Photograph every wall before the drywall goes up

Once the drywall is up, the pipes, wires, ducts and framing behind it are out of sight for as long as you own the house. A few minutes of photos while the walls are open tell you, years later, where everything is before you drill, hang or open a wall.

Why the walls are open, and for how long

Walls stay open for the inspections. Oregon’s residential code, based on the 2021 International Residential Code, says permitted work “shall remain accessible and exposed for inspection purposes until approved” (Oregon Residential Specialty Code 2021, R109.1). In Brainerd, Minnesota, the city’s inspection sheet lists the plumbing and mechanical rough-ins, then framing, then insulation, then the gypsum board (City of Brainerd).

Codes and their order vary by place. Ask your building department, or whoever is doing the work, which inspection comes last before the drywall, and plan your photos around it:

• After the rough-in inspections, before insulation: the pipes, wires and ducts are all in plain view.
• After insulation, before drywall: the last look at each wall as it will stay.

Why it’s worth the trouble

What’s inside a wall is costly to reach once it’s covered. ENERGY STAR’s air-sealing sheet says it plainly: “Once covered, many air leakage paths will be more difficult and costly to access and properly seal” (ENERGY STAR).

A record of where things are is what you’ll want later. HUD tells builders of covered apartment buildings that “The builder/owners should maintain records that reflect the placement of the reinforcing material” behind bathroom walls, “for later reference by a resident who wishes to install a grab bar” (HUD, Federal Register, June 28, 1994). That rule is for buildings of four or more units, but the reason holds in any house.

And people hit what they can’t see. A 2004 Department of Energy report on workers drilling into walls and floors at its sites found that “Facility drawings were not complete as to location of the conduit” (DOE, March 2004). Your photos are those drawings for your house.

What to photograph

Every wall, ceiling and floor that’s about to close, with whatever is in it. Look closely at:

What to photograph	What to look for
Water and gas lines	Brainerd’s plumbing inspection covers “all drain, waste, vent, water supply and gas piping.”
Ducts and line sets	Brainerd’s mechanical inspection covers “mechanical ducts, exhaust piping, AC line sets and ventilation piping.”
Wires and boxes	Every run, and every box that will end up behind a cover plate or inside the wall.
Backing	Plywood or extra studs put in for grab bars, a TV, shelves or cabinets. HUD names “plywood panels” and “double studs” as ways to back a grab bar.
Holes through the framing	For pipes, wires and ducts. ENERGY STAR names “penetration for piping, wiring and ducts” as the places air leaks.
Shut-offs and access panels	Ready.gov says to “Find the shut-off valve for the main water line that enters your house and tag it for easy identification” (Ready.gov). If a valve or cleanout ends up behind a panel, photograph where.

How to take them so they’re useful later

FEMA asks the people who assess damage to public buildings to work a certain way (FEMA damage assessment checklist, March 2021). The same method works for a wall:

• Wide, then close. Take a wide photo of each wall, then close-ups of what’s in it.
• Put a tape measure in the frame. FEMA: “include an item to indicate size, such as a traffic cone, tape measure, or pen.” Run the tape from a corner or the floor, and you can measure from the photo later.
• Keep a landmark in view, such as a window, a door or the corner, so you can tell which wall it is.
• Overlap. “Stand in one place and turn in a circle while taking photographs,” and “ensure the edges of photographs overlap.”
• Label them. FEMA’s flood-claims course expects “the date the photograph was taken,” and “the room location” (FEMA IS-1104). Name each photo by room and wall: “Bath, wall behind the vanity.”

Keep them where you’ll find them

Insurance regulators give the same advice for your belongings. The NAIC says to “consider videotaping and/or taking photographs of every room” (NAIC) and to “keep it somewhere besides your home” (NAIC), and the Texas Department of Insurance suggests “cloud storage or email” (Texas Department of Insurance). Keep your wall photos the same way: off your phone’s camera roll, with the job that opened the wall, named by room and wall.

If a pro is doing the work, ask them to send you photos of each wall before it closes. They’re in the room on the right day.

How Homaic does it

Each job has its own documents. On a phone, “Take a photo” opens the camera and lands the photo on the job, where one tap, “Keep it here”, files it; on a computer, drop the photos onto the job. Homaic keeps the original file.

When you share a job with the pro doing it and leave “They can answer here” on, they can send photos back through the job link, up to ten files a day. What they send waits for you to keep it on the job.

Look up your home at homaic.io.