Sounds like you have some fun on your hands!
Four years ago we moved into a house. c. 1930's with a few extensions of the years. We have moved many times of the years (7 times in 8 years before) so thought we had seen it all.
We viewed it thoroughly (we thought) 3 times and only saw a few cosmetic issues, and the survey (for what it was worth) brought little to light. The owner said that it would get a deep clean before they left and we were happy. We moved in and it was absolutely filthy.
First night, due to horrendous noise in the loft directly above the bed in the main bedroom we established that the loft was infested with squirrels who had been living there for some time (generations) - oh, along with lots of evidence of rats. Some joists chewed quite badly.
We found that there was a door to a bathroom and one to a teenagers bedroom that did not actually close - or indeed fit in the frames.
We found radiators that did not work at all, and assumed that they were sludged-up, but no, they were clean and nearly new. Where the house had been extended over the years the heating system was not strong enough to get water to all the radiators. That and a mixture of different bore pipes had been used all over the place.
Found water on the top of some built -in cupboards in a room downstairs and no sign of how it got there. Happened a few times . No wet wall, no wet ceiling but puddles of water on the top.
Completely mystified. Found the water was coming through some missing grout in a shower above that, went down in between a cavity wall, onto some electrical cables to the back of a wall-mounted TV in the room below, across the TV bracket and then poured off the end. Clearly has been happening for sometime as shower was in teenage daughter's ensuite and grout was very bad. This was not new.
Electric mains cable found to be unshielded and below just 1mm of plaster. Many of the electrics were condemned by our electrician who also found live wires cut off and exposed in the loft.
Some sunken ceiling lights in a room were not working. Changed bulbs and no joy. Then found all the transformers had melted as they had been packed into the ceiling insulation and had over-heated.
Found a lot of small cracks in the plaster of a bedroom wall that was part of a newer extension and when we had it looked at we found that the supporting steel in the loft was neither placed correctly or even secured to anything.
Found that the kitchen sink took ages to drain away, and when in was investigated we discovered that there was a cracked drain just where the waste went out of the house and there was lots of accumulated food waste that was blocking this drain where it left the house and there was lots of it all under the decking (explained the profusion of rats) and it has clearly been like this for months.
And those are just some of the problems we found! So many were clearly known about before the sale but not addressed.
Has taken a lot of time and effort (and money) to get everything resolved, but four years on we are nearly there! Had not realised that we had bought a project, and had not paid project money either! I am sure others had had worse horror stories, and they have my sympathy.....
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