Episode 32 – Part 3 – The added detail required in Level 3 reports with Tim Kenny

The following transcript is autogenerated so may contain errors.

 Matt Nally: In our final part of this episode with Tim Kenny, we’re discussing added detail in level three reports versus level two. I think the first. bit that would be interesting to discuss is so I suppose when and how to recommend further investigations in a level three and with that potentially, when does recommending further investigations become too caveat based and yeah, and annoying.

Tim Kenny: Yeah, first thing I’ll say on it is that I’ve, again I’ve seen and heard opinions from surveyors who say, If you have to recommend further investigation on level three, you’re not competent to do it. That’s garbage. I’ll just flat out say it. I’m not even gonna, and sugarcoat my answer on that one.

In fact, I would go further to say there are situations where if you are not recommending further investigations within any level of report, your reports are not compliant with the home survey standards. All right, if you’re not recommending them in certain situations, you are not complying with the home survey standards it very clear again, there is more work to be done to express the requirements around further investigations clear in standards but one of the things they say is that Okay, one, you can’t use a further investigation just because you can’t see something, right?

So I can’t see a flat roof. I’m sat here with a dormer window in front of me I couldn’t see that flat roof from ground level. I can’t say further investigations just because I can’t see it that’s not an example. So I have to say no, I can’t see it But however, if I was seeing a defect elsewhere that could be affecting that roof that section that I can’t see, then I have to recommend further investigation.

In fact, the standards say you must recommend further investigation. So we know in an RICS guidance document that uses the word must, that is obligatory. It’s not an optional, should allow some wriggle room, must is definite. So if you see a defect and that defect may, may be affecting an additional element of the building, you have to recommend further investigation.

So key one there for me is down to a ground floor wall. If the ground floor wall is damp, chances are the floor that abuts that wall is going to be damp. It’s either, there’s either a damp problem underneath it or there’s something else happening, but, if the two are in connection, one can’t be, one is unlikely to be dry and the other is unlikely to be wet.

They must, if it’s been going on long enough, they will be similar. If you’ve got a damp wall, You’re going to have to investigate the flaw. The HCS says you have to, the HSS says you must investigate that flaw. And of course, we have to really well define what we mean by investigate that flaw. Perhaps we’ll touch on that.

When we talk about damp specifically but it says you have to do it. Now, of course the challenge slightly when it comes to level three surveys is that under the description of the service in the home survey standards, it says the recommendation for further investigation should be an exception, not the rule at level three.

Which personally I feel is a slightly unhelpful thing, because in one section we’re saying you have to do it in these circumstances. In the next section we’re saying, don’t do it too much. Which is it? It’s either a requirement or it’s not. Now, I think what they’re trying to say there, and I think what it needs a bit of clarity on is that, Obviously, further investigations are not only required because you’ve got an element that might be affected by another element that needs some investigation.

Sometimes you need a further investigation to determine the extent of a defect, right? And just because physically you can’t get a, get at what’s happening within the, within one element. So it’s not just a different element, it’s an element that you can see, quite often with, for example, again, we use the example of damp, We got down, we can’t quantify it.

We can’t establish certain parameters. So we need to investigate that, that further. But it doesn’t explicitly say that in the home survey standards, it doesn’t say. That’s an example of when you can use it, it doesn’t clarify that. So what we are left with is this clear idea of yep, you have to do it in here, but you probably shouldn’t do it too much. It doesn’t work, but I think because they’ve used that phrase in there that’s led some people to believe, okay I have to avoid further investigations or I can’t say that.

It does perhaps touch back a little bit to what we said, what we were saying under about whether you’re competent to do a level three. If you find yourself constantly referring back for further investigations, there may be something missing in your knowledge. That there’s something you’re perhaps not understanding.

And for me, the way I help clarify that to people is to say, Okay, look, if you’re, if you don’t know what those further investigations should look like, if you cannot accurately define them, and one of the requirements under a Level 3 is that you should be explaining what those further investigations will look like if you can’t say, they should do X, Y and Z, and it should be this person that does it, and he might find this thing or this thing, then probably you’re just doing it as a caveat.

You’re doing it because maybe you lack knowledge, and that’s, great, a great question to ask any student as soon as they say further investigation required is, okay, what further investigations? And then if they don’t know that, that they just there’s a lack of knowledge and there’s a gap they need to be filled, which is, and again, I would say to people, don’t be scared of identifying a gap in your knowledge.

