Yikes! That was close ...

Killaine & I are looking for a house. We looked at this house on 8th street in the lower lonsdale area of North Vancouver.
It's a nice house, very quaint, and quite well kept-up inside. It's on a quiet street in Lower Lonsdale, in an area of heritage homes, and close to the old Ridgeway school. The garden at the back is very large. All in all, this house had a lot going for it.

We made an offer on it, contingent on inspection - good thing 'cause the deeper we got into it, the worse it started to look.

Before we did the inspection, we read an old report that indicated the house has an old style of wiring called "Knob and Tube". Read the Wikipedia entry for details, but the short story is that it's an old form of wiring that many insurance companies will no longer insure. This set of the first of the alarm bells. We had electricians check it out - the wiring appeared to be technically safe, and we found that there are insurance companies that will cover houses like this - it meant that we now had "some concern" about the house.

We continued to have it inspected today. We had a great fellow do the inspection. During the inspection he found that:

• there was some rot on the house near the foundation on the north & east aspects;
• that the hot water heating system was using steel pipes (which have a history of eventually corroding through), and that some of the newer copper piping already was showing some very small leaks;
• that there was dampness on the basement floor, indicating the possibility of perimeter drainage issues;
• and a bunch of other smaller issues.
  

But, that's not the end of it. As we moved into the upper part of the house, the home inspector gained access into the roof of the house, and was able to inspect the insulation. After prodding around, he told us that there was fibreglass insulation, but underneath, there was an old vermiculite form of insulation. After we looked at him blankly, he told us that this type of insulation is very old, probably original with the house, and often contains asbestos. Although he could not be certain (it needs to be tested in a lab to know for sure), he did say that 90% of the samples submitted for testing do have asbestos in them.

Well, at that point we'd heard enough. The inspection was concluded, we received the report and we'll very shortly be telling the real estate agents that the deal is off - very, very off.

The hunt continues ...