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Damp - builder not highlighted...

3 replies

SoulTrain · 26/01/2013 13:28

We bought a house about a year ago, a builder came into it and redid the whole house taking every wall back to bare brick, replastering and decorating among other things. The cost of the whole job was close to £30,000. This house was my husband's Nan's house and we were aware of damp and asked the builder to investigate.

A few weeks after the job was finished, we noticed flaking of the paint round our chimney breast. We called him back and he said that it was sediment settling in the plaster, came back another time after that and then got a bit dismissive....cut a long story short, we now having rising damp on every wall on our ground floor. We have had two specialists quoting appx £3000 to fix, not to mention the upheaval of having plaster drilled off a meter high round my ground floor.

Is this something a builder should have seen? Have I got any legal rights to ask the builder to rectify the situation at his cost or is it just something that's unfortunate luck?

OP posts:
Collaborate · 26/01/2013 13:35

Wouldn't you need a surveyor to advise you about damp rather than a builder? Builders build. Surveyors advise about faults in buildings.

PatriciaHolm · 26/01/2013 14:56

If you were aware of damp, you needed a surveyors report. Did you get a full report when you bought the house?

SoulTrain · 26/01/2013 16:26

We went on the people's survey who were buying the house before (family friend) which didn't indicate such a bad problem. When I say we were aware of damp it was around the fireplace and the plaster/wallpaper was literally coming away so I would have thought it was fairly obvious there was a problem? The area was stripped back and I vaguely remember a heater being in front of it when I called in one day.

I'm not angling for blame, I just genuinely didn't know how obvious to a builder with over 30 years experience damp would be when we have it to such a large degree such a short time later.

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