Old Gatehouse - Build Log

Martynt74

Martynt74

Martynt74

Soldato
Joined
20 Feb 2004
Posts
23,243
Location
Hondon de las Nieves, Spain
***Update***

We're in and work is ongoing-pics towards the end of the thread.






Original message



Am sticking this in it's own thread rather than the "Nervous Wait to Exchange" thread.

We're buying a property that was built in 1874. There's a little bit of lime coming through one of the walls which we're aware of.

I keep being told (by family/friends) that we should have the expensive home buyers survey done as there's potential hidden issues. My opinion to most surveys is that they're just covering their backs and everything will just be marked as "get specialist advice" which isn't going to help us.

However i've found this company called Heritage House, which seems to specialise in older properties and are potentially decent value.

https://www.heritage-house.org/

I've had a quote of £1200+vat for a survey, it's considerably more expensive than a regular survey but i'm hoping it would be much better value for money. I've been advised this takes about a whole day to do the survey and then 1-2 days to write up a 50 page report.

I'm erring towards giving them a go but wondered what peoples thoughts were on this.
 
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A full servey is at least with something. The others are waste of money. What sort of things do you want it to find, plenty of things are easy to see and find yourself with a bit of effort.
 
I suppose it's underlying things we might not be aware of. The father of one of the sellers is an architect so i assume that any issues he'd have mentioned to them, and the woman selling was very honest when i asked her a few things, even mentioning additional negative aspects that i hadn't asked about.

The floors upstairs are very uneven but i'm not overly concerned about them being a problem. The house generally looks in very good condition. I'm just a little worried about anything underlying.

For reference this is the property
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-52537722.html


One thing i did notice was that when i was in the loft i could see some rays of light on the side of the loft which wasn't boarded so i couldn't get over to it to inspect. It's probably around this area. I'm also trying to work out why there's a drain pipe going into the loft (the upstairs window there is the bathroom)

ZrD7vKn.png
 
If I was buying a property that old/specialist I wouldn't think twice about paying £1500 for a survey. Even a homebuyers would probably be worthwhile but like you say, it is a lot of back-covering and "get a specialist to inspect xxxx".

I've seen surveys on much newer properties come back with some serious amounts of essential works. At the end of the day even if you deem all the work unnecessary you've got a legitimate reason to negotiate on cost. I got £2,500 off as a result of my homebuyers and damp survey even though I've not done any of the work (see below).

Interesting that their homepage is referring to fraudulent damp companies. I had a report done by Peter Cox (as recommended by my homebuyers survey). I got it done for free as I know them professionally and as expected, the report came back to say there was rising damp on about 50% of the exterior walls due to a failed DPC and recommending their full DPC treatment and subsequent re-rendering with their specialist materials. Since moving in to the property I've discovered that whilst a significant portion of the carpet/underlay was damp, it seemed to all be stemming from the chimney breast. After removing the thick vinyl wallpaper, unblocking the air vent, turning up the heating and opening the windows, there is no longer any evidence of internal damp whatsoever. Funny that...
 
Wow that house looks great!

Drain pipe may be there either purely for visual to cover up brick ties, or from previous drain/overflow from water tank?
 
Get the survey done, whether it be the one from the company you linked to or another one offering a full building / structural survey.

You can use it, if you choose, to negotiate on price or even have the vendors fix some of the things it throws up before exchange.
 
@Skillmister - Want some online conveyancing work. Sure you'll offer ocuk discounts won't you :p

Jimmeh - Yeah the plan is to get some kind of full building survey. Just wanted confirmation really about whether going with a firm who specialise in old building techniques would be worth paying the extra for.
 
Old houses always have lots of little snags/issues, Get the survey done by someone familiar with older buildings.

Then find a good local builder that knows older buildings and pay them to come and have a look around and identify any issue, go with them and they can give finger in the air figures for fixes (some stuff that sounds scary to you or I is cheap to fix, and some stuff that we think 'oh its just that' can be a symptom of something else thats more expensive/big issue).

As many set of eyes that know what they are looking for would be my advise. compared to the cost of unexpected repairs its cheap piece of mind, and you wont be left wishing you had paid for someone to look around for you/with you.

Stuff WILL still appear that wasnt spotted, its the nature of houses.. So do have a contingency budget.
 
Nice looking house :)

By drain pipe do you mean the rain water collector and pipe on the left, which takes water from the valley between the pitched two pitched roof sections behind the facades or the effluent waste pipe vent to the right?
 
@Skillmister

Whilst we have you in here. When i've got my conveyancing quotes it mentions work for leasehold properties. I understand that this involves speaking to the leaseholder and getting permission to transfer the deeds etc. With ours we have indemnity insurance in place as our leaseholder is absent and we pay no ground rent.

What are the solicitors likely to be doing in this instance to warrant the fee?
 
Marvt74 said:
@Skillmister

Whilst we have you in here. When i've got my conveyancing quotes it mentions work for leasehold properties. I understand that this involves speaking to the leaseholder and getting permission to transfer the deeds etc. With ours we have indemnity insurance in place as our leaseholder is absent and we pay no ground rent.

What are the solicitors likely to be doing in this instance to warrant the fee?
Click to expand...
Leasehold sales do typically involve more work but it is hard to justify as it isn't substantial legal work, its more like a ton of back and forth with management companies/freehold owners to get things like ground rent/service charge info, deal with their transfer requirements and clear their various accounts. It's a difficult position as this can very easily rack up hundreds of pounds worth of correspondence and fiddly paperwork but for very little obvious "value". Not to mention leasehold properties are typically worth less so the increased fees go down even less well with clients...

In your instance there is unlikely to be much done to warrant an increase assuming that all of the above is bypassed by the fact there is no landlord.

