Every inspection on every home produces a long list of findings. That is what you paid for, and it is not a sign the house is failing. The skill is telling the safety issues and the expensive systems from the Saturday afternoons.
The first time most buyers open an inspection report, their stomach drops. There are dozens of findings, many in stern-sounding language, complete with photographs of things that look alarming. It reads like an indictment of the house.
It is not. A home inspector's job is to document everything they observe, and a thorough inspector on a well-maintained twenty-year-old Calgary home will still fill many pages. A short report usually means a superficial inspection, not a perfect house.
What the report cannot do is rank findings by how much they should matter to your decision. A missing GFCI outlet and a cracked heat exchanger can sit two lines apart in the same section. One is a twenty-minute fix; the other is a furnace replacement and a carbon monoxide risk.
This guide gives you the triage framework we use with buyers, what each common Calgary finding actually costs to put right, and an honest read on which items give you real negotiating leverage — and which do not.
Your inspector examines what is accessible and visible. They do not open walls, lift flooring, excavate the yard, dismantle appliances, or move the seller's stored belongings out of the way. If a wall is finished, whatever is behind it stays unknown. If the crawlspace is blocked, it may go uninspected — and the report will say so.
An inspection is not a guarantee that nothing will break. A furnace can pass inspection in March and fail in November. The report describes condition on the day, not future performance, and there is no threshold at which a home “passes.”
Homes are generally required to meet the code in force when they were built, not today's. Your inspector may flag that something would not be built that way now — older railing spacing, an ungrounded outlet, a low handrail. That is useful context, not a defect the seller must correct.
An informed picture of the major systems and their remaining life, identification of safety issues, evidence of past or ongoing water problems, and a maintenance roadmap for your first five years of ownership. That last one is worth the fee on its own, and almost nobody uses it.
Anything that could hurt someone: a cracked furnace heat exchanger, exposed or double-tapped wiring, missing smoke and CO alarms, an unstable deck or railing, a gas leak, water at the electrical panel. These get addressed regardless of price and regardless of who pays. They are also the findings most likely to get a seller's genuine attention.
The furnace, roof, hot water tank, electrical panel, windows, and foundation. These are not defects — they are the expensive parts of a house with a finite lifespan. A 22-year-old furnace is not broken, but you should be budgeting for it. This is the category that most changes what the home really costs you, and the one buyers most often overlook because nothing is technically wrong.
Work that should have been done and was not: failed caulking, negative grading against the foundation, disconnected downspouts, a plugged dryer vent, an unserviced furnace. Individually minor, and cheap to fix — but a house with a lot of it is telling you how it has been cared for, which is a signal about everything you cannot see.
Scuffed paint, a stained carpet, a cabinet door out of alignment, a cracked tile. You saw the house. These are not surprises and they are not negotiating material.
Expect knob-and-tube remnants, 60-amp service, cast iron or clay drains worth scoping, asbestos in stipple ceilings and pipe wrap, and original single-pane or early double-glazed windows. Foundations are often unreinforced concrete or block — efflorescence and minor cracking are common; horizontal cracking is not, and needs an engineer.
The aluminum wiring era in parts of Calgary, and a common insurance obstacle. Vermiculite attic insulation appears here and should be treated as asbestos-containing until tested. Panels of this age are often at capacity for modern loads.
The Poly-B window. Grey plastic supply plumbing that degrades from the inside and fails at the fittings — a leading Calgary insurance issue and a $8,000–$15,000 repipe. Check for it specifically in this range. Some homes in this era still carried aluminum wiring into the early 1980s.
Generally sound construction. Watch for original furnaces and hot water tanks now at end of life, first-generation Poly-B carryover at the early end, attic ventilation issues showing up as ice damming, and builder-grade windows starting to fail their seals.
Tight, efficient envelopes — and therefore higher radon readings and more indoor humidity issues. Look for condensation on windows, bathroom fans venting into attics rather than outside, and grading and drainage still settling on newer lots. Confirm the radon rough-in and whether it was ever activated.
Full roof replacement on a typical Calgary detached home runs $8,000–$20,000 depending on size and material. A high-efficiency furnace replacement is $5,000–$9,000. A Poly-B repipe is $8,000–$15,000. Electrical service upgrade from 60 or 100 amp to 200 amp runs $3,000–$6,000. Full window replacement on a mid-sized home can reach $15,000–$40,000.
Hot water tank $1,800–$3,500. Radon mitigation $1,500–$3,500. Regrading and drainage correction around a foundation $2,000–$8,000. Attic insulation top-up $2,000–$4,500. Sewer line repair, depending on depth and access, $8,000–$25,000.
