New house, boiler dead on arrival - can we claim a

worried_jim

Cakeguts wrote: »

Ask the gas engineer to explain how a boiler can scale up due to disuse? There is no water coming into the system from outside so where has the extra scale come from?

If you were not cold in the weeks just after you moved in and before you got the gas engineer to visit you can't suddenly complain that you are cold now.

Just replace the boiler it sounds as if the one that doesn't work wouldn't have worked very well anyway due to age?

Three weeks to find out the boiler doesn’t work, i can’t think of anyone moving into a house in January wouldn’t find out in about ten minutes!

Davesnave

Lysimache wrote: »

Vendor stated 'good working order' in a signed document hence why didn't get it checked beforehand. If the property information form is meaningless, then why is it even required?

If the boiler was heating water without problems when the vendor filled-in the form, then from their point of view it was in good working order.

It's plausible that some weeks later, when it had been sitting idle and sediment had settled in the heat exchanger, starting it up again caused a blockage and failure.

The PIF is a little like an MoT print out. It refers to a situation at a certain time on a particular day. It doesn't anticipate what might happen in a month's time, nor is it intended to.

Ithaca

Tea_Pea_Dee wrote: »

"I would". The apostrophe changes to loads of exclamation marks and 8217. This has been happening since last weekend when you could not edit. I think there must have been spammers flogging apostrophes for tuppence each, so they have been banned :D

The unicode decimal notation for a single right-quotation mark is 8217. For some reason the Board software isn't recognising it as a valid code and is quoting it as text instead.

Lysimache

Thank you - this is all very helpful. Will have a good think about best approach, if any, to the vendors. Definitely won't ask for anything extra. Appreciate we were very stupid to not get the boiler man in on the first day, but that mistake is done.

hazyjo

For starters, get a second (or even third) opinion!

[Deleted User]

Having moved into a number of rented properties (happened about three times) with boilers that didn't work on the day I moved in after a period of the property being empty, if I heard a property was empty I would definitely have had the boiler inspected before moving in. Usually the pump goes in my case lol. You must have seen it was an old boiler, and so suspect because of age if nothing else.

It was your choice to not have it inspected before moving in.

You knew it was empty so the boiler hadn't been used for some time so the vendors claim that it was in working order had to be dated from some time ago. They wouldn't know if they hadn't lived there.

I think your likelihood of success is small. You could get lucky but even with a successful claim, you then have to get the money which could mean increased costs.

I'd just get a new boiler. At least you know its new and energy efficient which is a bonus. I know how much better and cheaper to run new boilers are (in my case with new radiators too). Saved me a fortune on my heating costs and I have gone from living in a property that never seemed to get warm to one that warms quickly.

Mutton_Geoff

Many people are responding with a black or white view of the situation.

It will be worth contacting the selling agent with a copy of the engineers report and appeal to the goodwill of the vendor although leaving it a few weeks limits the chances of success.

You may however have been busy yourself and only just moved in and tried the boiler. If the vendor genuinely knew the boiler was faulty and failed to disclose the information, then you will have more chance of a “goodwill” payment from them since they couldn’t be sure what your next action or likelihood of legal success would be.

G_M

Trouble with that Mutton is that offering a goodwill payment is implicitly admitting (some) liability. A cautious seller won't want to do that....

Mutton_Geoff

G_M wrote: »

Trouble with that Mutton is that offering a goodwill payment is implicitly admitting (some) liability. A cautious seller won't want to do that....

Of course, but by even being on this forum, most people are showing themselves as a little bit more "prepared" than Joe Bloggs on the street.


As an example, a friend's car was struck by what turned out to be a fairly new driver, and so to avoid any issues later, he quickly wrote out a little note saying his car had been damaged through no fault of his own and the other person admitted full liability for the damage etc and got the other driver to sign it at the scene.


I understand it helped smooth his insurance claim later on.


If people didn't believe official looking but baseless threats, then TV Licensing would be out of business fairly quickly.

Lysimache

Good point, Geoff - thanks.