I feel your pain.

We paid for the full structural survey on our house when we bought it back in 2010 as it was built in 1810.

Ambiguous wording in the survey has so far cost me £7,050 to put things right.

The complete new roof was a good laugh! The one put on in 2006 was a bodge job. If the surveyor had just tried to move one easily accessible slate he would have seen that the batten spacing was wrong for the size of tiles used. It would have taken him 30 seconds, 60 if you include the time to open the window and step out on to the roof below. Three roofers spotted it straight away. They showed me how to check too and it could have been done in less time than it took to type this paragraph.

We’re just sorting out a damp issue now that was missed also. The affected patch was only 8m long, so there must have been one massive chair blocking his access to it.

I swear the **** couldn’t have done a worse job if he had stayed in his car. I tried to see if there was any recourse, but the language used in the survey was so vague “assumed” “lack of access” etc that there was no come back on the guy.

Thankfully the house was built before asbestos was invented, becasue he would have missed that too.

you got a new roof and all that damp fixed for £7k? bargain…

Unfortunately there is no real recourse in law or otherwise because the surveyor was a bit of a dick who can’t string a decent sentence together.

Yianni v Edwin Evans and Sons (1981) innit?

Not sure if there’s any more recent case law on it – just remember this from years ago…

you got a new roof and all that damp fixed for £7k? bargain…

£7k more than it should have cost.

you bought a 200 yr old house. <£1k a year maintenance sounds pretty cheap to me…

Not being funny but I can’t ever imagine a surveyor moving a roof slate to look at the spacing of battens below.

The roof and the problem wall were only 4 years old at the time of survey as they had been part of a major rebuild in 2006.

If the guy had done his job, like we had paid him to, he would have spotted that:

A) The roof was incorrectly installed. The batten spacing from the original roof had been retained, but the new roof was made using reclaimed slates that were shorter than the originals, so there was insufficient support and overlap.

B) A wall in the area renovated in 2006 running across the middle of the house from one side to the other had been finished incorrectly as the new plaster was in direct contact with the ground. The house is 200 years old and has little in the way of foundations, so damp was wicking up the plaster. The other side of the wall remains largely untouched and is dry.

The surveyor said that as the work was new he assumed that it was OK based on a visual inspection without actually checking it. The word “visual” was his get out when questioned as it looked OK to him. A damp meter test or lifting one easily accessible tile would have shown the defects.

The wiring in the extension is a bag of shit too.

Edit – Wrightson, you could lift them up by about 4″ as there was hardly any overlap. For £3k, or whatever it cost, I’d expect them to have a proper look especially as access is really easy. This wasn’t a cheap do.

The only slight crumb of consolation is that the person who sold us our house bought one just up the road of a similar vintage and I guess that they used the same surveyor as he was recommended by the estate agent that handled both sales. They had skips outside their new house for months as it was discovered that the joists holding up the first floor all had to be replaced.

I’m £7k down, I bet they have lost a lot more.

Yes because I’m sure the previous owner had specifically requested that shoddy work was to be carried out. You sound like a nice guy.

You sound like a nice guy.

Thanks.

Corners were cut on pretty much everything done and they did a lot of it themselves, not the roof, but the wiring and the plastering were DIY.

Plastering over wallpaper in another room was a good one, as was not supporting the shower tray in the ensuite. And the window frames that he fitted not being correct, so water ran off the bottom of them down the back of the render. That one cost a few K to fix too, but I hadn’t expected the surveyor to pick up on that.

To give him credit though the joinery that he did was beautifully done.

Ah, well that’s different, I redact my previous statement. Karma’s a bitch.

(been there, was 15k to sort in my case)

I’m all annoyed again now! After 9 years we’ve spotted and corrected most of the mistakes. We still have a dead plug socket because the wires were cut too short and don’t quite reach, but other than that it is water tight. I suspect that there are some issues with the central heating pipe runs and the electrical consumer unit is behind a rather nice fitted oak window seat and can only be properly accessed with a chain saw.

I don’t expect a surveyor to find everyting… but an 8m stretch of damp and a faulty roof?

So, we instructed a 2nd “expert’s opinion” from a 2nd surveyor.
They’ve been to the house today to take photo’s/assess the area etc and her initial comment was:
“There’s not a chance I would have assumed that to be anything other than asbestos containing. Visibility good, access good, varying levels of decor and a good contrast between the timber fascia and asbestos soffit.”
Mr Surveyor is going to get a strongly worded email with a view to recouping all of the associated costs.
If he still thinks he’s right we’ll go through the independent complaints procedure.

Bit of an update:
Had the 2nd survey done on Friday, report in today.

“I am sorry that in this particular instance, and contrary to the advice you were given, asbestos
containing materials have been identified externally to at least some of the soffit boards around the house and I hope that this matter can now be resolved without further delay, and to your satisfaction. ”

Hopefully that will help with the complaint 🤞

Going to get shot down for this but here goes…

I agree that most building purchase surveys aren’t worth the paper they are written on (unless it is for establishing that the movement in the walls which become evident three years down the line were not visible when you brought the building). For the extent of investigation the costs are crazy too.

But

Unless you commission a survey by a reputable professional roofer (with an extra fee and permission form the seller) in the majority of cases you are not going to pick up issues like the roof lap issues Harry describes unless the roofer who has done the work has handily cut corners next to accessible roof windows, terraces or other easily accessible locations. You are basically relying on a professional opinion about what looks right from ground level.

I don’t do valuation or home buyer reports but do do condition surveys on historic buildings (for the most part for significantly less than £3000 a throw). Unless you can see evidence of water penetration/broken or slipped slates/something looking ‘wrong’ it is difficult to be definitive about roofs, particularly when it is an issue to do with head and side laps because generally the battens are concealed by roofing felt or sarking boards. I have picked up issues like you describe in the past but usually only with the help of access to the roof. I can’t say for certain that I have never missed something like that. I just do my best and use my experience of what looks right/wrong.

Having said that if you can lift a natural slate by 4” I would have said there was an issue.

I had a surveyors report and then binged a local builder 3 hours time to go and have a good dig round and verbally tell me what he thought. One was a few K one was a few hundred. Funnily enough he found a massive list of things, some annoying some somewhat interesting some properly dangerous. We proceeded but had a huge list of things to rectify with costs which we reduced the asking price by. The ‘brand new’ 25k roof was one area where if you actually went into the loft it was clear the roof wasn’t new ! The best bit was the seller, developers on their first project, wanted a 5k a week penalty from me for non completion on time. Fine. Mutual though was what Insaid and after a lot of arguing they did it. Agreed a 5 week completion. Oh how I laughed when I discovered no building warrant for the external garage. Took 12 weeks to fix it extra. I reduced the settlement figure and they asked me not to do it. Special. Anyway karmas a prick as I’ve found a load of other problems now.

OP stick to your guns.

Just to add the conclusion to this:

Finally had the response from CEDR and they have backed our claim that the surveyor should have spotted asbestos or made us aware of the possibility of there being asbestos in the soffits.
As a result they have informed the surveyor that he must pay back all of our expenditure to remove the asbestos.

Lots of time and effort/research etc but well worth it in the end.

Result 🙂

Certainly is and, if anyone is in the same boat, I’d highly recommend the process.
Very easy to do (time consuming composing emails/photo’s etc) and everything is timed so there’s no unknown timescale.