Being a property detective: what lies beneath

When buying a house, most first time buyers focus all of their attention on the actual house itself. How it looks, the shape of the building, can you fit your furniture in it, can you actually imagine yourself living there. Some cursory attention is often paid to the grounds of the property, but maybe not enough. I'll give you a real life example.

When we bought our current home, we loved the fact that it was surrounded by some gorgeous mature trees. The draw to us was that these trees screened out the neighbours so that they couldn't see us, and we couldn't see them. We paid enough attention to make sure that the trees weren't too close to the house so that the roots would affect the foundations and because they were far enough away, we didn't investigate any further.

Fast forward a couple of years and suddenly we noticed that the bath water wasn't draining away as it used to. We then we realised that the kitchen sink was doing the same thing. We called in a drain specialist and this is when we discovered the extent of our issues. You see, although our lovely trees were away from our house and the roots weren't affecting the house directly, one particularly gorgeous one had grown roots in to the drainage pipes. We were a bit naive not realising that roots actually seek out water and that they grow towards it and can grow into drain pipes. Unbeknownst to us, the previous owners of our home had planted this lovely tree right on top of the private drain for our house which flowed to the main drain in the road.

Now, we were very lucky, because we acted on this issue fairly quickly and so the drainage experts were able to remove the roots in the drain and line it with a sleeve to prevent any leaks, but we also had to sadly remove the tree.

Armed with this new knowledge, we assessed the location of rest of the pipes and other utilities which were under ground on our property to see if there could be any similar issues in the future. As a precaution we relocated a small shrub, which may have caused issues as it matured and got bigger, and we have taken the decision to have a drainage inspection done every 5 years, just to keep check (not a bad practice to do anyway especially with lots of trees around).

The key message here is that when you are looking at a potential first home, you shouldn't only pay attention to what's present above the ground and what you can see, you also need to be aware of what is under ground too. This could be possible root damage to drains or even the house foundations themselves. It could also be that there are shared utilities (eg, gas, phone, water or waste) which run across your land so if there was an issue, you could come home one day to find the utility company has dug up some of your garden to find and fix a problem even if you weren't directly affected by any issues, but your neighbours were.

There is nothing wrong with communal utilities running through a property, the key is just to be fully aware of what is where and the implications of it being there. That way you can know what to expect in the future, should something need repair (and take it from me, at some point something will need repair, because everything has an expected life span). And to allay your fears, if a utilities company has to dig up your garden to make a repair, they are obligated to make it right again afterwards.

Some potential issues you can minimise yourself, like ensuring there aren't any trees planted over any pipes or drains, but others you can't, so you just have to be aware of how they may impact you.

So the next time you view a property, remember to pay attention to what lies beneath. Happy hunting for your first home.