Survey shows problems - help!

Prudence555

I've bought and sold 3 houses and every time I have been told before I bought that they needed completely rewiring and expensive damp courses. Lived in them for years, never rewired, never had any problems with electricity, and the damp always turned out to be a minor problem you could fix with ventilation and cleaning. .Unless you are buying a brand new house, you are always going to get people telling you it needs complete rewiring and damp courses. There is good money in it for a lot of people.
My advice is use your common sense and trust your gut feeling, if you really like the house and it is ok otherwise and a good price then you shouldnt let this put you off.

nansenst

Word of advice - get a proper damp proof specialist in rather than a builder who can deal with damp - it is sooo much cheaper (we got quotes)

stupot101

Fire_Fox wrote: »

If you don't have a damp proof course at all you will probably need to have this done. However this won't resolve the problem entirely if you don't address any other issues that will cause damp. Just because there are no visible signs of damp doesn't mean the house isn't damp, it just means there isn't a severe problem with water ingress.

Get Rentokil in - we had several damp companies recommending a full DPC on an Edwardian cottage I owned. Rentokil told us to unblock the chimney and airbricks, cut away some plaster that was touching the concrete floor and DPC one area where the old DPC had been bridged by a new concrete floor.

You can't really expect to only pay for a homebuyer's report and then go back to the surveyor asking for more information - on a house of this age you should have paid for a full structural survey.

From what I've read, a chemical damp proof course wouldn't stop rising damp. But this doesn't even matter, as the whole concept of rising damp seems to be rubbish. Even the past chairman of the RCIS agrees. So if a diagnosis of damp is based on the electrical conductivity test, which is a flawed test, and there are no actual physical signs of damp, and penetrating damp and condensation can be ruled out - then there's no damp! There's air bricks in the property, and a vent on the chimney where it is blocked.

The surveyor was quite happy to speak to me actually, I couldn't get him off the phone! If the house had been falling down, then a full survey would be needed. I disagree that it's always needed. Of course a full survey is always better, but the extra expense isn't always necessary.

stupot101

Prudence555 wrote: »

I've bought and sold 3 houses and every time I have been told before I bought that they needed completely rewiring and expensive damp courses. Lived in them for years, never rewired, never had any problems with electricity, and the damp always turned out to be a minor problem you could fix with ventilation and cleaning. .Unless you are buying a brand new house, you are always going to get people telling you it needs complete rewiring and damp courses. There is good money in it for a lot of people.
My advice is use your common sense and trust your gut feeling, if you really like the house and it is ok otherwise and a good price then you shouldnt let this put you off.

There's a certain amount of !!!-covering by the surveyor as well I think. When I actually spoke to him, he thought the house was great.

Fire_Fox

stupot101 wrote: »

From what I've read, a chemical damp proof course wouldn't stop rising damp. But this doesn't even matter, as the whole concept of rising damp seems to be rubbish. Even the past chairman of the RCIS agrees. So if a diagnosis of damp is based on the electrical conductivity test, which is a flawed test, and there are no actual physical signs of damp, and penetrating damp and condensation can be ruled out - then there's no damp! There's air bricks in the property, and a vent on the chimney where it is blocked.

The surveyor was quite happy to speak to me actually, I couldn't get him off the phone! If the house had been falling down, then a full survey would be needed. I disagree that it's always needed. Of course a full survey is always better, but the extra expense isn't always necessary.

If you have diagnosed rising damp you may end up with the same issue cropping up when you try to sell. I don't believe the concept of rising damp is rubbish, but I do believe that damp from other sources is often mislabelled as rising damp. A DPC done after a wrong diagnosis or installed badly is never going to be effective.

In an old house left to it's own devices rising damp is a natural phenomenon and not always a problem, as the place will have good air circulation via draughty windows and open chimneys. Once you make modern additions to old houses such as well sealed double glazed units and capped-off chimneys, rising damp can become a problem.

I think we are talking at cross purposes about 'blocked' chimneys. By blocked I mean all the accumulated carp has fallen down and is stuck in the base of the chimney so no void and no air flow. You are meaning blocked off, i.e. capped or a vent instead of a fireplace.

You won't necessarily know whether an old house is 'falling down' until you have a full structural survey. There are many examples on these boards of those who have gone for a homebuyer's report in error. It's only with the benefit of hindsight we can see whether a full structural survey was overkill or essential. I do think that a homebuyer's report carried out by a good surveyor is at least as valuable as a full structural survey completed by a poor surveyor.