Welcome

Welcome to the companion website for the second edition of Inspections and Reports on Dwellings: Inspecting!

As explained in the preface to the second edition, some of the more technical parts of the first edition text were omitted to make way for new chapters and expanded text. The ease with which the internet now allows access to such information as the Approved Documents of the Building Regulations means it is no longer necessary or desirable to reproduce information which, in some cases, is likely to be out of date almost as soon as it has been published.

Other sections of first edition material posed more difficulties for deciding on inclusion or exclusion, and the final decision came down to balancing the relevance of the information for the day-to-day practice of most practitioners against the ease with which excluded material could be obtained from other sources.

This resource allows something of a compromise; it contains much valuable information from the first edition that was omitted from the second edition but which it would be most regrettable to lose completely.

There is an illustrated section on tree identification, interesting information about the origins of different types and colours of bricks, an extended version of table 3 (in Chapter 11) giving guidance on the suitable thickness of solid brick walls for various heights and lengths of walling, and a table giving guidance on the identification of wall construction combined with comments on the suitability of the various forms of construction to cope with different Categories of Exposure.

The most important item is a fascinating and very valuable review of building stones, describing their colour and characteristics, together with details of buildings where examples of the stones can be seen. While not of direct relevance to the standard work of most residential surveyors and valuers, this item is ideally suited for inclusion in the online resource. Indeed, maintaining access to the information in this format has successfully avoided what would have been a great loss.