Buying a house with possible unknown subfloor damage

youth_leader

Good luck with the survey.  I've had all the floors here replaced and am still getting slugs in.  Having asked around other people in the street do too, seems it's just very wet clay.  Glad I have a visiting hedgehog in the garden, be overrun!

Windofchange

If it helps, pretty similar situation to us and our late Victorian era purchase a couple of years back. Our survey didn't report any suspicion of damp or wood rot, but I have been doing quite an extensive renovation since moving in and had the floor boards up in the front room. We have a large concrete slab where the fireplace was which I believe is quite normal in these homes, and then had a suspended floor on wood joists. They were pretty knackered with signs of rot throughout the end pieces. If you or your husband are reasonably competent at DIY, repairing or replacing this isn't a massively difficult job. You can either take the entire joist out and put a new one in which can be messy as a heads up depending on what is required, or you can secure supporting joists (or other such things) either side of the existing one to strengthen. This will require that the joist is of course not too badly rotten or you have no choice but to repair. If replacing it is then just a case of making sure it is all level, and have a good look at your ventilation whilst under there too. I fixed it all up and laid a new wooden floor in about 4 days including replacing the plumbing and electrics whilst under there for good measure. To get the floorboards up you just need a crowbar and a bit of elbow grease. You'll likely find there are a few that have been taken up in the past for whatever reason, so start there and then work out.

When I rip the entire ground floor out to do the kitchen and have someone take the load bearing wall out then I'll likely replace all the joists then as it makes sense. Will also finish replacing all the plumbing and electrics whilst we have access to it all.

youth_leader

Seems my floor was rotten because the floorboard replacement repair the vendor had paid for was attached to the existing rotten joists - wet/dry rot and woodwormed. They had also used 'non tannelised' wooden joists in the rooms they'd chipboarded, they just had black plastic stapled on the ends.  She had the job done in 2016, company went bust in 2018, I bought the property in 2021 with a void 25 year timber guarantee.

I had a week with the floors being taken up and saw I also had the big concrete slabs in front of the three blocked up fireplaces, the men very kindly took them out for me to increase the air flow.  I did tip them!