Common Problems When Renovating Older Property in Mallorca

On property of any age something is found once the finishes come off. What separates a project that absorbs it from one that stalls is whether anybody went looking first. Here is what tends to turn up on this island and what each one actually means.

Damp, which is never the problem itself

Damp is a symptom, and treating it where it shows is the most common wasted expense in renovation. Water arrives from somewhere: up from ground that holds it, in through a wall the weather reaches, down from a roof or a terrace, or sideways from a floor. Each has a different repair and only one of them is the plaster.

The other half of the problem is what was done about it last time. A wall sealed with cement render or an impermeable paint keeps carrying moisture and simply releases it somewhere else, usually higher up and years later. Undoing an earlier repair is often part of the fix.

Timber that is sound in the room and gone in the wall

Old beams can look perfect from below and be decayed where they bear into the wall, which is exactly where the load is. It is not assessable from a photograph or from standing underneath, and it is the single finding most likely to change a scope substantially, because a beam decision changes everything below it.

Structure that is not where anyone said

Older property here was altered by hand over a long time, so drawings, where they exist, describe an intention rather than a building. Walls that are carrying and walls that are not are frequently the opposite of what they look like, and previous openings were sometimes supported in ways nobody recorded. This is why structural work is priced after somebody has looked.

Concrete that is breaking itself apart

Where reinforcement corrodes it expands, and expanding steel breaks off the concrete covering it. It is common in exposed slabs, terraces and balconies, and much more common near the sea. It is a repair rather than a resurfacing: the steel has to be reached, cleaned and given proper cover again, or the patch lifts in the same place.

Services that have been added to rather than replaced

Circuits extended over decades, pipework rerouted around a kitchen that has since moved, and a consumer unit sized for the appliances of another era. None of it is dangerous by definition and all of it is unmapped, which means the first wall opened often reveals that the installation is not what the last owner described.

Every row in that table says yes. That is the point of the article: these are not really surprises, they are things nobody looked for. A small number of openings in the right places before the scope is fixed converts most of this column into known work.

What to do when you get the phone call

• Ask what was found and, specifically, what caused it.
• Ask what it costs to investigate further before deciding.
• Ask for photographs. This is normal and any good company offers them.
• Ask what the options are, not only what the recommendation is.
• Ask what happens to the programme, separately from what happens to the price.
• Ask whether anything nearby should be checked while the wall is open.

The last one saves the most. The cheapest time to look at anything is while access already exists.