Entity map

Flashing, penetrations and roof leaks

A composition shingle field sheds water reliably. Every hole, edge, change of plane and change of material in it is a detail that can be built wrong or wear out — and most of them are concealed by design.

Relations:

• PART_OF → Every era
• RELATES_TO → Hail

A composition shingle field sheds water extremely well. Overlapping courses, gravity and a slope are a robust system, and it is rare for water to get through the middle of an intact plane. What leaks is everything else: every hole, every edge, every change of plane, and every change of material . Each is a designed detail, and a designed detail can be built wrong, aged out, or repaired badly. The word for those details is flashing — the sheet metal, membrane or moulded component that carries water from one surface onto another without letting it behind.

Flashing, penetrations and roof leaks | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Attic ventilation in Texas heat

A ridge vent on a house with blocked soffit vents is not ventilation, and bolting a powered fan onto the same roof makes the airflow worse rather than better.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attic

Relations:

• PART_OF → Every era

An attic ventilates because cool outside air enters low at the soffits, picks up heat, rises, and leaves high at or near the ridge — driven by buoyancy , the stack effect, and by wind across the roof creating negative pressure at the ridge. Both halves of the loop are required. Intake without exhaust underperforms. Exhaust without intake does something worse.

Attic ventilation in Texas heat | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Composition shingle failure modes

Shingles in North Texas rarely wear out gracefully — they lose their sealant bond, crease at the rakes, and give up their fasteners, and the number on the wrapper predicts none of it.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asphalt_shingle

Relations:

• PART_OF → Every era
• RELATES_TO → Hail

A modern composition shingle is a fibreglass mat saturated and coated with asphalt, surfaced with mineral granules that shield the asphalt from ultraviolet light, and fitted with a factory-applied thermoplastic sealant strip that bonds each course to the one above once the roof gets warm. Four standards describe it, and confusing them is how most bad roofing conversations start. ASTM D3018 classifies by type: Type I is self-sealing , Type II is not. ASTM D3161 is a fan-induced wind test. Classes A, D and F correspond to 60, 90 and 110 mph .

Composition shingle failure modes | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Conventionally reinforced slabs

A conventionally reinforced slab cracks more readily than a post-tension slab under the same soil movement, and in 1960s and 1970s houses it sits directly above cast iron drain lines.

Relations:

• PART_OF → 1960s–1970s
• RELATES_TO → Expansive clay

A conventionally reinforced slab-on-grade is a concrete slab with steel — deformed bar, welded wire mesh, or both — cast into it and left at rest. The steel is not tensioned. That is the whole distinction from a post-tension slab, and it produces different behaviour. Passive reinforcement works after the concrete cracks. Concrete is strong in compression and weak in tension; when bending stress exceeds what the concrete carries in tension it cracks, and the embedded steel then takes the tensile load and holds the crack together.

Conventionally reinforced slabs | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Foundation drainage and grading

Grade, gutters, downspouts and irrigation control the moisture at the slab perimeter, which is what actually drives seasonal foundation movement in Blackland Prairie clay.

Relations:

• PART_OF → Every era
• RELATES_TO → Texas Blackland Prairies

Foundation movement in North Texas is a moisture problem before it is a structural one. The clay under most of Dallas–Fort Worth changes volume with water content, so whatever controls where water goes at the slab perimeter controls where the house moves. Grading, gutters, downspouts, beds and irrigation are not landscaping here. They are part of the foundation system. The mechanism has an under-appreciated feature.

Foundation drainage and grading | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Hail damage and roof age

Texas recorded 902 major hail events in 2025, roughly two and a half times the next state — and the damage that matters begins on the underside of the shingle, where nothing is visible from the ground.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hail

Relations:

• PART_OF → Every era
• RELATES_TO → Hail

The technical literature the insurance industry actually argues over is Haag Engineering's published research, and it defines the term everyone else uses loosely. Functional damage to any roofing is defined as diminution in its water-shedding capability or reduction in the expected long-term service life. Fractures start on the bottom. Impact-caused fractures initiate in regions of maximum tensile strain on the bottom sides of shingles and propagate toward the top.

