Are you buying a historic manor house, a chapel conversion, A Georgian or Victorian town house, or even your first two up two down terraced house?
Looking beyond the new kitchens and bathrooms, freshly painted walls, and newly carpeted floors is essential for getting an honest and accurate understanding of your property.
While the property may be well maintained or fully refurbished, and ready to move into, a building survey can provide you with insight and advice about what is going on beneath the surface of the glossy renovations.
Take, for example, this Methodist chapel conversion that our Harrogate surveyor, Paul Cunniff, visited recently. The original conversion work was undertaken approximately 40 years ago. During the original conversion all the original window openings were altered and the windows replaced with modern PVC units. Aside from significantly altering the appearance of the building, they are now failing.
Maintaining the basic structure will prolong the life of the building and reduce potentially expensive future maintenance costs. Ensuring the roof covering is in good condition, clearing the gutters of plant growth, and keep the ground levels below the sub floor air bricks may sound obvious, but many owners don’t do this.
Maintaining the external walls using lime-based mortar is also recommended. Many of these older buildings do not have a damp proof course but rely on good water management and evaporation to keep the inside surfaces dry. This works well until the property is repointed in cement mortar, and residual moisture becomes trapped in the wall leading to damp patches forming inside.
A thorough and well-thought-out building survey will provide you with the information you need to make an informed decision on whether to buy a property, and the money that will need to be spent on it. Even in cases where a home has been well-maintained, a survey report will give you the correct advice on how to maintain the fabric of the building using the correct materials and repairs in order to protect your home for future costly damage.
