Not every inspection fits the rulebook — Richard Renouf shares when to push and when to walk away

I’ve always said there are four possible outcomes to a flooring inspection: The flooring might be faulty, it might not have been installed correctly, it might have been damaged by a third party (sometimes even the end-user) or it might not be faulty at all and the complaint isn’t valid.

But yesterday I had a call which didn’t fit into any of these ‘normal’ categories.

Mr G had contacted me by telephone. He was concerned the subfloor under his new LVT flooring was not flat and level and wondered if I would be able to check it for him. I took him through the possibilities and costs and emailed him further details so he could mull it over.

A week later Mr G emailed to say his credit card company had told him they would require an expert’s report before they could take his claim further, so he asked me to visit. His address was in a nearby village, so I offered a 9am appointment and pencilled it in my diary.

A couple of days before the visit I had a phone call from Mrs P. She worked as an independent consultant herself, but not in the field of flooring. She had a successful international media consultancy firm which had enabled her to buy a brand new million-pound-plus home on a new estate not far from where I live. A local firm had passed on my details as they were not able to help her but thought I would.

‘The smell is awful, I can’t sleep in my new bedroom,’ she told me. ‘Ben said you would be able to test the air in the room and prove whether it was to do with the carpet or underlay.’

It wasn’t a case to deal with by phone, so I offered to drop in when passing to see if I might be able to help (writing ‘drop in for a quick sniff’ didn’t seem right in that last sentence, so I changed it). She was even nearer than Mr G, so I arranged to see her at 8am on my way to see him.

Within minutes she’d emailed me to confirm the exact details of when I’d arrive, what I’d do, and so on. It seemed obsessive, although she had told me she had been an investigative journalist earlier in her career.

I made sure I was at Mrs P’s door at 8am on the dot. She welcomed me into her home and when we reached the area that concerned her, she started pulling faces at the awful smell which I couldn’t even notice. I crawled around the room paying particular attention to the areas she pointed out.

I even went to lift a corner of the carpet to see if I could detect anything, but she almost jumped at me; she didn’t want me to damage anything and asked if I’d only check the corner beside the wardrobe where another cupboard was due to be fitted.

She agreed with me it was neither the carpet nor the underlay, but she then told me the housebuilder had already agreed to more than 25 other ‘snagging’ issues and she was not going to let any of them go. But she thanked me for my time and advice and I moved on.

I arrived with Mr G about 25 minutes later. He took me through to his kitchen and while he told me more of what he wasn’t happy with, I was looking around at his LVT flooring.

The agreement had been that the flooring company would use smoothing compound to bring the floor level of his lounge and hall to that of the kitchen. The walls between them had been removed.

The contractors had applied smoothing compound and achieved a smooth surface and the LVT appeared to well bonded and free of any gapping along the joints. But Mr G and his wife had measured and felt the floor rose significantly between the lounge and the kitchen. A shelf unit had been installed along the lounge wall close to the end kitchen unit and it was clearly out of line owing to the slope in the floor.

I put down a floor laser which showed a height change of more than 25 mm between the front of the house and the kitchen, and I put a cross-line laser against the shelf unit which showed it tipping to the left by about a centimetre.

I told Mr G he and his wife were right, but then I asked him what he was looking for. He had no answer.

Using the laser I was able to show the extent of the problem and also the impact that raising the front of the floor area or grinding down the back of the floor area would have. Either raise the floor height above that of the bottom of the front door or removed the kitchen and have the mess of grinding and replacing everything afterwards.

We then discussed whether or not he wanted this upheaval, or the stress and cost of a tenuous Court claim to try and achieve it – and the risks this would entail if he failed to convince a district judge.

Mr G knew his flooring wasn’t technically ‘correct’ but in the circumstances it was reasonable and there was no point trying to ‘punish’ the flooring contractors for not realising the issues and advising him more carefully. The shelf unit simply needed a packer under the lower foot – and that’s when I realised he probably installed it himself without a spirit level anyway!

So I now have a fifth possible outcome to an inspection visit. It’s not right, but it’s not worth pursuing. I’m not sure Mrs P would agree with that.
www.richard-renouf.com
Richard Renouf is an independent flooring consultant