Hail damage and roof age | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Pier and beam foundations

A pier and beam house sits on piers with a crawlspace beneath, which makes it the one North Texas foundation type you can actually reach, inspect and adjust.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_(engineering)

Relations:

• PART_OF → Pre-1960
• RELATES_TO → Expansive clay

A pier and beam foundation carries the house on discrete supports rather than on a continuous concrete raft. A perimeter beam runs around the outside, interior piers on footings carry beams under the middle of the house, and wood floor framing — girders, joists, subfloor — spans between them. The result is a crawlspace : a void between the ground and the underside of the floor, usually a few feet high, with vents through the perimeter. Everything that is distinctive about this foundation type follows from that void. It is adjustable.

Pier and beam foundations | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Windows and failed glazing seals

A fogged window is a failed seal between the panes; it does not leak into the house, does not spread, and does not damage anything else, which puts it in the budget column rather than the walk-away column.

Relations:

• PART_OF → 1980s–1990s

The glass is fine. What failed is the seal around its edge, and the assembly explains the rest. An insulating glass unit — an IGU — is two lites of glass, sometimes three, separated by a spacer containing a desiccant that absorbs whatever moisture is sealed in at the factory. The spacer is bonded to the glass by a primary seal , typically polyisobutylene, which is the actual vapour barrier, and a secondary seal of silicone, polysulfide or polyurethane for structural bond. The cavity may hold air or a fill gas such as argon.

Windows and failed glazing seals | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Brick veneer, lintels and weep holes

Brick veneer carries only its own weight and is designed to let water in and drain it back out, which is why most cracks in it are cladding cracks rather than a foundation verdict.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brick_veneer

Relations:

• PART_OF → Every era

This is the most consequential misunderstanding in North Texas residential construction, and correcting it changes how a buyer reads every crack they see. The controlling reference is the Brick Industry Association's Technical Notes on Brick Construction . Technical Note 28, Brick Veneer/Wood Stud Walls , states it plainly: "An anchored masonry veneer is attached to and laterally supported by its backing through anchors and supported vertically by the foundation ." Unpack that. The house is a wood-framed structure.

Brick veneer, lintels and weep holes | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Expansive clay soil movement

The clay under a Dallas-Fort Worth house cracks open several inches every summer and closes again after rain, and most slabs have moved without being damaged.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansive_clay

Relations:

• PART_OF → Every era
• RELATES_TO → Texas Blackland Prairies
• RELATES_TO → Expansive clay

Dallas–Fort Worth sits on the Blackland Prairie, a belt of dark calcareous clay weathered out of Cretaceous mudstone. The dominant and most frequently cited soil series here is Houston Black — the official State Soil of Texas. The USDA-NRCS classifies it as fine, smectitic, thermic Udic Haplusterts . Translated: it is a Vertisol , a soil that is defined by its shrink-swell behaviour rather than one that happens to exhibit it. Smectite clay minerals draw water in between their crystal layers and expand. When the water leaves, they contract.

Expansive clay soil movement | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Post-tension slab foundations

Post-tension slabs became the default for North Texas expansive-soil subdivisions through the 1980s, and identifying one tells you how the house was built rather than what is wrong with it.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prestressed_concrete

Relations:

• PART_OF → 1980s–1990s
• RELATES_TO → Expansive clay

A post-tensioned slab is a concrete slab reinforced with steel cables that are tensioned after the concrete cures — that is what "post" means in the name. Plastic-sheathed steel strands, called tendons, are laid in a grid before the pour. Once the concrete reaches a specified strength, each tendon is stressed with a hydraulic jack and anchored at the slab perimeter, putting the whole slab into compression . The reason that matters is a basic property of concrete: it is strong in compression and weak in tension.

Post-tension slab foundations | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Radiant barriers

A radiant barrier reduces radiant heat gain into the attic, and the research says the savings depend far more on where the ducts are and what condition they are in than on which product was installed.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiant_barrier

Relations:

• PART_OF → 2000s

Heat moves three ways: conduction through solid material, convection by moving air, and radiation across space. Attic insulation addresses the first two — it is a thick, still, low-conductivity layer that slows heat crossing the ceiling. A radiant barrier addresses the third. It is a low-emittance surface, almost always aluminium foil, facing an air space, and its job is to reflect the infrared energy that a sun-heated roof deck radiates downward onto everything in the attic.

Radiant barriers | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Reading interior distress — cracks, doors, floors

A crack at a door corner, a door that stopped latching in August, a floor that reads out of level — in a North Texas house these are usually the interior face of ordinary seasonal soil movement.

