Scio Township, Michigan
Looking for a Scio Township home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Scio Township, seven days a week. Home inspection reports come back in 24 hours.
Schedule your inspectionCall 734-331-3269
Services
For buyers, sellers, and homeowners keeping an eye on the place they already own. On new construction we also do pre-drywall inspections and 11-month builder’s warranty inspections. Our certified inspectors walk every major system in your Scio Township home and tell you plainly what they found — then put it in a photo-rich digital report within 24 hours.
Following the InterNACHI Standards of Practice:
Included free with every home buyer inspection— and none of them require us to sell your information.
SatisfactionIf you are unhappy with your inspector on the day of the inspection, before you have seen your report, tell us and we will make it right — or you owe us nothing.
30-Day WarrantyA free 30-day Guard home warranty trial, negotiated for you with no obligation. Activate it whenever you are ready.
$100 OffThe buyer’s protection guarantee: if the first home we inspect for you does not make it to the closing table, for any reason, we take $100 off any further home buyer inspection within 30 days of the original.
Optional services at an additional cost — not part of a standard inspection. Tap one to see what it covers.
A camera down the main sewer line, watching its condition from the inside — roots, breaks, bellies and blockages no visual inspection can find. More about sewer scope inspections
The wood-destroying organism report VA buyers are typically asked to provide, on the federal NPMA-33 form. Carried out during the same visit. More about Veterans WDO inspections
Up to five air samples sent to an accredited laboratory, added to the same appointment rather than booked as a second visit. More about mold inspection and testing
View a sample report
Offices, retail, multifamily and warehouses in Scio Township and across Washtenaw County. Know what condition a building is in before you sign — or stay ahead of problems in the one you already own. Reports in 24 to 72 hours depending on size.
Following the CCPIA commercial standards:
Commonly added to a commercial inspection at additional cost.
Commercial laterals are longer, older and carry more. A camera is the only way to see the condition of the one you are buying. More about sewer scope inspections
Air samples to an accredited laboratory, which matters most in buildings that have sat empty or had a roof or plumbing leak. More about mold inspection and testing
View a sample report
Add either to a Scio Township home or commercial inspection, or book it on its own. We test and we never remediate, so there is nothing to sell you on the back of a result — the number you get is just the number.
Radon measured in house on a professional continuous monitor; mold samples to an accredited laboratory:
The other things worth testing while somebody is already there.
Carried out after remediation on the treated area and the areas next to it, to confirm what was found. More about mold inspection and testing
A damp basement can have several causes, and the buried sewer line is the one a visual inspection cannot check. A scope rules it in or out. More about sewer scope inspections
View a sample reportScio Township housing stock
Scio Township has roughly 7,186 housing units and about 71% of them are single-family detached. Housing that went up mostly in one era has mostly one era’s problems — which is genuinely useful to know before you buy, because it tells you what to look at first.
Most of it went up in the 1990s — 1,776 homes, around 25% of the town.
The median owner-occupied home here is valued at $475,300. There are around 703 manufactured and mobile homes in Scio Township. Those are a different inspection — the questions are about the frame, the anchoring and the skirting rather than a basement.
None of this is a prediction about a particular house. It is where a Scio Township home inspector starts looking in a home of this age, and what we photograph and write up either way.
Housing figures: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2022 five-year estimates.
When Scio Township was built
88% of homes here run on utility gas, and 38 still heat with oil. If yours is one of them, the tank is the thing to ask about — where it is, and whether it was ever buried. Another 147 use bottled or LP gas.
Local knowledge
Scio Township contains the Gelman Sciences site, which the US Environmental Protection Agency added to its National Priorities List — the Superfund list — in 2026. The Township publishes a standing page on it, and any honest account of buying property here starts there.
The Township’s own summary is that beginning in the 1960s Gelman Sciences contaminated its site with 1,4-dioxane, a component of its manufacturing process, and that the resulting groundwater plume is now estimated at roughly four miles long and one mile wide, covering portions of Scio Township, Ann Arbor Township and the City of Ann Arbor. The Township also states plainly that the plume boundary has never been conclusively delineated and that the posted lines are estimates.
