Subsidence

[Syla5]

Sorry to hijack your thread but we currently have a subsidence claim in with the insurance which has been dragging on for over a year now.

The front corner of the bungalow has sagged and a crack appeared in the front wall, inside and out. The culprit was identified as a nearby willow tree, which has now been cut down.

Our query is that they say because it was a tree that caused it, which has now been removed, they don't underpin the house but are just injecting the crack with "helical crack bond resin" - is that normal procedure?

Also about 3/4 down the side wall, the sagging front corner has obviously caused pressure and there's a line of cracked bricks - shouldn't these be sorted as well?

Yes that is very much the case that if the cause of the subs is removed and monitoring shows that the property is table then underpinning is not a requirement. This is the reason no work is being carried out under insurance on my chimney. However my chimney has no foundations and is a massive part of the house we dont use, so we have reason to remove it.

The subs source at our house was vines and trees on the front corner, and we have visible cracking to the exterior brickwork as well, however the monitoring shows the property is stable and movement over the monitoring period is within tolerance - our movement over the 5 years monitoring happened was +/- 1.5mm with net movement being around 0.5mm, as we are a clay soil this is perfectly normal.

The reason for the extent of our works is that the floor distortion survey shows 50mm of distortion that we know wasnt present before because we had the floors levelled.

 

[DB_SamX]

Sorry to hijack your thread but we currently have a subsidence claim in with the insurance which has been dragging on for over a year now.

The front corner of the bungalow has sagged and a crack appeared in the front wall, inside and out. The culprit was identified as a nearby willow tree, which has now been cut down.

Our query is that they say because it was a tree that caused it, which has now been removed, they don't underpin the house but are just injecting the crack with "helical crack bond resin" - is that normal procedure?

Also about 3/4 down the side wall, the sagging front corner has obviously caused pressure and there's a line of cracked bricks - shouldn't these be sorted as well?

Cutting down the tree is addressing the root cause, assuming the ground is clayey where you are.

Helical crack stitching is addressing th symptoms of the cracks and common for large cracks. Small cracks can usually just be repointed.

Hopefully you have a structural engineer's survey, assuming commissioned by the insurance company

 

[Syla5]

The first hiccup - Week 4 update
Teardown is in full swing, weve added a fair old amount of work to the list and a lot of money to the bill, having to make difficult choices now, and then we hit our first major hiccup today.

Chimney is now out and removal of the floor had begun but on doing so its been found out that our main supporting wall of the house was just built on to the floor slab, no foundations, nothing. The chimney its self was not structural, however it was adding an element of mass that the walls tied in to which helped limit the risk of there being no foundations under it, and the supporting walls.

Time to get building control and structural engineers on the case ASAP so that we can keep things on track.

Additional works

Rewiring - full house, this wasnt really something i wanted to get done, but once the teardown began it became obvious we would be silly not to do it.
Kitchen - planned/specced and ordered
Patio Doors - new exit to the garden from the was the kitchen and will be the playroom
Insulated Eco plastering all walls and all ceilings - in addition to the new floor lay, and loft, this will really improve the thermal effectiveness of the house
Full radiator replacements throughout

Ill share all costs when we get towards the end of the build but needless to say we are over the cost of building a new house 10 years ago, and we arent even adding a room!

More pictures to follow.

 

[Syla5]

Week 7 Update

More entertainment along the way, our house was originally built by a brickworks company and so this explains the use of bricks underneath the concrete floor slab, instead of properly made up ground using hardcore etc. This explains why there was no internal supporting wall footings, apparently bricks were good enough!!

To address the lack of foundations underneath our supporting wall the plan was put together to support the joists and then remove the supporting wall, dig out a foundation trench, put in footings, and then rebuild supporting wall. At this point we needed to get building control involved, so thats added a little extra delay but they have been fantastically supportive. They are onboard with the plan and earlier this week provided the first inspection sign off at the point where the foundations trench was ready for pouring.

Progress pics from the remaining teardown up to date.

 

[Diagro]

Very Open plan now haha

I look forward to seeing it back in action later in the year

 

[Syla5]

Work is still progressing, we have had some delays, i will need to get a better update post going soon.

Current stage
First fix electrics completed - additions include data cabling to internal rooms and 4x external Camera points for POE Cameras
First fix plumbing completed
Kitchen prepped to plasterboard stage
New loft insulation installed in both Kitchen and main house loft
Upstairs ceilings vapour barriered and plaster boarding up
New patio door cut our, lintels fitted, and door in place
Bedrooms being prepped for plastering
Window surrounds wood framing replaced with blockwork


Photos to be added.

I have started the process of trying to claim back to costs of the additional structural work from the insurance company and to extend the alternative accommodation arrangements as the delays in total have pushed us back 6-8 weeks.

 

[aVdub]

Out of interest and forgive me if you have mentioned in this thread. What is the age of the house and are you alone in having this issue.

My mind would be working 4 shifts if that was my place as it is now.

 

[Syla5]

Out of interest and forgive me if you have mentioned in this thread. What is the age of the house and are you alone in having this issue.

My mind would be working 4 shifts if that was my place as it is now.

Built 1957. Definetly not the only ones who have issues, all the houses down the street were built this way, the ones impacted the most are ones that have plants / trees growing right near them.

Now that we have seen how the floor was built it all makes sense. Plenty of room for roots to grow under between the bricks and draw out moisture from what is a heavy clay base.

Yeah there’s quite a bit of mental gymnastics going on with balancing work, life, renovations, insurance company etc all at the same time.

 

[aVdub]

Built 1957. Definetly not the only ones who have issues, all the houses down the street were built this way, the ones impacted the most are ones that have plants / trees growing right near them.

Now that we have seen how the floor was built it all makes sense. Plenty of room for roots to grow under between the bricks and draw out moisture from what is a heavy clay base.

Yeah there’s quite a bit of mental gymnastics going on with balancing work, life, renovations, insurance company etc all at the same time.

Thank you.

The OH parents house is a similar looking design, but built later than yours that I've had a few issues to sort out over the years, which included adding reinforced 1 cube concrete to support retaining walls that were in damager of collapsing onto the house due to waste not being benched out correctly etc. (nearly killed me that work)

That floor is awful and I guess you are lucky the damage is not worse than seen. Hopefully all affected are able to resolve this.

Probably worth looking what the future predicts and installing now.

Looking forward to updates on this.