Relations:

• PART_OF → Every era
• RELATES_TO → Expansive clay

Interior distress is the collective name for what movement in the soil, the foundation and the framing looks like once it reaches the finished surfaces you live with. It is a symptom set, not a defect. The list an inspector works through inside a North Texas house is short and specific. Sheetrock cracking, especially radiating diagonally from the upper corners of door and window openings and along ceiling-to-wall junctions. Separated crown moulding and trim joints. Doors that rub the jamb head, will not latch, or show an out-of-square reveal.

Reading interior distress — cracks, doors, floors | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Roof decking and board spacing

Older North Texas roofs are built on individual boards rather than panels, and nobody — inspector or roofer — knows what condition they are in until the old covering comes off.

Relations:

• PART_OF → Pre-1960

The decking , or sheathing, is the continuous surface nailed across the rafters or trusses that the underlayment and shingles fasten to. It carries the covering, ties the framing together, and provides the holding power for every nail on the roof. Its type in a Dallas-Fort Worth house is largely a function of when the house was built, and the era boundaries are approximate rather than sharp. Pre-war and early post-war: 1-inch solid or spaced board sheathing , usually 1x6 or 1x8 nominal, nailed across the rafters.

Roof decking and board spacing | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Aluminium branch circuit wiring

Most houses sold as remediated were pigtailed with twist-on wire nuts, which CPSC says does not solve the problem.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminum_building_wiring

Relations:

• PART_OF → 1960s–1970s
• RELATES_TO → Consumer Product Safety Commission

Start here, because conflating three different things is the commonest error on this subject and it does harm in both directions — buyers panicking over wiring that is entirely normal, and buyers reassured about wiring that is not. The hazard is single-strand aluminium 15-amp and 20-amp branch circuits — the ordinary circuits feeding receptacles, switches and light fixtures. A solid aluminium conductor about the thickness of the copper you would expect, landing on device screws all over the house.

Aluminium branch circuit wiring | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Cast iron sewer lines

Cast iron drain lines are the era-normal material under pre-1980 North Texas slabs, and the useful question is never the material but whether anyone has put a camera in it.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cast_iron_pipe

Relations:

• PART_OF → Pre-1960

Cast iron soil pipe was the standard drain, waste and vent material in North Texas houses for most of the twentieth century. It carries wastewater by gravity from the fixtures, through the building drain under the slab, out to the lateral and into the city main. It is not pressurised, and holds water only when something drains. Two joint families turn up, and the difference matters when someone quotes a repair.

Cast iron sewer lines | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Ductwork and condensate in unconditioned attics

In most DFW houses the air handler and every duct sit in a superheated attic directly above finished ceilings, which turns an ordinary drain line clog into interior damage.

Relations:

• PART_OF → Every era

In most DFW single-family housing there is no basement and no mechanical room. The air handler and the entire duct system live in the attic, above the insulation, outside the thermal and pressure boundary of the house . On a July afternoon in Plano that attic can be far hotter than the outdoor air. Three consequences follow, and they compound each other: Every duct leak and every gap in insulation happens in the worst possible thermal environment.

Ductwork and condensate in unconditioned attics | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Federal Pacific Stab-Lok panels

Federal Pacific Stab-Lok breakers did fail UL calibration tests, and the federal regulator closed the case without deciding what that meant because it could not afford to finish.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Pacific_Electric

Relations:

• PART_OF → 1960s–1970s
• RELATES_TO → Consumer Product Safety Commission

Federal Pacific Electric manufactured residential load centres and circuit breakers under the Stab-Lok trade name from roughly 1950 to 1980. The name describes the connection: the breaker stabs onto a bus bar and locks there. The steel cabinet is not the issue. The allegation that has followed this product for four decades is about the breakers — specifically, whether a Stab-Lok breaker reliably opens when the circuit behind it draws more current than it is rated for. That is the one thing a circuit breaker exists to do.

Federal Pacific Stab-Lok panels | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Slab leaks

A slab leak is two different problems wearing one name, and in expansive clay the water under the foundation matters more than the pipe that released it.

Relations:

• PART_OF → Every era

Slab leak is one phrase covering two problems with different symptoms, different detection methods, different urgency and different repair logic. Most consumer content conflates them, which is why so much advice does not fit the situation it is given for. Supply-side leaks These are the under-slab hot and cold water supply lines — historically copper, sometimes polybutylene or CPVC, and in newer houses PEX, often run overhead instead.

Slab leaks | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Zinsco and Sylvania panels

No federal investigation, no recall, no fraud judgment and no large-sample testing — the case against these panels rests entirely on field failure reports.

