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Reference

Findings by build era

The year a North Texas house was built predicts most of what an inspection will find in it — not because older is worse, but because each decade had its own standard practice, its own materials, and its own set of things that later turned out to matter.

Every era

16 findings

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

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Structure & Exterior

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.

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Structure & Exterior

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.

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Structure & Exterior

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.

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Structure & Exterior

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.

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Structure & Exterior

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.

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Structure & Exterior

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.

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Structure & Exterior

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.

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Structure & Exterior

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Pre-1960

4 findings

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

Structure & Exterior

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.

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Structure & Exterior

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.

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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.

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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.

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1960s–1970s

4 findings

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

Structure & Exterior

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.

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Aluminium branch circuit wiring

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

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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.

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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.

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1980s–1990s

3 findings

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

Structure & Exterior

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.

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Structure & Exterior

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.

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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.

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2000s

2 findings

CPVC and PEX, radiant barriers, tighter envelopes.

Structure & Exterior

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.

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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.

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