The practical first question for a buyer, therefore, is not about the house at all. It is whether the property draws its drinking water from a private well or from a public supply — because the residential testing programs run by the Township, the county and the state are well programs.
We want to be exact about our own limits before going further. We do not test water. Dioxane analysis is a specialist laboratory method — EPA Method 522 — carried out by certified labs, and nothing in a building inspection touches it. What follows is a summary of what the Township publishes, so you know which questions to ask and whom to ask.
Before you buy
Gelman and 1,4-dioxane
The Township’s Gelman Sciences dioxane contamination page is the place to start, and it is the live source — the situation is actively developing, with the Superfund listing in 2026 and an EPA presentation to residents held in August 2026. Anything summarized here is a pointer to it, not a substitute for it.
The monitoring runs on more than one track. The Washtenaw County Health Department contracts with the state environment department to sample drinking water wells within 1,000 feet of the estimated plume boundary, using a method that detects down to 1.0 micrograms per liter. The Township, concerned about movement of the plume, ran its own residential well sampling program using EPA Method 522, which detects down to 0.12 micrograms per liter — a far more sensitive test. In the round the Township published, dioxane was detected in well water at 7 of 32 homes tested, with new detections between 0.26 and 1.0 micrograms per liter, and the Township reported detectable groundwater levels up to 4,000 feet north of the estimated northern plume boundary at that time.
On the numbers that matter: the Township states the Michigan drinking water standard for dioxane is 7.2 micrograms per liter, and that certain response activities under the existing consent judgment — including supply of bottled drinking water and monthly sampling — are triggered when drinking water levels exceed 3.0 micrograms per liter. Those are the published thresholds; where any individual well sits against them is a matter for testing, not inference.
For a buyer, that means a specific sequence. Establish whether the property is on a private well. If it is, the Township publishes a list of laboratories that will test a residential well for 1,4-dioxane at the owner’s expense, and the county health department and the state are the authorities on what the results mean and what programs a given address falls within. Whether an address is inside or outside an estimated boundary is not something to take from a map alone, given the Township’s own caution that the boundary has never been conclusively established.
None of this is what a building inspection covers, and we will not pretend otherwise. A buyer’s inspection covers the roof, structure, foundation, drainage, electrical, heating and cooling, plumbing and the accessible interior, and reports what the building shows. On a property with a private well we will report the visible well equipment — the pressure tank, the visible supply piping and its condition, and any treatment equipment present — but we do not take water samples and we do not analyze them. Those are separate disciplines with their own credentials, and here that distinction matters more than usual.
Two governments, one project
Scio Township does not issue building permits. Those come from the Washtenaw County Building Department. But the Township does issue zoning compliance permits, and its homeowner resources page is explicit that zoning compliance approval is required before you submit a building permit application to the county.
The list of work that needs both is broad: accessory structures including sheds, garages, barns and swimming pools; decks and patios; roof-mounted and ground-mounted solar installations; building additions and interior renovations; and generator installation. Home occupations and in-home daycare need zoning approval too. The Township reviews applications internally and typically completes them within seven to ten business days.
Two practical consequences. First, if you are planning work, get the order right or you will lose weeks. Second — and this is the one that matters when you are buying — the paper trail for a property here lives in two places. A permit search that only covers one government is only half a search.
That is worth remembering on the items the Township names specifically. Solar and generators are both relatively recent additions to a lot of houses, both involve significant electrical work, and both are things we look at closely: how the array or the generator is mounted and flashed, how it is connected, whether the transfer arrangement is what it should be, and what condition the roof underneath a solar array is in — because taking an array off to replace a roof is not a small undertaking.
One jurisdiction note while you are working out which office to call: Township Hall carries an Ann Arbor mailing address, and Scio Township addresses commonly read Ann Arbor or Dexter. The City of Ann Arbor is a separate municipality with its own rules, and so is the Village of Dexter. Confirm which one an address actually falls in before relying on anything you have read about any of them.
