The Folowing article was placed in the Huddersfield Examiner.
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Local Surveyor wins national award…
When he retired from his estate agency business, Patrick Doyle was looking forward to all the usual pastimes people normally associate with their later years. But, as with many others in his position, he soon found he missed the daily activities associated with working life. So much so in fact that he started to look for ways to keep active whilst, at the same time, determined to do something worthwhile.
Prior to starting his estate agency Patrick had always been involved in the construction industry. Having built more than fifty new houses and renovated dozens more he has always been keenly aware of construction methods, techniques and standards. So much so in fact that his energy efficient houses won awards for excellence from the Energy Council.
His interest in buildings, particularly vernacular housing, has always been one of the passions of his life and even today he’s still renovating properties, including his own Regency house in Holmfirth. Naturally he now has an accumulated knowledge of properties spanning a wide spectrum.
Casting his mind back over his time in estate agency, Patrick recalled how he had often been dismayed as buyers, and sellers, of older properties found themselves in difficult and stressful situations when a building society surveyor suspected their property was damp or had timber problems.
He knew that very often the ‘problems’ were only minor ones, or were historical, and often caused by the lifestyle of the occupants rather than a defect of the building itself. However, as the selling agent, his opinion wasn’t worth very much and he had to stand by and watch as people paid hundreds, sometimes thousands of pounds for remedial works that weren’t always necessary.
His recollection of these events prompted a desire to do something about the situation and so, using his considerable experience and new-found time, he embarked upon a year long course of study to obtain the British Wood Preserving and Damp Proofing Association’s (BWPDA) certification for remedial treatments surveyors – the nationally recognised CSRT qualification. He sat, and passed, the examinations in Bristol in May of 2004 and was awarded his qualification later that year.
But not only did he gain the qualification at the first attempt, he has also won the Annual CSRT award for 2004 which is given "to that individual who achieves the most outstanding results in the CSRT exams within one calendar year"!
Said Patrick "To achieve a pass at the first attempt was a worthwhile achievement. To be awarded the top marks in the country from over three hundred and fifty candidates - most of who were very much younger than me - was deeply satisfying and obviously says a lot for motivation as well as mature reflection!" Since qualifying, Patrick has carried out surveys all over the north of England, in properties ranging from 15 th century farmhouses in Derbyshire to Victorian country houses in the Lake District - with dozens of other types in between! In the vast majority of them his holistic and thoughtful approach to the property’s requirements has saved his clients hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds.
Said Patrick "I’m still approached by the occasional client who expects to have a ‘free’ survey carried out by a commercial company but these days more and more people are aware that ‘free’, at least in this context, is often another way of saying expensive; especially when it comes to damp and timber issues.
Awareness is rapidly growing, especially with the growth of information available on the Internet, that older houses are very good at coping with their own problems and that interventionist techniques, such as injection damp proof courses or profound irrigation treatments for dry rot are seldom necessary and can create more problems than they solve.
The vast majority of ‘damp’ problems can be cured by sympathetic attention to the way a building is used rather than by the use of chemicals; and achieving a cure by adjusting your lifestyle slightly is usually a lot cheaper than having your walls injected ".
But of course you need to talk to someone who’s independent, as well as qualified, to tell you how you can do that!
Patrick’s website, with discussions and links to other sources can be found on www.pdoyle.net . He can also be reached via the BWPDA’s website, in their ‘Freelance Surveyors’ section.
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