cruickshanks
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- Jun 2, 2008
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We have lived in a rented house for a couple of years, and the owner wishes to sell. We are interested in buying but our experiences over the last 2 years has left us some concern over a load bearing wall.
The previous previous owner was a DIY person with no knowledge of things, we have a main sewer in our conservatory which smells horrible sometimes and also has the neighbours sewers running into it, we had a flood as water came through our ceiling which we found out that our central heating system was installed completly wrong, and the overflow pipes were running up-slope, so instead of the water running out of the overflow, it came through our bedroom. We have found dangerious electrical wiring in whcih the cooker installer said he has never seen anything so dangerious, a back yard that floods whenever it rains as there is no drainage over the patio area and a back gate which doesn't shut as a drainage pipe is in the way.
Most of these things have been sorted out (apart from our back flooding!)...but we are left wondering what else might we find if we buy it.
The house we live in originally had a very small kitchen, and two walls have been knocked down to make it an open-plan kitchen diner. Now I know that one of those walls was load bearing, as our neighbours wall when they extended it had to have special supports put in.
Our concern is that there are no columns or supports, just a beam running into the middle of the room with nothing supporting it. Is this right, or is is suspicious. There are no cracks or anything, and it was done around 10 years ago....is it safe? Does every beam have to have two supports either side?
I have a picture below showing the beam. I have marked in yellow the position of where the old load-bearing wall used to be.
Thank you, Alister and Alison
The previous previous owner was a DIY person with no knowledge of things, we have a main sewer in our conservatory which smells horrible sometimes and also has the neighbours sewers running into it, we had a flood as water came through our ceiling which we found out that our central heating system was installed completly wrong, and the overflow pipes were running up-slope, so instead of the water running out of the overflow, it came through our bedroom. We have found dangerious electrical wiring in whcih the cooker installer said he has never seen anything so dangerious, a back yard that floods whenever it rains as there is no drainage over the patio area and a back gate which doesn't shut as a drainage pipe is in the way.
Most of these things have been sorted out (apart from our back flooding!)...but we are left wondering what else might we find if we buy it.
The house we live in originally had a very small kitchen, and two walls have been knocked down to make it an open-plan kitchen diner. Now I know that one of those walls was load bearing, as our neighbours wall when they extended it had to have special supports put in.
Our concern is that there are no columns or supports, just a beam running into the middle of the room with nothing supporting it. Is this right, or is is suspicious. There are no cracks or anything, and it was done around 10 years ago....is it safe? Does every beam have to have two supports either side?
I have a picture below showing the beam. I have marked in yellow the position of where the old load-bearing wall used to be.
Thank you, Alister and Alison