Very glad to have found this forum. In a very tricky position. To quickly summarise:
We bought a new family house in November 2018, which was newly built and completed mid-2017.
We had a routine mortgage survey and were given new electric and gas certifications, plus a 10-year structural warranty. We didn't do any further in-depth surveys (FIRST MISTAKE).
We moved in and quickly noticed a few issues - the underfloor heating system didn't seem to work very well. We asked a plumber to come and have a look.
This triggered a cascade of workmen visiting the house and uncovering issue after issue.
The full list:
Electrics: combustible DB, unbonded pipes, multiple non-earthed outlets, neutral and main cabling separated coming through the house, unsupported and unsafe wiring in the plant room
Gas: water valve placed instead of gas valve, leaking underfloor heating manifold
Drainage: initially thought to be blocked by builders waste (See below), the vent is below the roofline (against regs)
Guttering: full of these weird bird spikes, overflow constantly and leaking joints
Floor: wrong type of grout, loose floor tiles
Landscaping: cement used for garden wall and patio completely eroded away, dip in drive (see below!)
Essentially the electric and gas certificates were falsely signed off, and the house was fairly poorly done.
So I spent £5,000 fixing all the urgently stuff (mostly electrics and gas) then took it back to the builder. After a bit of tussle involving small claims mediation we settled on £3,000 being paid back (he took issue with my fixing it all first, even though they were C1 electrical errors and I had toddlers here, plus I couldn't justify the time and effort on top of going to full blown court. (another mistake?)
So this week the drains blocked AGAIN. This time a different engineer came round - he immediately spotted the external vents were not meeting building regulation, and I filled him in a bit on the above. When he looked in the drains it was bad news:
1) There is a uncapped outlet pipe which is open to the foundations, leaking water and waste directly in there, and also eroding the ground away into the drain, hence blocking it.
2) There is a crack in the rain pipe leaking water, again likely through the foundation, pulling stones and screed into that drain as well
3) The fall on the outside pipe is wrong and water is pooling back towards the garden
4) The pipe is obstructed by a dropped pipe next door which would've been constructed by the same contractor
Structurally I hadn't re-ordered a full survey, but now am reconsidering my options. Everything so far points to a very poor construction job with little regard for the final product and somehow managed to squeeze through a building inspection (I am suspicious of this).
The warranty has 8 years left on it. I now have great doubts about the foundations and structure of the house in general, and likely other issues with drains that I can't see currently.
The way I see it I have two ways to move forward:
1) Keep the house, attempt to identify ALL structural and other issues through re-inspection and the warranty (with ICW), take the developer/contractor back to court etc if needed to get it all fixed. Hope there aren't even more major hidden issues down the line.
2) Fix everything I know about currently (the leaking rain drain essentially, having re-done electric and gas certificates already) and then do up the house to sell on ASAP.
I really don't know how to weigh up or move forward from here, and am worried I will mis-step costing me thousands if not hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Any help or advice at all would be greatly appreciated!!
