We can help you with the NHBC

Also known as the National House Building Council

We are experienced Building Surveyors who have also dealt with all sorts of property problems including NHBC issues, if you are stuck getting nowhere with a property issue and need expert advice we are more than happy to help please give us a call on free phone 0800 298 5424 and we will endeavour to help you.

We give independent expert advice

We are Independent Building Surveyors and as such we give independent expert advice and, in our opinion, the best advice on what is best in the long term for you as our client.

From what we have seen with insurance companies and the NHBC you are not always getting what you thought you were originally buying and certainly not a guarantee or a warrantee.  We have found the NHBC quite difficult to deal with and that is coming from Building Surveyors who talk builders speak.

National House Building Council (NHBC) warrantee

Over the years as independent Surveyors we have helped many clients with insurance claims and became particularly interested in this area when one of our Chartered Building Surveyors purchased a house with National House Building Council NHBC warrantee and had various problems with the house.  We found out firsthand how firstly the NHBC warrantee was relatively speaking limited cover, we would say far less than the average person believes and secondly we can only speak from our experience we found the NHBC quite difficult to deal with.

National House Building Council Resolution Service

From what we understand less people are using the NHBC Resolution Service.  We have to say that we are not surprised about this as they are sponsored by the house builders and we believe that they have a bias towards the house builders particularly in our experience of dealing with them, which we will explain later on in this article.

Examples of problems we have had

This particular issue was some time ago therefore the facts may not 100 percent correct but this is in essence what happened in our opinion.

Drains getting blocked due to lack of fall

The first problem which resulted in smells and blocked drains was that the drainage run that ran from the house to the main drainage system was not taking the waste water away.

This resulted in smells coming up through the drainage pipes into the house and toilets simply not flushing away waste material – not a pleasant situation at all.

We recall this issue took ages to resolve and ultimately the drains were dug up and re-laid.

Drainage a problem that is very hard to see

Even though a structural Surveyor was buying the house and had run the taps for fifteen minutes plus to test the drainage system it was not until the property was fully in use that the drainage problem was noted.

Unfortunately the issue took far too long to be resolved.

Compare our website and compare our building surveys

Have a look around our website www.1stAssociated.co.uk to check out the quality of our website and Survey reports. We pride ourselves on our professional standard and easy to read reports, which we have been carrying out for many years on every age, type and style of property across the UK. 

Problem central heating system and micro-bored pipework

A second issue that we ended up getting repairs ourselves was a problem with a central heating system with micro-bored pipework where the micro-bored pipework had been hand bent rather than being bent with a pipe bender.

If the pipework had been bent correctly there would be properly flowing pipework resulting unfortunately with the water not flowing around the system adequately.

The original contractor would not come out to see the problem and the NHBC were in our opinion of little help.

Ultimately we ended up re-installing some of the brand new micro-bored pipework.

Claims and disputes

Over the years, we would say that, insurance claims, NHBC claims and disputes between builders, architects and clients disagreements full into several categories:

1.  Misunderstanding

Misunderstanding what the client was expecting the insurance company/NHBC/architect/builder to do and what they actually did.

2.  Difference of opinion

Fairly commonly there is a difference of opinion as to the quality of what the insurance company/NHBC/architect/builder did which can range from anything such as not returning telephone calls quickly enough to the actual technical solution proposed.

A new house claim

A claim that we are aware of on a newish property that we have seen firsthand related to leaking pipes in the ceiling over a kitchen, which we believe was due to the use of a mixture of copper and plastic piping.

This mixture of materials we believe has different thermal properties and also due to vibrations in the pipework had worked itself loose and discharged water over the ceiling and into the brand new kitchen.

One of the problems as a new house owner is what to do when such a matter happens.  You would naturally believe that the issue is covered by the NHBC guarantee (we know it is a warrantee but most people believe it is a guarantee) in this case the issue had to go via a housing association as well and calls to the actual builder who built the house.  Further calls had to be made to the NHBC and insurance company.

Finally, as we understand it, the claim was passed from the builder and the NHBC to the insurance company.

Are we learning from our mistakes?

Probably what is worse from the above situation is that this problem can go on and on and on being repeated if the builders are not learning from their errors by coming back to repair them.  As the NHBC are stating that this sort of issue is not covered by the warrantee then how does this problem get rectified?  The insurance companies are of course not related!

We have written several property and surveying articles that may help you:

NHBC Warranty problems

Specific Defect Reports

Cracks in my wall

Structural reports

Check you can get insurance before you purchase a property

Commercial break for our surveys

Compare our website and compare our quality surveys

We are of course trying to sell our surveying services.  We would recommend you have a look around our website to check out the quality of our website and our Surveys and Defect Reports.  We pride ourselves on our professional standard and easy to read reports, which we have been carrying out for many years on every age, type and style of property across the UK.

Phone us on free phone 0800 298 5424 and we will be happy to send you an example of a Specific Defect Report most likely typical to the property or property problem you are looking at.  We literally have hundreds of downloadable Structural Surveys and Specific Defect Reports on our website so have a look around our website; if you cannot find what you are looking for do give us a call and we will find them for you.

What do the circles and ovals mean in our Specific Defect Reports?

In our Specific Defect Reports the circles and ovals are a system that we used to highlight property problem areas so that you are not left wondering what the property problem is.

In addition to this if the Specific Defect Reports photographs do not we believe explain the property problem enough together with our description we also add in one of our own unique survey sketches.

Examples of Specific Defect Reports

Please contact our office; we may be able to give you examples of Specific Defect Reports that we have dealt with similar to yours and help you understand how to deal with your particular issue.

Surveying Articles

We hope you found the article of use and if you have any experiences that you feel should be added to this article that would benefit others, or you feel that some of the information that we have included is wrong then please do not hesitate to contact us (we are only human).

For your information, discussion and delight

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