We bought a house 6 years ago that had had two internal walls removed. One supporting, one not. There was an indemnity policy on the work and our solicitor advised us at the time this was adaquate…
Well we’re now coming to sell and it turns out that is not in fact adequate. After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing we’ve agreed to get the council in to regularise the work that was done. They arrive in the morning and I’m terrified.
We know that the calculations the structural engineer provided were not followed. The builder said this was because when they started doing the work they realised some of it wasn’t necessary (for example, the engineer plans said there should have been an RSJ for both walls that were removed, the builder said that only the supporting wall needed an RSJ and the other wall didn’t because once they removed the plaster they realised that there was already a structural wooden beam above, running in the correct direction).
We have no reason to believe the work was not done to a good standard- it’s now 8 years old and there is absolutely no movement/ cracking/ sagging etc. Everything looks perfect.
But I know absolutely nothing about building control and I’m terrified they’re going to come out and tell us it’s unsafe. Not only will that mean our house sale and purchase will fall through AGAIN (and we’ll lose our dream house 😔), but we will have to pay for thousands of pounds of work to be done to correct it.
Nothing anyone can do I know, but just nice to have a sounding board. This entire process has been so stressful and I just don’t feel like I can take anymore bad news.