What about galvanized plumbing in an older house?

Same problem, older houses. Galvanized steel supply lines were standard before copper took over, roughly pre-mid-1970s, and they corrode from the inside out over about 40 to 50 years. The symptoms are falling water pressure and discoloured water. Some insurers decline it and many charge more, and gradual corrosion damage is usually excluded from coverage anyway.

I think there is vermiculite in my attic. What do I do?

Looking from the hatch is fine. Do not climb in, move it around or tidy the attic. Vermiculite from the Libby mine in Montana, sold as Zonolite between the 1920s and 1990, can contain asbestos, and Health Canada's guidance is that older vermiculite should be assumed to contain some unless tested. Undisturbed and sealed off from living space is the lowest-risk state. Testing means a qualified asbestos professional taking a sample, not you.

Is the old tape on my furnace ducting asbestos?

In a house of that age it may be. White or grey cloth-like tape at duct joints and elbows, or chalky moulded insulation on pipe fittings, is common on older heating systems and can contain asbestos. Intact and undisturbed it is not doing anything. Do not pull at it, re-tape it or paint it. If the furnace or ducting is being replaced, that is abatement work for a qualified contractor.

Is 60 amp electrical service a problem when selling?

Often a serious one, and it is an insurance problem rather than an electrical preference. Sixty amps was normal before about 1950 and will not carry modern loads. Many insurers will not write a policy without an upgrade to 100 amps, and some that will charge considerably more. No insurance means no mortgage, so it can end a sale during subject removal.

How do I know if my roof needs replacing?

From the ground, look for curling or cupping shingle edges and heavy granule loss. Bald patches, and granules collecting in the gutters. Both mean you are in the replacement window. Know the age too: many insurers scrutinise an asphalt roof around fifteen years, move to actual cash value around twenty, and some decline to renew past twenty-five.

Does aluminium wiring stop a house selling?

Not usually, if it has been remediated and you have the paperwork. Aluminium branch wiring went in roughly 1965 to 1978, and the risk is at the connections rather than in the wire. The accepted fix is pigtailing copper leads at each device, done by a licensed electrician. Some insurers decline homes where nothing has been done.

Do I need a WETT inspection for my wood stove?

Expect it to come up. Many insurers will not bind or renew coverage on a wood-heated home without a current WETT report, often less than twelve months old, and BC insurers are tightening this as wildfire exposure grows. Better to get one before listing than to discover a deficiency during subject removal.

Do retaining walls matter on a hillside property?

On a slope they can be the most expensive thing outside the house. Walls over about four feet generally need to be engineered and permitted. Find that paperwork if it exists. Leaning, bulging, stepped cracking or soil washing through are the signals. The cause is almost always drainage failing behind the wall rather than the wall itself.

Are termites a problem in the Okanagan?

Termites in BC are mainly a coastal concern rather than an interior one, so much of the termite advice online is not written for this valley. The structural insect to know about here is the carpenter ant, which excavates damp or rotting wood to nest in rather than eating it. Finding them is a reason to go looking for the water that made the wood attractive.

Do cracks in the driveway mean something serious?

Sometimes. Surface crazing in asphalt and hairline shrinkage in concrete are age. Cracks that step or offset, sections that have dropped, or water pooling where it should drain away suggest something below. Poorly compacted fill on a cut-and-fill lot, erosion under the slab, or slope movement. It is a question worth asking rather than a verdict.

What to check in an older South Okanagan home

Q: I have bats in the attic. Can I get them removed before selling?

Not on any timeline you choose. Bats are protected under the BC Wildlife Act, so they cannot simply be removed or destroyed, and exclusion work has to avoid the maternity season when flightless young would be sealed inside. Use someone who does this properly, and plan it well ahead of listing rather than the week before.

By Dan Jones · September 12, 2026

Bottom line: older Okanagan houses carry a predictable list, and every item on it is a number rather than a worry. Foundation and retaining walls, what the driveway says about the ground, poly B or galvanized plumbing, asbestos in the attic or on the ducting, buried oil tanks, 60 amp service, roof age, aluminium wiring, wood stoves, suites, and pests. Several of these are really insurance questions, and a house a buyer cannot insure is a house they cannot finance. None of them are reasons not to buy or sell. Whoever learns the number first controls the conversation about it.

I am Dan Jones, a REALTOR with Royal LePage Locations West in Penticton, licence number 1118346. I spent twenty-four years building houses as a Red Seal journeyman carpenter before I got licensed in 2004, and this is the list I actually run.

