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Slight Sloping of floor on 1st floor - House Buying

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  • 13-08-2018 12:48pm
    #1
    willabur
    Registered Users Posts: 1,619 ✭✭✭


    Hey All,

    Looking for some advice. We are sale agreed on a house which we are pretty excited about. Our surveyor has provided a thorough 46 page report on the house in which there is one significant issue.

    There is a slight sloping of the floor on the first floor over the kitchen. The Surveyor has stated that there was a wall removed beneath and that we should get the work that was done certified to ensure the support beam downstairs is of sufficient quality.

    We passed this information to the seller with a request for the certification of the work. They do not have the certification, whats more they have been into the neighbours house and the layout there is exactly the same (the neighbours say that no work has been done there). So they say there is no work to be certified.

    Original house layout plans are not available.

    What advice do you give for this buyer? Do we run a mile? Is there a specific service or professional we should get in to assess the work needed to be done?


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    #2
    seamus
    Registered Users Posts: 68,317 ✭✭✭✭seamus


    That's a hard call. The vendors may be genuine in there's no work done...as far as they know. If the house is old enough, someone may have removed that support wall decades back.

    Your solicitor will tell you not proceed without a full engineer's report. The bank, probably the same. They always take the ultra-cautious route.

    It might be worth going back to the surveyor and asking their advice, given that you now know the vendors weren't even aware of the situation.

    It may be a case that the vendor is going to have to get an engineer out to pull down the ceiling and inspect the work that's been done.


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    #3
    L1011
    Registered Users Posts: 68,798 ✭✭✭✭L1011


    Combined kitchen diners were optional at build time on many estates back to the 60s, my 1972 house was built as such but others in the estate are retrofit and have beams fitted (somwtimes quite nastily in a box) where I don't. Without original floorplans or opening walls/ceilings it'll be impossible to tell really.


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    #4
    willabur
    Registered Users Posts: 1,619 ✭✭✭willabur


    I got back in contact with the engineer yesterday evening and questioned him more thoroughly on it. He stated that there was no sign of deflection in the ceiling below, that the windows and outside wall were not showing any signs of drop either. The Sloping is confined only to the first floor, he was inclined to believe that it was just an issue with the floorboards and that he would need to lift the floor boards themselves to tell for absolute surety. Will get someone in this week to have a peak on it but having quizzed him a bit further he felt 99% certain that there were no structural issues.


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