Relations:

• PART_OF → 1960s–1970s
• RELATES_TO → Consumer Product Safety Commission

Zinsco Electrical Products built residential load centres into the early 1970s. The line was acquired by GTE-Sylvania , after which panels were branded Sylvania or GTE-Sylvania , or continued to carry Zinsco markings. Production halted in the mid-1970s. You will see a specific acquisition year quoted around the trade; this site will not publish one, because it could not be confirmed against a corporate filing or a contemporaneous record.

Zinsco and Sylvania panels | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

GFCI and AFCI protection

A Texas inspection report marks missing GFCI and AFCI protection deficient regardless of the age of the house, which is a reporting rule rather than a code violation.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residual-current_device

Relations:

• PART_OF → Every era

These are two different devices solving two different problems, and treating them as interchangeable is the fastest way to spot content written by someone who does not know the subject. A GFCI protects people. A ground-fault circuit interrupter compares the current leaving on the hot conductor with the current returning on the neutral. If they differ, current is going somewhere it should not — through a person, through water, through a damp slab — and the device opens.

GFCI and AFCI protection | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

HVAC age, sizing and capacity

A Texas inspector measures whether a cooling system is performing today; the rule expressly does not ask them to decide whether it is the right size for the house.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVAC

Relations:

• PART_OF → Every era

A Texas inspection of a heating and cooling system is a performance check, not an engineering review, and the distinction is written into the rule. Under the Texas Standards of Practice the inspector operates the equipment with normal controls and reports as Deficient, among other things, deficiencies in the performance of the cooling system that fails to achieve a 15 degrees Fahrenheit to 22 degrees Fahrenheit temperature differential — the difference between the air entering the return and the air leaving a supply register while the system runs.

HVAC age, sizing and capacity | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Irrigation systems and backflow prevention

In Blackland Prairie clay the irrigation system is the main instrument a homeowner has for controlling soil moisture around the slab, which makes uneven watering a structural issue rather than a landscaping one.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backflow_prevention_device

Relations:

• PART_OF → Every era

The soil under most of Dallas–Fort Worth is Blackland Prairie clay, and its defining property is shrink-swell. The USDA-NRCS description of the Houston Black series records cracks 1.3 to 10 cm (½ to 4 inches) wide at 30 cm (12 inch) depths during dry periods, and those cracks remain open 90 to 150 cumulative days a year. Infiltration is rapid when the soil is dry and cracked, and very slow once it is moist.

Irrigation systems and backflow prevention | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Polybutylene supply plumbing

Polybutylene sits directly on top of DFW's peak building years, which is why it matters more here than in most markets, and why so much of what is said about it is wrong.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybutylene

Relations:

• PART_OF → 1980s–1990s

Polybutylene is a flexible plastic water supply tubing, most often grey, sometimes blue and occasionally black or cream, joined with barbed insert fittings and crimp rings. It was installed in American houses across a window commonly given as roughly 1978 to 1995 . Treat those dates as approximate; no primary manufacturing or regulatory source pins them down precisely, and anyone quoting an exact start or end year is sharpening a range that was never sharp. The reason this matters more in North Texas is arithmetic rather than anecdote.

Polybutylene supply plumbing | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Service entrance, grounding and bonding

Double-tapped breakers are the most common panel finding in North Texas resale inspections, and most of them are an afternoon of work.

Relations:

• PART_OF → Every era

Most consumer electrical content conflates these two words, and the confusion produces a dangerous misunderstanding about what protects a house. Grounding connects the electrical system to the earth , through a grounding electrode system — typically a driven ground rod, a metal underground water pipe, or a concrete-encased electrode cast into the foundation, known as a Ufer ground. Its purpose is to stabilise system voltage relative to earth and to give lightning and utility surges a path other than through the house.

Service entrance, grounding and bonding | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Water heaters — TPR valves, pans, expansion

Most water heater findings in North Texas are about the safety devices around the tank rather than the tank itself — the relief valve discharge, the pan and its drain, and whether the system is closed.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_heating

Relations:

• PART_OF → Every era

A storage water heater is a pressure vessel full of water above ambient temperature. If the thermostat fails and the high-limit fails with it, water in a closed vessel under pressure can be driven well above 212°F while remaining liquid. If the vessel then ruptures, that superheated water flashes to steam instantaneously and the tank becomes a projectile. The temperature and pressure relief valve , universally shortened to TPR, is what prevents that: it opens on excessive temperature or pressure and dumps water somewhere safe.

