Is it possibel to have a 'damp' problem in a house despite living in it healthily for ten years and never having any 'evidence'...??? please help!!

[stilltryingtosell]

We were due to exchange contracts on our house and to buy another this week. Got a phone call today from our buyers solicitor to say the valuation report shows evidence of a damp problem in the house. They vare sending a damp expert around tomorrow.

Am so upset and angry. We have lived here for years, no health probs (well not respiratory ones lol!) Ds who is 2.5 perfectly healthy too. We have not noticed any evidence of damp whatsoever and i have just been on internet to check 'symptoms and nothing' ticks a box.

The house is very old, over 300 years and built of solid stine FFS!! Maybe over those 300 years a little moisture has impregnated the walls but so what!!!!The house is never going to fall down and there is nothing in it/on it to causae health probs.

if anyone has heard of a similar situation please please tel me as am feeling quite desperate about it all!!!!

apologies for typos, have had a large glass of wine to calm nerves!!!

Well I owned a victorian property...so fairly solid in itself but their building methods were different and I ended up having to have a damp course put in. They will test it with a meter which will tell you either way.

I had no syptoms as such but it always smelt musty, although I only tended to notice it if I had been away...when you live with it on a day to day basis you get used to it.

The trouble is that surveyors are extremely conservative and will recommend tests by specialists for everything as a way of making sure that they don't get sued for not spotting a problem. There's no point taking it personally and the house will probably be fine - there may be traces of damp (hard to imagine that there won't be in a house of that age and construction) but, worst case scenario, it will probably cost a few hundred to sort out which the buyers can negotiate from the price. I can almost guarantee that the damp specialist will find evidence of woodworm and recommend spraying .

When we sold our Edinburgh ground-floor flat (built circa 1890) the valuation surveyor thought there was damp near the back door. The specialist found none. I could have told him the mark on the wall was caused by oil from my dog's coat, built up over time as every time I opened the door he was keen to get out for a bounce round the garden.

Surveyors are really crap on this, and most of the "specialists" aka people who sell damp courses are too. I did a bit of a search on this, and it turns out that the methods they use to assess for damp are completely inappropriate for most older houses (like using meters calibrated for timber, not brick or stone). We just ignored ours, and refused to move on the price for the place we were selling, as it was obviously crap (so much so that the place we knew there was damp (from a crack in the chimney breast) was not picked up, and several places where we knew it was fine were (after 10 years we knew our house pretty well!).

There are a couple of surveying companies that do not sell damp courses (clear conflict of interest there!) that do surveys, but they are few and far between.

Really don't feel bad. I would be really surprised if there were many surveys that didn't recommend a "damp specialist". It's just a total scam unfortunately.

Here's some stuff of interest on this topic:
www.konrad-fischer-info.de/2auffen.htm it reads a bit oddly die to the translation from German
www.heritage-house.org/ this one is a bit more English.

I did find an excellent scientific explanation as to why damp readings were recorded in perfectly dry houses (usually to do with condensation, which is a totally normal and not to be worried about phenomenon) but I can't remember where it came from. Some research organization.

Hi Nooka (all everyone else!)

Have just had a quick read through the heritage house info. Am going to print it off before the damp people come around.

It just confirms what I already know, namely that the walls of our house are perfectly dry and not in need of an awful damp proff course. I doubt the listed buildings people would even agree to it- It makes me so mad.

Am going to be here when they come around (was planning on being out and letting DP deal with it) but now am going to stick around and if they come up with the idea of a damp proof course then i will challenge them.

Thanks again!