Boiler failure during inspection prior to Exchange of Contracts

AdrianC

martindow wrote: »

The house owner will say that before the plumber's visit the system was working,

Except it wasn't, because it was depressurised. The act of repressurising it is what caused it to fail.

camptownraces

AdrianC wrote: »

Except it wasn't, because it was depressurised. The act of repressurising it is what caused it to fail.

Ah, but how can OP prove that? did he or the plumber take photos of the pressure gauge?

Vendor will undoubtedly swear that both boilers worked last time they were tried (however long ago that was) .

It seems important that OP had vendor's permission in writing to do exactly what he did - take in a plumber to fiddle around with both the boilers. Estate agent's permission could have been good enough.

How did you get the keys, OP?

Johnandabby

But surely any decent plumber would visibly check the boilers and pressure gauges before just turning the heating on? Sounds a bit gung-ho!

Normally you would drain down heating systems if the house is left empty. Could be a real issue if the OP's plumber refilled the system which led to the leak/failure, especially if the permission was for an inspection only...

And how was the OP allowed access into the house without the vendor or EA in attendance? I've had it before where a plumber has been given keys to an empty house, but with explicit orders not to allow anyone else into the property... I would be furious if I was the vendor.

When_the_going_gets_tough

These situations are never black and white. It is up to you to decide how much the house is worth to you in its current state and make a final offer accordingly. Then it is up to the vendor to decide how to respond. Any claim against you/your plumber is a separate matter and really you need do nothing unless the vendor chooses to start a claim against you.

jeks2014

Thanks for all the replies and advice.

camptownraces - the Plumber got the keys from the EA and it was 100% clear he was going to the house to do a Heating Inspection. As I said the offer was based on us doing an inspection which the Vendor was well aware of. The fact that we were there did not affect the outcome in any way.

Adrian C - I agree 100%, surely to do an inspection the system needs to be pressurised to the correct level to see how the system works under normal running - expect when that happened one boiler developed a leak and the other one failed totally!

In terms of the Plumber running the CH and adjusting the pressure - If he shouldn't have done this, what was he supposed to do, just look at it? It's like going to take a car for a test drive, starting the engine and not being allowed to drive it! This would have been totally useless.

I also have strong grounds to state that the boilers were likely to have faults as evidenced by the staining on the bedroom ceiling, the staining to the plywood beneath the boilers and the crappy reviews they got all over the internet. As the buyer I am perfectly entitled to check what I am buying to make sure it is working properly. To argue against me/the Plumber the Vendor would have to provide strong evidence that the boilers were in perfect working order at the time of the Inspection - when in fact I highly doubt they have been serviced for over 2 years..

The Plumber did nothing wrong at all - I saw him pressure the system to exactly 1 bar very slowly. These systems can take up to 4-5 bar without blowing so 1 bar should have been a walk in the park for these boilers. Note that only 1 boiler failed, both were pressurised to 1 bar in exactly the same way. If it was the way he did it, both boilers would have failed catastrophically.

The bulge in the wall is due to the fact that when they built the gable end wall of the extension they used the original garage wall from the 1930's which was not built perfectly straight, so I am not so concerned about this anymore, thankfully.

I have spoken to the EA and provided 2 proposals - being blunt I stated I am buying the property on the basis that is has 2 working boilers, so by hook or by crook at exchange of contracts they need to provide 2 working boilers. I won't prescribe how they accomplish this, that's up to them.

Or.... we contribute £2k each to replacing the boilers.

We'll see what happens tomorrow. Thanks.