Advice re: making a complaint to a surveyor & cavity wall tie work

dlon_ray

We recently purchased a property with a Nationwide mortgage and paid the extra to Nationwide to have a Homebuyer's Report Survey conducted on the property in question (a 1930s ex-local-authority house in South Wales)

In the survey the surveyor reported:

The property is constructed of 275mm rendered brick cavity walls to the main
house, generally vertical without signs of major cracking or bulging likely to
suggest on-going structural problems. Some old movement and minor cracking
was evident particularly to the side and rear, but this movement is not considered
significant or progressive in nature. Some cracks appear to have been infilled and
painted over. This probably has resulted from previous cavity wall tie problems.
although I understand from the owners that this work was carried out by the
Council prior to their purchase of the property whilst they were tenants, and they
do not believe they have any guarantee in respect of this work. However, no
current problems were noted at the time of our inspection. The crack to the rear
elevation should be infilled wioth a suitable flexible mastic filler and painted over to
blend in.

Upon arrival to the property we spotted the cracking in question which looked to me like it was ongoing (given the house was painted in the last 2 years and the cracks had come in the paintwork since then) and asked the opinion of a local builder who was looking at sorting something else out for us at the time, and he said it was tell tale cavity wall tie problems, so we got a cavity wall tie company to come out and conduct a survey.

Their findings were as follows:

The property is a semi detached house and an external inspection was made that revealed horizontal cracking to all elevations. The opening of mortar joints to elevations was consistent with the effects caused from the corrosion and expansion of metal wall ties.

A limited random internal inspection of the cavities was carried out at 1st floor level with the use of a boroscope. This revealed that vertical twist ties had been used in the construction and it was noted that the ties displayed evidence of corrosion.

No evidence of any new ties or isolation of the old ties was present.

We believe the surveyor was negligent; he did not recommend that we questioned the work had been done (as surveyors frequently would!); we took this to mean that he had been assured and believed that the work had been undertaken. I believe that it is obvious when cavity wall tie work HAS been done as the faces of the property has lots of little dots where the replacement ties have been drilled in.

Additionally, there was major cracking to the top left corners of the window lintels in the master bedroom as the lintels are insufficient and appear to be failing (i.e. there is not enough lintel either side of the opening; only 10cm as opposed to the building reg. 15cm) I am not certain that the surveyor can be blamed in this respect as this damage was hidden behind a layer of wallpaper (though there was a physical difference in surface between the lintel immediately above the window and the wall to the left of the window, even when the original wallpaper was still attached)

Anyway, we have since got the work done at a cost of £2200 including scaffolding for the cavity wall ties, and £400 for the lintel remedial work, and were wondering if we'd have any chance whatsoever of claiming anything (even just the £600 fee for the survey) back in respect of this?

I read a BBC article from 2004 that suggests that complaining against surveyors is often a fruitless exercise. If I'm not likely to win anything back then I won't waste my time...

pararct

What makes you think the Builders and Cavity Wall Tie Company's Opinion is worth anything?

Do they not have an axe to grind? some business to chase?

Get yourself an independent opinion probably another independent surveyor then you will have the answers you need not, biased opinions.

If the original surveyor has dropped a clanger you are going to need at least one other professional surveyors report to be able to proceed with it anyway.

dlon_ray

I did see evidence of the old ties myself (through a vent in the first floor) and I know that the old ties weren't isolated, even if new additional ones may have possibly been added by the council. So from that point of view I know that the report from them wasn't COMPLETE crap Unfortunately (and I should have) I did not take a photo of this.

Unfortunately I don't think I can take the risk of paying another surveyor and might as well just swallow the £2200 and get on with it. Fortunately we had a contingency for if stuff went wrong and didn't pile everything in to a deposit

jc808

House in 'maintenance' scandal.