Quote:
Originally Posted by blankall
No one has ever said houses from the 80s are well built. That's probably exactly what you want to avoid. The worst of both worlds. A cheaply made house, without character, that will cost a lot of money to fix up. Additionally, the fixing a 30ish year old house may be far more fundamental and costly than the fixing a 70ish year old house requires. For example, there could be major issues with the foundation, frame, or leaks in a house from that 1980s era.
Builders were using all sorts of plastics and composite wood that had not been tested for time. For example, a lot of the PVC piping from the 80-early 2000s degraded under UV light, but people didn't know about it. They would store the piping in areas exposed to UV light, and then install it.
When people talk about solid older houses, they are talking about 1960 or earlier.
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I think you mean Poly-B, not PVC. From what I understand, the pipe failure was more in the USA than Canada and that was mainly from outdoor storage of those pipes for anywhere between 2-16 months outdoors uncovered before installation. Canada's lack of sunlight helped a bit.
I was told that in Canada, insurance covers issues with Poly-B as long as it passes inspection prior to coverage. It was mentioned to me by an inspector that the failures of Poly-B in Canada are mainly with crappy fittings, but most of those fittings stopped being used within a few years of installation in the 80s already. Insurance won't cover water damage if the water damage goes on for too long rather than being addressed immediately. So no different than if you had a house full of copper or PEX and there was a pipe that burst.