InspectOS · Viewing checklist
Visible without instruments and without lifting anything. Each one is a question to ask, not a verdict to reach.
Exterior wall
Where an addition meets original fabric there is almost always a line: a vertical render crack running floor to roof, a texture change, or a slight step in the wall plane. Painted-over joints still catch light differently.
From the street
An extension usually carries a different pitch, a different tile batch, or a flat roof grafted onto a pitched one. Tile colour varies between production runs and weathers differently, so a newer section marks a change.
Façade
Original façades follow a pattern in window size, spacing and cill height. An opening that breaks the pattern, or one sitting noticeably closer to a corner than its neighbours, generally arrived later.
Inside, walking
A step down into a room, a change in ceiling height, or a floor finish that changes at a threshold with no doorway to justify it. Extensions on sloping ground rarely match the original slab level.
Inside and out
Surface wiring, an external waste pipe crossing a façade, conduit running around the outside of the building, or a newer sub-board bolted beside the fuse board. Additions get serviced by the shortest route, not the designed one.
Most common in Portugal
A glazed section whose frame differs from every other window in the building, sitting where a rail would have been, often with the original external render still visible on what is now an internal wall.
They identify later work, not unauthorised work. Plenty of extensions carry full authorisation and look identical from the pavement. The signs tell you where to point the question. The answer comes from the municipal file and from a measured comparison.
That a part of the building is later than the rest, and which part. Enough to ask a specific question and to price the uncertainty into a first offer.
The measured footprint against the approved drawings, whether the work is structurally sound, and the finding recorded in a dated report with the cédula number of the inspecting engineer.