By all means if you want a quote drop me a trust with the details :)
 
Find an independent RICS chartered surveyor in your area. Even specialist full surveys with structural assessments should top out at £750-£850 inc VAT.

www.rics.org then if necessary they will recommend a local chartered structural engineer (full MIStructE not just a CEng)

The smaller independent surveyors who are often fellow members FRICS would prob charge £500 all in.

Also, rising damp doesn't really exist. Often it is condensation in older houses which can cause a huge amount of water to build up on floors/carpets/walls. A surprising amount really, up to several litres per day all condensing on cool spots on walls and floors. To resolve this passive vents or even active can make a huge difference. In suspended floors, between the cavity space below and outside, with concrete floors head height in the rooms. Sometimes (if applicable) having the cavities cleared out is part of the solution.

Or / and it can be caused by a) a breached air gap/cavity by building material, broken material or soil etc, b) a filled air gap with cavity insulation and especially the wrong type when the building shouldn't have it and or c) loft insulation covering the open cavities on construction with open cavities at loft eves d) a water source dripping like burst pipe, broken joint, foul water breach, leaking roof dripping into cavity. There are others but these tend to be the main ones.

DPC/DPM failures don't cause the issues propagated by the damp proof industry in the way they claim requires thousands ££££ to fix.

Houses used to be well vented before all the retrospective cavity wall insulation, chimneys blocked up, carpets, double glazing, loft insulation etc so water easily evaporated and would pass outside.

A Chartered surveyor and their builder are much better placed to resolve genuine DPM/DPC failures than a lot of so called damp specialists and it will be considerably cheaper than the injection chemicals etc .
 
Lovely looking place Marv, great arch over the front door. I think we were in a similar position to you as the oldest part of our house dates back to around 1825.

We went for a Homebuyers Survey done by a independent RICS surveyor, cost £495+VAT. Didn't turn up much bar the usual back covering (eg the electrics should be immediately checked over).

No major issues since buying, think one of the chimneys needs re-pointing but need to find a roofer who cab be bothered to return calls.
 
i believe as stated above the right hand side drain is the stench pipe, it doesn't run into the roof space but rather caps at the top of the pipe? All the advice is here is fairly sound. I would ask some questions of the vendor though, find out when the refit was completed, it does look like its been done to a good standard but if it was recent it could be covering up some issues and it might take a while before they become known to you. I am actually studying to become a chartered surveyor and from the pictures it looks in decent condition. People need to understand that houses do not and will not last for ever, you can of course prolong the life of a house with regular effective maintenance but most people don`t factor in these costs. In my somewhat limited experience you can tell how good a house has been built by going into the loft, a decent roof normally means a decent house is underneath it. Not always true of course. Check that items that required it when the work was completed had the relevant planning permission and sign off from building control, for example if you look at picture 9 it looks like they have removed some of the old external wall to open the space into the lean-to conservatory. If you have a 2nd viewing check the corners of everything, windows and rooms for signs of even the smallest trace of any mold, if you find some ask about it.
 
Great advice so far guys thank you.

Spoke to an independent surveyor yesterday. He was talking about having taught Historical Building Conservation at a local university and one of his team have just done a 2 week course in lime based mortar so it sounds like he would be competent for the job. Bonus part was his quote was£600 less than Heritage House!

Had a call from the Sellers last night, the house they wanted was sold the day before they were able to offer. They had initially said they'd remove the house from the market if they couldn't get that house (prior to accepting our offer) but would keep looking to see if they found somewhere else.
 
Ok, we've had the survey. It doesn't make for fantastic reading. Our areas of concern are the roof really.

I've uploaded a few exerts and put them in a word doc which i've upload. If any of you guys could have a read through and see if you have any thoughts. I have spoken to te surveyor who suggested it wouldn't be a deal breaker for him and that we just need to be aware of problems.

I'm trying to get some quotes for the work so we have an idea but i'm worried about all the damp proofing scams out there and wondered if anyone had any advice on that front.

Hopefully the below document works for you all.

http://docdro.id/fyIoQJs
 
Marvt74 said:
Ok, we've had the survey. It doesn't make for fantastic reading. Our areas of concern are the roof really.

I've uploaded a few exerts and put them in a word doc which i've upload. If any of you guys could have a read through and see if you have any thoughts. I have spoken to te surveyor who suggested it wouldn't be a deal breaker for him and that we just need to be aware of problems.

I'm trying to get some quotes for the work so we have an idea but i'm worried about all the damp proofing scams out there and wondered if anyone had any advice on that front.

Hopefully the below document works for you all.

http://docdro.id/fyIoQJs
Click to expand...

I have had a read, whilst nothing overly unusual for an older property, there is a fair amount of remedial work to be done and costs incurred at some stage. It's one of those that you could live with the issues but a) the house will suffer from damp due to roof issues and general construction as I mentioned previously and b) you will have to pay at some point.

I could imagine roof repairs could easily be 20k as replacement will need to meet building regs so it could be a roof off effort.

Extension roof repair £3k-£5k although not essential if they have tied it in correctly to the house at low pitch.

Any roof repairs are likely to require scaffolding.

I could see

Repointing / brick repair - £2k-£5k
Damp remedial passive / active ventilation and cavity clearance £1.5k-£3.5k
Roof, frame and timbers - £2.5k - £30k depending on extent of work inc extension
Guttering £500-£2k

Remedial work isn't always cheap sadly. The surveyor should be able to recommend and can potentially project manager contractors though which is well worth it.

If you need to underpin the foundations then £20k-£60k.
 
Thanks for that. Think it’s what we were afraid of. We budgeted for some of the work that we could see from the outside (brick and pointing) but the roof issues are potentially taking it well over what we’d be able to afford.

I’ve contacted one roofer and also a damp proof company so will have to see what they come back with.
 
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