Buying a property with no building regulations certificate for bifold doors

Anotherpassword

Hi
I'm in the process of buying a property without building regulations certificate for bifold doors.  The doors are in an existing extension and replaced a window thus extending the existing opening which required building regulations. The sellers said the builders advised no building regulations were required to do the work which is not the case.

 The seller is reluctantly agreeing to obtain an indemnity insurance policy which his solicitor advised is needed for the sale to proceed. I'm aware this doesn't cover me if the doors haven't been fitted correctly structurally and I would have to pay to have them correctly fitted if this is the case. 

I'm thinking of paying for a structural engineer to check the installation. This would involve using a multi tool to put a small hole in the plaster to check the lintel/RSJ and the pad stone placement and calculate if all is correct. 


This would give me peace of mind that there is no safety or structural concerns and would enable me to get a regularisation certificate if I ever wanted to sell the property. 

Do you think the seller would agree to my doing this? If all is ok with the installation then I don't have to worry but if not then I'd want to negotiate the price to reflect any work needing done to fix the issue. Either way I'd pay to have the plaster fixed after the structural survey whether I proceed with the purchase or not.  Maybe I'm being too cautious but I don't want to have any problems with the installation further down the line whether it's operational problems or home insurance problems or selling in the future due to no BR certificate. 

I've already had a level 3 survey done which advised of no structural issues with the property which was built in 1900.

Thoughts please.

silvercar

What did your surveyor say about the doors? 

Anotherpassword

The surveyor said all doors and windows worked. He didn't mention anything untoward regarding the bifold doors.

Yorkie1

Generally, it is thought that sellers would be very reluctant to allow invasive investigations, however limited in scope.

stuart45

The main question you are asking is if the seller will allow an invasive structural survey. The only person who can really give you the answer is the seller. 
In these situations it comes down to who is the most desperate to sell or buy. 
If he refused and you pull out he might have the same issue with the next buyer. On the other hand, if you take a chance, you might have structural issues, or the same problem when you come to sell. 

Section62

Anotherpassword said:

...

The sellers said the builders advised no building regulations were required to do the work which is not the case.
...

If the sellers are telling the truth, then a builder who doesn't know that increasing the size of a structural opening requires BR signoff (or lies about it) isn't one I'd trust to safely make a structural alteration to a building I was thinking of buying.

silvercar

Anotherpassword said:

The surveyor said all doors and windows worked. He didn't mention anything untoward regarding the bifold doors.

Though he did say no structural issues, so why are you concerned about this one? Why not contact the surveyor and query this? 

Section62

silvercar said:

Anotherpassword said:

The surveyor said all doors and windows worked. He didn't mention anything untoward regarding the bifold doors.

Though he did say no structural issues, so why are you concerned about this one? Why not contact the surveyor and query this? 

Unless the surveyor was told a window had been changed to bifolds and asked to comment on this specifically, they wouldn't necessarily know the change had been made and/or express any concerns about it.

The builder could have extended the window lintel using spit and a length of 4x2, but once covered with plaster the surveyor wouldn't see it and could (with the lengthy caveats such reports contain) truthfully say there were no structural issues.

user1977

Yorkie1 said:

Generally, it is thought that sellers would be very reluctant to allow invasive investigations, however limited in scope.

If they're resistant to a small hole in the plasterboard (in a property which is already under offer) then I'd wonder what they were trying to hide.

silvercar

Section62 said:

silvercar said:

Anotherpassword said:

The surveyor said all doors and windows worked. He didn't mention anything untoward regarding the bifold doors.

Though he did say no structural issues, so why are you concerned about this one? Why not contact the surveyor and query this? 

Unless the surveyor was told a window had been changed to bifolds and asked to comment on this specifically, they wouldn't necessarily know the change had been made and/or express any concerns about it.

The builder could have extended the window lintel using spit and a length of 4x2, but once covered with plaster the surveyor wouldn't see it and could (with the lengthy caveats such reports contain) truthfully say there were no structural issues.

Agreed. But in this case the surveyor hasn’t made any caveats. If he had said that there appears to have been an extension and OP should make sure it was all signed off that’s different. 

Section62

silvercar said:

Section62 said:

silvercar said:

Anotherpassword said:

The surveyor said all doors and windows worked. He didn't mention anything untoward regarding the bifold doors.

Though he did say no structural issues, so why are you concerned about this one? Why not contact the surveyor and query this? 

Unless the surveyor was told a window had been changed to bifolds and asked to comment on this specifically, they wouldn't necessarily know the change had been made and/or express any concerns about it.

The builder could have extended the window lintel using spit and a length of 4x2, but once covered with plaster the surveyor wouldn't see it and could (with the lengthy caveats such reports contain) truthfully say there were no structural issues.

Agreed. But in this case the surveyor hasn’t made any caveats. If he had said that there appears to have been an extension and OP should make sure it was all signed off that’s different. 

I mean the generic caveats which say stuff like nothing has been moved, uncovered or disassembled in carrying out the survey.

The OP's post suggests the extension was existing from some time before - so that could have signoff, and the surveyor wouldn't necessarily know the original work had been altered.