Most of the housing stock in this valley is old enough to carry at least one item on this list. None of them are reasons not to buy or sell a house. All of them are reasons to know before somebody else tells you.

I spent twenty-four years building houses before I started selling them, and this is the list I run on every older property. Whether I am walking a seller through what to deal with before listing, or standing in a house with a buyer who is about to write an offer.

All of it by eye, without touching anything. I do not open panels, operate valves, pull back insulation or climb into attics. A REALTOR® is not a home inspector, and some of what follows is actively hazardous to disturb. What I am doing is reading what is visible and saying what it suggests. Confirming what it means is somebody else’s job, and I will say when that point has arrived.

Why this is really about price

Every item here is a number. Not a vague worry. A quotable cost with a rough timeline attached.

Whoever knows the number first controls the conversation about it.

Selling: know what is in your house and you set a price with it already accounted for. Find out when the buyer’s inspector does, and you are negotiating down from a number you already announced, against someone who has just learned something you did not tell them.

Buying: know before you write and you can put a realistic figure on paper and explain it. Find out at subject removal and you are renegotiating a deal you are already attached to, from a weaker position, against a seller who feels ambushed.

None of this is about hunting for faults to drive a price down. It is about the number reflecting the house that is actually there.

The list

Foundation type

The first thing I want to know about an older house, because everything else sits on it.

Full basement, crawlspace, or slab on grade each behave differently and fail differently. A crawlspace wants to be dry and ventilated the way it was designed to be; a damp one with poor access is where rot and air quality problems start, and it is the part of the house nobody looks at for twenty years.

Very old stock can have rubble, stone or block rather than poured concrete. That is not automatically a problem, plenty of them are solid, but it changes what repairs cost and how a buyer’s inspector writes it up.

What I am looking at is cracking and whether it is settlement or movement, water staining at the base of walls, efflorescence, and how the grade outside relates to the floor inside. Most foundation worry traces back to the drainage question at the top of this page.

Retaining walls

A lot of this valley is built on slopes, so a lot of properties hold ground back somewhere. On a hillside lot the walls can be the most expensive thing outside the house itself.

In Penticton a wall over 1.2 metres, or one carrying a load such as a driveway above it, needs an engineered design as part of its permit. The question on an existing wall is whether it was designed or whether someone stacked it.

What I look for from the ground: leaning, bulging mid-run, stepped cracking, separating joints, and soil washing through or over the top.

It is usually a drainage failure, not a wall failure. Water trapped behind a wall is what pushes it over, which is why a wall can stand for decades and then move in one wet spring.

Full detail, including the zoning limit in setbacks and what a leaning wall does to a sale: retaining walls on hillside properties.

The driveway, as a symptom

Nobody buys a house for the driveway. I look at it anyway, because it is the largest flat surface on the property and it reports on the ground underneath before the house does.

Ordinary weathering is one thing. Surface crazing in asphalt, hairline shrinkage in concrete, the usual wear of thirty freeze-thaw cycles. That is age, and it is cosmetic.

What I am looking for is movement. Cracks that step or offset, so one side sits higher than the other. Cracks that open up rather than staying hairline. Sections that have dropped, especially near the garage or where the drive meets the house. Water pooling where it never used to, or running toward the building instead of away.

Those suggest something below: fill that was never properly compacted, which is common on hillside lots that were cut and filled to make a building site; erosion carrying material out from under the slab; frost working on ground that holds water; or slope creep on a steeper property.

None of that is certain from a crack. It is a question worth asking rather than an answer. But it ties directly to the drainage point at the top of this page and to the retaining walls above, and it is the kind of thing an inspector will photograph.

Resurfacing or sealing a drive that is moving hides the symptom and fixes nothing. If it is genuinely just age, tidy it. If sections are stepping or dropping, find out why before you price the house.

Plumbing: poly B and galvanized

Poly B went into BC homes roughly from the late 1970s through the late 1990s. Galvanized steel came earlier, pre-mid-1970s, and corrodes from the inside out over about forty to fifty years, showing up as falling water pressure and discoloured water.

Different materials, same problem for a sale: both have become insurance questions more than plumbing ones. A growing number of insurers decline, exclude or surcharge, and a buyer who cannot insure a house cannot get a mortgage on it.

Poly B comes up often enough here to have its own page: poly B plumbing when you sell. For either material, find out what you have before you list, then talk to your own broker about where you stand.

