Richard Renouf relates an amusing (well, for the reader) story about the importance of photos on inspection sites – and how he was caught short.

MY ‘holiday’ was looming. As usual, it wouldn’t be a holiday because I tend to get dragged in to help friends out with practical work, or I book myself in for some training.

For the coming week I would be spending my time with a world-renowned baker improving my proving (baking) skills. And, as usual, I was under pressure to get everything completed before I went away.

Disaster struck! I put my camera’s memory card into my computer. On it were the photographs for several inspections that had not yet been written up. ‘Card not recognised’ was the message that came up on screen.

One of the inspections had been at the home of a wheelchair-user. Newly-built and with every feature available to meet his needs, the only issues he’d encountered were with his flooring. It had been installed by ‘experienced professionals’, and the developer had used the flooring ‘hundreds of times’ without dissatisfaction, so the cause of the problems must lie with the product or at least with this production batch.

My visit had taken about half-an-hour and the cause of the issues was clear from the moment I walked in and saw the cupping floor panels. The screed hadn’t been fully dried out when the engineered wood panels had been laid and the floating panels hadn’t been protected by a damp-proof membrane between the screed surface and the flooring.

All of this was confirmed by the photographs of the moisture readings and of the other fitting issues such as the lack of expansion room and the installation of the kitchen – complete with granite worktops – on top of the flooring.

I sent the disc away to a data recovery specialist who, at considerable cost, recovered the photos by the time I had returned from holiday. But not the ones from this job. I had no choice but to write up my findings as a report and send this across without them.

The reaction showed me how important my photographs are when producing a report. The property developer took the absence of pictures as an indication I’d fabricated the report (a polite way to suggest I was lying) and that the moisture readings must have been incorrect as they had waited more than three weeks before laying the flooring.

As for lack of expansion gaps, that also could not possibly be true and they challenged the company who had called me in to bring me back to site so they could prove I was wrong. The rep who called me was very apologetic and did not expect me to accept the challenge, and ‘would fully understand if you said ‘no’.’ But I said ‘Yes’ and arranged for a follow-up site visit.

There was a large of posse of people waiting when I arrived. The retailer, the developer and his office manager-wife and the two installers. All were intent on having their say before I could carry out any checks. The homeowner was there, too. He was bemused. He hadn’t been given any reason for my revisit and was largely being ignored by the people standing around his wheelchair aiming their comments at me.When I finally made a start, the members of the posse were constantly interrupting and getting in the way to point things out and this made it very difficult. I was in danger of leaving without clear photographs as most were likely to have someone’s prodding fingers or upwardly pointed rearend as the main feature.

I called everyone together and told them I was there to do a fresh inspection, not to argue about my previous findings or to agree or disagree with their comments before checking the facts. Until I’d completed my inspection and checked my observations with the specification for the flooring and its installation, I wouldn’t be making definite conclusions.

They were free to watch and ask what I was doing, but I wasn’t prepared to discuss every individual finding as the assessment needed to be based on all of the information I gathered and not on any one specific aspect of it.

I started again in the hall and this time the posse remained in the kitchen. Then I heard the installers saying that as they were obviously not needed they were going back to the job they’d left. The developer and his wife engaged the customer in conversation and I was able to complete the job.
As soon as I got home I uploaded the photos and created a back-up. I will be writing up my findings soon after finishing this article, making sure the photographs illustrate the points which the installers clearly found unbelievable the first time round.
www.richard-renouf.com
Richard Renouf is an independent flooring consultant