Owning your own home

Oh, and changed a lavatory into an ensuite shower room and dunny.

Excellent! Thank you all for narrowing it down, I’ll get someone to remove the paint properly to get that (hopefully) Welsh slate to show, far better than the black cast iron look that’s for sure

If the layout doesn't match the plans on record, then solicitors and surveyors will ask questions and may want proof of compliance. Valuations for a mortgage are often £0 until this is sorted.

As a structural engineer I often get asked by people in a panic trying to buy/sell, to provide calcs or a report for walls or chimney breasts etc taken out previously without building control approval.

I think you can retrospectively get BC certification through a process called 'regularisation'

Worth noting that in some aspects of work the Trades themselves can self certify if they are a member of a particular scheme.

I think you can retrospectively get BC certification through a process called 'regularisation'

I did this for a bay window we replaced, cost about 10x an indemnity policy which in hindsight we should have done as the guy spent all of 5 minutes looking at the window.

Worth noting that in some aspects of work the Trades themselves can self certify if they are a member of a particular scheme.

Yeah, this is a Competent Person Scheme e.g. the big window business can issue a FENSA certificate, but smaller/artisan firms aren't registered so you have to go through BC.

I did this for a bay window we replaced, cost about 10x an indemnity policy which in hindsight we should have done as the guy spent all of 5 minutes looking at the window.

Yeah. I guess you need to weigh up whether the lack of certification has an impact on what people will pay for your gaff, rather than comparing the cost against the subsequent indemnity.

Ultimately an indemnity only protects you from subsequent fines and enforcement from BC, it doesn't protect you against 'was it done right?'.

With a BC certification you have, um, some sense of the work having been done properly, although it doesn't mean you won't have any subsequent problems with it.

Le Sigh etc.

You can end up with a bit of a circular argument too. One party insisting that they don't have building control sign off because it didn't need building control sign off and the other side being unable to verify whether this is the case because they don't know what exact work has been done.

If the layout doesn't match the plans on record, then solicitors and surveyors will ask questions and may want proof of compliance. Valuations for a mortgage are often £0 until this is sorted.

As a structural engineer I often get asked by people in a panic trying to buy/sell, to provide calcs or a report for walls or chimney breasts etc taken out previously without building control approval.

I had to get a report from a structural engineer before I did the work to certify that it was ok, provided that to the freeholder before I could proceed.

Hah yeah. Then at that point it becomes 'do you want the place, or not?'

Which is a fair question, in a good market. In a bad one, not so much...

The other freeholder is bankrupt so it’s a bit of a mess. We have spent collectively £25k at this point on legal fees getting our leases extended. It’s likely that the court will be signing them for us as they haven’t engaged at all.

You'd be amazed (or probably not) how many people don't bother!

"but my builder (who only takes cash) said it would be fine"

Bigger issue is that without a completion certificate, selling may be very difficult.

Indemnity insurance is cheap. @TW, ibid.

Ditto.

I speak from a vast pool of anecdata of buying a house.

Our (full fat, all the bells and whistles) survey brought up that plans were different, and there was no building control sign off.

The bank's separate (as full fat as they mandated, for which we paid an additional £1,000) survey may have brought up the same. It didn't affect anything.

I asked our solicitor if we should follow up with Building Control and Planning, and he asked why bother?

We paid £50 for insurance against being pinged for it.

YMMV, of course.

We viewed a flat (ex-local authority) which had something odd about the bathroom, I asked if the owner had removed a wall and the estate agent said something like "oh yeah they did, but dont worry the seller will cover the indemnity insurance if the council finds out when you buy"

lol no thanks

we put ours in the skip

That's where my folks got one of their fireplaces. I think it was marble too.

As a structural engineer I often get asked by people in a panic trying to buy/sell, to provide calcs or a report for walls or chimney breasts etc taken out previously without building control approval.

I think my parents had the right paperwork when they took out a chimney breast 30+ years ago but I've no idea where it is. I'd have thought the lack of falling down would be more helpful though. Different if it was recent.

As for £0 valuations; that would be ace for probate, more details please!

Leaky roof woes: Season 1 Episode 2

"Hard to pin down roofer" turned up today and within 10 mins found the issue using a hose. It looks like a combination or poor valley edges that can't cope with so much water (plus were jammed with some old mortar and leaves that were pinned by the slates) combined with a very slight overhang on the new apex roof that is causing water in ingress under the slates on the OG roof.

Even though it should be the builder who did this bit of roofing to fix, I can't be arsed with the hassle, so hopefully we'll get the roofer to fix this week before the deluge of Scottish rain hits at the end of the week.

If anyone cares, looking at the below picture, its the overhang/detail in the top left of this photo plus a section of the valley a little further down that is the culprit.

What that doesn't explain is why there was wet/mouldy gyproc when the OG roof was opened up, but hopefully that was an older leak that has since been fixed.

Nice. Glad you've identified the culprits. I did wonder if it was a valley issue simply because it sounded like a lot of water was getting in and faulty valleys are a great way of providing volume.

@Howard yeah thanks for the thoughts on this. It was actually amazing to see the shear volume of water that comes off the apex and is directed into that valley. Hopefully this will be the end of a long saga and I can finally paint my kitchen.

Our solicitors moved us to a new case handler/lead who's a whole load more responsive and pro-active than the first, which is a breath of fresh air.
All the seller's forms are through, searches back, just 4 of 28 enquires raised left to be answered fully, so hopefully not long to go (5 months in).

Up-side of it taking a while is that there's less time paying both rent and mortgage, even if that means less time to do the renovations without living there at the same time.

I know you said you didn't think the rubble could be removed but I reckon you could fit a small child down there

Just make sure to tie a rope round them so you can pull them out if they get stuck/get some rubble too heavy to carry.

My 3 year old son and some rope was my first thought.
If all my neighbours kids teamed up it could be done in half a day.

You need some proper PPE.

Like a pointy stick, in case they rise up against you.