I love it when I find a gap. ’cause I can then go out and I can fill that gap. Yeah. Yeah. You, I can plug that hole. And we all have gaps in our knowledge that we didn’t know we had until we, we bump up against them and plug them as we go along. Is it also been 

Matt Nally: driven by the fear of claims at some point?

We don’t cover ourselves. We’re putting. Some sort of further investigation recommendation then I’m likely to get a claim, perhaps, is that driving 

Tim Kenny: that? There’s a big element of that, which is, which I think is difficult. Still. ’cause personally I don’t see where that’s come from because I’ve not seen any specific evidence that condition based vein is a high risk of claims realistically, whether that’s in my own personal experience or conversations with other people.

Yeah we all get claims. I’ve had a claim. That’s fine. It happens. We all make errors or things happen or what have you. It’s not a problem. But they don’t happen that often. And when they do within the surveying residential conditions of any context, they’re relatively low value.

The average claim, obviously we have the big outlier of heart and large and fine, but most of it is in that couple of grand, two, 3000, it’s not big figures. I get that we’ve had indemnity insurance prices went up a while ago. They’re coming back down again from what I can see.

But that wasn’t because of claims. Again, I’m not seeing any information, I’m not being presented with any information, I’ve not been told by anybody, including brokers or insurers, that was due to claims. That was due to other factors within the market. Yeah, and, I can also make a point that just because you recommend a further investigation, I don’t think you automatically protect yourself either.

And I think this is perhaps a good point to talk about DAMP specifically. Because I, I would actually say that if you recommend the wrong further investigation or you’re unclear on the investigations that should take place, and if a client then acts upon that recommendation and gets the wrong subsequent advice and does the wrong thing then you as the surveyor are more likely to be found liable than the contractor that did the work.

So I give the example of injecting a chemical damp proof course in a solid. Walled listed building. All right. So if you were to character to inject an outproof course, she’s not gonna be a good idea but just from a exclude the kind of the Pointlessness of it and the potential damage to the building from a listing point of view if you should require you should Get listed building consent for injecting chemical DPC.

Most people probably don’t really think about that but if I as a homeowner, as a surveyor, have just put in my report, I found damp, go away and get further investigations from a PCA damp specialist, that specialist comes in, says, yeah, inject a damp proof course, because too many of them do and they go ahead and do it, conservation office comes along and says, why’d you do that?

That’s, that you need to get consent. A homeowner is at risk, where they had a survey didn’t tell them it was a bad idea, who are they going to look to? The surveyor. So I can, there is a, you can clearly follow that trail to the surveyor still being liable, even though they think they’ve covered themselves with their further investigations.

Matt Nally: How would you handle that scenario? Out of interest in terms of how would you word that type of recommendation or on advice? 

Tim Kenny: I would very clearly say this issue is unlikely to be resolved by the injection of a chemical doubt proof course. Fundamentally we’ll include that advice.

We, we know it’s true. We need to be really clear and strong in that advice. We need to take that step to say, do it. It’s gonna, if you do it, it’s a bad idea. If you do it, it’s gonna be breach of the listing. Even if it’s. And even if it’s not listed, we know a DPC, in a, in the outside wall of a cavity wall is fundamentally pointless, right?

If an existing DPC injects a new one, it’s not really doing anything. It’s clear. The way I tend to particularly, I tend to approach further investigations on DAMP is the first thing we have to be clear about. is the use of an electronic moisture meter is very limited.

It doesn’t directly tell us that it’s damp. To comply with the joint position statement, we should be saying, these are some of the other ways that you can investigate the moisture content of the walls. List ones that might be most relevant, but also note that they are tend to be invasive taking samples or what have you Go on to say, okay.

Yeah, you need further investigation specify who should carry that out whether it’s an independent specialist or PCA or whatever your Platform is for doing that, but also say what those investigations are going to be So again, this is where we come back to our joint position statement talking about different types of moisture investigation Obviously talk about some of the possible causes And we talk about some of the possible remedies, and in that we can talk about the remedies that aren’t relevant, except in the damper of course.

But we also need to say, then we jump over to floors, further investigation is required, and that investigation should involve lifting the floor coverings and lifting the carpets. And for me that’s a very strict requirement. Thing in that because you cannot investigate particularly we were talking about a first floor wall or over, roof leak or whatever fine That’s separate, but we’re talking about Dampen a ground floor wall.

You cannot investigate that wall without investigating the floor. You have to get that floor We have to look underneath that floor and for me just that simple little line in there And I would put that line in level put that line in level two as well and That, for me, protects your client against the well meaning, but perhaps uninformed DAPT specialist who comes along with these DAPT meter and taps against the wall and gets one reading and goes, DAPT proof cause.

