Truth and Consequence

The lady of the house followed me around incessantly.

I was not sure if she just didn't trust me in her home or if she was hanging around in a quest for knowledge of what to look for in her onward move, that is if I reported back to my clients, her purchasers that the place was in good condition and worth the money.

I would say that she did have some justification in being concerned in case I broke, damaged, disturbed or just plain fiddled with something that I ought not to.

I have been known to break the odd ornament, the emphasis being on odd, cause damage to decorative finishes, rip up tight fitted carpets and mess about with settings on boilers and electric showers.

It is not that I am clumsy, awkward, ham fisted or malevolent.

I do these things on occasion in pursuit of further information.

I am on the trail of something interesting and the answer may be in an otherwise concealed, innacessible or prohibited place. My clients, as prospective buyers, when availed of a key piece of information are usually thrilled but the house sellers are invariably far from it.

The shadowing lady led me to start a running commentary on what I was looking for in a particular room or location in her pristine home.

By way of a back story, my career in surveying started in 1985. It is true to say that at that time the only defects of note and mention were damp ,woodworm and dry rot. These horrors had captured the imagination of the house buying public through consumer programme features or articles in the media about how one's dream home could turn into a nightmare from the ravages of rising damp, the nibbling of wood to perforation by annobium punctatum (woodworm) or that phenomena of voracious fungal attack, dry rot.

In the 1980's and in my working area the cost of sorting out a damp and timber problem could be, on average, £500. In today's money that is hardly significant but bearing in mind that a two bedroomed terraced house, pre war built and that first step on the housing ladder was £14,750 the cost of the repairs was a tangible proportion of the transaction.

The now relatively paltry sum of £500 could be a real deal breaker.

But what of surveying today?

Well, I do not exaggerate by saying that I have driven an estate car for the last 15 years not out of choice, although they are useful, but mainly to cart around my equipment and a few box files of notes and information on problems to be expected in housing and environments in the modern age.

Take the beloved home of the lady trailing me through it.

It was built about 1970 in a seaside town as a true bungalow. Cavity walls, as per the norm for modern housing, tiled roof, solid floors so nothing unexpected or unconventional. To complicate matters, at some time in the 1980's a first floor was constructed.

As I explained to the lady I was checking for all manner of issues and by careful investigation these could be either eliminated as a problem or pursued, again, if there was a reasonable trail of suspicion to follow.

Take the roof, when built it was common to fit asbestos cement bonded sheets at the verge. Asbestos was then perceived and promoted as the wonder material being durable, low maintenance and cheap. I pointed it out to the lady.

The solid floors may have been laid onto rubble and waste from urban clearance sites as was the widespread and acceptable practice of the era. Over the passage of time the hardcore and any sulphates from old chimney linings could expand and push out the external walls of a house. The lady went a bit pale.

The cavity wall would be secured at regular spacings by metal ties. If as a child you ever trespassed on a building site you may have treasured the butterfly wire twists as legitimate booty. In a seaside town the salt sprays can cause the ties to corrode, expand and fracture the mortar joints.

The lady hesitated to follow me into the next room.

I explained that a first floor uplift on the footprint of a bungalow would require a lot of strategically placed steelwork to support the loadings of joists, floors, fittings, furniture and inhabitants. The lady noticeable ducked and shirked where she stood under a downstand beam in the hallway.

The upstairs floors were typically for the 1980's in large chipboard sheets. I explained to the lady that early chipboard was just not very good and was prone to sagging between the joist supports. My impression of John Cleese doing his Ministry of Silly Walks Sketch as I made my way across the master bedroom confirmed that, yes, the house contained the weak, undulating flooring.

I was not deliberately tormenting the lady but I could have written a text book on the basis of my visit to her house.

I dare not mention my mental checklist of potential problems but these included the clay subsoils beneath the foundations, the relative proximity of a crumbling cliff line, yet more asbestos in her ornate Artex decorative finishes, a few misted up and failed double glazing units, toxic mould in the shower cubicle, potential electro-magnetic fields around the electrical consumer unit, the possibility of lethal carbon monoxide from a poor flue arrangement for the gas fire in the living room and a threat to the foundations from a once ornamental tree but now oversized and sprouting from the base of the outer wall.

Similarly I did not disclose that my pre-visit investigations had considered but then dismissed such issues as radon, sink holes, mining activity, flight paths, flooding, landslip, subsidence, contaminative issues, socio-ecomomic factors and education catchment areas.

By now my host was a gibbering wreck. I reassured her that, in fact, I had not found anything unexpected given the type, age and location of her home. It was actually quite pleasant, nicely fitted out and decorated.

She did ask me, as I was preparing to leave, to give her a frank opinion as to what would be the best thing consider for her next purchase. I seem to think that I replied, flippantly, had she thought of a caravan.