Advice Needed Re Damp In My Mum and Dad's House

[neilsumner]

The building surveyor read high readings throught the utility and kitchen area. Without further professional investigation you are buying a house blind after being told it has damp.
The damp was traced to a bridged DPC outside, however once the temperatures were taken into account we were able to better understand the scale of the problem and dismiss many of the other high readings as 'normal' for the conditions.

Like I said when you are spending those amounts of money you need the reasurance of a professional that can assess if the readings are high because of an unheated house or high because there is some other problem that needs to be addressed. I would not have been happy buying a house thinking 'Oh well it's been empty therefore there's bound to be a bit damp' I needed to know the scale of the problem before committing. YMMV.

-Neil

 

[neilsumner]

the house was empty over winter -Neil

I think it would have helped if you had mentioned this earlier...

An empty house, not heated, over winter, will show some effects due to damp.

But why then did none of the other rooms in the same house not show any high readings?

-Neil

 

[masona]

My guess is that you will always have a cold spot, my son front bedroom is the coldest of all our room because the sun never shine or heat that room.

 

[neilsumner]

My guess is that you will always have a cold spot, my son front bedroom is the coldest of all our room because the sun never shine or heat that room.

You've hit the nail on the head. It's always going to be a guess untill you've had somone around to quantify the risk more than you get from a standard surveyors report.
Personally I would not be willing to put what amounts to a huge amount of money on the line without trying to assess further what the risks are. Some people are higher risk takers than others but for the sake of £80 I was happy to pay to get further details of what the surveyors report described as "High damp readings" were.

Cheers

-Neil

 

[^woody^]

If you have had proper survey done, by a proper surveyor, then there is no reason why he can't investigate and comment on any damp problem.

What has happened over the past few years, is that the surveyor will try and refer the client to a plethora of other 'specialists' in order to weasel out of his obligations and minimise his risk

A damp 'expert' is just someone who works for a damp treatment company. A building surveyor should know just as much, and be able to consider any damp issue in context of the property generally