Cavity Wall Insulation - Damp/Damage Claims

Oneoftheoldies

superbmum wrote: »

Hi welshblob. I feel for your parents! Do they live in Wales? Although this is a nationwide issue, there's a massive problem with CWI in Wales due to it having been installed in regions subjected to driving wet weather. Do your parents have their 25 year CIGA guarantee? They can contact CIGA but I warn you now, they have a battle on their hands. This is a problem that is getting worse but even worse is that CIGA are a guaranteeing agency who do not make a profit and only have a certain amount of money to put things right. They will argue your parents' case from the outset and will say the damp and any mould is due to lifestyle condensation. The fact that they had it installed so long ago is irrelevant (it's a 25 year guarantee). I would not recommend a claims company - they're unlikely to put in the amount of hours/months/years this is going to take. Look up CIVALLI - they know so much about this problem, particularly from the Wales angle, and will support you every step of the way (for free). They're a victim support group.

I had it installed in my home in 2004 (blown fibre). It took me 11 years to work out why my walls were damp and mouldy - a chance link on Google took me to CWI. After well over a year of battling CIGA, including two inspections, I'm finally at the point of it being removed under guarantee, due to it not having been installed properly (in fact, due to debris in my cavities, it should never have been installed in the first place).

Good luck and don't give up! It will be a long, stressful and soul destroying process but you will get there in the end. Don't be fobbed off.

Watch Rip off Britain Tues 10th Oct - BBC1.

If you have damp problems as a result of cavity wall insulation (and they can be very serious and expensive to put right!), insist that CIGA remove it, especially if there is evidence that the property was never suitable for CWI. It can take years to get CIGA to accept that it was wrongly approved. Get a builder you trust to thoroughly investigate the damp including inside below the wall. The Government supplied free grants for much of the work but so far is not assisting victims.

Rufusthered

Hi - has anyone else had this particular problem? We had cavity foam in 2008. Started to get problems with damp in the house 2014 (west wall mainly) got Miller Pattison (who did the work) out to look, they denied all responsibility. Over the next 3 years we spent over £3000 on the wall and chimneys/roof to no avail. CIGA (governing body) came out, surveyed the wall and found large voids in the insulation and told Miller Pattison to remove the filling which they did in September 2017. When they had removed the filling they found some had entered into the two chimney voids and so now the chimneys are condemned and we can't use the gas fire in one room or the open fire in the other. I cannot believe the two things are not connected considering that no foam entered the chimneys when the stuff was put in in 2008. They again denied responsibility. Sadly, because we involved CIGA no solicitor will help us on a no win no fee basis (not really sure why, but anyway...) Has anyone else had anything like this? Does anyone know anything about chimney surveys - cost/identifiying possible cause of the leakage... ? Sigh... from a very fed up member...

Furts

Rufusthered wrote: »

Hi - has anyone else had this particular problem? We had cavity foam in 2008. Started to get problems with damp in the house 2014 (west wall mainly) got Miller Pattison (who did the work) out to look, they denied all responsibility. Over the next 3 years we spent over £3000 on the wall and chimneys/roof to no avail. CIGA (governing body) came out, surveyed the wall and found large voids in the insulation and told Miller Pattison to remove the filling which they did in September 2017. When they had removed the filling they found some had entered into the two chimney voids and so now the chimneys are condemned and we can't use the gas fire in one room or the open fire in the other. I cannot believe the two things are not connected considering that no foam entered the chimneys when the stuff was put in in 2008. They again denied responsibility. Sadly, because we involved CIGA no solicitor will help us on a no win no fee basis (not really sure why, but anyway...) Has anyone else had anything like this? Does anyone know anything about chimney surveys - cost/identifiying possible cause of the leakage... ? Sigh... from a very fed up member...

What a mess - where does anyone start to try and sort it out? A few pointers but you will need to tweak to suit your situation ... you had CWI so what did you do to check and present your home as suitable for CWI?