Because hopefully then they’ll come along. In fact, what I actually say is you should not consider the investigations complete unless floorboards and floor coverings have been lifted and the DAPT and the subfloor void has been physically inspected. So if they didn’t get the report back that says. Oh, I talked to my dad, touch, touch my dad, meet him and got some high readings, didn’t look under the floor.

They know that investigation is not complete and they shouldn’t rely on it. If they choose to rely on it, that’s the choice they’re making. Contrary to your advice as the surveyor. So you’re more effectively covered. 

Matt Nally: I think it’s a nice example of how you can add detail to the advice to make it clearer and provide more.

And cause you’re, I’m imagining having done quite a lot of training, you’re listening quite a few examples of how people. Suggest they might investigate their examples. You see where either people are too eager in certain parts of the property to recommend an investigation or conversely they don’t where they should.

Yeah. 

Tim Kenny: That’s a really good example of the over eager to recommend further investigations. I use an example of a modern building, 2017. Truss rafter roof, insulation laid all the way across, so you know, good 300 as it should be. Running through it you’ve got a duct for mechanical ventilation. Underneath it you’ve got some staining around the vent in the, in a fact, en suite shower room.

So the question I always put to students is, okay this is what we’ve got this stain here, we can see the duct running through the roof space, picture taken from the hatch because, getting all the way across there is not advisable because you can’t do it safely. What do you do next?

And the common response is always going to be further investigation is required and I’ve had similar things from qualified surveyors as well. Because, of course, they can’t see the base of where, they can’t see where that duct fits into the unit, they can’t see the problem, right?

Which, there’s a logic to that, isn’t it? Further, investigate it further. To me, the logic fails insofar as There is only a limited number of defects that this situation can be causing. We as a surveyor can be fairly safely assume what that range of defects is. We can narrow it down, can’t we?

We know that it’s, you know that it’s not sat at the edge of the building. There’s no roof leak, so it’s not water pouring in. We know that it’s some kind of issue with condensation on the duct and it’s draining down and fundamentally that’s what it is. Exactly because the duct is tucked underneath the insulation in the roof space and there’s all sorts of other problems going on.

But it’s not. My response is, okay what’s the investigation? Investigation could be to go over there and look at it. What’s the repair? What are the likely repairs? They involve going over there, looking at it and fixing it. If it is something that could be fixed by the competent contractor on the stuff they have in their van, it’s not an investigation.

An investigation is to go out and find out what the problem is. So then go and get the equipment or to go and tell somebody else or get somebody else in to deal with it. If it’s just going to be, if you can investigate and address at the same time, if you can, and again, this takes the knowledge and experience to be able to narrow down the range of defects.

So again, if you can’t narrow that range of defects down, You probably need to increase your level of knowledge before you inspect that building. Again, these are good ways of telling yourself, okay maybe I’m not competent because I can’t narrow down the range reasonably.

You can’t foresee what the issues that are, that have been created. So yeah, if the same guy is going to investigate it and fix it in the same job, that’s not an investigation. And these are the examples where we’re not doing it enough as far as I’m concerned. Or we’re doing it too much, we’re covering ourselves and we could just be giving some useful information.

Matt Nally: Yeah, they’re nice examples I think on both. Both ways, how you provide better understanding of what to do next in terms of an investigation or where you can just eliminate it from the report. 

Tim Kenny: Yeah, and I don’t see many examples of where people don’t recommend further investigations where they should, which I think comes back to the point we touched about concerns about liability and everything else.

That’s not something that happens, which is for good or bad. 

Matt Nally: Perfect. Perfect. Okay. So I think that’s yeah, been quite interesting. I know with DAMP specifically you raised there were times where you might add more detail. Are there different things you might add just in terms of general advice rather than investigations or is it, does it tend to, does the detail tend to come from recommending an investigation?

Yeah. 

Tim Kenny: It’s always going to be down to the individual property, isn’t it? And courtrooms and everything else. I think we need to, Yeah, certainly as one of the kind of maybe the level of knowledge that is lacking in some surveyors particularly when looking at traditional buildings is that better understanding of vapor permeability or breathability as you refer to the different paint types.

You know some people are good with maybe the lime plaster and the lime mortar but also thinking about paint finishes and how whether they have the vapour permeability and whether they can affect it. So we need to be, We need to be including that advice as part of the maintenance information we give within our level 3 surveys as well But we certainly need to be thinking about it in terms of how we consider damp issues we need, I do feel that as a profession, there is still this slight gap in knowledge.

