My dusty crack is getting bigger and now it smells of smoke!

[SteCenturion]

View attachment 16000

This might be an old'ish thread but...

Be-Jaysus !!

 

[MarkF]

I was born in new house, then moved to another new build house when I was 14. As an adult I've only bought Victorian properties and would never want to live in a "normal" new house. Sure they have faults but they also have high ceilings, cellars, detailed door frames, deep ceiling cornices, sturdy staircase balustrades, bannisters your kids can slide down and when "in drink", you can fall against a wall, not through one. Character

Monty Veda's kitchen story made me laugh, I've had joiners and tilers turn up and then run away!

 

[Andrew_Culture]

I was born in new house, then moved to another new build house when I was 14. As an adult I've only bought Victorian properties and would never want to live in a "normal" new house. Sure they have faults but they also have high ceilings, cellars, detailed door frames, deep ceiling cornices, sturdy staircase balustrades, bannisters your kids can slide down and when "in drink", you can fall against a wall, not through one. Character

Monty Veda's kitchen story made me laugh, I've had joiners and tilers turn up and then run away!

We've had at least five electricians refuse to work on our house, including one who was my cousin!

 

[Andrew_Culture]

No mines here in Suffolk but I have recently learned that about five doors away from us the council had to do some major groundworks at the bottom of the gardens of about six houses to stop them collapsing. They then sent each homeowner a bill for £40k. Rumour has it at least one person had to default on their mortgage and move out!

Would you believe it but a fellow CycleChat member I met at the weekend nearly bought a house a few doors down from mine but didn't because as soon as he became the owner he'd have to pay the council £15k for subsidence repairs done at the bottom of the garden

 

[subaqua]

We've had at least five electricians refuse to work on our house, including one who was my cousin!

thats because we are supposed to ensure earthing and bonding are adequate. can be a nightmare in victorian houses where elastictrickery was put in anywhere from 1930 to 1965 and the water pipes and gas pipes are a million miles from the electricity intake.

all my houses have been victorian and I love every minute of the challenges presented anytime i go to do a job. 1st house was easy as I gutted it back to bare brick and timber and had a blank canvas to work from.

current house I have spent 15 years putting right all the botches the previous owner put in when he tried to "renovate" amazing how many people think newspaper is a good bulk filler.

 

[Andrew_Culture]

thats because we are supposed to ensure earthing and bonding are adequate. can be a nightmare in victorian houses where elastictrickery was put in anywhere from 1930 to 1965 and the water pipes and gas pipes are a million miles from the electricity intake.

all my houses have been victorian and I love every minute of the challenges presented anytime i go to do a job. 1st house was easy as I gutted it back to bare brick and timber and had a blank canvas to work from.

current house I have spent 15 years putting right all the botches the previous owner put in when he tried to "renovate" amazing how many people think newspaper is a good bulk filler.

I found newspapers from the 70s stuffed up my crack!

 

[SteCenturion]

Here's a more illustrative photo for your horror and amusement:

View attachment 16279

That photo reminds me of ...


"Ah canny poosh her any further captain, she's gonnie blow".

 

[subaqua]

I found newspapers from the 70s stuffed up my crack!

daily mirror 1956 is the earliest in this one.

oldest ever found by me was a 1921 dated page in a big house at 6 Beach Lawn Waterloo, sefton

 

[SteCenturion]

Does anyone on here play banjolele?
This thread title deserves to be a George Formby-style ditty.

"Eeh, ah live at noomber twenty-three
With Mavis, who's mah lass
We got married joost last year
We really 'ave a gas.

She went into t'pantry
To give 'er beans a soak
Boot 'er doosty crack got bigger
And now it smells of smoke..."

(clearly the song needs development, but I hope it has potential)

"If you could see what I could see...

Through Andrew_Culture's windows"

 

[MontyVeda]

... As an adult I've only bought Victorian properties and would never want to live in a "normal" new house. Sure they have faults but they also have high ceilings, cellars, detailed door frames, deep ceiling cornices, sturdy staircase balustrades, bannisters your kids can slide down and when "in drink", you can fall against a wall, not through one. Character

...

yup, the lack of anything straight or square is made up with character... although I rent a single floor in my house, buying the whole property is one of my 'lottery dreams'... and kicking out the other tenants of course.

It's still got the original sash windows on the front, and judging by how wobbly the outside world looks, original glass too for the most part. A proper chunky bannister and balustrade, and the staircase up to the attic is a thing of beauty. I've got a big fat original fire place in my living room, (originally the drawing room i guess), but a knackered chimney so i can't use it. It'd be a nightmare to restore the whole property, and possibly cost more than it's worth... but I'd love to have the time, the money and the deeds to do just that.

