Subsidence from water damage - what to do next

rockstarnorth

Short version is as follows:

• Bought and moved into a property in August 2019
• After signing up with the water company on a direct debit and signing up for e-billing, I then didn't hear from them for over a year
• My direct debit suddenly shot up last month from £40pm to £180pm. I logged into the account and discovered that my property was using around 1,600 litres of water a day when projected consumption was 80 litres per day. At no point had I been notified that bills were ready or that high consumption was identified on my account, or that my direct debit would be increasing
• My insurer carried out investigatory works, discovering the cause was a pipe underneath my house which was inaccessible. Therefore I had a new supply pipe fitted and this inaccessible pipe was capped off, ending the leak
• However, in a direct line above the leaking pipe, there are clear cracks in the walls indicative of the house effectively splitting in two/sagging into the point where this pipe is.
• My insurer says that this sounds like subsidence caused by leaking water, which is one of the few 'exempt causes' in my subsidence cover - and therefore they won't cover.

My view is that the water company has been extraordinarily negligent - if I had been notified of a bill in the first instance back in February, action could have been taken to prevent damage. It is likely I will need some sort of underpinning works conducted and as these are not covered by my insurer, I believe my best option is to sue the water company for negligence.

Does this sound reasonable, and how would I proceed? 

AskAsk

water companies are responsible for pipes outside the property.  internal pipe, even if it is burried under the ground is the owner's liability as far as i am aware, so i think it will be difficult to claim against the water board.  your building insurance should cover the cost of damage resulting from the leak.

you can certainly make a complaint to them and see if they can offer you any compensation.  often they will reduce the water bill as it wasn't your fault the water leak was not detected because they had not come round to take meter readings.

DiddyDavies

AskAsk said:

your building insurance should cover the cost of damage resulting from the leak.

I don't know who the OP is insured with but my policy (Aviva) wouldn't cover the damage and this may well be a common exclusion.

What is covered:

5. a. Water escaping from water tanks, pipes, equipment or fixed heating systems.

What is not covered

Loss or damage: 

that happens after the home has been left unoccupied for more than the period shown on your schedule; 

to solid floors caused by infill materials settling, swelling or shrinking as a result of water escaping from the home; 

by subsidence, heave or landslip caused by water escaping

AskAsk

DiddyDavies said:

AskAsk said:

your building insurance should cover the cost of damage resulting from the leak.

I don't know who the OP is insured with but my policy (Aviva) wouldn't cover the damage and this may well be a common exclusion.

What is covered:

5. a. Water escaping from water tanks, pipes, equipment or fixed heating systems.

What is not covered

Loss or damage: 

that happens after the home has been left unoccupied for more than the period shown on your schedule; 

to solid floors caused by infill materials settling, swelling or shrinking as a result of water escaping from the home; 

by subsidence, heave or landslip caused by water escaping

i am with AXA and it is covered on my policy, but the excess is £600.  i just looked at another policy i have with another insurer and that also covers this, but it doesn't cover escape of water caused by subsidence, heave or lanslip, that is the other way round to yours, where esape of water caused by these are not covered, not that water causes these.  the excess on that one is £250.

rockstarnorth

AskAsk said:

water companies are responsible for pipes outside the property.  internal pipe, even if it is burried under the ground is the owner's liability as far as i am aware, so i think it will be difficult to claim against the water board.  your building insurance should cover the cost of damage resulting from the leak.

you can certainly make a complaint to them and see if they can offer you any compensation.  often they will reduce the water bill as it wasn't your fault the water leak was not detected because they had not come round to take meter readings.

Yes, I'm aware the internal pipe is my responsibility - my contention is that had the water company conducted itself with due care and attention (ie. sending me bills, and alerting me that my apparent consumption of water was so high that it's off their scale for domestic water usage), I would have been aware of the leak and could have taken action before damage had happened.

They've already agreed to wipe 100% of the leakage usage. The problem isn't that they failed to take meter readings - it's that they did, but don't apparently have any system in place to alert customers when usage is high, or failed to recognise that it was extraordinarily high consumption. 

AskAsk

rockstarnorth said:

AskAsk said:

water companies are responsible for pipes outside the property.  internal pipe, even if it is burried under the ground is the owner's liability as far as i am aware, so i think it will be difficult to claim against the water board.  your building insurance should cover the cost of damage resulting from the leak.

you can certainly make a complaint to them and see if they can offer you any compensation.  often they will reduce the water bill as it wasn't your fault the water leak was not detected because they had not come round to take meter readings.

Yes, I'm aware the internal pipe is my responsibility - my contention is that had the water company conducted itself with due care and attention (ie. sending me bills, and alerting me that my apparent consumption of water was so high that it's off their scale for domestic water usage), I would have been aware of the leak and could have taken action before damage had happened.

They've already agreed to wipe 100% of the leakage usage. The problem isn't that they failed to take meter readings - it's that they did, but don't apparently have any system in place to alert customers when usage is high, or failed to recognise that it was extraordinarily high consumption. 

you would have to consult a solicitor to see if you have a case, but i think this will be difficult to win.  they don't have to issue bills regularly and ours only do so every 6 months.  if they allow water to escape then they lose money on it as they can not bill the customer, but that is as far as the regulatory body will enforce.  it is their water after all that they are wasting.

to claim for damages you would have to prove that the escape of water caused the subsidence by getting an independent structural engineer report, and the engineer would have to say without doubt that this is the only cause of the subsidence.  the court would ask if you pestered the water company for the bill when you didn't hear from them after 6 months?  did you?

