Local Home Inspection, Audit, and Rating Services in Loveland, Fort Collins, Greeley, Windsor, Estes Park, Boulder, Longmont, Larimer, and Weld 970-430-1819 Antique and Old Home Inspections By Bruce Czech ACI Member Historic Building Inspectors Association Older homes require special attention, both at purchase time and during the ownership. For my business, I charge more to inspect home that are older than 50 years old. I do this because these older homes require a higher degree of skill and significantly mor detailed reporting. But even a home that is 30 years old can take a lot more time to inspect than a 10 year old. A larger percentage of the original systems and components will have outlived their design life. Antique and historic homes require an even greater level of effort and commitment to detail. While newer home inspections are somewhat black and white, old and antique home inspections are strictly gray. During decades and centuries of occupation, these homes will experience many diferent levels of home maiantainance. Construction methods will also change. Practices that are taboo in residential contruction now, were many times common practice in the past. The elements will take their toll too. So a home inspector must sift through the attributes of a house and determine which is character, and which is important information that a home buyer must know. Another problem for home inspectors is that they use standardized home inspection report templates that aren’t suitable for old and antique homes. While these templates help a modern home inspector manage their time by having a wealth of cookie cutter comments about modern homes, they often don’t have a comment library that accurately describes conditions and systems used in the last century and before. In general, old and Antique home inspectors require a narrative report style and a comment library that accurately describes the vast universe of conditions and systems found in these homes.