Have I got a mis-sold case? Underpinned House caused £££££'s work.

lucyeowen

Good afternoon everyone. I'm looking for some advise from someone in the know.
I purchased my home at the end of 2018, so have been here just over 4 years now. The plan was always to extend and renovate which we started doing in October last year. To cut a long story very short, it turns out that the house is underpinned in 10 places. This has caused us no end of problems with the extension and renovation. Whilst it seems the works were done and the problem fixed, the whole house is wonky. There's not a wall that's straight. It's caused me tens of thousands of pounds of extra work to make things look straight and make floor level. Instead of a concrete floor for the extension I've had to have all timber floors which has been massively costly and extra labour and time. 

My question is, where do I stand legally? Having gone through all my paperwork from the purchase of the house, there is a hand drawn diagram of the works and a structural sign off from 1987. However this wasn't brought to my attention as a potential issue, nor did it come up on my survey. My builders joke that this house is the one that Jack built, but joking aside I'm now having to remortgage 50k to cover the costs of the extra works involved to cover up such a problem. 

Has anyone got any advise for me? Do you think I'm due compensation? 

Thank you in advance. 

tooldle

Short answer, probably not. If the info is in your bundle of paperwork from the purchase, presumably you saw it at some stage? Was this prior to, or after exchange? 

Lots of houses are wonky. What did your survey say and what type of survey did you have?

lucyeowen

Honestly, I don't recall seeing it at all. My building control for my extension wanted to see that the underpinning had been signed off by a structural engineer, so I requested all my paperwork from the archives of my solicitor hoping it was in there, and it was. It was then that it came to light. Shouldn't someone have highlighted this to me when I was purchasing the house? My Solicitor? Surveyor? Mortgage provider? I don't know what kind or survey I had. I've now requested a copy of this also. 

TBG01

So the Solicitor would've seen confirmation that the work had been signed off. What more do you want? For them to go round with a spirit level?

The fact you don't know what kind or survey you had or have a copy to hand makes me think that maybe you weren't thorough when it came to reading what was sent to you.

macman

Compo from who? Not the seller, unless you can show that they misrepresented the condition of the property. Not the engineer, as you had no contract with them. 
Nothing to do with your conveyancer or mortgage provider. 
You need to go through the survey, but remember that it's purely visual, and a surveyor can see no more than you can upon inspection. 
You don't need a surveyor to tell you if a floor is not level.

user1977

lucyeowen said:

My building control for my extension wanted to see that the underpinning had been signed off by a structural engineer, so I requested all my paperwork from the archives of my solicitor hoping it was in there, and it was.

And at what stage in the transaction was it produced to them?

If "none of the walls look straight", wasn't that obvious from first viewing? Not something which ought to have taken four years for you to notice.

Or has there been movement since you bought? Bear in mind any claim against the surveyor would need to involve someone retrospectively determining what they should have reported on back in 2018.

ThisIsWeird

When a house is underpinned in order to sort subsidence, the sinking/moving situation will essentially be halted at that point, and folk will live with the slight deviations from 'true' that had occurred, most or all of which would just not be noticeable. If floors and ceilings were clearly skewed to the point of being noticeable or unpleasant, then these could - and likely would - have been sorted relatively easily. But the only way to straighten, say, a seriously 'sloping' wall is to rebuild it, and no-one is going to do this unless there's a very good reason to.

I don't think that anyone buying an underpinned house is going to expect 'perfection', only that any old movement that had occurred before the 'pinning will be so slight as to not really be noticeable in practice. If anything is noticeable - walls are really squint, floors clearly felt to be off-level, etc - then they'd presumably only proceed with the purchase if this was all 'acceptable' to them. 

I'm guessing that you knew the house had been underpinned, and also that you found the fabric of the building to be aesthetically and ergonomically 'ok'? 

So, I cannot see any legitimate route towards a claim. I presume you had an architect draw up the extension plans? And they would have visually surveyed the house and taken lots of measurements? And they didn't notice anything excessive or out of the ordinary? So your house surely cannot be that bad?!

So, this only begs one question for me - how the hell can your builder justify an additional cost of multiple 10's of £ks?!

We had an extension built a few years back. I am pretty sure that if the odd house wall had been out by a foot, all the builders would have done is go, "Wow! Look at this beaut - lol!", and have proceeded to carry on building, taking that 'foot' naturally into account.

Do you know what they found soooo complex to deal with? Have they given you a breakdown of the extra work? Does it make sense?

Doozergirl

How ild is this house? 

All houses move.  Any old house will be wonky - I've worked on countless properties and the only one I've ever expected to be straight was the one we built that was manufactured in a factory.  

Clearly this one needed underpinning but there's many, many, many more houses that aren't straight than ones that have been underpinned.  

lookstraightahead

I'm a bit confused. Did you know it was underpinned and how old is your house.

FreeBear

Doozergirl said: All houses move.  Any old house will be wonky

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crooked_House

mi-key

As others have said, basically no. You haven't been missold anything. I would however be questioning your builder as to why it has costs tens of thousands more as there is no real reason for that. It isn't normally a major issue to work around wonky walls and floors

However, as Doozergirl says, it is very common to have walls that are not totally parallel to each other or at 90 degree angles, particularly with older houses. Mine was built in 1960 and when I refitted the kitchen, every cabinet and worktop had to be adjusted and custom fitted as none of the 4 walls were at 90 degrees to each other