Did you know that if you live in an older home, you’re probably drinking a good amount of lead in your water? I didn’t and neither did my toddler and pregnant wife, who are most at risk. If you don’t know, check, the city has records and offers free testing. Which begs the question of why they don’t warn people when they buy a home. The other thing I’ve learned is that if your sewer line, that runs just under your water line, may have tree roots in it. You can have it scoped for a couple hundred dollars. If there are roots from a city tree, the city will pay for your sewer line replacement and you should have your lead water line changed for copper at the same time. Look into it. Don’t just assume that you’re drinking good city water in the 21st century! —Unleaded
This article appears in Aug 7-13, 2014.
Hm, interesting. Thanks for the heads up OB
From HRM website: Lead service lines are restricted to the older parts of HRM such as the Halifax peninsula and central Dartmouth, in homes built in the 1950’s or earlier. Of the 80,000 service pipes within Halifax Water’s distribution systems, there are fewer than 2,500 lead lines in operation.
Now, about that paint in your house …..
Meh…if you total up the amount of chemicals you expose yourself to on a daily basis from household cleaners, air fresheners, laundry detergents/fabric softeners, exhaust fumes and industrial pollution that comes up from the eastern seaboard of the United States every single day, I highly doubt that the lead pipes your water runs through will be making much difference in your health.
wouldn’t that come up in your home inspection report? or your realtor’s check list?
It’s wierd to see sunday bitches… like is there a big bitch bank where all these bitches come from? and someone happened to be in the coast office today and said ” Damn the bitch bank is getting kinda full, better release some into the bitchonomy to stimulate the trolls and posters!”
I’m not complaining it’s just weird that it doesn’t happen often.
Mod had nothing better to do online to keep herself amused today.
You would think that it would just be common knowledge if you buy a house with plumbing put in decades ago, that copper piping may not have been used. Especially if it was early 20th century. Our house was 200 years old and we figured the piping wouldn’t be copper… same with the electricity: we assumed knob and tube would be in there.
I really appreciate you giving everyone a head’s up, but as a home owner, one should definitely do their homework before/while buying and find this shit out, certainly during an inspection and by asking questions. The seller has to disclose this shit, and it’s not hard to find out if the house has lead pipes. Knob and tube may be a bit of a different story, since it’s behind walls, but one way to tell is if your panel has been upgraded in the past little while. Not 100%, but it gives you some sort of indicator, at least.
Basically, my question is: why didn’t you find out what type of plumbing this house had before/while you were buying it? Seems like pretty rudimentary shit to me, especially since plumbing (and electricity) are a pretty important part of the house.
Also go with PVC, not copper as some water (such as mine) is acidic enough to eat away at the copper over the years.
PVC with bisphenol A,styrene and phthalates for example.Whiskey Tango I’m not disagreeing with you ,just saying everything has an effect on human health.
You’re either too cheap to bring in an inspector or your realtor is just phoning it in. Either way, you lose.
Regarding the home inspector comments, they can only tell you what they see. They are not knocking down walls. Even if you cover all the bases and do your due diligence, you really never know when dealing with homes of that age.
i usually just open the sink cabinet door to look at water pipes. they object to you knocking holes in walls during an open house. or go into the basement and look up.
the big drains from the house to the city mains though, yes, its buried. but you aren’t drinking FROM them (one hopes) those are for poop.
Hmm, yes, good point about the inspectors, but the realtors probably have a pretty good working knowledge about houses in HRM and which ones you might want to look into with regards to this problem.
True. It honestly is rare to see the water pipes still lead, though. The waste pipe sure, but like GDM says, it for poop. Who cares. I think the best thing is to be as involved as you can in the process, and asking specific questions.
I thought “Drinking Lead” was a role in a production titled “How to Survive Living in Nova Scotia”. Fuckin’ English language bs….