findings. If a problem shows up, you can see which visit it started on, and what was normal the visit before.
What we look at on a visit
Every visit, we photograph the main thermostat against the agreed setting, the position of the main shut-off, and the water meter or well pressure gauge reading with every tap closed. In winter, we photograph the snow and ice along the roof edge from the ground. We log the basement hygrometer reading to follow the trend, and photograph any notices left at the door, like those from Hydro-Québec or the municipality, to pass them on to you. It all goes into the report, time-stamped.
If something’s off, we call you the same day, with photos. If needed, we meet an RBQ-licensed contractor on site and document the work.