Survey reporting structural movement. What to do....??

Phil4432

My parents house has something similar, and its been fine.

However, none of us can really say all is ok from the picture.  I'd follow the professional advice and get a structural survey.  If that does not fully satisfy, best to pull away from the sale.

warwick2001

Managed to speak to the Surveyor, he reckons that the wall has dropped, not 'come away'. He said that in order to fix the problem, may need a load of work in the cellar/foundations. Oh dear. 

Rang a structural engineering company, gonna get a survey done. Will be very annoying if we have to walk away from the house, but best to do it now than be stuck with a property that needs a pile of structural work.

I'll update once I get the report back, if anyone is interested.

Annemos

Oh yes please.... that will be great. Good Luck. Hope it will be all fine. 

stuart45

Sensible thing to do. I think people on here are always interested to hear the results. 

Phil4432

Sounds like it needs underpinning basically.  Unfortunately, this lowers the value of the house.  Fine if you wish to be there for life, as you could get money off and actually have a better foundation than if there was no work.

But if you wish to sell, you'd have to lower the price as home insurance would cost more(for yourself also) 

Section62

warwick2001 said:

Managed to speak to the Surveyor, he reckons that the wall has dropped, not 'come away'. He said that in order to fix the problem, may need a load of work in the cellar/foundations. Oh dear. 

I agree with stuart45's analysis - a vertical crack close to the corner of a building is usually an indicator of the wall to the side moving relative to the wall which contains the cracked.  In your case the door and window represent a weak point with relatively little masonry connecting the front wall to the side wall.  With no nearby internal cross-wall in this case, the lateral restraint of the front section of the gable wall would be reliant primarily on the joists and ties in the first-floor floor and ceiling.

(this is a good example of something which comes up regularly on the forum about 'structural' considerations being more than just dealing with the weight on top of/above a wall)

The problem with the pointing repair work is it masks the true nature of the movement.  But if we assume the pointing was all done at the same time with the same materials and to an equal standard, it would appear that a larger gap has since opened at the bottom than at the top.  In classic 'rotation' of the gable wall you'd typically expect the cracks to be larger at the top than at the bottom, which is possibly why the surveyor thinks it is a case of 'dropping' rather than 'coming away'.

Although I'm not a SE, I'm not sure I would agree with the surveyor's conclusion in this case.  If you look at the area immediately above the doorway lintel in the picture below, the stone above the BT wires is 'bridging' the path of the crack.  The left-hand end is supported on top of the doorway (indicated by the magenta arrow) whereas the right-hand end is embedded in the masonry which is assumed to be moving.

In a case where the gable wall is dropping I would expect to see that masonry unit either cracked through (roughly where the blue line is) or else being rotated in the direction of the red arrow (which of these depends on the material strength).  The wires and ivy are obscuring the view, but I can't see either a crack or obvious signs of rotation.  For me that would suggest the primary issue is horizontal movement, rather than vertical.





There is a very similar pattern of movement/vertical cracking seen at the bottom corner of walls which is common with clay bricks (due to swelling of the bricks), but that wouldn't be applicable to a stone building of considerable age.

So I think this is definitely one for a structural engineer to take a very close look at.

On the positive side, if the problem is purely one of lack of lateral restraint, that is something which could (in theory) be stopped by (re)providing sufficient ties into/through the wall.  It wouldn't necessarily require alteration to the foundations.  However, to determine whether this is possible the SE is almost certainly going to need to do some invasive investigations - in which case you will need the vendor to be cooperative and willing to allow this kind of investigation to take place.  Ideally it should be something they arrange, and deal with the problem through their insurance.

warwick2001

@Section62 thank you so much for your detailed response. It all makes sense to me, but I'm a pleb.

In a twist of luck (for a change), I've actually managed to secure a copy of a previous structural report of the house. Brief history, the house sold in July to another couple, they had a home buyers report done, and then following the advice within the report got a structural survey done, and then pulled out.  I have a rather good estate agent, so when I voiced my concerns with the house, they offered to get in touch with with the previous 'buyers', who have agreed to let me look at the report (for a small charge, obviously...).

So, hopefully I'll have a much better idea of what was reported 'wrong' with the house. Armed with the info in the report, and Section62's advice, I think I'll put it to the vendor to either sort the problem through their insurance, or we walk. Unless, of course, they knock £10k off the house. That should cover the repairs, I would assume.

warwick2001

Phil4432 said:

Sounds like it needs underpinning basically.  Unfortunately, this lowers the value of the house.  Fine if you wish to be there for life, as you could get money off and actually have a better foundation than if there was no work.

But if you wish to sell, you'd have to lower the price as home insurance would cost more(for yourself also) 

Thanks for this.

Just a thought. Why does the underpinning lower the value of a house? I can't think of another example where you find a problem with a house, you fix it, but yet you are constantly penalised for said repaired problem i.e. higher insurance premiums and lower value of house. And as long as the underpinning is done correctly, is it not as good as any other house foundation, if not more so as it has more support (I assume)? Certainly in an area where the houses are all built on the same soil, having further supporting structures would be a benefit I would have thought?

No need to answer/respond to this, just a musing.

Section62

warwick2001 said:

Unless, of course, they knock £10k off the house. That should cover the repairs, I would assume.

You'll need to be guided by a SE on the potential cost of repairs, along with any permanent devaluing effect a historic 'structural' defect might have.

warwick2001 said:

Just a thought. Why does the underpinning lower the value of a house? I can't think of another example where you find a problem with a house, you fix it, but yet you are constantly penalised for said repaired problem i.e. higher insurance premiums and lower value of house. And as long as the underpinning is done correctly, is it not as good as any other house foundation, if not more so as it has more support (I assume)? Certainly in an area where the houses are all built on the same soil, having further supporting structures would be a benefit I would have thought?

Logically you are correct.  The reason is primarily due to the irrationality of housebuyers, lenders and insurance companies.

Annemos

What I have heard is that the experts prefer not to underpin these days. It is only used as a last resort, if all else fails. (About ten per cent of properties with issues.) 

The reason seems to be, that if you underpin only part of a house, then you have part of the house that is strengthened and part of the house that is not. This can then create areas and hard spots that may have differential movement against each other. 

So ideally you would have to underpin the whole house to overcome that potential issue.