A building inspection will tell you plenty about a home’s structure, but plumbing has a way of hiding its secrets from a general once over, and the expensive surprises, corroded pipes, root damaged sewers, a hot water system on its last summer, rarely announce themselves at a fifteen minute viewing. The good news is that a buyer armed with the right checklist can learn a remarkable amount without any tools at all. Here is what we would check before buying any Perth home, drawn from decades of being called to fix the things buyers wished they had noticed.
Establish the era, because the era predicts the problems
The single most useful fact is the age of the house, because plumbing problems arrive by generation. Homes built up to around the 1970s often carry galvanised steel water pipes, which corrode internally, and clay sewer pipes with a joint every metre for roots to exploit. Later homes bring copper and PVC, fewer root problems and their own quirks. Ask when the house was built, whether the plumbing has ever been upgraded, and whether any documentation of that work exists. A seventies house with original everything is not necessarily a bad buy, but it is a different buy, and the difference belongs in your budget.
Run the taps like you mean it
At the viewing, actually use the plumbing. Turn on the kitchen tap fully, then start the bathroom taps and watch what happens to the first one. Strong flow that barely flinches when a second fixture opens suggests healthy pipes. Flow that collapses points at internal corrosion or undersized pipework. Run the hot taps long enough for hot water to genuinely arrive, noting how long it takes, and check both the pressure and the colour. A brown tinge on the hot side hints at a corroding tank, and brown on the cold side hints at pipe corrosion. While water is running, listen. Banging, humming or shuddering pipes are telling you about pressure and securing problems.
Interrogate the hot water system
Find the hot water unit and read its badge, which carries the manufacture date. Storage systems in Perth commonly serve somewhere around ten years, sometimes more with maintenance, so a unit near or past that age is a replacement cost you should price into your offer. Look for rust streaks on the casing, corrosion at fittings, water pooling underneath and a relief valve that dribbles constantly rather than occasionally. None of these are dealbreakers, all of them are negotiating information.
Give the drains the tests nobody performs
Drains are where inspections go quietest and problems cost most, so do what other buyers do not. Flush every toilet and watch the water clear, listening for gurgles from nearby fixtures, which suggest venting or partial blockage issues. Fill basins and release them, watching for lazy draining. Outside, find the gully traps and overflow points and look for staining, dampness or debris marks that betray past overflows. Survey the garden for large established trees near where the sewer must run, particularly ficus and other aggressive species, and treat mature trees over an old clay sewer as a line item, not scenery. A patch of lawn greener than the rest in summer earns suspicion too.
Check the wet areas and the little things
In bathrooms and the laundry, look under every sink at the flexi hoses, rust spotted or bulging braided hoses are cheap to replace and expensive to ignore. Check for signs of past leaks, warped cabinetry bottoms, lifting flooring near showers, resealed patches and fresh paint low on one wall. Test the toilet for movement at its base and the taps for stiff or grinding operation. Confirm the location and operation of the main water shut off valve, because a seized mains valve is both a hazard and a bargaining chip.
When to bring in a professional
If the house passes your checks and you are proceeding, or if anything above raised a flag, a professional plumbing inspection before settlement is modest insurance on a purchase this size. The piece most worth paying for is a CCTV camera inspection of the sewer line, which shows the actual condition of the drains no walkthrough can reveal, roots, cracks, displaced joints and previous bodged repairs all appear on screen in minutes. We perform pre purchase drain inspections across Perth regularly, and buyers have renegotiated by more than the inspection cost many times over on the strength of the footage. Buy the house with your eyes open, including the parts underground. If you would like us to look before you sign, call Drains Plus.
One more habit worth adopting is asking direct questions in writing through your agent. Has the property had recurring drain blockages? Any plumbing insurance claims? When was the hot water system installed, and is there a receipt? Sellers must answer honestly, silence is itself informative, and written answers give you standing later if the truth turns out to have been flexible. Combine the paper trail with your own observations and the picture sharpens considerably before you spend a cent on professional checks.
