Damp and Timber Guarantee

joleeander1964

Hi, Just selling my house and come across this problem. The house has been tanked and treated for damp then the certificate was requested. I did not have this but was fortunate to find the lady who had the work done. I contacted her and she sent me the certificate. Now its come to light that because the certificate was not transferred to my name within 28 days after purchasing the house. the guarantee is now void! I did not even know about any of this and was it not picked up when I purchased the house. Our buyers have had a damp and timber survey on the house and are awaiting the report. There is no problem at all with the house and the report will be fine. My problem is, I have only just found this out and wondered how it can be solved? I have contacted the firm who done the work in 2015 and they have told me point blank the guarantee is now void because of the 28 day transfer. Is there an indemnity policy that I can take out for this? considering the work was only done 5 years ago and the guarantee still would of had another 25 years left! 

davidmcn

I wouldn't get overly concerned, what matters is that the house doesn't currently suffer from damp problems. A guarantee is nice to have, but in reality it's no different from a house which hasn't had recent damp treatment and doesn't currently have damp problems.

FreeBear

The guarantee would have been full of caveats and cop-out clauses, so just a worthless bit of paper. Chances are, the work was too.

It is all well and good injecting chemicals in to the DPC, slapping waterproof cement on the walls, and spraying toxic chemicals around, but if you don't fix the source of the damp, the problem will resurface again and again - The damp industry love this, as they know the prior insurance is worthless, and they can try to sell another bunch of expensive "treatments" to another unsuspecting home owner.

With older properties of solid brick/stone construction or timber framed houses, waterproof cement slapped on the walls can cause untold damage to the house. With timber, damp is trapped in the walls, leading to rapid rotting of the timbers and a seriously expensive repair bill afterwards.