Help! Wall cracks - insurance, underpinning, etc

GrowingUp

Best bet is to draw a few striaght lines (must be straight) in pencil over the cracks, monitor them daily to see if the lines split apart at all (one side moves and the other stays put)

it may be that tje subsidence has ceased and can therefore be filled and covered up rather than worrying about supporting the building while it still shifts.

allyshaw

Folks, thanks very much for taking the time to reply.

Don’t have online pics to show you, and can’t see a file upload option, but DannyboyMidlands, think it’s as what you describe: as you face the house the bay juts out from the forward facing wall; the cracks run down the creases on both sides of the bay, with a hairline crack down the front of it too that’s mirrored inside the house.

Agree that the insurers have patently registered the case as a claim, which is why we now can’t get subsidence insurance and our premiums have jumped up.

However the loss adjustor told us (need to find the actual words) that it was an innocent little investigation and that thanks to us following his advice to cut down the shrubs, the cracks were closing according to his measurement (which they are not) and we would not have nasty words like ‘subsidence’ on our record.


So while the insurer is currently out of our life, it makes me wonder if we can get them/him on that.

We’re relatively comfortable that the house isn’t going to fall down the hill; you’re right, we should measure them ourselves but it looks like the cracks are not getting worse and could be repaired relatively simply. They themselves aren't our main concern



We don’t have immediate plans to move, but with family on the way I want the option within a few years. So what’s incredibly worrying is that if we can’t get subsidence insurance and our premiums are very high in relative terms, presumably those problems will register with any potential buyers, who will run a mile or knock £30k off our already depressed value.


Which is why I’ve wondered whether to look into the costs of the full, up front solution of identifying the underlying problem and getting it fixed. But I’m under no illusions that those will be anything other than astronomic.

Ms-Money-Penny

If your claim hasn't been closed with your original insurer then they still have to follow it through even though you are no longer insured with them.

Notmyrealname

allyshaw wrote: »

The insurer appointed their loss adjustor, whose advice was to remove the shrubs in our front garden, which he claimed were weakening the soil, then monitor the impact. We did that, however since then other people we've spoken to have pointed out that they may have actually helped strengthen the soil, so his advice was allegedly dubious.

No, you got advice from village idiots. What the shrubs and plants do is extract moisture out of the ground. This causes shrinkage especially if your house is built on clay type soil which then reduces the support the ground can give.

Subsidence_Help

Hi Allyshaw,

I was wondering if you've made any more progress or need any further help since your last post of 2nd August?

Regards

Mrs_Imp

We have a few cracks in the wall of our house. Our insurance company told us that if we were to get a letter from a structural engineer stating that it wasn't subsidence then that would be taken in to account for future renewals and bring the price down.

I suggest that you find yourself a good structural engineer and pay them to assess the cracks. Then you will either know what the problem is, and be able to fix it, or you will have evidence for your insurance company that your bay is fine.

I hope you get things sorted.

allyshaw

Thanks for the help, folks. Will follow some of the suggestions.

One suggestion is that the insurer was obliged to offer a renewal. If so, we need to trace down whether they did. If they didn't, was that because the adjutstor told them the case was closed. If so, can we prove that we told him not to because we couldn't see evidence that the cracks were closing. So we're trying to trace that down too. He told us that pursuing the claim would result in it being registered as subsidence. But patently it has among insurers, as we cannot get it insured for subsidence, so we also need to track down if we can prove he told us this too.


So some lines for us to follow through.

allyshaw

Thanks, sounds interesting. We had to have one inspect the cracks to activate the claim and he said they couldn't know the cause unless they conducted an excavation. But worth exploring though.