Utilities
For properties on the Township system, the Utilities Department handles billing and meter reading, maintains and cleans Township-owned water and sewer lines, locates Township-owned underground lines, and runs a 24-hour standby emergency response.
It also publishes something genuinely useful: how to use your own meter to find a hidden leak. The digital meter is typically in the basement, or in a utility closet where there is no basement. With everything in the house turned off, a Metron display reading “FORWARD” means water is still moving — which, with nothing running, points at a leak. The longer version is a time test: note the reading, use no water for thirty to sixty minutes, and read it again. The Township’s list of usual suspects is the right one — toilet flappers and valves, dripping faucets, irrigation systems, water softeners or filtration equipment cycling too often, and outdoor spigots left slightly open.
That is a good check to run on a house you are buying as well as one you own, and it overlaps with what an inspection looks for: running toilets, dripping fixtures, the condition and age of supply piping, water heater condition, and any staining or damage that suggests a leak has been happening somewhere it cannot be seen.
Two other things the Township notes. Routine hydrant flushing can leave water temporarily discolored or cloudy and pressure slightly reduced — normal, and not a fault in your plumbing. And staff working on water and sewer infrastructure near or inside a home drive a Township truck, wear Township gear and carry badges whose QR code links to the Township directory. Anyone at the door who does not have those is not the Utilities Department.
The housing here is mostly recent: of about 7,186 units, 1,776 date from the 1990s and 1,721 from the 2000s, with 1,148 from the 1980s and 627 from the 1950s. Around 71% is single-family detached. A house from the 1990s is now reaching the point where its first roof, first furnace and first water heater all come due within a few years of each other.
The buried line
Where a property here is on the Township sewer, the buried lead running from the building to the main is the one component no visual inspection reaches.
On a house from the 1990s that pipe has been in the ground about thirty years, with the landscaping planted alongside it now fully mature; on one of the 627 units from the 1950s, seventy. Either is long enough for roots to find a joint, for ground movement to displace a section, or for a repair to have been made that nobody now remembers. We will not name a material from a build year, because no authoritative source establishes what Scio Township laterals are generally made of.
On a property with a septic system, the question is a different one and belongs to the county health department rather than to us. We do not evaluate septic systems, and on this side of the county that evaluation belongs in the same conversation as the well.
A sewer camera inspection records what is actually inside the line: roots, cracks, displaced joints, bellies or blockages where they exist, and a clear run where they do not. It is added to the same visit rather than booked separately. Alongside it, commercial building inspections follow the CCPIA standard for offices, retail, multifamily and warehouse property, and radon testing or mold inspection and testing can be added to a residential or commercial visit. Get in touch to talk through a particular property.
Local information from Scio Township — Gelman Sciences dioxane contamination · Scio Township — homeowner resources and zoning compliance · Scio Township — water and sewer services. Municipal requirements change — verify current details with the municipality.
Radon in Washtenaw County
Zone 1 is the highest of the three EPA categories — the predicted average indoor level across the county is above the 4 pCi/L action level. What a zone cannot tell you is anything about one house: 38% of tests actually run in Washtenaw County still came back at or above the EPA’s 4 pCi/L action level. A zone is a prediction of an average, and nobody lives in an average.
We place a continuous monitor for 48 hours and read the result on site — no mail-in kit, no lab wait. How radon testing works · Washtenaw County radon and inspection coverage
Zone from the EPA Map of Radon Zones. Elevated-result share from the Michigan Indoor Radon Program.
Why choose us
Five reasons people here pick us as their Scio Township home inspector.
Family owned since 2009, more than 16,000 inspections completed and over 2,000 five-star reviews across Michigan. We also handle home buyer inspections, commercial building inspections, mold testing and radon testing.
We do not sell mold remediation or radon mitigation, so there is nothing to gain from a result that comes back bad. The number you get is just the number.
Radon, mold, sewer scope and wood-destroying organism inspections go on the same appointment as the home inspection rather than costing you a second morning.
Most people do, and it is the most useful hour of the whole purchase. Ask anything while we are standing in front of it.
