diff --git a/doc/sphinx/compiling.rst b/doc/sphinx/compiling.rst
index 1141eaae6..4c42717db 100644
--- a/doc/sphinx/compiling.rst
+++ b/doc/sphinx/compiling.rst
@@ -94,7 +94,7 @@ OS X
 
   and agree to the Xcode license agreement
 
-* If you don't have numpy version >= 1.3, you can install a recent version with::
+* If you don't have numpy version >= 1.4, you can install a recent version with::
 
     sudo easy_install -U numpy
 
@@ -437,7 +437,7 @@ Optional Programs
   * Required to build the Cantera Python module, and to run significant portions
     of the test suite.
   * http://sourceforge.net/projects/numpy/
-  * Known to work with versions 1.7 and 1.8; Expected to work with version >= 1.3
+  * Known to work with versions 1.7-1.9; Expected to work with version >= 1.4
 
 * `Cython <http://cython.org/>`_
 
diff --git a/site_scons/buildutils.py b/site_scons/buildutils.py
index 6d528b64f..843b1588d 100644
--- a/site_scons/buildutils.py
+++ b/site_scons/buildutils.py
@@ -313,7 +313,6 @@ def compareCsvFiles(env, file1, file2):
     """
     try:
         import numpy as np
-        hasSkipHeader = tuple(np.version.version.split('.')[:2]) >= ('1','4')
     except ImportError:
         print 'WARNING: skipping .csv diff because numpy is not installed'
         return 0
@@ -329,12 +328,8 @@ def compareCsvFiles(env, file1, file2):
             break
 
     try:
-        if hasSkipHeader:
-            data1 = np.genfromtxt(file1, skip_header=headerRows, delimiter=',')
-            data2 = np.genfromtxt(file2, skip_header=headerRows, delimiter=',')
-        else:
-            data1 = np.genfromtxt(file1, skiprows=headerRows, delimiter=',')
-            data2 = np.genfromtxt(file2, skiprows=headerRows, delimiter=',')
+        data1 = np.genfromtxt(file1, skip_header=headerRows, delimiter=',')
+        data2 = np.genfromtxt(file2, skip_header=headerRows, delimiter=',')
     except (IOError, StopIteration) as e:
         print e
         return 1