The majority of homes in the Greater Boston area are older homes that were built before 1950.
If you are looking for a home in Greater Boston, it is important to keep some things in mind about older homes, especially if the home that you previously lived in was a younger home. Since basements are critical and often the most misunderstood part of a house, this page focuses on older home basements.
OLDER HOME BASEMENTS:
Older homes have basements that were not designed to keep water out. The foundations were not poured concrete. They were built with stone foundations that were often in place with little, if any, mortar sometimes. When pre-1920s homes were built, there was probably a dirt floor and the concrete basement floors were added later. It is also likely that gutters were added later. If they were insulated at all, the insulation often consisted of old newspapers in the walls. There were no storm windows. Those homes were not air tight and the homes “breathed” the air movement was a healthy bonus (except for the winter chills) for the humans that lived in the houses.
As home building technology changed, homeowners often upgraded their older homes with modern aluminum or vinyl siding, storm windows or vinyl windows, storm and insulated doors, blown in insulation, and concrete basement floors. While those upgrades made the houses more energy efficient and easier to maintain, they often created situations that were not problematic before the “upgrades”. For instance, basements that used to have air infiltration before they were made “energy efficient” (by eliminating the air infiltration from older windows and filling every crack with expandable foam) often develop mold or mildew when homeowners don’t add or run a dehumidifier to remove the moisture that normally builds up in a basement after they eliminate the previous air flow in the basement.
The bottom line is that buying an older home is like buying a used car. There are some things that may have been neglected and the buyer will need to repair, there are things that need to be monitored and there will be things that will need to be replaced sooner or later.
