Discovered fire damage to the roof structure of a house we just bought
We recently bought a house and our contractor started the demolition of the first flour which is in the attic. Our initial plan was to only keep the roof structure, isolation and to redo everything inside.
While stripping the attic, we discovered important fire damage to the top of the wooden roof structure, almost on the entire surface of the roof.
Our engineer hasn’t done his calculations yet but there is a chance we might need to completely replace the entire roof structure, as we wanted to redo the tiling at some point and put some external isolation which will increase the weight on the structure.
These damages were impossible to notice during our visits since everything was hidden behind gyproc panels and nothing is visible from the outside so we can talk about hidden defect. However, to get some compensation from the seller we would need to prove that he was aware of this.
My plan was to either find proof that the fire happened when he was the owner (I contacted a regional service that provides reports for firefighter intervention), or that at least a part of the attic renovation took place when he was the owner (found a date on a piece of gyproc and will look for other clues), also still need to get the DIU from the notary.
Already a big chunk of the floor was demolished by the contractor (they haven’t evacuated anything yet). Should I leave the waste on the group or are pictures and videos enough as prove?
What else would you do now to make sure we can get a settlement or win this case against the seller if we need to go to court? Thanks !