Then did you check for, and hopefully obtain, the BBA Certificate (or similar), and carefully read all the clauses?

If yes so far, then what did you do regarding control and inspection of Miller Pattison working on your home?

If all is positive so far, now for the grey area which nobody on the forum can answer. What did the BBA Certificate say about injecting close to a chimney? My instinct is an exclusion zone is specified, possibly in conjunction with cavity barriers. But in fairness to all forum folks we have not read your Certificate and we do not know which one it is.

Then why did you waste three years dealing with idiots - MP - instead of getting CIGA straight in?

More so if MP had blatantly flouted the rules why trust them to give a competent response?

Then why spend £3000 on all this?

Moving on, was your home ever suitable for CWI and did you pick an appropriate product? Foam is bad news but did you actually receive this, or was it fibres or beads? CIGA will not tell you the full picture - they are a flawed trade organisation operating under severe pressures. But the fact that the CWI has been partially removed tells you a key point.

If CIGA arranged incompetent, or heavy handed, operatives to remove the CWI then your chimneys may be damaged. Which prompts the question what were you doing during this regarding inspection and control?

Coming bang up to date - under normal, careful, competent, situations your CWI removal should not be causing you chimney problems. However I have personal experience of chimney problems with CWI - it happens.

Since you say you have chimney problems have you defined what these are and reported them back to CIGA? If so, where are you and/or CIGA with arranging a cctv of the chimnies to establish what is going on?

Over to you now please!

Rufusthered

Furts wrote: »

What a mess - where does anyone start to try and sort it out? A few pointers but you will need to tweak to suit your situation ... you had CWI so what did you do to check and present your home as suitable for CWI?

Then did you check for, and hopefully obtain, the BBA Certificate (or similar), and carefully read all the clauses?

If yes so far, then what did you do regarding control and inspection of Miller Pattison working on your home?

If all is positive so far, now for the grey area which nobody on the forum can answer. What did the BBA Certificate say about injecting close to a chimney? My instinct is an exclusion zone is specified, possibly in conjunction with cavity barriers. But in fairness to all forum folks we have not read your Certificate and we do not know which one it is.

Then why did you waste three years dealing with idiots - MP - instead of getting CIGA straight in?

More so if MP had blatantly flouted the rules why trust them to give a competent response?

Then why spend £3000 on all this?

Moving on, was your home ever suitable for CWI and did you pick an appropriate product? Foam is bad news but did you actually receive this, or was it fibres or beads? CIGA will not tell you the full picture - they are a flawed trade organisation operating under severe pressures. But the fact that the CWI has been partially removed tells you a key point.

If CIGA arranged incompetent, or heavy handed, operatives to remove the CWI then your chimneys may be damaged. Which prompts the question what were you doing during this regarding inspection and control?

Coming bang up to date - under normal, careful, competent, situations your CWI removal should not be causing you chimney problems. However I have personal experience of chimney problems with CWI - it happens.

Since you say you have chimney problems have you defined what these are and reported them back to CIGA? If so, where are you and/or CIGA with arranging a cctv of the chimnies to establish what is going on?

Over to you now please!

We are just lay people so relied on MP to assess the suitability of the property... We got the CIGA certificate but I don't know what the BBA certificate is..

We would not have known whether MP were doing the job correctly or not. We had no experience of CWI so just left them to get on with it...

When the damp patches appeared we had just moved out and were planning to rent the property. We called in MP as that was what we thought we had to do. They said the pointing/flashings/chimneys needed attention as they were at fault and as we had to prepare the house for tenants we just had everything done over time as we thought we had no other option. The people who carried out the pointing and flashing work both said they did not consider these areas to be bad enough to cause the problems. We wasted 3 years as after each batch of 'remedial' work was carried out we waited a time to see if anything had changed. The tenants in the property did not bother telling us (sometimes for months) if anything had changed (despite the letting agent trying to get the information) and so the time went on. We had no idea we could go to CIGA with our concerns until May 2017 when I came across some other people with the same problem and then we involved them.

