ditto. It's subjective in every way. Get the inspector to state his position and begin pressuring him from there if need be. These traps work well everywhere in the world. It's a residential bathroom, where one or two people will use it once or twice a day. It's not a high-traffic bathroom. The fact that a functional design flaw can be described decades prior to a possible failure is actually a functional design advantage: you know what will fail first. (And that IS an advantage in system design theory.) But speaking of failure does not mean it will fail; this is just idle talk a century in advance. Get serious: it's "tubular" and this is a customer-purchased item that any repair handyman can replace. It's not even covered by the plumbing Code, and the inspector's job is Code compliance not idealizing his whims into reality. By the way, everything is designed to fail, when you think about it a little. So nobody should take this concept and turn it into a big thing. Socks and underwear fail faster than shirts and pants, but nobody insists he buy only the highest quality underwear. Any owner can change the trap if as and when. His job is to focus on the serious stuff. There are many serious concerns that a drain system compensates for, with pipes of a specific diameter, bends of a specific geometry, pipe slope of a specific angle, and venting within specific distances. So, let's get seriosu and move on to the next subject. (By now, he's smiling and he'll drop it.) Hope this helps.

The permit process is becoming more and more draconian. It also varies from city to city and county to county. My daughter who lives in another county called a half dozen plumbers today to bid on a water heater installation. If she buys one locally she will have to pull a permit. She figured it would be easier for them to pull it since they "do it all the time". Not one of them said they will pull permits. Told her the reason is once you allow an inspector into your home these days it's like agreeing to allow a rogue cop to search your car without a warrant. Horror stories of people having to redo things the inspector sees that in the recent past would have been grandfathered in. Often things that have nothing to do with actual item being inspected. Ends up costing the homeowner 1000s more than they had bargained for. I found the same thing while shopping around for various remodeling items here. Windows, doors, skylights, lighting. When I asked about permits for installation the common answer was, we don't get permits, it starts a process that snowballs out of control. These are reputable businesses that have been around for years. So the tighter restrictions are going against making sure things are safer and done right. But the reality is the few times we have pulled permits for things the inspectors were mostly pretty much clueless about what they were looking at. They have a check sheet but many have no actual knowledge of the words on the sheet mean. Government bureaucracy. Much to do about $$$$$$, Revenue. Little to do about safety.

We sell kitchens to everyone. We simply insist that our customers make sensible decisions that we know will work. We won't sell a kitchen if it doesn't work, or is dangerous, or against building code. For example, many kitchen designers and appliance suppliers were guilty for a decade of selling and recommending high CFM blowers without replacement air systems. So they knowingly or unknowingly poisoning their clients. We always refused to do this and require that our recommended appliance sales people insist on selling our customers the replacement air systems they need to be safe, whether they want it or not. I believe all professionals should "first do no harm". Giving people what the want is the easy road. Helping them make good decisions is harder but is also why our company grows at a rate of about 30% per year.

From what I am reading, you were lucky enough to secure a contract on an unusually large home in a hot market. In circumstances like that, being in the right place at the right time gave you the opportunity to buy a desirable home. If you choose to back out, you will spend more money trying to secure alternative housing, fees and charges duplicated on the next house you find and likely pay a higher price for the replacement. If you back out now, you are guaranteed to lose money, but if you close, you have a fairly good chance that you haven't bought a problem house. Most issues found in a home inspection are not deal breakers, especially if the property was built in the past few decades. Old houses are more likely to have expensive problems but if this is a newer home, serious issues aren't as likely. In my area, most sales are as-is with an inspection clause which allows the buyer walk away if there are substantial defects found. In common practice, buyers request certain items to be fixed and sellers often fix issues to avoid losing the sale. However in a hot market, sellers are likely to refuse to fix issues unless lenders refuse to finance the purchase.