Seller incorrectly completed the TA6 form

[Optimist2020]

Hello wise Mumnetters, after some advice . Me and my partner recently (end of July 25) purchased a property. Within 5 weeks we noted issues such as the upstairs toilet being incorrectly fitted leading to waste water leaking on the bathroom floor and a new floor, floorboards needing to be replaced.

I turned on the central heating and the two radiators in the living room , hall way and downstairs bathroom do not come on. I contacted British Gas whose engineer viewed the property and advised that the pipe work has been incorrectly fitted and therefore the radiators do not work.

I checked the TA6 form and the sellers ticked that the central heating was in good working order and the heating system report is to follow. I have searched my emails and can’t find the heating system report and notified my conveyancing solicitor of the issues and awaiting their response.

Has anyone experienced anything similar ?

I’m tempted to obtain a heating system report as we have been in the property just over 2 months and I feel the incorrect pipework and lack of radiators working downstairs would be an issue the former owners would of been aware off. Not sure If id be successful in a small claims court ?

When you say they don’t work do they not get hot at all? Or just not as hot as they should.

Bodge toilet fittings is not a reason for legal action…

Honestly my house that I bought 3 years ago is full of bodge jobs done under the previous owner, so I feel your pain. But sadly poor workmanship (by contractors, presumably, and which may have even been done prior to the last ownership and only resulted in problems now) aren't a basis for legal action. I think you'll really struggle to prove any of it was evident at the time of the sale, and your seller isn't a developer.

You've also got to think about how much you might actually get versus all the cost and time and stress it will cause you.

There’s no central heating at all in the living room , we have a log burner so we will have to use that this winter. The bodged toilet fittings they would have known about it as within 6 weeks of us using the toilet all the waste water leaked and destroyed the bathroom floor .

They might not have known the toilet was leaking though

I had a slow leak in a rental

Landlord was horrified when he saw how much damage there was to the floor, but it was a slow leak we only reported it when we saw water on the wooden floor

By that time it has been leaking for awhile while

I absolutely feel your pain. My sellers also put central heating was working fine. When I moved in boiler wasn’t working at all and I was told didn’t look like it had been working for a long time

me being a know it all 1st time buyer did run the upstairs tap and she looked horrified, stupid me only ran the cold tap so didn’t notice there was no hot water in the place

lots of my pipes were not the right thickness and got replaced as and when we did that room, they weren’t illegal though

unfortunately there’s not a lot you can do as it will be expensive and time consuming for you. Please spend your time and energy in enjoying your new home and getting things as you want them

You and your solicitor should have chased up the heating report.

And tested the heating straight away.

I've had two houses with microbore pipes and it's annoying but still worked.

This.

I’ve rarely had “notice” that my heating was going to pack up!

I always worry when I switch the heating on after the summer

It’s a lesson learnt , we will have to pay a few thousand to get everything sorted . At least the insurance company has agreed to rectify and sanitise the bathroom floor .

We have heating downstairs in the form of a log burner and underfloor heating in the garden room so at least we won’t be freezing this winter with a small child .

Have you tried rebalancing the system, throttle back the upstairs radiators to force more through downstairs. Why did they use such small pipework downstairs and how did they connect it to standard radiators?

Is the toilet leaking out of the bowl, unlikely unless it is cracked, or overflowing due to a faulty flush mechanism which is easy to replace.

for various reasons we don’t have our heating on downstairs so there is a chance they didn’t know as well
i haven’t heard of a heating systems report either

it is awful but it is the way of selling a house we sold my FIL house and it has a comprehensive survey and I am sure they found things

With the heating, are you sure it's not split into zones? Somehow, houses will have the boiler set to heat upstairs and downstairs separately.

Also, I would definitely get a second opinion, we were without heating for a month and the first few engineers British Gas sent were focusing on the wrong thing

OP kindly you are not going to get anywhere with your sellers on this. Various reasons:

1. They do not have to supply a heating report, if you had wanted one it was on you to get one done before exchange. You have exchanged and completed so the onus is on you.

1. You cannot prove the heating was not working at the point of exchange/completion:

1. You have contractually accepted the condition of the property, having had opportunity to verify the sellers replies. You not checking is not an excuse.

If the sellers misrepresented the situation then that is different, but here the boiler service is fine and at least some radiators work.

