Surveyor due, cellar flooded

Jonow310

Hi all

Sorry if this is in the wrong place but I didn't know where else to put it. I am currently selling my house and I am at the stage where I am due a surveyor to come around. I came home form work today and went in my cellar to add to my electric meter and noticed about 0.5"-1" of water surrounding the floor throughout my cellar.

I have noticed this problem once before when it rained heavily and the same again today after a full day of heavy rain. Previously it had dried up on its own so my thoughts that it is the groundwater coming through.

My main questions being; Is this common in older terraced houses? How can I reduce it? And if the cellar isn't flooded at the time of the surveyor coming is this something I should mention?

Generally how much of a problem is this? I have no damp in my walls, all the beams/floorboards seem to be dry and when there is no rain my cellar is pretty dry.

I am quite nervous about this now as I have seen properties that I like and we don't want to miss this opportunity to sell.

Thanks

Slithery

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6067530/buying-house-with-basement-damp-issues

Davesnave

It's normal, though for some it's more normal than for others.


If you have only seen this a couple of times, then your cellar is at the drier end of things. If you haven't a sump and a Hippo pump to shift the water, that's probably a good sign. The surveyor will almost certainly know how much emphasis to give such occasional water ingress and he shouldn't call it 'flooding.'

quotememiserable

I worked in this area for one of the major water companies for many years. You have a house that is prone to flooding due to flows in excess of the capaticy of the drainage system in times of high rainfall. Right now we're experiencing one of the wettest years on record. The water will fall away, and dry out, and may well not happen again for ten years or more. But the right route is to report it to the Water Company whenever it happens, and if you cross the funding threshold they'll come along and spend whatever it costs to fix it.

Davesnave

quotememiserable wrote: »

I worked in this area for one of the major water companies for many years. You have a house that is prone to flooding due to flows in excess of the capaticy of the drainage system in times of high rainfall.

If you call a cellar that occasionally has a few cm of water in it 'flooding,' what do you call a house that has that in the living room?


If the house had no cellar, the water in the ground would still be at the same level, but no one would see it.