I believe we had the fibre but I have to be honest and say I am not completely sure. Regarding suitability of the property for CWI we relied on MP.

The tenants were in residence when the CWI was removed so we were not present and even if we had been I doubt we would have known if the removal was done in a heavy handed way... I repeat that we are lay people with no prior knowledge of CWI

I told CIGA that the chimneys had been condemned. They sent my concerns to MP who said that whilst the chimneys were sound in 2008 when the CWI was installed obviously the chimneys have deteriorated in that time and they do not take responsibility. I have looked into having chimney surveys but am not sure if we should pay for this or ask CIGA/MP to pay

Thanks!

Furts

Rufusthered wrote: »

We are just lay people so relied on MP to assess the suitability of the property... We got the CIGA certificate but I don't know what the BBA certificate is..

We would not have known whether MP were doing the job correctly or not. We had no experience of CWI so just left them to get on with it...

When the damp patches appeared we had just moved out and were planning to rent the property. We called in MP as that was what we thought we had to do. They said the pointing/flashings/chimneys needed attention as they were at fault and as we had to prepare the house for tenants we just had everything done over time as we thought we had no other option. The people who carried out the pointing and flashing work both said they did not consider these areas to be bad enough to cause the problems. We wasted 3 years as after each batch of 'remedial' work was carried out we waited a time to see if anything had changed. The tenants in the property did not bother telling us (sometimes for months) if anything had changed (despite the letting agent trying to get the information) and so the time went on. We had no idea we could go to CIGA with our concerns until May 2017 when I came across some other people with the same problem and then we involved them.

I believe we had the fibre but I have to be honest and say I am not completely sure. Regarding suitability of the property for CWI we relied on MP.

The tenants were in residence when the CWI was removed so we were not present and even if we had been I doubt we would have known if the removal was done in a heavy handed way... I repeat that we are lay people with no prior knowledge of CWI

I told CIGA that the chimneys had been condemned. They sent my concerns to MP who said that whilst the chimneys were sound in 2008 when the CWI was installed obviously the chimneys have deteriorated in that time and they do not take responsibility. I have looked into having chimney surveys but am not sure if we should pay for this or ask CIGA/MP to pay

Thanks!

I appreciate you are lay people and I feel for your situation - been there and know about this. However harsh it may sound, the regrettable fact is CWI is a serious proposition with serious implications. CWI should never be sought by lay people without seeking competent professional guidance. Add to this your total absence of knowledge on what has happened and you can see why no solicitor is going to take you on. Then couple this with the perceived the dismal reputation of CIGA and it becomes even more problematic.

Who has condemned your chimnies? Why have they condemned them? What facts, and what evidence do you have to support the condemning?

Having carefully analysed that then the next step forward can emerge.

However, there is no way you can do this via a forum, because your knowledge base, and strength will not facilitate this.

At some stage you will need professional help to sift through everything, and get to grips with CIGA. Either that or you draw a line under matters and move on. But equally CIGA have a nightmare reputation so there is no guarantee anyone will get a quick, or a satisfactory, outcome.

If you give your location, and the property location (if not the same) somebody on the forum may be able to chip in and help.

Rufusthered

Furts wrote: »

I appreciate you are lay people and I feel for your situation - been there and know about this. However harsh it may sound, the regrettable fact is CWI is a serious proposition with serious implications. CWI should never be sought by lay people without seeking competent professional guidance. Add to this your total absence of knowledge on what has happened and you can see why no solicitor is going to take you on. Then couple this with the perceived the dismal reputation of CIGA and it becomes even more problematic.

Who has condemned your chimnies? Why have they condemned them? What facts, and what evidence do you have to support the condemning?

Having carefully analysed that then the next step forward can emerge.

