RICS Chartered Surveyors in Bradford

Millstone grit, and what it does when it is treated wrongly

Local sandstone is an excellent building material and there are walls in this district standing sound after a hundred and fifty years. It works because the stone is laid in a soft lime mortar that takes up moisture and releases it, and because the outer face of the stone develops a weathered skin that protects what is behind it. Two common interventions destroy both of those things.

The first is hard cement pointing. Cement is stronger and far less permeable than the stone around it, so water that gets into the wall cannot leave through the joint and leaves through the face of the stone instead. In a hard frost the wet face lifts off. You can read the history of a street's repointing from the pavement, because the cement-pointed houses are the ones with crumbling, sanded-back stonework and the lime-pointed ones are not.

The second is grit blasting. Cleaning soot off a Victorian frontage is understandable, and a great many Bradford houses were blasted in the decades after the Clean Air Acts. Blasting strips the weathered skin and opens the pores, and a blasted elevation absorbs water for the rest of its life. Where we find one the report says so, explains that the damp readings inside are a consequence rather than a coincidence, and sets out what a breathable repair looks like.

Rubble-built walls add a third consideration. Many Bradford walls are two skins of stone with a rubble core, tied at intervals by long through-stones. Where through-stones are missing, corroded or were never adequate, the outer skin can start to separate, which shows as bulging rather than cracking. It is not a subtle defect once you know to look for it, and it is not something a valuation inspection would catch.

Stone slate roofs and the loads nobody plans for

The traditional roof covering here is stone slate, thick sandstone flags laid in diminishing courses with the largest at the eaves. It is a superb covering and it is extraordinarily heavy, several times the weight of a modern concrete tile. The roof structures beneath were sized for that weight, using large section timbers at close centres.

Two problems follow. The first is nail sickness. The flags were hung on oak pegs or iron nails, and after a century the fixings fail even though the stone is perfectly sound. Slipped flags, a patchwork of replacements and a roof that has been repeatedly repaired from the outside are the signs. Stripping and relaying a stone slate roof is a substantial cost and the report gives you a realistic view of where the covering sits in its life.

The second is what happens when somebody replaces the stone with something lighter. That sounds sensible and often is, but a roof structure designed for a heavy covering that is then loaded with a light one can behave in unexpected ways, and a roof that was spreading under stone will not necessarily stop. More often we find the opposite: a light covering replaced later with reclaimed stone by an owner who wanted the original look, on a structure that was reduced when the first change was made. Either way the survey looks at the covering, the structure and the relationship between them rather than just noting the material.

Defects we see most in Bradford homes

The district has its own pattern of recurring faults, and these are the ones our reports name most often.

• Cement pointing and grit-blasted elevations on sandstone terraces, driving persistent penetrating damp on the weather side and spalling the face of the stone.
• Bulging outer skins on rubble-cored walls where the through-stones have failed, most visible on long unbroken terrace frontages.
• Nail sickness and slipped flags on original stone slate roofs, and roof structures altered when a covering was changed.
• Retaining walls and stepped foundations on the district's steep streets, where garden and boundary walls hold back significant ground and have often never been maintained.
• Cellars driven into the hillside that are dry at one end and saturated at the other, with blocked or built-over original ventilation.
• Back-to-backs and through terraces converted into flats without building regulation approval, particularly in Manningham, Girlington and Great Horton, where fire separation and sound insulation are frequently absent.
• Shallow historic coal workings on the Coal Measures beneath parts of the district, where cracking needs assessing against a Coal Authority mining report rather than guessed at.
• Culverted watercourses, including Bradford Beck and its tributaries, running beneath property in and around the city centre, where responsibility for the culvert can pass with the title.

Buying in Bradford: values, repair costs and getting the order right

Bradford has some of the most affordable housing anywhere in the north, and that creates a specific risk that we are blunt about in our reports. When a house costs relatively little, the cost of a full repair schedule can represent a large share of the purchase price, and occasionally more than it. A stone terrace needing a roof, repointing and a damp strategy can absorb a sum that would be a rounding error on a southern property and is a serious proportion of the value here.

That is not an argument against buying. It is an argument for knowing the number before you exchange rather than after, and for sequencing the work correctly. Our reports set repairs out in order of urgency and explain which ones unlock the others, because doing them in the wrong order wastes money. There is no sense replastering a wall before the pointing outside it has been put right.

Instruct the survey as soon as your offer is accepted and your solicitor is instructed. We arrange access through the agent and we need the cellar open, the loft hatch unlocked and the yard gate unbolted, because on a stepped site the back of the house often tells a different story from the front. If something concerned you at the viewing, say so beforehand and the surveyor will go looking.

The district has a large number of listed buildings and conservation areas, from the Little Germany warehouse quarter and the Manningham villas to Saltaire on the Shipley side. Where a property sits inside one, the report says so, and where alterations look as though they should have had listed building consent it flags the question for your solicitor, because unauthorised work on a listed building becomes the next owner's problem.

Other surveys and valuations we carry out in Bradford

Besides Level 2 and Level 3 surveys, Bradford clients instruct us for structural engineer's reports where a wall is bulging or a retaining structure is moving, timber and damp reports on cellared stone property, drone roof surveys where a tall stone slate roof or a mill conversion cannot be seen safely from the ground, and valuations for probate, matrimonial settlements and private sales. Landlords and freeholders across the district's many converted villas instruct us for building insurance valuations and fire risk assessments of the common parts.

On the commercial side we survey shops, offices, mills and industrial units across the district, prepare schedules of condition before a lease starts, advise on dilapidations at the end of one, and carry out commercial valuations and rent reviews. We also cover Shipley, Saltaire, Bingley, Baildon, Ilkley, Queensbury and Thornton from the same base. The full service list is on our Types of Survey page.