Pipe Dreams

A home inspector is not a code inspector, and the main reason is that a house that was built to code a few years ago my not meet the code standards of today. A home inspector reports major defects, safety concerns and maintenance issues, this supersedes codes. In many cases the safety issues we report are in violation of a code anyway.
Here is an example of a related question I received:

Question:
I live in an older home that thought out the years has had many repairs and updates, not to mention many different people working on it. Recently we had our water heater go out and I think I hired the wrong person to replace it. We have a gas water heater with a metal flue pipe coming out of the top of the water heater then turning and going to the chimney. My concern is when the water heater was replaced, the installer used a plastic pipe called CPVC. This plastic pipe runs with in an inch of the flue pipe, and the flue pipe gets hot. We had a home inspector do a pre-listing inspection and he wrote this up as a defect. I tried to call the installer to find out if this work was up to code, but his phone is disconnected and it appears he has vanished.
Do I need to call some one else, or is this not a problem?

Answer:
In this case you are going to need to have a professional plumber correct this installation. Gas water heaters are require to have a short piece of metallic pipe or appliance connector at least six inches long, above the flue piping. This transition piece is required to prevent damage to the CPVC from excessive heat build-up in the flue. In some areas CPVC can be installed directly onto electric water heaters with special transition fittings, but gas water heaters always required the metallic connectors. A licensed plumber will consult local code requirements prior to installation, and in most cases a local permit is required. The home inspector reported this because it will turn into a maintenance issue and maybe a safety concern.