GFCI outlets $150–$300 each installed. Smoke and CO alarms under $200. Downspout extensions under $100. Dryer vent cleaning $150–$250. Furnace service $150–$250. Caulking and minor sealing, a weekend. A long list of these is a maintenance to-do, not a reason to renegotiate.
If you intend to raise something with the seller, get a written contractor quote inside your condition period. “The inspector says the furnace is old” is an opinion. A dated quote for $7,400 is a number, and numbers move sellers.
Ask one question of any finding: would this have changed the offer I wrote if I had known? A $12,000 sewer repair would have. A missing GFCI would not have. That single question sorts almost every item correctly.
Safety defects. Significant, previously invisible problems — a failed sewer line, a cracked heat exchanger, active water penetration, structural movement. Anything that makes the home difficult or expensive to insure. And anything that contradicts what was represented on the listing or the property disclosure statement.
Age. A twenty-year-old roof on a twenty-year-old house is not a defect — it is a twenty-year-old house, and the price already reflects it. The same goes for a long list of small maintenance items, anything you could plainly see when you viewed, and anything that would not be built to today's code but was fine when built.
Pick the one or two items that genuinely matter. Attach a written quote. Ask for a price adjustment rather than repairs where you can — a seller doing last-minute work has every incentive to do it cheaply, and you inherit it. Give the seller a specific number and a reason.
Leverage depends on the market and on the deal. If you were one of five offers last week, an aggressive request may simply end the transaction — the seller has a list of buyers. If the home has been on for ninety days, you have room. We will tell you which situation you are in, including when the honest answer is that you should absorb the finding and buy the house.
Go through the report and write down every major system with its age and expected remaining life. A 16-year-old furnace, a 14-year-old roof, an 8-year-old hot water tank. Now you know roughly what is coming and when — and you can set aside money instead of being ambushed.
Grading and drainage before anything else. Most expensive Calgary basement problems begin as water sitting against a foundation, and correcting slope and extending downspouts is inexpensive. Then service the furnace, clean the dryer vent, seal what needs sealing.
File it with your home records. It is a dated baseline of condition, and it is genuinely useful years later — when you sell, when you make an insurance claim, or when you are trying to remember whether that crack was there when you bought.
Start a long-term radon test in your first heating season. Locate and label the main water shut-off and the electrical panel. Change the locks. Note the furnace filter size. These take an afternoon and they are much harder to get around to later.
No. A thorough inspector documents everything observed, so even a well-maintained twenty-year-old Calgary home produces pages of findings. A short report more often means a superficial inspection than a perfect house. What matters is not how many items are listed but which category they fall into: safety, major systems near end of life, deferred maintenance, or cosmetic.
Roughly $400 to $700 for a typical single-family home, more for large, older, or acreage properties. Useful add-ons include a sewer camera scope at $200 to $400 for older homes with mature trees, radon screening at $150 to $300, and thermal imaging. A structural engineer, if one is needed, is a separate $500 to $1,500.
It means the inspector has reached the limit of what a visual inspection can determine and a specialist is needed. Take it seriously — it usually appears next to the items with the widest range of possible cost, such as foundation movement, electrical concerns, or suspected water penetration. Get the specialist in while you still have condition days left.
You can ask, but it rarely works and often damages a deal that was going fine. Sellers are not obliged to fix anything. Focus on the one or two findings that genuinely would have changed your offer, attach a written contractor quote, and ask for a price adjustment rather than seller repairs — you will control the contractor and the standard of the work.
Sewer line failure at $8,000 to $25,000, full window replacement at $15,000 to $40,000, a roof at $8,000 to $20,000, a Poly-B repipe at $8,000 to $15,000, and furnace replacement at $5,000 to $9,000. The sewer line is the one most worth investigating in advance, because it is invisible during a normal inspection and common in older Calgary communities with mature trees.
Usually not on its own. A twenty-year-old roof on a twenty-year-old home is expected condition, and the market price already reflects the age of the house. What does justify a conversation is a system that has actually failed, one that is unsafe such as a cracked heat exchanger, or a system materially older than represented in the listing.
On any Calgary home built before roughly 1970, particularly with mature trees on or near the lot, yes. Older clay and cast iron drain lines are vulnerable to root intrusion and collapse, none of it visible during a standard inspection, and repairs run from $8,000 to $25,000. It costs $200 to $400 and is one of the highest-value add-ons available.
Turn it into a five-year budget: list each major system with its age and remaining life so replacements are planned rather than emergencies. Do the cheap preventive work first, starting with grading and drainage, since most expensive basement problems begin as water sitting against the foundation. Then file the report — it is a dated baseline of condition that is useful when you sell or make a claim.
A forty-page report is only frightening until someone sorts it for you. We go through every inspection with our buyers line by line — what is serious, what it costs here, and honestly where your leverage sits.
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