Advice Needed - House of Horrors

TonicUK

[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]Really hoping for some advice on this, as I’m not sure what my next steps are and the solicitor handling my sale and purchase has gone quiet. Ideally, I want some recourse and am trying to ascertain if a crime has been committed on the boiler installation/recent servicing/safety check paperwork. [/FONT][FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]
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[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]On 9th Sept, I completed on a house purchase. During the latter stages of the conveyancing, the vendor of this house (at my repeated insistence, due to no entry of the installation on the Gas Safe or Corgi registers) supplied a Gas Safe Landlord Safety Certificate, proof of it being serviced and an indemnity policy, which was dated in August. The engineer who did the check & service has their contact details on the paperwork and the firm checked out OK, when I looked it up at the time. [/FONT]

[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]On 3rd October the boiler failed and was assessed by a heating engineer from my Home Emergency Cover on 4th as being dangerous and beyond economical repair for a number of reasons. This should never have passed the Gas Safe Landlord Safety Check, nor can have been serviced as per the paperwork which the vendor supplied (connected to plastic pipework into boiler rather than copper, a piece of shielding designed to protect against explosions is corroded from an historic leak, valve broken, it was continually firing causing overheating (interestingly the surveyor who did the Homebuyer Report noted the heating was on, on a hot day in July), it’s held together with wood-screws and the pressure relief valve which should vent outside is venting into the house!).
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[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]3 other (non-Gas Safe registered) plumbers, another Gas Safe engineer, 2 NEIC electricians and a general builder have also seen this installation, whilst attending for leaking/blocked pipework and to quote on other urgent jobs (the bath & basin don’t drain as the plumbing all runs uphill and since moving in the bath/shower has been unusable as the grouting all cracked within the first week of moving in and the shower screen fell out, as it was only loosely siliconed in. Each one commented on the visible elements of the boiler as being bodged at best & dangerous at worst, including that it was wired onto a light switch, rather than a fused outlet and I found the old off-peak immersion heater flex (which was still live), concealed behind plasterboard under the boiler.[/FONT]

[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]Additionally on removing a built in electric fireplace housed in a studwork in the living room installed by the previous owner (he had written his name, the date of installation and that he’d done it on the wall behind the fireplace), I discovered a spur powering this, connected to a concealed junction box under the upstairs floorboards, which also fed lighting (on the sockets ring-main) that was wired using incorrectly rated flex and unfused. This spur on the fireplace studwork fed 2, 2 gang sockets and 2 fused switches that each had multi-gang extension leads hardwired into them and the fire was plugged into one of these, with everything being inaccessible under a plaster skim and boarding.
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[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]Electrics have all been made safe by an NEIC electrician and new boiler is being fitted by a real Gas Safe registered installer, next week – But in light of what I believe to be a fraudulent Gas Safe certificate (comments from tradesmen include ‘Someone took a backhander for that certificate’ and ‘He’s got a mate to do that’), what legal recourse is there against the vendor?
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[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]Had I known what I have uncovered about the boiler (and the electrics and plumbing), I would not have proceeded through to completion and would have walked away. The really worrying thing is he’s a landlord and has multiple, tenanted properties (the place I bought was his personal home). [/FONT]

tom9980

You should have paid a for a gas safety engineer to check before buying, you didn't.

You should have paid for an electrical engineer to inspect before buying, you didn't.

It is really that simple assuming this is not Scotland.

davidmcn

tom9980 wrote: »

It is really that simple assuming this is not Scotland.

Even if it were Scotland, the OP's too late to make a claim.

TonicUK

tom9980 wrote: »

You should have paid a for a gas safety engineer to check before buying, you didn't.

You should have paid for an electrical engineer to inspect before buying, you didn't.

It is really that simple assuming this is not Scotland.

Thanks Tom, but you seem to have missed that the vendor paid for a Gas Safe engineer and I have the gas safety certificate (which also states it was serviced), which was issued in August.


Either this Gas Safe engineer (I have all of his details) has knowingly certified a dangerous installation as being safe or the paperwork is not legitimate.

davidmcn

TonicUK wrote: »

Thanks Tom, but you seem to have missed that the vendor paid for a gas safety engineer and I have the gas safety certificate issued in August.

Was the engineer acting for you (and the vendor just paid the bill), or was their client the vendor?

tom9980

TonicUK wrote: »

Thanks Tom, but you seem to have missed that the vendor paid for a gas safety engineer and I have the gas safety certificate issued in August.