Asbestos: the attic and the ducting

Two places it turns up in houses of this age, and the same rule governs both.

Looking is fine. Disturbing it is not.

Tape and wrap on the furnace ducting. A white or grey cloth-like tape around duct joints and elbows, sometimes chalky insulation moulded around pipe fittings. Check the basement first, because it is at eye level and easy to knock. Fraying or hanging tape is the state to take seriously.

Vermiculite in the attic. Loose and pebbly, grey-brown to silvery gold, poured between the joists like coarse gravel. You can see it from the hatch. Health Canada’s guidance is to assume older vermiculite contains asbestos unless tested. Undisturbed and sealed off from the living space is the lowest risk state, so do not tidy the attic before listing.

Since January 2024, asbestos work in BC is licensed, and that includes taking samples. Locally, firms that handle oil tank removal often do this work too, Compass Environmental among them. I have used them on my own properties, with no referral arrangement.

Full detail, including how to verify a contractor’s licence and what it does to a sale: vermiculite and asbestos in older homes.

Oil tanks, especially buried ones

The one that can cost more than everything else on this page combined, and the reason I ask about heating history on older properties.

Homes that once heated with oil may still have the tank, above ground or buried and forgotten. A buried tank that has leaked contaminates soil, and under BC’s contaminated sites framework liability can follow previous owners rather than stopping with the current one. The BC Fire Code requires out-of-service underground tanks to be removed, and Penticton asks for the work to be certified.

The detail most sellers do not know is that an unqualified “no underground tank” on a Property Disclosure Statement can amount to a warranty.

Full detail: buried oil tanks in Penticton.

60 amp electrical service

One of the most common reasons an older house will not close.

Sixty amps was normal in homes built before roughly 1950. Modern construction runs 100 or 200. In my experience many insurers will not write a policy on a 60 amp service, or require an upgrade as a condition. No insurance, no mortgage, so a buyer who discovers it during subject removal walks or comes back with a number.

The upgrade needs a permit and a licensed electrician in most cases, and it is rarely just a panel swap, because existing circuits being reconnected have to meet code. Get a quote for your specific house.

Full detail: 60 amp electrical service and why insurers care.

The roof: age, type and what it is doing

I look at three things, and none of them require going up there.

Type. Asphalt shingle is the common one here and generally runs about twenty to twenty-five years. Torch-on appears on flat and low-slope roofs. Check for ponding and blistered or lifting seams. Metal lasts longer but fasteners back out. Cedar splits and holds moss. Each fails in its own way and on its own schedule.

Age. Know it, and be able to prove it. Insurers ask, and the answer changes what they offer: many scrutinise an asphalt roof around fifteen years, move to actual-cash-value rather than full replacement coverage around twenty, and some decline to renew past twenty-five. If you have the invoice from when it was done, find it before you list. That piece of paper is worth having.

Condition, from the ground. Curling or cupping at the shingle edges is the clearest end-of-life signal. So is heavy granule loss. Bald patches on the roof, granules collecting in the gutters and at the downspout outlets. Lifted or missing tabs, mismatched patches from past repairs, moss holding moisture on the north side, and the valleys and flashings where two planes meet or the roof meets a wall.

Layers matter too. A roof that has been shingled over rather than stripped carries extra weight, and the next replacement costs more because someone has to remove all of it.

If it is curling and losing granules, a buyer’s inspector and their insurer are both going to say so. Deciding what to do about that belongs in the pricing conversation, before listing.

Aluminium branch wiring

Aluminium branch wiring went into Canadian homes roughly between 1965 and 1978, when copper prices were high. The aluminium itself is not the hazard. The connections are, because aluminium expands, contracts and oxidises differently from copper, and loose or corroded terminations generate heat.

Insurance again. Some insurers decline homes with unremediated aluminium branch wiring outright; most want to see it has been dealt with.

The accepted remedy is usually pigtailing. A licensed electrician joins a short copper lead to each aluminium conductor using rated connectors and antioxidant compound, so the device sees copper. Full rewiring is the other option and costs far more. What matters at sale is that the work was done by a licensed electrician and that you have the paperwork, because that is what the buyer’s insurer will want.

UFFI

Urea-formaldehyde foam insulation, banned in Canada in 1980.

Worth being calm about this one, because the reputation outruns the reality. The off-gassing concern that caused the ban dissipated decades ago in homes that have it, and it is now primarily a disclosure and stigma question rather than an active health hazard.

