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Buyers Beware!

Buyers Beware: Orangeberg tile maybe your worse enemy and you didn't even know about it.

After WWII the very common product used for sewer lines in cities was a tile they named Orangeberg. This innocent looking product appears normal enough:

Problem with this product is that it is actually Coal Tar Impregnated Wood Fiber Pipe. Here is a website with sewer history

http://www.sewerhistory.org/grfx/components/pipe-orng1.htm

(How in the world were people able to sell homes without the web years ago? We have so much history available to us now...but that's the topic for another blog.)

So this cardboard pipe fails. What a surprise...NOT. Problem for us as Realtors, we need to know which neighborhoods have Orangeberg and which do not. Even then the records are not totally correct.

Here is a document of a sewer line failure on the west side of AA:

http://www.apin.com/401/main.htm

If I have a buyer you can bet the offer will include a request for exploratory investigation of the sewer lines and if I list a home, I'll try to find facts about the sewer line.

Posted by Karen Moorhead Ann Arbor Area Real Estate on 10/06/2007 08:39 AM

Comments (6)

buyers, home inspection

6 Comments on Buyers Beware!

OCT

2007

We lived in a house built in 1959 that had Orangeburg pipe. Which failed. We ended up having the entire line replaced. However, since we've owned the house for almost 20 years now, the cost of replacing it has amortized over time to be not that big a deal. Was certainly a royal pain at the time, though.

Something almost worst was that when they built homes then, they built them to last. Which meant that when the 40 year old bathroom sink finally rotted out and had to be replaced, we discovered that it was necessary to replace the entire tile countertop, because it had been cemented in place! A simple sink replacement turned into a major project. Not complaining at how well the home was built, mind you, just boggling that they didn't figure into the design and construction that the sink would need replacing sometime in the future.

yuck, what in the world was the person who came up with that one thinking.

Karen, it is extremely important in our area. Slowly but surely they are replacing it, but when you have a contract on a house and it is found, and the sellers didn't know, it is such a huge expense. Thanks for all the links.

OCT

2007

This story was very funny! http://www.apin.com/401/diggit.htm

The author of that has a marvelous sense of humor.

Yes, he is just too funny Kase. I agree.

OCT

2007

I am actually commenting on the article

http://www.apin.com/401/main.htm

More specifically, the intro page. I would like to comment to the author of that article (not the author of this blog) that I thought it was offensive in terms of the " Female Sales Pitch " and " Guys - Just Read This Part " aspects of the article. It was very clear that this was based on stereotypes of women and men, and appealing to the women through "motherly" terms and ideas (ie "a sewing room or a kids play room") and using "male/macho" terms to draw in the men (ie "the most incredible football property you will ever find!") was offensive and frustrating. Women are not necessarily the only ones looking for play rooms for children and men are not the only ones looking for a good tailgate. You should be more careful with the way you word things, otherwise you come off sounding immature and offensive.

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