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Working RE :
Low cost, same-day E&O Insurance
How
to Date a House
By Alan Carson
As home inspectors, we have some tricks for figuring out the age of a house. In newer subdivisions we pick up dates from manhole covers, sidewalks and curbs. This will give you an idea of when the subdivision was built. This obviously doesn’t work in older neighborhoods.
Thermal pane windows usually have a metal strip which separates the two panes of glass. On that metal strip you will often find the manufacturer’s name, a CMHC number and the date of manufacture. Again, this information must be used carefully. It will tell you the age of the window but not necessarily the age of the house. Check several windows. If they are all the same, you have just figured out how old the house is or the date when all of the windows were upgraded.
On houses built within the last 20-25 years, you will often find a sticker on the outside of the electrical panel indicating the possession date of the house. Where we live, the Ontario (Canada) New Home Warranty Program placed these stickers on the electrical panel so that the warranty period could be established easily.
If you can be sure that the furnace or water heater is original, the gas inspection sticker on either of these appliances is a good indication of the age of the house. Porcelain plumbing fixtures usually have a manufacture date stamped into them. The easiest place to find a date is from a toilet (no jokes). If you remove the lid from the tank, the date will often be stamped on the underside of the lid and also inside the tank near the water line. The date is usually on the right side of the rear portion of the tank when you are facing the toilet. The date inside the tank is more reliable than the date on the lid because sometimes lids get broken and replaced. Again, you must look for other clues to convince yourself that the toilet is original. Otherwise, you have only established the date when the bathroom was renovated.
Building
Material Clues
Certain building materials can be clues
about the age of a house. These clues can vary dramatically by region. For
example, in Toronto, virtually all houses with stone foundation walls were built
before 1930. If you go to Kingston, Ontario however, and ask when they stopped
using stone foundation walls, the response might be, "You mean they stopped
using stone foundation walls?"
In Toronto, brick foundation walls were popular until about 1935. In other parts of the province, you will find no brick foundation walls at all. With the exception of custom built houses, most houses built with concrete block foundations are pre 1970. Most subdivision houses built in the 70s or newer have poured concrete foundations. Most brick houses in Ontario were solid masonry construction (two widths of brick) up until the late 1960s. Most brick houses built after 1970 were brick veneer construction (one width of brick with a wood stud wall behind).
If you stand in an unfinished basement and look up at the sub flooring, you will find that most houses before 1965 used plank sub flooring. After 1965, most houses have plywood sub flooring, until the early 1980s, when wafer board sub flooring became popular (with the builders at least).
Aluminum
wiring began to be used residentially in about 1965, however, it did not really
catch on until about 1970. When was it banned? It was never banned. However, it
received so much bad press that aluminum wiring stopped going into houses in
about 1978. To this day, aluminum wiring is still used to bring power into the
house from the street! Full
Story
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