No i did not miss it. You say you think it was fraudulent, do you think if you paid and instructed the engineer he would have missed all the problems? you should have paid for and instructed your own engineer.

That is on you. It is indeed a harsh lesson for you to learn and expensive but it is your mistake, it is up to you to do your research and due diligence.

TonicUK

Their client was the vendor. However as Gas Safe engineers have to be registered and would be risking their livelihood (and peoples lives) to certify a dangerous installation as safe, it seems crazy there's no recourse.



This was what my solicitor advised and I checked the engineer is Gas Safe registered, which I believed to be due-diligence. If he'd asked some unregulated person to write a note saying 'Yep, everything is fine here' I'd have been worried.

eddddy

TonicUK wrote: »

Thanks Tom, but you seem to have missed that the vendor paid for a gas safety engineer and I have the gas safety certificate issued in August.

Did the gas safety certificate, service invoice etc come via solicitors, or did the seller give them to you directly?

If they came via the solicitors, they'd probably form part of the contract. And if the seller knew they were 'fake' or misleading - you might have a case for claiming damages from the seller for misrepresentation.

If the seller gave them to you by any other means, they're not part of the contract, so there's no real scope for a misrepresentation claim.


But, either way, if the seller told you they were genuine documents, but knew they were 'fake', that would be 'fraud by false representation'.

'Fraud by false representation' is a criminal offence, but you might have trouble getting the police to show an interest.

And the seller might say that he believed them to be genuine, accurate documents, and he was 'duped' by whoever provided the documents.


If you want to take things further, you should get expert reports from gas engineers etc - saying that, in their opinion, the documents cannot be legitimate, because of the condition of the boiler.


(Also, if an unqualified person did work on a gas boiler, they have committed a criminal offence. But it might be hard to determine who that was.)

need_an_answer

The gas safety certification gives an indication on the day,in a similar way as a car MOT will work.

You've subsequently had the installation checked and its been found to be not in a state to pass a cp12 documentation at that point.

What evidence do you have that actually when the original CP12 weas done in august that it failed?

I believe you would have more recourse perhaps if the engineer had been chosen and paid for by yourself,leaving it to others to provide the documentation adds an unnecessary layer for which you cannot substantiate that the boiler wasn't in full working order when tested.

You've had several gas safe registered engineers look at it since...its a shame you didn't ask any one of them to do that original inspection.

TonicUK

eddddy wrote: »

Did the gas safety certificate, service invoice etc come via solicitors, or did the seller give it to you?

If they came via the solicitors, they'd probably form part of the contract. And if the seller knew they were 'fake' or misleading - you might have a case for claiming damages from the seller for misrepresentation.

If the seller gave them to you in any other means, they're not part of the contract, so there's no real scope for a misrepresentation claim.


But, either way, if the seller told you they were genuine documents, but knew they were 'fake', that would be 'fraud by false representation'.

'Fraud by false representation' is a criminal offence, but you might have trouble getting the police to show an interest.

And the seller might say that he believed them to be genuine, accurate documents, and he was 'duped' by whoever provided the documents.


If you want to take things further, you should get expert reports from gas engineers etc - saying that, in there opinion, the documents cannot be legitimate, because of the condition of the boiler.


(Also, if an unqualified person did work on a gas boiler, they have committed a criminal offence. But it might be hard to determine who that was.)

Thank you. It all came via the solicitor and when the new boiler is fitted on Monday, I'm planning on photographing everything and getting the engineer to write a full report.



I also have the report from the engineer who my Home Emergency Cover sent, which talks about corrision that's happened over time to the chassis and other parts from leaking.

trex227

When we bought our house we foolishly didn’t get the boiler checked out. In the first year it failed due to being poorly installed (the condensate pipe was straight rather than angled so during cold weather it froze and the condensate backed up into the boiler frying it- I’m not entirely convinced a certificate would have picked this up as otherwise the installation was fine).

We had a new boiler installed at cost of about £1000 (small house so could have smallest boiler). I would of thought even if your new boiler is going to cost £3000 that legal costs going after the vendor, without any guarantee of success would exceed this. The solicitors I worked at charged £600 for initial review of litigation matters and the first letter.

We swallowed the cost of the new boiler knowing that at least we knew it had been installed correctly. Over time we have found more issues as we’ve had new kitchen and bathrooms fitted but again we now know those problems have been sorted.

In your position I would be seeing if there is any regulatory body you can report the gas engineer to and trying to accept the unexpected extra cost.