However, there is no way you can do this via a forum, because your knowledge base, and strength will not facilitate this.

At some stage you will need professional help to sift through everything, and get to grips with CIGA. Either that or you draw a line under matters and move on. But equally CIGA have a nightmare reputation so there is no guarantee anyone will get a quick, or a satisfactory, outcome.

If you give your location, and the property location (if not the same) somebody on the forum may be able to chip in and help.

Thanks Furts for your input so far..

I believe solicitors are not interested because we have had a partial solution through CIGA and nothing to do with our inexperience.

The chimneys were condemned by MP after extraction of the west facing wall because they said filling material was found to be in the chimneys. In fact one of their operatives had to sit in the house for 7 hours until a gas engineer arrived to disconnect the gas fire..

The property is in Yeovil, Somerset BA20 (we live in Yeovil too). I believe Yeovil is on the edge of the area where CWI should not be installed...

Hoping someone can give some advice... Thanks

Furts

Rufusthered wrote: »

Thanks Furts for your input so far..

I believe solicitors are not interested because we have had a partial solution through CIGA and nothing to do with our inexperience.

The chimneys were condemned by MP after extraction of the west facing wall because they said filling material was found to be in the chimneys. In fact one of their operatives had to sit in the house for 7 hours until a gas engineer arrived to disconnect the gas fire..

The property is in Yeovil, Somerset BA20 (we live in Yeovil too). I believe Yeovil is on the edge of the area where CWI should not be installed...

Hoping someone can give some advice... Thanks

I speculate that solicitors are not interested because the facts are not there to form a case, and the area of knowledge is beyond their expertise. I have not used the term "inexperience" but you have to face everyday reality with solicitors. The legal bods love to complicate matters, they love to delay matters, they love people coming to them without basic knowledge. They make enormous fees out of all this. However if approached on a no win no fee basis as you want the format changes. Then the solicitors want minimum input on their part and maximum input on the consumers part. Been there and know this! If the consumer cannot give the easy ride to the solicitors then they do not want to know. Which again is just what you have found.

A key point is were the chimnies defective before MP installed CWI or were they damaged by MP causing the CWI to then enter?

Rufusthered

The chimneys were clear after the CWI was installed.. I asked MP that same question and they replied that the chimneys must have deteriorated between 2008 and 2017 to the extent that material entered the chimneys during extraction... I am not sure whether a chimney survey will indicate the cause of any damage (particularly, for example, if it is just missing mortar - hard to define a cause of that) but I guess that is the next stage... it's just whether we have to pay or CIGA/MP will pay...

Furts

Rufusthered wrote: »

The chimneys were clear after the CWI was installed.. I asked MP that same question and they replied that the chimneys must have deteriorated between 2008 and 2017 to the extent that material entered the chimneys during extraction... I am not sure whether a chimney survey will indicate the cause of any damage (particularly, for example, if it is just missing mortar - hard to define a cause of that) but I guess that is the next stage... it's just whether we have to pay or CIGA/MP will pay...

The MP explanation makes no sense, but the concept of insulation being in the chimney is also strange. It will not, logically, have got there during removal. Logically it was always there. Which means MP should have removed it. In turn this means you have incomplete and defective remedial works. This in turn means going back to CIGA. You should not be dealing with MP.

Your guarantee is with CIGA and that is the route you should be taking.


But when this has been done you still have defective chimnies which will need repairs. You need to have tactics/strategy to push this in the direction of CIGA

Rufusthered

I sent CIGA an email just before I started the discussion here saying I now wanted to escalate to a claim against MP for all the unnecessary work we had done which made no difference to the damp patches in the house, and to claim for the condemned chimneys, and should we go through them (CIGA) or start an action ourselves. I had a reply to say they had forwarded my email to MP! So I wait to hear from them but MP has already told me that they will not pay anything... I didn't realise MP and CIGA were so closely aligned..