Plumbing Inspection in Fountain, CO
Fountain is a town that moves. 43% of its owner-occupied homes have changed hands since 2018, which puts the plumbing of a great many of them in front of an inspector inside the last few years.
The one-paragraph answer
Inspection reports are common in Fountain, where 43% of owners arrived in 2018 or later and houses change hands often. What is not common is reading the exclusions: both published standards of practice leave the buried sewer lateral outside the inspection.
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25038.
When Fountain moved in
Where houses move this often, inspections are a familiar part of the process and the risk shifts. It stops being whether one was done and becomes whether anyone understood what it was not required to cover.
| Owner households in Fountain | Share of all owners |
|---|---|
| Moved in 2021 or later | 12% |
| Moved in 2018–2020 | 31% |
| Moved in 2010–2017 | 24% |
| Moved in before 2010 | 33% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25038 (tenure by year householder moved into unit), 2023 release. Universe: 11,091 occupied housing units, of which 8,095 are owner-occupied. This counts when the CURRENT occupant moved in, so it measures recent moves as a share of the housing stock — not a rate of sales per year.
What the inspection will not cover
Lawn irrigation is excluded. It is buried, it is seasonal, and it is connected to the same supply as the house — which makes it the one excluded item that can affect something the inspection did cover.
Source: InterNACHI Home Inspection Standards of Practice; ASHI Standard of Practice.
What it is required to cover
The covered list is shorter than the excluded one and it is not thin. Every fixture run, every toilet flushed, the drain-waste-vent system described, the water heater and its venting examined, the shut-offs located. That is a real morning of work and it is worth knowing it happened.
Worth ten minutes before you read your own report: everything the two standards require, in the order an inspector does it.
What to do about it
Write down where the main water shut-off and the main fuel shut-off are. InterNACHI requires both locations to be described, and they are the two most useful lines in the document.
Everything above comes from documents you can read yourself: the exclusions, the requirements, and why a camera down the lateral is never part of it.
Other Colorado towns we route in
Checking a plumber in Colorado
Checking a credential in Colorado
Colorado licenses are issued by the Colorado State Plumbing Board, Division of Professions and Occupations, which publishes a public search you can use before work begins.
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. We take Fountain requests that never appeared on any inspection.
Call (888) 764-3501