...

Monty Veda's kitchen story made me laugh, I've had joiners and tilers turn up and then run away!

back when i was doing my C&J work experience... the joiner i was working with told me to just throw away the spirit level in old properties and do it all by eye... just remembered that nugget of advice... dang!

 

[SteCenturion]

Well it's all come to a head now. The monitoring company reckons the movement has stopped and has given us an epic long list of work they're going to carry out. We just had to find a £1000 excess. I received a payout for mis-sold PPI insurance which nearly covers the excess (but would also have nicely covered a new MTB).

Shame (no new MTB) but at least getting the house/home sorted out should improve life for the family, which after all is all anyone wants so Best of British to you.

 

[summerdays]

Never had more modern than 1950s/1960s, but currently in a 1920s house with mostly original sashes, and drafts! I do prefer the style and character of the older house but wouldn't mind some of the cosyness of a more modern house!

 

[captain nemo1701]

Does anyone else here have any experience of subsidence?

We bought our 1882 Victorian terrace house twelve years ago and knew from the survey that there had been subsidence in the past (although the steeply sloping floors were also a clue), but we were young, optimistic and Northern Rock were happily giving anyone a mortgage regardless of structural stability, income or rank odour.

A few years back I foolishly reported to our buildings insurer that the cracks in our walls that I'd been filling with polyfiller for years were still opening up. They asked if the gaps in the floor and the walls were big enough to fit a credit card in, and I told them the truth, which was that the gap between wall and floorboards in our bathroom is so big the cats stick their heads down it and look under the floorboards.

A couple of years ago they told send some folk down to look at the drains and told us we needed to spend £2000 because our drains weren't in 'optimum' condition. Dynorod gave us a second opinion and told us that our drains were fine, but still we had to fork out for the work to be done or the insurance company wouldn't progress the claim.

So here we are now, the cracks are still being monitored and the gaps are still slowly getting bigger. But as of last night we noticed something odd. We are technically end terrace, but the next terrace starts about 3cm from our external wall (so from the outside we look mid-terrace), and last night we noticed that our pantry smells of cigarette smoke, neither my wife or I smoke and I'm fairly sure my 14 month year old daughter isn't smoking either... but our neighbour does smoke. So why on earth does our pantry now smell of cigarettes when our house isn't even attached to the one next door???


I guess I'm posting for commiseration more than anything else! We're in no hurry to move, but it would be nice to get the repairs done and be living in a house that we can't even decorate.

Hi Andrew,

I work as a geotechnical engineer and this is something we sometimes get called in to look at. Not much use to you as I live in Bristol, so I can only offer some advice:

1. Check the geology under your house. You can go to the British Geological Society website and use the free geology viewer to see what lies beneath (it has a zoomable map). Clay soils are subject to shrinkage & swelling (heave), granular soils (sand/gravels etc) settle but generally only during construction. My house settled a bit after it was built and I have a few 'non-right angled' door frames.

2. Check historical maps and get a desk study done. Maps can be bought from emapsite. It will help to check old maps as although their may not be any mines in the area, there may be old wells (once had a client whose patio vanished into an old well), areas of old landfill which are unstable etc.

3. Call in an engineer and get your drains checked again with CCTV. Any leakage might be creating a 'bulb' of soft ground under your foundations which might be causing differential settlement ie. the part of your house on soft ground will be sinking and the rest won't, so it can cause cracks.

4. The house is on a slope. Get the slope stability checked out. With all the wet weather we've had in the last two years, it's causing slope problems and sinkholes to open up.

5. I understand that there are no mines in the area. However, records aren't always concise and it would help to rule this out by getting a coal mining survey done. Reports cost about £80 -100.

6. Chalk : Chalk 'dissolution' features can be common and hazardous.
https://www.bgs.ac.uk/caves/chalk.html

Hope this helps. I suspect that one of your drains is leaking, softening the ground and causing some differential settlement.

 

[Beebo]

I found newspapers from the 70s stuffed up my crack!

stop it!

 

[Andrew_Culture]

Well the insurers have decided that our house has stopped moving and today they started the repairs. However, the fella here to start the work is taking a lot of photos and having some fairly alarmed sounding phone calls with his boss. I thought those of you who have been following this tale for a while might like to see some updated photos.

This is the under stairs cupboard, the insurers' agent only looked in here for the first time a few months ago, god knows they they thought the crack that runs the height of the house stopped at the top of the stairs:

Now that some of the loose debris has been moved away light for our bedroom is shining through to our bathroom.

A few bricks fell out, but you can see how severe the gap is by comparing it to the size of the light switch