Damaged outside faucet pipes: Silent Seeper

If you have an older house please do the following. It may save you a headache when you want to sell or it may improve your living condition. It's really simple. Go outside and look at the pipe leading to your outside faucet. Check the pipe coming from the wall to the faucet and the pipe coming from the ground into your water supply line.

I've seen the galvanized pipes that lead to the faucet swollen and split. Moisture will be on the brick (if the house is brick) around the pipe. Once you see the moist brick or siding there is way more moisture inside the wall. The pipes look rusted and are moist. Just touch it and look at your fingers. If the house has bricks around this pipe the brick will appear moist and if you look lower there will appear to be algae and moisture on the bricks if it's been seeping for a while. I just had a customer tell me there is a black substance that grows near a desk in his house on the wall. This wall is on the inside of the wall from this outside faucet pipe. The pipe was moist and I showed him the seepage coming from his pipe. Once he backed away he noticed moisture going about 15+ feet to the left and right of the faucet pipe. It looked like that wall was dipped in water. It was behind some shrubbery. The source of the growing substance was identified. The seepage was so slow that it often goes unnoticed. 

I was able to locate the inspection report from prior to him buying the house and the moisture was present in the picture but it was only about one foot wide on both sides of the fauced and two feet down showed the mositure. So in 4 years the seepage has really grown. I've also noticed if you look and the Sun is shining you can miss this simple but major problem. 

Problem: I recently had an inspector evaluate a property which had this particular issue. The inspector made no mention of the moist pipe but did say there was major piping damage and caused a $280,000 sale to be terminated. Of course the inspector said ALL the piping needed to be replaced because there was major piping problems due to a pressure leak. I actually warned the seller to get the repair. A plumber told the seller $230 will get it done but the seller chose to save the $230 and ultimately lost $163,000 in sales profit. 

On my own house I noticed this same issue. I spent $5 on the pipe, took 5 minutes to unscrew the damaged swollen piece and replaced it. Problem solved. Brick dried out within a few days and problem solved. 

I want to be your Personal Real Estate Agent. I pay attention to things that could cost you to lose out on thousands of dollars that actually may have a simple resolution. Don't leave money on the table. Let me help you.