Subsidence Nightmare

Mikeyabosbht

Hi guys,

Hope someone can help, please.

My parents have suffered Subsidence since July 2013 on a fourteen year old house and we estimate £30-40K worth of damage required to remedy.

We our insured, mercifully.

A goat willow tree was considered the culprit by a structural engineer, yet excavations and investigative trial pits did not find any tree roots. They also state this is a "very small claim".

Parents and I feel it was caused by a neighbouring three-story extension that went on for nine months, we feel extensive works only six or so metres away from the house has essentially lifted the foundations, (clay foundations) of our house causing the cracks.

The goat willow tree adjacent to the property has chopped and they state there has since been "improvements".

Monitoring has been ongoing since November 2013 and this will now be the sixth reading. The results show house movement of one millimetre per month - would you consider this a material movement?

The engineer clearly classes this as significant and will not allow the builders to initiate building works to remedy the cracks.

I question their integrity here - if they receive a fee per month, per survey this would likely explain their reluctance to engage the builders to perform repairs.

The house has been left as it was when the cracks were first discovered, although we did instruct them to "point" the cracks.

Any help here would be greatly appreciated.

dacouch

Subsidence claims can take a long time, they need to monitor the property and take actions to remove the cause of the subsidence.

They will not normally start the building works until they have stabilised te property

rs65

Mikeyabosbht wrote: »

I question their integrity here - if they receive a fee per month, per survey this would likely explain their reluctance to engage the builders to perform repairs.

You would question their integrity more if the repairs were done and cracks reappeared.

Have you considered paying yourself for a second opinion?

eddddy

Hi Mikey

Some advice I got from a structural engineer about a subsidence claim many years ago (which I assume still holds good)...

Make it clear that you are not asking the insurers to start the building work, you are leaving them to decide when building work should start.

My engineer had come across cases like this where insurers wrote to policyholders saying something like "we are proceeding with repairs in accordance with your instructions" (especially where the policyholder's request worked out cheaper than the insurer's engineer's plan).

My engineer suspected that if cracks reappeared, the insurers might then argue that they had followed the policyholder's instructions, so the policyholder is to blame.