There is one thing about water that is a definite, if you chill it enough it will freeze. No ifs and or buts about it, you get ice. Ice is great to cool your drink or for skating, but not if it's inside the pipes in your house. If your pipes freeze you have problems, namely burst pipes and an unwanted indoor water feature.

While inspecting this little house not to far back, I discovered the water supply pipes going doooown into the floor and then up, up, up into the ceiling. Hmmmm, very curious and not too good.

Under the floor was a crawl space and that means no heat. Above was the attic, ditto, no heat.

Why would anyone plumb the house this way? Simply this little house was never meant to be a house but a summer cottage. Over the years it was added onto and then made into a year round residence. So you see the pipes originally would have been drained in the fall and filled back up when the vacationers came back next summer. Now there are no part time resident and that presents some what of a problem.

I could not access either of these areas to view if the pipes have been insulated or had pipe heaters. I would suspect that some sort of "protection" had been installed because someone had been living there for years and was now selling. None the less this is risky business running pipes through unconditioned areas and relying on mechanical devices to keep the water flowing.

The person buying this property has plans to re-plumb the home along with other renovations. This would be a first rate plan unless he wants a winter waterfall.

James Quarello
NRSB #8SS0022
JRV Home Inspection Services, LLC

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