But it is still a question on the Property Disclosure Statement, and the honest answer matters. If you know the house had it, say so. If you genuinely do not know, say that. Do not guess in either direction. The disclosure being accurate is what protects you; the insulation itself, decades on, usually is not the problem people expect.

Wood stoves and fireplaces

If the house has a wood stove, a fireplace insert or a pellet appliance, expect a WETT inspection to come up. Many insurers will not bind or renew coverage on a wood-heated home without a current report, often one less than twelve months old.

This is tightening rather than relaxing, particularly in BC, as insurers get stricter about wood heat in wildfire-exposed areas.

So: if the appliance is there and you have no recent WETT report, getting one before listing is sensible. If it comes back with deficiencies, you would rather know while you can still fix them than during a buyer’s subject removal. And if there is an uncertified or owner-installed appliance in the house, that is a conversation to have early, sometimes the right answer is to remove it.

Suites: legal, or not

One of the biggest value questions on an older house, and one of the most commonly fudged.

Two separate tests have to pass. Zoning has to permit a suite on that lot, and the suite has to have been built under permit to the building code. Meeting one does not cover the other, and a suite that exists and works is not the same as a suite that is legal.

It matters in three places: insurance, where an undisclosed rental unit is a coverage problem; financing, where an unauthorized suite narrows the pool of buyers who can use the rental income to qualify; and the City, which can require an unauthorized suite to be brought up to code or removed.

What I look at: a separate entrance and where it goes, egress windows in the sleeping rooms, fire separation between units, interconnected smoke alarms, ceiling height, and how the furnace and hot water tank serve the two units. None of that tells you whether a permit exists, but it tells you how far off code the space is if one does not.

Full detail, including what Penticton currently permits: legal and unauthorized suites in BC.

Insects and rodents

Almost always a moisture story before it is a pest story. Things move into wood that is already damp, which is why this section sits at the end of a page that started with drainage.

Carpenter ants are the structural insect to know about here. They do not eat wood. They excavate damp or already-rotting wood to nest in, which is why they turn up exactly where there has been a leak. What I look for is coarse sawdust-like frass below a joint or a sill, often in a crawlspace or near a deck ledger, and smooth-walled galleries if any wood is already open. Finding them is a reason to go looking for the water that made the wood attractive, because treating the ants and leaving the moisture only buys time.

Termites are mostly a coastal BC concern rather than an interior one, so a good deal of the termite advice online is not really written for this valley. If you have had them here, I would want to hear about it.

Rodents. Mice and rats in town, packrats on rural and hillside properties. Droppings in a crawlspace or the corners of a garage, nests pulled into insulation, chewed sheathing. The one that matters beyond nuisance is chewed wiring, which is a genuine fire risk and something an inspector takes seriously.

Bats. Common in older attics and soffits here, and worth knowing that bats are protected under the BC Wildlife Act. You cannot simply remove or destroy them, and exclusion work has to avoid the maternity season, when flightless young would be sealed inside. If you have bats, that is a job for someone who does it properly and at the right time of year, not something to sort out the week before listing.

Wasps and hornets in soffits and wall cavities. Usually nuisance rather than structural, but a nest in a wall is a poor thing to discover during a showing.

None of this needs hiding or panicking about. What matters is that you find it rather than a buyer’s inspector, and that when it is found the moisture behind it gets dealt with rather than just the animal.

Hot water tanks

The small one, and the easiest to fix.

Tanks have a limited service life and a failed one floods whatever is below it. Insurers ask the age on applications. Inspectors note it. A buyer seeing a rusting tank with a faded label assumes it is about to go, and prices accordingly.

If yours is visibly old, replacing it is one of the least expensive things on this list and removes a question mark for a modest cost. It also removes the risk of it letting go while the house is listed, which is a genuinely bad week.

What this is not

It is not an inspection and it does not replace one. I can see that a house is of the era for poly B; an inspector can tell you what is actually behind the wall. I can see a wall leaning; an engineer can tell you what it costs to put right.

The value of doing it early is timing, not substitution. You learn it before you are emotionally committed and before a price has been set.

Where this fits

Preparing your own home to sell? What to fix and what to leave alone covers the decisions around this list, which items to spend on, which to price for, and which renovations you will never get back.

Viewing houses to buy? What I look at first on a walkthrough covers the order I work in and what comes before any of this.