Hi I'm buying my first home with my fiancee and we've had our home buyer report results back today and I'm a bit concerned. The house is unoccupied and has been refurbished, and we were told previously that there was damp in the house and it had been treated. You can still patches on the walls however but we were assumed this was fine.
Anyway we had the survey report back today and it's raised a few issues, all regarding damp. See below extract of the report:
The walls are of solid, rendered, masonry construction. The front walls have been rebuilt and are of cavity construction with a rendered outer leaf. The inner leaf is believed to be blockwork. The walls are a mixture of pebble dash & smooth rendered. There are several air vents to ventilate the air space beneath the ground floor. Internally, the external walls have been plastered; whilst those in the kitchen and utility have been dry-lined with plasterboard with a final coat of plaster.
The front walls contain a plastic damp-proof course. We cannot confirm whether a damp-proof course is present on the rear walls because of the external render coating obscuring the construction. However, bearing in mind the age of the property, the walls are likely to have a chemical damp-proof course.
High damp meter readings were recorded internally throughout the ground floor. We believe these high reading are due to a combination of factors such as the absence of an effective damp-proof course, the failure of the existing damp-proof course and the external render bridging the dampproof course. It is evident that a damp and treatment has been undertaken and, if enforceable guarantees exist, the original treatment company should return and report. However, as this will take some time, you should ask a Property Care Association (www.property-care.org/) registered company surveyor to inspect the property for damp and report to you before exchange of contracts so that all costs of treatment are known before purchase. Any further inspection should include a check on the whole property. We refer you to the page in this report entitled 'What to do now'. This is a risk to the building and we refer you to our comments in Section J. Condition Rating 3. Further Investigation.
In addition to any damp treatment necessary, the sub-floor ventilation should be improved and all sub-floor areas should be exposed and inspected for further decay and we refer you to our comments later in this report.
And in section J this is stated in 'risks to the building'
E1: Chimney stacks - damp within stack/s;
E2: Roof coverings - defective fillets/flashings;
E3: Rainwater pipes and gutters - defective/leaking gutters;
E4: Main walls - damp present;
F1: Roof structure - damp penetration;
F4: Floors - damp present; inadequate under-floor ventilation
Can anybody maybe give a better idea of what the implication is of this? It's obviously very concerning but could some of it be the result of damp that has been 'resolved'?