cladding

keyboard

Hi i have just had my offer accepted on a house and im thinking ahead to the valuation. at the back of the house i am buying there is orange cladding and it suits and looks nice but I'm conerned that it may be hiding something. is it resonable to ask for the cladding to be taken off so the surveyor can look at the wall. The rest of the brick work looks ok no cracks etc.

silvercar

you can ask? I doubt any seller would agree though, imagine the mess it would leave behind.

o_t_e

Do you mean stone cladding or something else that could be easily be removed? If it is stone cladding I can't imagine anyone would agree to have it speculatively removed to see what is underneath -unless you were prepared to stump up a few thousand to have the work done including restoring the appearance afterwards - but then if you're concern was subsidence etc the cladding would move with the brickwork underneath.

Doozergirl

Of course you can't take it off, it'll leave a right mess underneath.

Our current project had stone cladding and we weren't exactly surprised to see what was underneath. There had been such a mess created by the people that had installed the windows; there were bricks missing, huge gaps between the windows and walls that had been stuffed with newspaper and worst of all, they'd not bothered fitting any lintels at all and the walls were sagging. We had to take out a load of bricks from above where the windows were, rebuild those parts and install lintels.

To be fair to the vendor, when we asked why they'd clad the house, he told us what he knew and that was that the window people had made a mess. Virtually all the work they'd had done over the years had been carried out by cowboys .