loft end result not what i expected!

[sofia22]

Hi, we have just had a loft conversion carried out our 1920's terraced house. We have paid a sizable sum for this but was surprised to find that sloping roof to the front of the house( the other half of the roof is now a dormer) slopes unevenly and so looks unsightly inside . The contractor has said what did we expect, the roof was old and that many of the lofts he has done look like this and no one normally has a problem with it. I didn't expect the roof to bow in so having spent so much money and would have liked the opportuntiy of straightening the roof before starting. Just to make matters worse the ridge of the roof had also dipped so we have had a structural engineer in who says that the sag is unacceptable and that it is down to the execution of the loft design and that the roof should be straightened and the liability is with the contractor. Is it our problem having too high expectations? We dont know now whether the roof was bowing beforehand or not and who is telling the truth.
After my long ramble my main question is - is it normal to be left with a dip in the ridge of the roof and the room with the sloping roof to look uneven due to the bowing roof after a quality loft conversion

 

[^woody^]

Roof angles/pitches aside, I would expect new plasterboard to be at least put up flat ... which may mean packing the rafters with timber to get a uniform plane to board to. This is different to straightening an old roof - which you could not expect the builder to have done

It does seem like a bodge if the plasterboarding is all uneven

If the ridge has dropped or dipped, then that is more concerning, and may be due to lack of structural support or too much movement of the roof when timbers were stripped out.

Get your builder back and use your engineers comments as a basis for discussing what the builder is going to do about it

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

Did you use a structural engineer to do the structural calcs or did you leave all that to the builder, your comments seem to suggest you used a new engineer only at the end for an inspection? Has this been done to building regs?

 

[Static]

Also when you say sizeable sum of money do you mean £5k or £35k.. cos sizeable is relative to your income..

 

[sofia22]

Hi thanks for the replies, yes we went through building regs and yes it cost approx 35k.

The plasterboard isn't too uneven but when you look at it you can see boughs inwards in the middle of the width of the room and then out ward at the ends.

They are saying that it is normal as the roof wasn't straight. if they had told us that it would look like this we would have done something about the roof.
To us 35k was a lot of money and we expected a perfect loft which we don't feel we have got. It feels like what they are saying is we have baked a cake its not our fault its a funny shape, it's your cake tin. !!! but for the cost of the cake tin we would have preferred it perfect if you get my meaning!!

They have said they will artificially arise the ridge but they still haven't quite explained why it dipped in the first place.

 

[^woody^]

They are saying that it is normal as the roof wasn't straight.

It might be normal in their little world of crap work, but in the real world it is a poor quality job to fix plasterboard to uneven timbers without first packing the boards out level with additional timber

It's also not normal to allow a ridge to drop

And it's not normal if it keeps dropping

You need to insist on the poor work being corrected, and if there is a structural issue with the ridge (as per your engineers comments) then that needs sorting out too - not just cosmetically lifted.

Ask the builder if they will object to an independent professional report on the quality and structure, and the findings being binding on each party - including the cost of the report.

Don't listen to "Well it has been passed by building control".

And It seems like that you have paid them all the money without holding any retention back, so you have more of a problem of getting them to correct any dodgy work

 

[sofia22]

Hi Woody, a really good idea about getting an independent report thank you. We have held back 25% loft cost so we do have some leverage.

Thanks for your help, they were starting to make us feel that we were being awkward!

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

Did you use a structural engineer to do the structural calcs or did you leave all that to the builder, your comments seem to suggest you used a new engineer only at the end for an inspection? Has this been done to building regs?