First Time Buyer - New house worries

[Beefy2013]

Hello, I have found your forum doing a few google searches on other topics.

Me and my partner are buying a 2005 build house. We have recently got our Home Buyer Survey through and it has 2 points that are of concern - hopefully you lovely people can help us out.

1) The blue bricks or engineering bricks were of concern to the surveyor and rated this problems a 2 out of 3. On some areas around the house some of the blue bricks are being covered by the drive for example. probably half way up some of the blue bricks. The surveyor stated that this may be a problem for damp.

This obviously has us worried. The driveway was put down the same time as the house, so surely it would have had to be signed off by the relevant authorities / regulator bodies at the time?

Will damp definitely set in? Or is the more of an advisory, kinda like a car advisory on an MOT? Could do with looking at but not major? Or is it more of tha CYA (cover your arse) exercise for the surveyor, so if any damp did occur there is no come back to him? What is the actual chance of damp setting in, in this scenario?

2) The house is on a hill and detached. The neighbour a few years ago I believe installed a drive, and because it's on a hill it's slightly raised. The problem the surveyor picked up was the fact that this drive is now pressing on the fence causing it to bow along the bottom.

Could this have happened because of settlement? I understand buildings/structures settle and therefore move slightly. The surveyor didn't even rate this with a number just noted it saying that the fence could collapse.

The vendor is apparently getting a builder to sort the fence out. What would this builder need to do to sort it out? Surely concrete or something to prevent this from happening any further? Could my suspicion be correct that the neighbours driveway will have settled now and will no longer cause concern.

Sorry for all the questions folks but we don't know anyone that can be of assistance.

I look forward to your responses.

Kind Regards

 

[r896neo]

The drive will not have settled it will simply have been installed badly and is putting pressure on the fence. They have probably built up the ground behind the fence by a few inches and are effectively using it to retain the new drive which a fence is obviously not suitable for.

Its hard to say exactly if this is what has happened without a photo.

As for the damp issue the ouside ground level of any driveway path or patio should be a minimum of 150mm (which equates to 2 bricks) below the DPC of the building. It would be fair to assume the change in brick colour is probably the dpc level but your surveyor should be able to confirm this to you.

Ask him for further information about your queries as you paid good money for him to do the job.

If the ground level is at least 75mm below dpc you will probably be ok but any less than that would have a fair chance of problems at some point down the line.

 

[dann09]

Dont rely on past BCO possibilities - deal with what is there now.

I dont see how i could properly advise you without pics of the two problems, it would save a lot of tedious questions.
But others might see it differently.