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In 22 years of home ownership I have never needed to claim on the buildings bit of the insurance, but that might change.
I have recently realised that the line of cracked plaster at the top of our stairs is more serious than I thought (assumed it was plaster shrinking. Turns out that the entire corner section of our house has shifted half a mm or so and if I look closely I can see small cracks in the mortar on both sides of the rear corner of the house about 5-8 feet each side from the corner. Clearly this needs reinforcing and possibly the foundations need pinning?
Given the size of this job, think it will need to be done under insurance.
I changed insurance companies last October. M&S despite the bike insurance was just too dear, so I went to AXA on a pretty decent policy.
My question is, will AXA cover the work even though I have only been with them for 6 months?
I have had continuous buildings insurance for 20 years, but how does it work if the damage might have started before the policy started?
As an aside, the HS2 line is due to go within 15m of my house (45m underground however!), and I heard that they split the line in this area due to the ground being unstable (ex mining).
All advice welcome.
bump for the evening crew!
If you are claiming for subsidence there is an ABI agreement in place about who covers the claim based on when the claim was notified relative to when the policy was incepted. You don't need to get involved as they will sort it out between themselves. Are you sure it is not just movement/settlement?
bubs, thanks for the advice. I suspect it is not just "movement/settlement" as the houses were built in the early 1960's.
There (apparently) was a cement shortage at that time so there is a general issue with the quality of the mortar used in the property, but after >50 years I think settlement is not likely to be the cause. The main drain runs near that corner of the house, so I worry that this is somehow linked. Or it could be the mines near the area, or just slightly shonky building. To my knowledge, no other houses on the street have had issues and we have lived here for nearly 20 years.
Half a MM is pretty much nothing, is that a typo or are the cracks just hairline?
I would have thought at this stage they will just monitor for further movement (I remember someone fixing glass strips across cracks in our house when I was a child). MIght be worth doing that DIY without flagging up a potential subsidence issue for the purposes of changing insurer in the future.
Or of course, you could just monitor it yourself and see if it changes when the line goes through...although 45 metres is pretty deep 🙂
if it' half a mm it is nothing to worry about just monitor. The weather has been particularly cold, have you been away at all? I've noticed several cracks in wood architrave and skirting along the stairs have appeared. we were away over the really cold spell so I'm putting it down to my house not really like going between 20 on the inside and -10 on the outside.
when you can fit a pen in the gap you should start worrying.
also before you worry about subsidence worth checking you don' have any hidden water leaks or problems with your drains
We have a similar problem with one of our houses. The insurance have organised everything so far but their first step (after coming to look at it) was a camera survey of the drains.
Eeee lad that's nowt to worry about. That's really bugger all to be fair. Worth you going off your own back and getting a quick reliable and cheap camera survey done of that one drain. Avoid the dyno rod types for doing this. Go local.
Thanks for all the advice folks! Will keep you posted.
Definitely get the drains checked, and are there any trees nearby? Also do you know what the soil type is?
It's highly unlikely your house would need underpinning based on your description. At worst you could be looking at some minor crack stitching, but you can buy packs of the helibar kits from Screwfix for about £50 so I'd consider that before getting your insurers involved once you have ruled out drainage problems.
So I spoke provisionally to the insurance company (but have not logged a claim).
Their advice was as above. Get a CCTV check of drains first. IF it turns out to be the drains causing problems then that's a much less severe claim than subsidence. Subsidence claim can bugger up your insurance for years to come (10 years).
So tomorrow I have a nice person from Wakefield coming out for a full CCTV survey. £125+vat but if it gives piece of mind and rules out any other problems then it's worth it.
If there is no major underground issues then I will probably self repair with the helical bar solution.
Important things I have learned:
Don't log a subsidence claim unless you are certain that's the cause.
Repairs to drains on my property only have to be paid for by me up to the bit where it hit's the shared pipe.
So even though the communal pipe runs right across my back garden, if there is ever a problem with this then Yorkshire Water foot the bill.
So full camera survey done this morning and our drains are fairly knackered looking at the footage. The pipes are the clay type. You could see on the camera that quite a few of the pipe joints were misaligned and at the end where it joins the soil pipe there was a half inch gap between bottom of soil pipe and the elbow.
There are actually three bits of drain on my land that join the main communal pipe: one from the front corner freshwater drain grate, one from the rear drain grate (shared by guttering and domestic drainage) and a third one from the soil pipe. This could be a big job!
My guess is that the drain pipes have shifted settled and this has caused some minor erosion/softening of the surrounding soil allowing the property to move a little. IF so would I be correct in assuming that getting the drains fixed (under insurance) and then getting cracks reinforced with helical bar (out of my own pocket)would be sufficient fix? This would avoid the "subsidence" marker going onto the property.