Surveyors

SD#2 is training to be a surveyor. She's already a qualified engineer but architecture and buildings fascinate her. So she arrived for Christmas and noticed the roof of our laundry house, which her father had retiled a few years ago. See the photo. She's never seen one like that before. She says that the tiles are supposed to be in two layers so that they overlap, but that it's probably okay on a laundry house. Her father points out that it means 40% fewer tiles, so is economical.

Economical might be what surveyors are in some cases. Our surveyor for this house missed a few small things, death watch beetle being one of them. Getting a couple of special surveys done to check what to do about the DWB and then fixing the problem cost us a big £five figure sum, which added considerably to the cost of the original economical-in-facts survey. SD#3 says that surveyors are corrupt, and they get bribes from people who want planning permission - I might believe her. Surveyors must have connived at the estate agents' suggested prices and the banks who gave mortgages. Estate agents get a bigger fee if the house price is higher. Mortgage givers will make more money if they lend for a bigger mortgage. Surveyors might have put some brakes on the house spiral, but didn't.

End-of-rant