Professional Home Inspection in Essington, PA

Essington, Delaware County

What does a home inspection in Essington include?

A home inspection in Essington, Delaware County is a top-to-bottom evaluation of a single property -- foundation, structure, roof, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, and exterior envelope -- performed in person by Bob against InterNACHI standards, with a full photo-documented digital report delivered inside 24 hours.

Essington is a riverfront community in the western part of Tinicum Township, Delaware County, sitting on a flat band of Delaware River floodplain just west of Philadelphia International Airport and bordered by the Darby Creek drainage. Its housing stock is mostly early-to-mid twentieth century working-class construction, built to serve the Westinghouse plant, the Lester Piano Works, and the riverfront airfield that became the Philadelphia Seaplane Base. You find modest detached frame houses, brick and frame twins, and rows of small homes on stone and concrete block foundations along Wanamaker Avenue, Saybrook Avenue, and the side streets that run between Governor Printz Boulevard and the water. These are homes built solidly for their purpose -- frame and masonry construction, plaster walls, simple roof lines -- but they carry eighty to a hundred years of layered repairs, system swaps, and deferred maintenance, and they sit on some of the lowest, wettest ground in the county. When I inspect a house in Essington, I check the foundation and structure for the settlement and moisture damage that low river-soil sites produce, the roof and attic for the wear that flat-lot exposure brings, the electrical for the piecemeal upgrades typical of century-old houses, the plumbing supply and waste lines for galvanized corrosion and laterals failing under the slab, and the heating and cooling equipment for the safety problems that come with old chimneys and fuel conversions. The structural picture matters most here because of the ground itself. A house built on river floodplain and, in many cases, on former industrial fill settles unevenly as the soil compacts and the tidal water table cycles, and I look closely at foundation walls, floor framing, and door and window alignment for the evidence of that movement. The proximity to the river also means buyers should understand drainage and grading specifically, because water that is not directed away from these foundations has almost nowhere to drain on ground this flat and this low.

When I inspect an early-1900s frame house or twin in Essington, I am not treating it as a generic old house -- I am looking at a structure on some of the lowest ground in Delaware County that has almost certainly had three or four rounds of owners make uncoordinated decisions about the foundation, the wiring, the plumbing, and the heat. The issues cluster in predictable places. The first is the foundation and the ground beneath it. These houses sit on stone and concrete block walls on river floodplain soil, often over former industrial fill, and a tidal water table that climbs high in wet seasons. I check below-grade walls for bowing, step cracking in block, deteriorated mortar joints, and the efflorescence and staining that mark chronic moisture, and I look hard at crawlspaces, because so many of the smaller riverfront houses have a dirt-floor crawlspace over saturated soil rather than a full basement. Settlement shows up upstairs too, in out-of-square door frames, sloping floors, and separation cracks in plaster, and I trace those back to the structure rather than writing them off as cosmetic. The second pattern is the plumbing. Original galvanized supply lines in houses this age corrode from the inside out, and the clay sewer laterals running to the township main have spent a century settling and cracking in soft river soil and filling with tree roots -- a sewer scope is something I strongly recommend on any Essington house unless recent paperwork proves the lateral was replaced. The third is the heating system and its chimney. Many of these homes went through oil-to-gas conversions over the decades, and those conversions frequently left an original masonry flue oversized for the new gas equipment, which allows condensation, liner deterioration, and carbon monoxide spillback into the living space. I check the panel and accessible wiring for the same piecemeal history, where modernized service sits alongside surviving early circuits in attics and wall cavities, and the junction points between old and new are exactly where I look hardest. I am an independent inspector. I never perform repairs and I never refer the work to anyone, so nothing I write carries a financial incentive -- my only job is to tell you what is there. Buyers looking at similar river-floodplain housing in Norwood face many of the same questions. I encourage every client to walk the house with me so I can show you each finding in person. Call 610-348-6728 to schedule.

What does Bob check during an Essington home inspection?

Bob approaches every Essington inspection per ASHI and InterNACHI Standards of Practice. With 1900s–1950s housing stock dominant in Essington, he focuses on the era-specific concerns that affect late 19th and early 20th century construction in Delaware County.

What are common issues in Essington homes?

Based on 20+ years inspecting late 19th and early 20th century homes in Delaware County, these are the issues Bob finds most often in Essington's 1900s–1950s housing stock:

• Knob-and-tube wiring still energized behind walls and under blown insulation
• Stone foundation moisture intrusion and mortar joint deterioration
• Lead paint on original trim, windows, and exterior surfaces
• Gas pipe conversions from original coal or oil systems with improper venting
• Original clay sewer laterals with root intrusion and bellied sections
• Aging slate or clay tile roofs with deteriorating flashing