We were recently asked to survey a new build property in Berkshire. On the day of the survey we arrived to find a property which, on the face of it, looked like a reasonably good purchase, although our surveyor had an inkling there was something strange about the roof.
The property was a quite a nice looking one, inside the decoration was clean, tidy and the house was very peaceful with the children busy playing their console games. However, during the survey and after careful investigations we were able to identify there had previously been a fire in the roof which had led to it being totally replaced. Interestingly the owners forgot to mention the fire and more to the point what had caused the fire. We managed to establish that this was due to newly installed lights in the ceilings which were not compliant with modern regulations to reduce the risk of fires and we were surprised that with this being such a new property that the regulations were not followed!
The situation and the risk of fire was made worse as the occupier was a lady from overseas who specialised in dancing for carnivals and she had left her multiple, very risqué, costumes in the roof space on top of the ceiling lights! The backs of these lights should NEVER be covered! Luckily for the occupier she had building insurance as the cost of replacing the roof was immense and could have run her business into bankruptcy.This was a classic example where poor workmanship and ignorance of safety regulations caused an awful amount of damage - which is enough to put anyone off cutting corners when it comes to these ceiling lights - especially a family of exotic carnival dancers!
