Wood exterior doors?

[Julie Bove]

My mom has those. We do too.

[trader_4]

Who says you have to change things to make it up to code? Are you confusing what a "home inspector" squaks about with what is actually required by code? Normally, probably 90%+ of what was built to code at the time it was built is not required by law to be brought up to current code, meaning you could get a CO and sell the house to a buyer. An example of an exception would be smoke detectors. But the town isn't going to require you to bring the electrical system up to current code. A home inspector is free to squak about anything he wants to. And if you want to sell the house to his buyer, then you may have to fix what he's squaking about or give a discount, but if what they are squaking about is unreasonable, you could also find another buyer.

[Malcom "Mal" Reynolds]

will wonders never cease

[Orenthal]

Some building codes, like venting a roof, are useful. As I'm sure you are aware, without proper venting, the life of the building structure will be drastically shortened.

Other codes, like mandatory residential fire sprinkler systems, are of dubious value. Their main purpose is to enrich the pockets of the fire sprinkler manufacturers.

[Julie Bove]

This was the inspector that we hired prior to buying the house.

[trader_4]

And a bad one can find multiple "alleged" code violations too.

It sounds like you are conflating several things. Let's take the example of roof venting. If a house was built to the code at the time, in most jurisdictions, as long as the roof venting met the code at the time the roof went on, then the house is grandfathered because most of the codes are not applied retroactively. So, I'm guessing you hired a home inspector and he looked at the roof. He might have said that the roof looks like it's in the middle of it's life, but that in his opinion, it should have more venting. In that case, as long as the roof venting met the code at the time it was built, it's not a code violation. You could get a CO and buy the house if you chose to. You can probably choose to not buy the house unless the seller increases the venting, but the seller can also say he's not doing it and there is very likely no code that says he or you has to bring it up to current code.

Or he could have said that it needs a new roof and that the venting is inadequate. In that case, when you put a new roof on, the venting most likely would have to be increased if it doesn't meet today's reqts for venting.

Note that I'm not arguing that if the roof venting is inadequate, increasing it isn't a good idea. If it doesn't have adequate venting I'd increase it. I'm just saying that if it was built to code at the time, it's unlikely you have to bring it up to code. If you applied that to all the various things in houses, there would be a huge amount of expensive work required on houses that were even just 20 years old. There are some things that are required to be up to current new code, eg smoke detectors, but those things are the exceptions.

[Julie Bove]

Yes. At the time we bought the house, no houses had vents like we will be getting. I only began to notice them a few years ago. However, if they will fix the problem of the damp garage, I'm all for it!

Yes.

Agree. But when he said that it needed vents, particularly over the garage, I did tell him that indeed that was where we were having problems.