Surprise problems in your new home?

MovingForwards

Aside from the seller taking some bits included in the sale (only part I liked of the kitchen), place being filthy and filling up the bins with letters / junk mail for previous tenants, plus the previous tenant / occupier's dog took chunks out of the front door and part of the skirting (dog was so quiet and we'll behaved when viewing), other minor things, no issues.

Received random spares eg rolls of wallpaper, the dreadful kitchen floor and wall tiles, varnish, pictures and a feather duster plus other things. Some went in the bin / tip or offered on FB for free; helped others start to make their property homely.

Best bits were the garden tools and free fire extinguisher. I think I've now found everything.

Part and parcel of buying.

gardian8

We had a leaking kitchen tap, but we seen this on the viewing so knew about it. 
Conservatory roof had a leak in that had been "repaired" quite a few times judging by the amount of silicone on the outside when I got up to take a look. New lightweight tiled roof was required.
Boiler was old and we knew we wanted to replace, but before we could get an appointment for a replacement it would go off during the night as the wind would somehow blow out the pilot light.
The big radiator in the kitchen which is quite large to heat, was blocked. Plumber couldn't get it unblocked after several failed attempts we gave in and had the radiator re piped form upstairs causing a load of work to put things back to normal.
Carpet on the stairs and all upstairs was the original of 20 years so was threadbare all needing to be replaced. Carpet had been cut around the pervious owners very large wardrobe in the master bedroom so there was 2 different carpets when it was moved.
There were 5 extractor fans which could clear a room of the lightest steam so were useless, all protruding about 6-7 inches off the wall or ceiling where they were mounted. all removed and patched up.
Still. we love the house!

[Deleted User]

 Awful water pressure, took an hour to run a bath. Found gleeson had fitted a water restriction within the inlet pipe. We put up with it and it was found by my plumber whilst installing a stopc**k that gleeson failed to install!

 Water temperature valve meaning the water was lukewarm. Usually used in old peoples homes or children's nurseries. Also had that removed. 

 

 

Skintoap

Worst problem I’ve had was a new home from a local builder. All was well until we used the downstairs cloakroom.  One of the casual builders had dumped left over concrete mix down the toilet and it had, naturally, solidified. They had to replace toilet, pipes and external piping. 

Skiddaw1

We've been amazingly lucky (the worst surprise was a minor problem with the plumbing when we tried to instal our washing machine). Friends of ours moved into their dream home only to discover, within a few months, that it was literally riddled with dry rot. A complete (and extremely expensive) nightmare...

firebubble

Moved into my flat, and the washing machine and oven broke within a week. Then the boiler went, and I couldn't afford to get it replaced. When I finally saved up (a freezing winter later), the installer was horrified because the top vents hadn't been sealed - the carbon monoxide just filled the (windowless) bathroom, so if it hadn't broken we could have gassed ourselves. Then it was rewired, and the electrician discovered that the electrics at the back of the flat were reliant on a single plug which came off the mains, and was plugged into a four-gang extension, thick with flammable grease and dust on the top of the kitchen units. The electrics weren't earthed either, which can be fatal. One of the chimney breasts had this horrible painted arch instead of the original fireplace and an ominous crack extended above it (covered up with paint until we moved in). When we pulled it out to investigate, the arch was made of cardboard and there was no lintel so the entire chimney breast was sagging, hence the huge crack. Everything was held together with no nails and expanding foam. Thankfully we bought it as a doer upper, but if not, I would have been so upset.

Blue_bell_20

We walked in to the house to find hanging wires. We are not even sure what it used to be because it didn’t exist during the viewing. Plus additional wires just hanging next to the fuse box. Luckily we managed to get an electrician fairly quickly to check they were not live. The electrician was only visiting to visually check but when he saw them he couldn’t leave without testing them. Found more wires behind a cupboard we removed, which were active. 

A toilet that took 30 minutes to refill. A family member unscrewed it to take a look and lost a part down the toilet. So we then waited three weeks for the plumber to turn up. Thankfully now it works better than when we first got the house.

Something we haven’t resolved yet: the gas meter doesn’t turn on, waited four weeks for BG to send an engineer. They turn up then say they can’t turn the gas off to change the meter. The gas network engineer turns up to say it can be turned off but requires pliers, the best guess is the person who fitted the kitchen or a plumber has cut the stop tap short so the pipes and sink can fit. They said 9/10 or even 10/10 we won’t need to turn the gas off, but if we needed to we probably wouldn’t manage.

We waited a further four weeks for a gas engineer to visit and assess the stop tap and agree to move it. However they can’t give a time frame for moving it…. We still don’t have a working gas meter. So we are paying a lot for gas (due to it being an estimate) for the foreseeable. 

The porch puddles when it rains. Not quite figured out where from yet, it’s next on the list to try and fix. 

Slithery

Moved in on Xmas Eve only to have both the boiler and cooker condemned by the gas man that we'd booked in to do a service.

We were cooking dinner for a load of extended family the next day, luckily the local white goods retailer managed to deliver us a new cooker that evening.

Irishpearce26

We told the seller not to bother filling in holes or pulling out fittings as id rather do it knowing I would probably put more care and attention into making the walls right. We moved into a sight of holes everywhere not to mention how badly they filled in previous holes when they lived there and their painting skills were terrible. This didn't bother us too much as i can make good and we were going to repaint the house anyway. the worst was where they had removed speakers from the wall that left hand sized holes. We managed to get some money back from them for this.

lookstraightahead

Oh my goodness what horror stories. Now worried about it even more 😂😂👍