Structural engineer missed structural issue in report

[rrrrrreatt]

I’m really hoping someone could give some advice as we’ve found ourselves in a nightmare situation.

We recently bought a house, we had a RCIS level 3 survey which recommended a structural engineer report. The structural engineer said there were signs of historic movement but no signs of recent movement and no present detriment to the integrity plus uneven floors throughout, particularly in the dining room.

When we went in we found the wall to the right of our dining room bay (ground floor rear) was bulging into the room near the base, with cracks in the paper and clearly something loose inside. We investigated and long story short, the wall of the bay window seemed to be unknitting itself from the external wall!

Now we actually know what the signs of a bay window coming away are (thanks to Google and our tradespeople) there were plenty of visible signs, even before we peed back the paper.

We now need urgently sort this, it threatens the structural integrity of the entire rest of the property and the safety of our contractors currently working on site.

We contacted the original structural engineer and he came out today. He said it’s caused by differential movement, gave very scant instruction about what to do and had to be pushed for any further help. When I said I was worried about the thick loose sheet of plaster falling on tradespeople doing the work, he told me to hit it with a hammer to make it fall!

He said there’s no sign of recent movement but there’s also no way he’d have missed an issue like this so it must have developed since he last visited 6 months. We’ve looked back on RightMove though and you can clearly see the lintel crack and wonky windowsills.

We’re pretty unhappy with all of this. We want to make a formal complaint and our ideal outcome would be he claims on his insurance for the costs above the French door (we planned to put one in the bay anyway). Is this reasonable? Has anyone else has to deal with a problem like this? It’s a big unexpected cost for a serious issue and I’m also nervous about what other issues he could have potentially missed.

Do you have legal expense cover on your house insurance that you could use for potential legal action? If so you could take advice from a specialist lawyer ( I would go to one of the larger firms) who will probably get expert reports done.

This is bad. He sounds negligent, and vague.

They never look properly and are 100% vague. Get a builder to look at any future purchase. The surveyors are a joke.

Unfortunately not, the house is currently being renovated (it’s a proper building site with no heating and partial electricity) and isn’t occupied so we had to take specialist renovation insurance and it only covers us for fire/flood/storm/etc.

So you’ve bought a old wreck requiring full renovation, and it requires a bit more? He may well be right and the wet/dry of the seasons, or say the removal of a tree, or a major new leak, or repair of a leak, have caused this.
Perhaps if you can get the EA original photos you may have a leg to stand on, if it shows the bowed wall, but in any case without your own insurance you’ll have to pay yourself to take him to court.
What repair have the builders proposed?
What about the rest of the house? Sounds like you have very shallow foundations, very common under bays, which are prone to movement anyway.
Do you have any pictures?

What you described could well be historical movement

I think you'd be best to spend the money on another report by another engineer to be sure

If you can see it on the Rightmove cracks had you considered it might be a problem.

There was a situation quite a long time ago where a Surveyor was advertising themselves (in Yellow Pages) as being a member of RICS when they weren't.

I would contact RICS and first establish that they are a member (you may be able to find a list of members on their website) and then ask RICS what they suggest is the best course of action to take. Do this via email or post and keep all the documents and replies.

I’d think you’re on a hiding to nothing here. You’re already having works done, just get the bay underpinned.

Bays are notorious for movement and yes, it changes with the seasons.

And I say that as a surveyor and building engineer.

Bays are notorious for movement. You’ve bought a renovation property, there’s going to be more of this. And his advice to bring the plaster down isn’t bad, the whole ceiling will probably come down anyway. We almost had a while ceiling come down in ours, lath and plaster, builders got boards and new plaster board up just in time…

Do smash the lose plaster off with a hammer. A crumbling lintel is not gonna make your house fall down, it's likely that you'll discover more of those. It's probably better to devote your money and time to carrying out the repairs, these things come with the territory of buying an old house. In a way it's a good thing it became obvious now, so that you can fix it at this stage, rather than it cracking in a year or 2 after you have decorated everything. If it's a lath and plaster ceiling, you can try to stabilise and rescue the ceiling by taking up the floorboards above and putting down mash and pouring fine plaster of paris onto it, and then repair any cracks from below with fine lime putty.

We bought a lived in house in need of modernisation and trusyrd the expert we paid to flag if that modernisation included structural work. Now we’ve spent hours researching bay windows we know the warning signs but we (wrongly) assumed that the expert would look for those things for us.

Knowing the house hadn’t been maintained amazingly we budgeted for some surprises but again, having paid an expert, we didn’t expect the surprise of something serious involving the structure. We’ve also had a few smaller surprises that are closer to what we expected - water ingress due to missing pointing, a door falling off the garage the first time it’s opened, etc.

We’re apparently beyond the point of getting the bay underpinned now, or at least that’s the consensus so far from our builder and the first structural engineer. We would need to have it underpinned and then at least one side dismantled and rebuilt. The rest of our house is slightly wonky (door frames floors aren’t 100% straight) but it’s nearly 100 years old. It’s already underpinned so hopefully won’t go anywhere as long as we stabilise the bay window area.

The structural engineer called my partner yesterday unprompted and said he wasn’t admitting liability but upon reflection he realised he needed to help us and he wants to meet our builders on site to discuss how to proceed. We’re going to get a second opinion first and have another structural engineer due to visit early next week.

I’ve included a picture of the window now, the wall as we found it and the RightMove photo. The estate agent said they’re happy to give us the original too if we need it.