InterNACHI and CCPIA certified, with four Certified Master Inspectors and National Home Inspector Examination passes on the team — none of which Michigan requires. The standards we inspect to are published and you can hold the work against them.
Including weekends, because inspection windows sit on closing dates and closing dates do not care what day it is.
Reviews
Mr. Cahoon was very thorough inspecting the home I am interested in purchasing. He explained everything clearly as he went along. Went above and beyond crawling into the very small crawl space! Thank you!
Amy CaragayYpsilanti, MII recently hired Trademark for a full home inspection on a new purchase, including sewer scope and radon testing. It was a phenomenal experience from beginning to end. Our inspector, Mitch, did a fantastic job explaining all the findings, and the digital report with photos and videos was superb. Would definitely recommend without hesitation.
Salina HamiltonOak Park, MIWe had Mitch inspect our prospective house and he was amazing. He was thorough, patient to answer my questions and provide feedback on what areas he would recommend having a follow up expert and why. The office was responsive and I was able to book multiple services to be done in the same visit (inspection, radon test, sewer scope).
Chris PlaweckiOak Park, MIWhat happens
Questions
The Township states that beginning in the 1960s Gelman Sciences contaminated its site in Scio Township with 1,4-dioxane, and that in 2026 the site was added to the EPA National Priorities List as a Superfund site. The resulting groundwater plume is estimated at roughly four miles long and one mile wide across parts of Scio Township, Ann Arbor Township and the City of Ann Arbor, and the Township notes that the boundary has never been conclusively delineated. Read the Township’s own page for the current position — it is updated as things develop.
That is not a question anyone should answer from a map or a build year, and we will not. The first thing to establish is whether the property draws drinking water from a private well or a public supply, because the residential testing programs are well programs. If it is on a well, the Township publishes a list of laboratories that will test for 1,4-dioxane at the owner’s expense, and the county health department and the state environment department are the authorities on results and on which monitoring programs an address falls within.
No. Dioxane analysis is a specialist laboratory method — EPA Method 522 — carried out by certified labs, and nothing in a building inspection touches it. We do not take water samples and we do not analyze them. On a property with a private well we report the visible equipment — pressure tank, accessible supply piping and its condition, and any treatment equipment present — and the testing belongs with the labs the Township lists.
The Township states that the current Michigan drinking water standard is 7.2 micrograms per liter, and that certain response activities under the existing consent judgment — including supply of bottled drinking water and monthly sampling — are triggered when levels exceed 3.0 micrograms per liter. It also notes that the county and state monitoring uses a method detecting down to 1.0 micrograms per liter, while the Township’s own program used EPA Method 522, which detects down to 0.12.
Washtenaw County does. But the Township issues zoning compliance permits, and its approval is required before you submit a building permit application to the county. That covers accessory structures, decks and patios, roof- and ground-mounted solar, additions and interior renovations, and generator installation, along with home occupations and in-home daycare. Township review typically takes seven to ten business days.
Both places. Because zoning sits with the Township and building permits with Washtenaw County, a search covering only one of them is only half a search. That matters most on the work the Township names specifically — solar arrays, generators, additions and accessory buildings — which are exactly the items a buyer wants a record for.
No. Township Hall itself carries an Ann Arbor mailing address while sitting in Scio Township, and Scio addresses commonly read Ann Arbor or Dexter. The City of Ann Arbor and the Village of Dexter are separate municipalities with their own rules and their own permit records. Confirm which one an address actually falls in before relying on anything you have read.
The Township publishes a good method using your own meter, which is typically in the basement. Turn off everything in the house, then check the display — a Metron meter reading FORWARD with nothing running suggests water is still moving. For a firmer answer, note the reading, use no water for thirty to sixty minutes, and read it again. Toilet flappers, dripping faucets, irrigation systems, softeners cycling too often and outdoor spigots are the usual causes.
More on cost, timing and what is included on the FAQ page.
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From the blog
January 24, 2025
November 11, 2020
Your local Scio Township home inspector, seven days a week. Home inspection reports in 24 hours.
