Survey concerns (including chimney breast removal)

pmj1980

Advice would be much appreciated. I'm in the process of (possibly) buying a Victorian terrace that was extended at the rear by the current owner.

As part of this extension, a chimney breast was removed from the ground floor and the first floor, but left intact at roof level. About one or two metres of the chimney breast is still in place in the attic, and the surveyor was extremely concerned about the way this has been supported. Basically, the remaining section is supported by a concrete lintel that rests on bricks that are stepped back into the wall, with a few breeze blocks positioned in the opening below. You can see directly into the void from the attic. To quote a subsequent email from the surveyor:

"The chimney breast has been removed with the remaining stack poorly supported.This would have required Building regulation supported by calculations from a structural engineer and full details should be confirmed by your legal adviser. Further, any work to remove the chimney breast and adding loading's to the party wall would require a Party Wall Notice and full details should be confirmed by your legal adviser."

I know that the seller got both planning consent and a completion certificate for the extension, and the files I downloaded from the council's website show the chimney breast as being present in the 'before' floorplan and absent in the 'after' plan. What I want to know is: does this necessarily mean that the removal of the chimney breast was approved as being done properly? I don't know how specific these completion certificates are. Could the extension have been signed off without the chimney breast being examined?

The estate agent is being extremely unhelpful, to say the least. He is seemingly irate at me being present during the survey, saying that I was being underhand and I had no right to be there. My surveyor insists that he asked if it was ok when he arranged the survey, and it had never occurred to me that it might be a problem. The idea of a seller/EA who doesn't want the buyer to attend a survey sounds kind of suspicious to me.

There are a multitude of other problems, and I'm seriously considering pulling out despite having spent about £1700 on fees and legal work.

Freecall

pmj1980 wrote: »

Could the extension have been signed off without the chimney breast being examined?

Yes. Unless Building Control was asked to certify the work then they will have had no way of knowing that the work was being undertaken. It may have been done at a different time to the extension work.

The solution is simple, ask the EA (in writing) to have the vendor provide you with a copy of the supporting Building Control paperwork. If they are unable to do so and you do decide to pull out then, as a favour to other prospective buyers, make sure that the EA knows so that they can draw attention to the issue at an early stage.

Hoploz

The EA is being awkward because he works for the seller and you are wavering and bringing up problems. He just wants you to buy it as quick as possible so he gets his commission!

You have done everything right, there's no reason why you shouldn't go with the surveyor. Good on you. You are absolutely right to be questioning this.

The paperwork needs checking. Your solicitor needs to get hold of the working drawings that the building inspector signed off on, to ensure the chimney was part of the work he was inspecting, or whether it was done separately. Sometimes building control applications are available online, some councils have it and others don't. If not publicly available your solicitor may be able to check on other records. It's a bit tricky, as you don't want to alert the council that there might be a problem as it could cause problems down the line if work has been done which doesn't conform, so you need to tread carefully.

pmj1980

Thanks both. Typically, neither my solicitor nor the EA are available to discuss this right now. I did phone the council's building control department (without giving identifying details, of course) to clarify this as well. My confusion stems from the fact that the planning application shows the removal of the chimney on the before/after plans, but makes no mention of it elsewhere. The man from the council told me that the inspector will not necessarily have looked at the chimney, as Freecall says. The completion certificate might not mention it, even if it was looked at - but the council's file will mention it, and they're very happy to check it for me if I give them the address!

When the EA gets back, I'll ask him to find out. If they claim that it was approved but it's not on the certificate then I'll ask their permission to check with the council.

I don't know if I should be annoyed at their failure to mention this anywhere else. The property information form they supplied to my solicitor mentions the extension in the section dealing with alterations, but nothing about the chimney and nothing in the section on unresolved planning/building control issues. Either they class the removal of the chimney breast as part of building the extension, which seems a stretch given that it was also removed from the non-extended first floor, or they have omitted it on the information form.

AlexMac

The advice above says it all, but I'd take nothing for granted! My nephew had exactly the same problem, and his helpful surveyor's comment was that the poorly supported chimney in the loft and above the roofline, was, in part being kept up because it was supported by the brickwork of the adjacent undemolished chimney breast which it backs on to in the next house in the terrace. Had that owner tried the same trick, the whole upper stack would have fallen on to the bed in the upper bedroom!

It was fixable, as almost everything is, but he ensured no one slept there till it was