Water heaters — TPR valves, pans, expansion | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

CPVC and PEX supply lines

CPVC and PEX are current, code-approved supply materials with specific and narrow vulnerabilities — chemical incompatibility for CPVC, and one generation of yellow brass fittings for PEX.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-linked_polyethylene

Relations:

• PART_OF → 2000s

CPVC is chlorinated polyvinyl chloride: rigid, cream or tan — the FlowGuard Gold product has a distinctive yellow-tan cast — and joined with solvent cement, the way PVC drain pipe is. In North Texas it is the characteristic 1990s supply material, sitting between the copper and polybutylene era and the PEX era that followed. PEX is crosslinked polyethylene: flexible, supplied in coils, joined mechanically rather than chemically. It displaced CPVC and most remaining copper through the 2000s and is effectively universal in new construction.

CPVC and PEX supply lines | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Sewer scope — what it actually finds

A sewer scope is worth ordering on any older DFW slab house, but a camera reports condition rather than verdicts, and the company reading the video is often the company selling the repair.

Relations:

• PART_OF → Pre-1960

A sewer scope is a push camera fed into the building drain, usually through a cleanout, and run out along the lateral toward the city main while a technician records video. It produces two things: footage of the inside of the pipe, and a report interpreting that footage. The second is where the trouble starts, and most of this page is about the gap between them. It is not part of a Texas real estate inspection, and there are three independent reasons for that in the rule itself.

Sewer scope — what it actually finds | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Wood-destroying insect inspections

The Texas wood-destroying insect report is a separate document issued under a separate state licence, and it answers a narrower question than most buyers assume it does.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termite

Relations:

• PART_OF → Every era
• RELATES_TO → Texas Real Estate Commission

The Texas Official Wood Destroying Insect Report is a specific document on a specific state form — Form SPCS/T-5 — administered by the Structural Pest Control Service of the Texas Department of Agriculture . It is not a section of your home inspection report, it is not written by your inspector in that capacity, and it is not issued under a TREC licence. Only a certified applicator or a technician licensed by TDA in the termite control category may perform the inspection and sign the report.

Wood-destroying insect inspections | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Texas Real Estate Commission

The Texas agency that licenses real estate inspectors and promulgates both the Standards of Practice and the required inspection report form.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Real_Estate_Commission

The Texas agency that licenses real estate inspectors and promulgates both the Standards of Practice and the required inspection report form.

What TREC Standards Require and Exclude | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Texas Blackland Prairies

The belt of dark calcareous clay soils running through North Texas, and the geological reason foundations move across Dallas-Fort Worth.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_blackland_prairies

The belt of dark calcareous clay soils running through North Texas, and the geological reason foundations move across Dallas-Fort Worth.

Expansive clay soil movement | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Expansive clay

Clay that changes volume with moisture content, shrinking as it dries and swelling as it wets, which is what drives foundation movement in North Texas.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansive_clay

Clay that changes volume with moisture content, shrinking as it dries and swelling as it wets, which is what drives foundation movement in North Texas.

Expansive clay soil movement | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex

The North Texas metropolitan area whose soil, climate and construction history this reference describes.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas%E2%80%93Fort_Worth_metroplex

The North Texas metropolitan area whose soil, climate and construction history this reference describes.

All findings | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Consumer Product Safety Commission

The federal agency whose investigations and publications are the primary record on electrical panel and aluminium wiring hazard claims.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Product_Safety_Commission

The federal agency whose investigations and publications are the primary record on electrical panel and aluminium wiring hazard claims.

Federal Pacific Stab-Lok panels | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Home inspection

A limited visual survey and basic performance evaluation of a dwelling, defined in Texas by administrative rule rather than by model building code.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_inspection

A limited visual survey and basic performance evaluation of a dwelling, defined in Texas by administrative rule rather than by model building code.

The Texas inspection process | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Hail

The precipitation form that ends most North Texas roofs, typically long before the covering would have failed from age.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hail

The precipitation form that ends most North Texas roofs, typically long before the covering would have failed from age.

Hail damage and roof age | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Structure and Exterior Findings

Findings affecting the foundation, roof, cladding and building envelope of North Texas houses, where expansive clay soils and hail drive most of what an inspection reports.