We have people going out and doing level three surveys, and saying, damn, further investigation or damn, put a damn proof course in there. That happens more often than it ever should. It shouldn’t happen at all on a traditional building, but it’s still out there. And that’s, I think we do need to build more knowledge within the profession.

Matt Nally: Interesting. Okay. And that ties in nicely, I think, with a couple of other points. We’ve discussed these on another podcast episode with with Kate Harrington around energy matters, but probably more so climate change risk. But how does that side of the report in a level three differ to a level two?

And is it what you meant to put in or comment on? So 

Tim Kenny: level one we merely referenced the rating, the ratings. It’s a rating, plural. And this is a key mistake a lot of surveyors do make and this and that’s what we do at level one, we do at level two and level three. So this applies at all levels, but you need to remember there are two ratings within an EPC.

We have the energy efficiency rating. That’s the headline rating, that’s the, on the front page. It’s the one, the minimum energy efficiency standards. And we great grants are based on, it’s the one we all know. It has a little graph and it’s great. And most people are, most of those have got quite good at doing that one.

We also have the environmental impact rating. So that’s the one that is a measure of carbon. So my headline rating based on cost energy rating based on carbon dioxide output or requirements for that property for residential for commercial. They’re reversed. So the main rating is based on carbon secondary ratings based on cost.

So for residential property that’s we have those two ratings. They’re both still there I’ve had surveyors swear blind to me that one of them’s been removed, but it’s definitely there It doesn’t have a graph anymore, but it does there and we do have to put both of them in there And this is where I have a slight Peave maybe with the standard rics template.

It’s got a box for one but not a box for two So the standard we have doesn’t encourage Anyway, I don’t want to ramble too much. But yeah, we do have, we’re told we have to include both ratings. It is a requirement of time service. If you don’t include one of them, I’m not sure anybody’s going to care because no one really understands the energy one, but the environmental one, but they do know the energy one.

So it is but it’s there, required to do it. Anyway, that’s all we have to do on level one. Level two, we’ve got to check EPC for discrepancies. And that’s a kind of a big topic in itself. What constitutes a discrepancy? What’s actually a factor of the way is produced and how they’re perceived.

But we do have to know where they’re wrong. Level three, we do have to step up a little bit and we have to actually consider the validity of some of the recommendations within the EPC. So is it valid to put a solid wall insulation on or underfloor insulation or what have you? Overriding all of that.

Is a requirement to report on any defects or deficiencies caused by energy measures. So if, for example solid walled insulation has been applied and it’s causing a problem. Now, what I always say is initially, because you have that overriding one to spot the defects and deficiencies, you need exactly the same knowledge to do that as you do for the requirements to give, to check the recommendations.

So you have to be able to look at recommendations. Okay, is that appropriate? That’s exactly the same thing as saying all the recommendations in place now, is it appropriate? So what we have to do on the level one, we have to have the same competency as we have what we have to do with level three. So it’s, it should be relatively easy for surveyors to do all of those.

They maybe don’t, but it is certainly something we should all be doing. You can of course go further and give. Give better recommendations for energy efficiency and break it down and people and again, I tend to encourage people to do that again, we have the retrofit standards We’re not talking about full retrofit relevance, but we can give some better information about energy efficiency even simple stuff like getting making sure a smart meter is fitted that reduces you can help to reduce your energy costs So so why don’t we tell people to do that?

Why aren’t we encouraging people to do that within our survey reports? 

Matt Nally: Interesting. I think there’s a lot of nice points you’ve touched on. Is there anything else you’d like to add around detailing reports? 

Tim Kenny: If you’ve had Kate talking about it, I’m not going to, I’m not going to bore everybody else with the same because she knows what she’s talking about and she will give you, she’s probably given you all the information that, that you could never possibly know on the subject.

Matt Nally: I love that. Yeah, definitely worth checking that one out as well then. Thank you for coming on today Tim. It’s been really really interesting going through all the different topics today. If anyone wants to get in touch with you to learn more around level threes, et cetera, how do they get in touch?

I 

Tim Kenny: think Timmy’s always good. I should be so you can just contact me through there or drop me an email to tim at tksurveying. co. uk I’m not too difficult to find and I’ll certainly happily share my opinions where I can. 

Matt Nally: Awesome. Thanks for coming on again. And hopefully once the yeah, the new standards out and we’ve embedded for a bit, we can have another discussion around changes.

Looking forward to seeing those.