legends · 4 min read ·
Condition Survey, 9 Orchard Close
A pre-purchase survey finds damp in the shape of a face, and behind the plaster a woman who has been tucked in.
**Pennington & Vail Surveyors · Level 2 Condition Report**
**Property:** 9 Orchard Close · **Survey date:** 2 Oct · **Surveyor:** D. Pennington MRICS
**Purpose:** Pre-purchase, mortgage valuation
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**Summary of findings**
- Roof: fair. Two slipped tiles, rear slope.
- Walls: sound. Pointing weathered, north elevation.
- Damp: **moderate, localised, rear bedroom, chimney breast.** See note.
- Timber: no active infestation.
- Services: boiler serviced 2024, electrics satisfactory.
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**Moisture readings, rear bedroom (wall, 1.2 m height)**
- **Point · Reading (%) · Notes**
- A · 14 · Normal
- B · 19 · Slightly elevated
- C · 31 · High
- D · 44 · Very high, damp patch
- E · 58 · Saturated
*Note: readings increase in a rough oval toward the chimney breast. Patch is approximately 60 cm across, with a darker margin.*
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**Surveyor's note (D. Pennington, 2 Oct)**
The damp patch has the outline of a face. I don't mean it resembles one in the way a stain on a ceiling sometimes does. I mean the tide-line runs around the brow, down the cheek, under the jaw, and the darker margin is thickest at the mouth, which is open.
Readings at the centre of the patch are 58%, the highest I've recorded in the house. When I touched the plaster there, it was cool, and the paint below my fingers had blistered in a fine pattern, like the bubbles on a boiled potato.
I could hear water somewhere inside the wall. Not dripping. A slow, steady draw of breath, moving in and out.
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**Homeowner's letter (Carol Benedict, vendor, 5 Oct)**
*Dear Mr Pennington,*
*Thank you for the survey. I hadn't realised the damp was so bad. My husband and I have lived with it for nine years and we'd stopped noticing. It's always been cool in that corner. We put the wardrobe against it to hide the marks.*
*You asked whether we had any reason to believe the damp would spread. Honestly, it does. It spreads in the night, when the house is quiet. It goes a little further up the wall each month, and the face gets a little more defined.*
*Please don't be alarmed by the eyes. They're closed. They have been closed since we moved in.*
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**Surveyor's addendum (D. Pennington, 9 Oct, return visit)**
Re-surveyed rear bedroom. The patch has grown. It now covers 1.4 m of wall, from the skirting to the cornice. The face is fully defined: a woman's, middle-aged, with a broad forehead and the faint marks of a smile.
Readings at the mouth: 62%. Readings at the forehead: 19%, dry. Readings around the eyes, which are closed: 0%. Bone-dry.
I asked the vendor whether the eyes had been open when they bought the house. She said no. She said the sellers had told her the room had always been a sleeping room, and the eyes are the last thing to open.
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**Lender's valuation query (Ashgate Building Society, 14 Oct)**
We note the surveyor's report describes "structural damp, recommend specialist treatment." Valuation has been reduced by 40% pending remediation.
Please confirm whether the wall is load-bearing and whether the patch is a risk to the structure of the adjoining property.
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**Surveyor's note (D. Pennington, 18 Oct)**
I opened the plaster to check the wall cavity, with the vendor's consent. Behind the plaster there is no brick. There is a dark, cool space, a foot deep, lined with a fine pale mesh, like the weave of a bed sheet, and at the centre of it, a shallow hollow in which something lies very still.
It's a woman. Or it was. Her skin is grey and smooth, the colour of the damp, and her hair is spread across the mesh, and her eyes are closed. She has been plastered in, neatly, the way you'd tuck a sheet around someone who was sleeping.
The vendor says she's the previous owner's wife. The vendor's husband says she is the owner.
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**Specialist treatment report (Dryline Ltd, 27 Oct)**
Recommendation: the wall is sealed and the damp is contained. Plaster has been replaced with new board. Moisture readings in the rear bedroom are now 9% across the whole wall, the same as the rest of the house.
*Operative's note: the new plaster is cool to the touch. The face has not returned. But the wardrobe has moved, and someone has written, in the new board, very small and neat, in the same hand as the original tide-line: "She's sleeping now. Please keep the room quiet, and don't open the window."*