Plumbing Inspection and the Plumbing It Leaves Out

Both of the industry standards of practice say an inspection is visual and not technically exhaustive. The list of plumbing that follows from those two words is longer than almost any buyer expects.

The one-paragraph answer

A home inspection is visual and, in both industry standards, not technically exhaustive. For plumbing that means wells, septic, water quality, pressure, concealed pipe and the sewer lateral sit outside it — and those exclusions are published rather than discretionary.

Source: ASHI Standard of Practice; InterNACHI Home Inspection Standards of Practice.

PresalePipe is a referral service, not a contractor or a home inspector. We connect homeowners and buyers with independent contractors. Contractors are required to hold whatever credential their state or municipality demands. Every state page sets out who licenses plumbers there and where to check, so you can confirm before work begins. We carry out no inspections and no work, we do not set prices, and we never charge homeowners anything — the contractors in our network pay us when we route them a call.

The definition, not the disclaimer

InterNACHI and ASHI are competing bodies with different standards, and they agree on this: an inspection covers readily accessible, visually observable, installed systems, and is not technically exhaustive.

Where two competing standards draw the same line, the line is real. Everything excluded follows from it.

Source: InterNACHI Home Inspection Standards of Practice; ASHI Standard of Practice.

What that rules out

Wells, pumps, pressure tanks and filters. Septic and other wastewater treatment. Water quality and potability. Water conditioning. Flow and pressure. Pipe inside a wall, under a slab or below grade. Fire sprinklers, lawn irrigation, clothes washer connections, gas leak testing. InterNACHI names polybutylene piping outright.

None of that is an inspector cutting corners. It is the published boundary of the service, and reading it is how you find out what you did not buy.

What is covered, and covered properly

Every fixture with the water running. Every toilet flushed. Drainage at every sink, tub and shower. The drain, waste and vent system. The water heater, its venting and its relief valve — though the valve is looked at, not operated, and both standards decline that test deliberately.

The covered list is shorter than the excluded one and it is not thin.

And the gap people pay for

The drains are checked inside the house. Where they run to is excluded by both standards, which is why a camera survey is a separate instruction — and the most expensive thing on a property to be wrong about.

Where we route

We publish a page for each of the 4,383 towns we route in across 38 states, each carrying that town’s own turnover figure. Across all of them, 22% of owner households moved in during 2018 or later.

Inspection report in front of you?Read us the plumbing lines and nothing else — we do not want the document. We will route you to a contractor covering your area who can quote the items on it, and you are never charged by us. Inspections are the theme here; calls of every kind are routed.

Call (888) 764-3501