Doozergirl

rockstarnorth said:

AskAsk said:

water companies are responsible for pipes outside the property.  internal pipe, even if it is burried under the ground is the owner's liability as far as i am aware, so i think it will be difficult to claim against the water board.  your building insurance should cover the cost of damage resulting from the leak.

you can certainly make a complaint to them and see if they can offer you any compensation.  often they will reduce the water bill as it wasn't your fault the water leak was not detected because they had not come round to take meter readings.

Yes, I'm aware the internal pipe is my responsibility - my contention is that had the water company conducted itself with due care and attention (ie. sending me bills, and alerting me that my apparent consumption of water was so high that it's off their scale for domestic water usage), I would have been aware of the leak and could have taken action before damage had happened.

They've already agreed to wipe 100% of the leakage usage. The problem isn't that they failed to take meter readings - it's that they did, but don't apparently have any system in place to alert customers when usage is high, or failed to recognise that it was extraordinarily high consumption. 

This isn't going to give you a conclusive answer, but we are with Severn Trent.  When two more people moved into our house, someone called my husband to see what had happened as they were concerned that we'd developed a leak! 

I don't remember how long that took, but we're only billed every 6 months.  

Have the structural engineers established if/what remedial action needs to happen to the house? 

troffasky

If I had a water meter, I would be reading it myself rather than waiting for the water company to do it, but mostly out of curiosity rather than to cover a scenario like this.

From what Doozergirl says, some water companies have systems in places to spot this; a shame that yours doesn't.

You're going to have to prove that they had a duty of care to you and were somehow negligent in delaying telling you about your rate of water consumption [some latitude could be allowed for them here as you'd just moved in; they don't know what your "normal" consumption would be].

Given that you [almost certainly] have access to the meter yourself, why are they any more responsible in this regard than you are?

weeg

I know nothing about the legal issues, but my advice on what to do next is this: talk to a structural engineer. There's a good chance that a)you might not need underpinning, just crack stitching, b) if you do need underpinning it's the easy/cheap version you could (with a bit of hard labour) diy - dig hit-and-miss holes, fill with ready mix, repeat. Find out the actual scale of the problem/ likely size of the bill before you go to war.  

Obviously, this depends on the ground under your house. Hence, spring for £350-500 on getting expert advice - it could save you a ton.

AskAsk

Doozergirl said:

rockstarnorth said:

AskAsk said:

water companies are responsible for pipes outside the property.  internal pipe, even if it is burried under the ground is the owner's liability as far as i am aware, so i think it will be difficult to claim against the water board.  your building insurance should cover the cost of damage resulting from the leak.

you can certainly make a complaint to them and see if they can offer you any compensation.  often they will reduce the water bill as it wasn't your fault the water leak was not detected because they had not come round to take meter readings.

Yes, I'm aware the internal pipe is my responsibility - my contention is that had the water company conducted itself with due care and attention (ie. sending me bills, and alerting me that my apparent consumption of water was so high that it's off their scale for domestic water usage), I would have been aware of the leak and could have taken action before damage had happened.

They've already agreed to wipe 100% of the leakage usage. The problem isn't that they failed to take meter readings - it's that they did, but don't apparently have any system in place to alert customers when usage is high, or failed to recognise that it was extraordinarily high consumption. 

This isn't going to give you a conclusive answer, but we are with Severn Trent.  When two more people moved into our house, someone called my husband to see what had happened as they were concerned that we'd developed a leak! 

I don't remember how long that took, but we're only billed every 6 months.  

Have the structural engineers established if/what remedial action needs to happen to the house? 

my dad is with Thames water.  he got a really big bill and i asked them to come and have a look to see if there is a leak as the bill was unusually high, more than double the usual bill.  they came out to look but reported there was no leak, but they found my dad had left the garden hose pipe running!

so they do not monitor leakage, even when they see the high bill.  it is up to the customer to ask them to investigate.

rockstarnorth

the court would ask if you pestered the water company for the bill when you didn't hear from them after 6 months?  did you?

No, but as a new home owner, I actually don't know how frequently different water companies issue bills. I would have assumed that I would have received notifications on reception of a bill and it has already been determined by the water co. that there is an issue in sending me these notifications.

troffasky said:

You're going to have to prove that they had a duty of care to you and were somehow negligent in delaying telling you about your rate of water consumption [some latitude could be allowed for them here as you'd just moved in; they don't know what your "normal" consumption would be].

Given that you [almost certainly] have access to the meter yourself, why are they any more responsible in this regard than you are?

An interesting question, because I suspect it wouldn't be asked of a pensioner.

Arguably, I'm not in the business of understanding average water consumption or how to understand how a water meter reading. My water company, however, is. They also know the household has two people in it (which is how they calculated the original direct debit) and the consumption recorded was so high it was off their equivalency scale - it works out that the amount of water is most likely equal to a household containing >20 people. My revised monthly direct debit to account for this consumption was in fact set to be almost as much as the average annual bill for a household in the area. Given the company's insistence on customers saving water, I do find it rather surprising that none of this seemed to trigger any sort of system on their part.