I know lots of people think building is easy or at least straight forward. Don’t kid yourself though. If your building expertise is limited to hanging a painting, get an expert to help you check the building quality of your renovation - well before it’s finished.
There are enough building regulations to fill a phone book or two. I sued my builder, in part for the defective works he refused to fix. I reckon that after going through the Scott Schedule that listed all the defects, I’m up to about “L” in the builder’s phone book. That covers two things I want to mention right now: the cat’s lip and the bad lap.
Lots of people render the new additions to their renovated homes, but did you know that you’re supposed to render first and then put on the fascia and barge boards? The reason makes absolute sense when you think about it, but when you’re renovating it’s the cat door you’re more likely to think about, not the cat’s lip.
The cat’s lip is where you put the barge board and fascia on first and then render - the upper lip is behind the lower. The problem with this is that when water runs down the face of the board, it can seep in where the board meets the render. It’s made worse if the brick coursing doesn’t extend all the way up behind the fascia - as it should - to weatherproof the external walls. And water seeping in, is a problem you really don’t want to have. The issue is, will you recognise this problem?
Now let’s look at the bad lap - that’s shorthand for something I heard about just the other day. My building consultant was called out to a job with a lot of water damage from a leak in the roof. The cause? The lap of the roof sheets were not laid away from the prevailing weather. As a result, rain was driven over the one and a half ridges under the lap. Of course, this was also a shallow pitched roof, which meant the builder should have been more careful. (A bit like Steve Jackson’s builder, mentioned earlier in another defect story.)
If the cat’s lip and the bad lap are news to you, maybe think about engaging an independent assessor to check the quality of your builder’s work at each key stage. I sure wish I’d thought of that before I first renovated!
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