"Richard Faulkner" wrote in message
...
In message , Ian
Stirling writes
Richard Faulkner wrote:

Is it generally possible to hire a surveyor, on the condition that you
want to walk round with him, and have him explain faults, so you
can discuss, rather than just getting a report?

In my experience, they would definitely rather that you werent there.
Mainly because they would get drawn into discussions which would add
substantially to the time taken for the survey.

I have always tried to accompany surveyors; usually not possible for the
reasons Richard states, but it can be incredibly helpful if you manage to
swing it.

Perhaps slightly different circumstances, as it's not a surveyor, but on
Friday I had a structural
engineer take a look at a property I was thinking of buying, and he agreed
to let me accompany him.

The main reason I wanted this report was because the house is currently a
refurbishment which has been abandoned half, and the whole ground floor had
been removed for reinstatement (it is presently just sand/rubble/mess), and
my concern was that there could be 'issues' with this floor.

The bloke duly nosed around, and when it came to the floor, he pointed out
that I'd need to excavate X amount of the rubbish, and provided the ground
was solid below that, then add hardcore, membrane etc etc; the only possible
problem would be if the ground wasn't firm enough, and that would need a
test excavation to ascertain one way or the other. Bummer, I thought, I
still don't really know the answer for sure. "Tell you what", the guy said,
closing the front door, "there's a shovel over there, why not do one now if
you want!" Needing no further encouragement I set to in the middle of the
front room; I had made a small hole just 9" deep and the bottom filled with
water. I put my foot on the shovel to dig down a bit further and it went
straight down; I pushed down further on the handle and it almost disappeared
into the mire (it went down smoothly, in one push, to nearly 30" below floor
level). "Hmm", we thought.

He reckoned there was a conservative 10K's worth of work needed to sort this
out (and more if the whole building needs underpinning as seems likely), so
unless the vendor wants to do some serious renegotation, I'll be walking
away from this one. As the engineer says, it will probably end up getting
flogged to some unscrupulous developer or builder who will just throw down a
normal slab and then do the place up; and will be long gone when it all goes
pear-shaped 2-3 years down the line...

Anyway, my point here was, had I not managed to accompany the engineer, I'd
never have got the valuable info which I did (or at least, not without
shelling out for a separate report/test excavation etc).

David