Damage to drain from roots

yllop1101

Thanks all for the advice. I have got in touch with the surveying company as we've also had a leak in the roof and a roofer has come out and inspected it and all the felt lining is bad. You could see daylight coming through, it was patched in places with cardboard! The ridge tiles aldo have all their cement missing which is sat in the gutter, but according to the surveyor the roof was fine and felt didn't need replacing. For me that's the final straw and in my opinion was negligent in his advice, and now I'm left having to pay thousands of pounds for issues which apparently would have been obvious to the trained eye. 
We shall see how it goes..  

AdrianC

yllop1101 said:

I have got in touch with the surveying company as we've also had a leak in the roof and a roofer has come out and inspected it and all the felt lining is bad. You could see daylight coming through, it was patched in places with cardboard! The ridge tiles aldo have all their cement missing which is sat in the gutter, but according to the surveyor the roof was fine and felt didn't need replacing. 

Was that all visible from ground level?

TBG01

Between the time of the survey and completing, I'm assuming you viewed the property one last time? If not, and there had been damaged caused between that time, who would've been responsible?

In your original post you make no mention of a leak. That's now nearly a week old so I'm assuming it took you close to a week and the suitable weather conditions to notice a leak. So can you confirm whether or not the surveyor had close to a week and some rain that day?

yllop1101

AdrianC said:

yllop1101 said:

I have got in touch with the surveying company as we've also had a leak in the roof and a roofer has come out and inspected it and all the felt lining is bad. You could see daylight coming through, it was patched in places with cardboard! The ridge tiles aldo have all their cement missing which is sat in the gutter, but according to the surveyor the roof was fine and felt didn't need replacing. 

Was that all visible from ground level?

Obviously inside the loft/roof, you have to go up the hatch, which he did because he commented on the felt type, its quality and said it didn't need any immediate work. 
The cement in the gutter is visible from ground level yes. I wonder if he will have photos of the section of gutter with cement in as he had photos of another section where it was bowing. Of course if he has photos which demonstrate it wasn't there, then that is fair proof that it must have happened recently (but the roofers opinion, given the extent of the missing cement all along, is that it has been deteriorating for closer to years rather than in the last 8 weeks). 

yllop1101

TBG01 said:

Between the time of the survey and completing, I'm assuming you viewed the property one last time? If not, and there had been damaged caused between that time, who would've been responsible?

In your original post you make no mention of a leak. That's now nearly a week old so I'm assuming it took you close to a week and the suitable weather conditions to notice a leak. So can you confirm whether or not the surveyor had close to a week and some rain that day?

I'm not referencing damage which happened as a result of an accident by the sellers, e.g. they dropped something on the floor and a tile was cracked. These are ongoing issues with a building which come with age, which don't just happen overnight. I did visit the house twice after the survey but I wasn't doing things like going up in the loft to check if holes had suddenly appeared. As far as I was concerned a survey had been completed and the overall structure of the house had been assessed. 

On the day at which the surveyor visited, it was dry. However surely a visible patch on the ceiling is the final indicator of a leak, and seeing holes in the felt, daylight coming through, and areas patched with cardboard, should have been sufficient evidence to advise that the roof felt needed replacing? Instead he made this decision (that the felt was fine and didn't need replacing) based on the lack of damp found internally, which again, is probably only going to present when the probably has got really bad, or at best (if more recent) may be hard to detect if there has been a dry spell. There is no information to indicate how he measured damp, whether it was just visual or whether an instrument was used.  

I am obviously not the expert, which is why I commissioned a surveyor to point out these things, just like the reasons listed here: https://www.coseyhomes.co.uk/news/4-important-reasons-home-buyers-get-survey/

I got a survey and don't feel I benefited from reasons 2, 3 and 4, as costly things were omitted, and I have other professional tradesmen telling me they are longstanding problems which should have been identified in the survey itself, or in a specialist survey should one have been recommended (and it wasn't).