Relations:

• INCLUDES → Flashing, penetrations and roof leaks
• INCLUDES → Attic ventilation in Texas heat
• INCLUDES → Composition shingle failure modes
• INCLUDES → Conventionally reinforced slabs
• INCLUDES → Foundation drainage and grading
• INCLUDES → Hail damage and roof age
• INCLUDES → Pier and beam foundations
• INCLUDES → Windows and failed glazing seals
• INCLUDES → Brick veneer, lintels and weep holes
• INCLUDES → Expansive clay soil movement
• INCLUDES → Post-tension slab foundations
• INCLUDES → Radiant barriers
• INCLUDES → Reading interior distress — cracks, doors, floors
• INCLUDES → Roof decking and board spacing

Findings affecting the foundation, roof, cladding and building envelope of North Texas houses, where expansive clay soils and hail drive most of what an inspection reports.

Structure & Exterior Findings | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Systems Findings

Findings affecting the plumbing, electrical and mechanical systems of North Texas houses, largely predicted by the decade in which the house was built.

Relations:

• INCLUDES → Aluminium branch circuit wiring
• INCLUDES → Cast iron sewer lines
• INCLUDES → Ductwork and condensate in unconditioned attics
• INCLUDES → Federal Pacific Stab-Lok panels
• INCLUDES → Slab leaks
• INCLUDES → Zinsco and Sylvania panels
• INCLUDES → GFCI and AFCI protection
• INCLUDES → HVAC age, sizing and capacity
• INCLUDES → Irrigation systems and backflow prevention
• INCLUDES → Polybutylene supply plumbing
• INCLUDES → Service entrance, grounding and bonding
• INCLUDES → Water heaters — TPR valves, pans, expansion
• INCLUDES → CPVC and PEX supply lines
• INCLUDES → Sewer scope — what it actually finds
• INCLUDES → Wood-destroying insect inspections

Findings affecting the plumbing, electrical and mechanical systems of North Texas houses, largely predicted by the decade in which the house was built.

Systems Findings | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Every era construction

Findings that turn up in North Texas houses of any age.

Relations:

• INCLUDES → Flashing, penetrations and roof leaks
• INCLUDES → Attic ventilation in Texas heat
• INCLUDES → Composition shingle failure modes
• INCLUDES → Foundation drainage and grading
• INCLUDES → Hail damage and roof age
• INCLUDES → Brick veneer, lintels and weep holes
• INCLUDES → Expansive clay soil movement
• INCLUDES → Reading interior distress — cracks, doors, floors
• INCLUDES → Ductwork and condensate in unconditioned attics
• INCLUDES → Slab leaks
• INCLUDES → GFCI and AFCI protection
• INCLUDES → HVAC age, sizing and capacity
• INCLUDES → Irrigation systems and backflow prevention
• INCLUDES → Service entrance, grounding and bonding
• INCLUDES → Water heaters — TPR valves, pans, expansion
• INCLUDES → Wood-destroying insect inspections

Findings that turn up in North Texas houses of any age.

Findings by Build Era | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

Pre-1960 construction

Cast iron waste lines, plank decking, pier and beam, original service equipment.

Relations:

• INCLUDES → Pier and beam foundations
• INCLUDES → Roof decking and board spacing
• INCLUDES → Cast iron sewer lines
• INCLUDES → Sewer scope — what it actually finds

Cast iron waste lines, plank decking, pier and beam, original service equipment.

Findings by Build Era | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

1960s–1970s construction

The panel and wiring era — Federal Pacific, Zinsco, aluminium branch circuits.

Relations:

• INCLUDES → Conventionally reinforced slabs
• INCLUDES → Aluminium branch circuit wiring
• INCLUDES → Federal Pacific Stab-Lok panels
• INCLUDES → Zinsco and Sylvania panels

The panel and wiring era — Federal Pacific, Zinsco, aluminium branch circuits.

Findings by Build Era | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

1980s–1990s construction

Post-tension slabs become standard; polybutylene supply lines appear.

Relations:

• INCLUDES → Windows and failed glazing seals
• INCLUDES → Post-tension slab foundations
• INCLUDES → Polybutylene supply plumbing

Post-tension slabs become standard; polybutylene supply lines appear.

Findings by Build Era | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas

2000s construction

CPVC and PEX, radiant barriers, tighter envelopes.

Relations:

• INCLUDES → Radiant barriers
• INCLUDES → CPVC and PEX supply lines

CPVC and PEX, radiant barriers, tighter envelopes.

Findings by Build Era | Home Inspection Dallas — published by Home Inspection Dallas