@BadgernTheGarden the previous owners brought the house in 2019 and moved to upsize so I”m not sure if they installed the pipework or if it was there when they brought it . I’ll get a second opinion, the British Gas engineer suggested flushing the system and we may be able to get heat downstairs .

The botched toilet pipe work points upwards as opposed to downward and the leak was caused due to the water not being able to flow form correctly.

I thought I’d ask on Mumsnet @onwards2025 before I speak to a solicitor but the general consensus is I won’t get anywhere so will leave it

@Optimist2020 please just remember why you wanted your house and the feelings you had when you moved in

*the previous owners brought the house in 2019 and moved to upsize so I”m not sure if they installed the pipework or if it was there when they brought it . I’ll get a second opinion, the British Gas engineer suggested flushing the system and we may be able to get heat downstairs ."

It's unlikely that the downstairs radiators didn't work at all for 6 years and I have to say I would be unimpressed to be told the piping is just "too narrow " and needs replacing/ power flushing because that is not a proper diagnosis / explanation of why it's not heating downstairs, as some houses use microbore for the entire system and the heating works fine.

British gas are notorious for recommending a power flush whenever there is an issue with a heating system, in the same way that some garages recommend ( unneeded) brake pad changes etc when you take your car in for new tyres.

You are likely to struggle to prove that the heating didn’t work at the time the seller said it did. Plus, it seems from this thread that microbore pipes aren’t wrong. I’ve just bought a house and to get a check on the boiler and heating I had to pay for an engineer to come and do it. It wasnt a standard part of the conveyancing process, it was an optional extra. Did you pay for this?

British Gas 'engineers' told me all kinds of rubbish at my last home. They made it up as they went along, and it seemed to be so I could not claim under the repair scheme I had signed up to! Several people would show up to see the various issues, but not once did they leave without having made an excuse for why they could not fix the issue.

I find if you ask three different engineers the same thing, you also tend to get different answers so you would have to go to extreme lengths to provide enough unequivocal evidence to make this stick in court. I am very used to the money claim system and it is not anywhere near as simple as it used to be. For one thing, the fees to claim in the county court are hefty compared to a few years back, and if you lose, you could find you have spent a lot of money ... more than it would cost to repair this issue.

Could it be that you simply need a pump fitting to aid the system to circulate the hot water to the rads? This is the advice I have been given, where I live now (but we have not tried it yet).

My house has a new heat pump (it is a new house which only has electricity, no gas or backup heat method) and I only get heat downstairs but it's a 3-level house. Downstairs is a steady 23 degrees and never loses heat, even with no heating switched on until I open the patio doors.

Middle floor is 18, and the top floor hovers around 11 degrees. Big rooms as well, plus very high ceilings. The two large upper rooms are too cold to spend time or sleep in, which means I have only two usable bedrooms out of four. That is crazy as they are the loveliest spaces. Big bathrooms too, both freezing cold upstairs.

I have seriously considered having a timber cabin built inside my upstairs rooms for heat retention. I am surprised nobody does this ... like a lodge inside your big room, and then you can have far cosier space! :)

@Walkden @MungoforPresident I will contact another gas engineer not British Gas as I took their word that all the piping downstairs is incorrect however from this thread it appears the micro pipes is quite common and I need a second opinion.

I

Also, it's been spring and summer so heating probably hasn't been on for 6+ months. So they filled out the form as heating was fine when they last used it, but problems have come up now which they may not have known about.

" the micro pipes is quite common"

I believe it has fallen out of fashion as power flushing does not work particularly well. There is normally a manifold (which is a distribution point to which the microbore pipes are connected.)

There may be a problem here I suppose but I would not be happy if I was simply told it was plumbed wrong or similar because it's not a proper diagnosis of the issue ( which is what you need in a report)

I'd get it fixed now, rather than be cold all winter. Has the log fire been installed correctly?

When my mum had 2 rads not working at end of the pipeline it needed a powerflush, she would not have known the heating wasn't working until the day it didn't.
With regards to the wc, we found out this week this was incorrectly installed 14 yrs ago when it finally leaked. Hadn't realised it was a bodge job til then.
I'd say this is just one of the joys of property ownership.
I second not using Brit Gas. Total cowboys. If you cant get a personal recommendation then find a local heating engineer for your boiler by searching the brand and 'approved engineers'. Do not use a big nationwide company.

." If you cant get a personal recommendation then find a local heating engineer for your boiler by searching the brand and 'approved engineers'"

This.

Also checking there is a magnetic filter on the central heating circuit.