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A plumber in Roanoke showed me a $40 fix and it made me rethink every old house I look at
I was looking at a 1920s bungalow outside Roanoke last spring, 1,100 square feet listed at $38,000, and I had my offer almost ready. The seller let me walk it with a retired plumber who lived two streets over, and he spent 20 minutes in the basement just looking at the cast iron drain stack. He pointed at a rusty joint near the floor and said that one spot would run me $4,000 to $6,000 if the whole line was shot, not the $800 I had guessed. He also showed me the water heater was from 2003 and the main shutoff had been painted over six times, which meant I could not even test the pipes without risking a flood. I walked away from that house, and now I refuse to put in an offer on anything older than 1950 until someone has actually looked at the drain lines. What is your go-to inspection step on old plumbing before you commit?
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