help! don't trust damp survey!

se8ah

hi everyone,

I'm buying a terraced house, approx. 100 yrs old, which has already had damp treatment to one wall on the ground floor in living room. My homebuyer survey revealed high damp readings in a different wall which wasn't treated at the time and also in the suspended timber floor which sepeartes the living room from the cellar.

The vedor commissioned a further damp survey from a contractual firm and they have advised that the high reading in the floor is due to a washing machine leak (but they were only able to test a small area of the timber floor which they could acccess in the cellar) and the damp wall is due to the fact it was replastered when an electric heater was fitted and the plaster was wrong. They are recommending replastering or, faliling this, damp proof injections in the wall.

The issue I have is that, becasue the firm are not independent, surely they are biased and want me to have to pay for a DPC whether I need one or not? I'd really appreciate anyone's advice on this!

David_Aldred

Hi se8ah,
You are the person considering buying the property and it is you who is going to have to live with any issues if you proceed with the purchase.This being the case I would have your own investigation undertaken rather than relying upon any undertaken by the vendor.

If a property is mid terraced with cellars to each property being common, then rising dampness up through the party walls where cellars exist is unlikely to be present to ground floor rooms above those cellars, though there could well be issues of high relative humidity to cellars migrating up into floors / plaster etc to rooms above. Obvioulsy the issue of plumbing leakage requires further investigation and the reasons for the high moisture content of ground floor timbers / consequential risk of decay. If you want a truly independent report upon the matter then simply do a 'google' search for independent damp and timber surveyors to find one who is able to travel to you.

Kindest regards, David