UPDATE 18th Nov 09: The good news is the assessor came this morning, and it turns out we don't have actual subsidence, but we do have heavy settlement shifting under two of our floors which apparently simply need latex screeding to level them up before having our new carpets fitted. Our carpet fitters are coming tomorrow to give an estimate for doing this, as it's apparently something they often do.

The bad news is, we aren't insured for this work to be done as it isn't actual structural damage to the main property itself (foundations and outer walls etc.). Hopefully we will be able to pay for all this work within the £1,000 excess we would have had to pay the Insurers...



UPDATE: The Insurance Assessor is coming on Wednesday, 18th - next week. The whole process sounds as though it's going to take months, and we got in some help today to move loads of furniture out. Fortunately we have a huge summer house at the end of our garden, so we're able to store a lot of it there, and the rest is in the back lounge and conservatory!



We have been having various works done to our home, and the last thing on the agenda (for now) was to have new carpets laid, scheduled for today and tomorrow. Well, last night, having removed just about everything out of the computer room (what a heck of a job!!), my husband noticed some very strange dips in certain areas of the floor, so he decided to pull the old carpeting up to take a look.

We have subsidence! There's a 9 ft crack along the floor about a foot within the outside wall, and the whole of the middle of the room appears to be dipped down, with the concrete badly crumbling. There are water pipes routed under this floor to the radiator under the window, and these, fortunately, are ok at the moment, due to the fact that they have been properly ducted and supported.

On top of this, there are enormous cracks in the plaster along the wall between this room and the kitchen, the cracks being in precisely the same positions on both sides. The implications are not good for this concrete-block wall! We have noticed the cracks for a very long time, and have patched them over whenever we've redecorated, but after several years they have always returned. This has always made us wonder, but a surveyor some years ago assured us it was most likely to be due to drying out and natural settlement. Now we're not so sure, as we also now see some separation of the floor from the skirting board on the computer room side!

And that's not all!

We've noticed for quite some time a ridge in our flooring in our bedroom at the back of the bungalow and assumed it to be due to a possibly perishing underlay. On further investigation this morning, Richard found a similar drop in the floor (ust like that in the computer room), only he also established that the pipes under our bed are actually beginning to very slightly leak!!!

Obviously we had to cancel the installation of our carpets this morning. (This has all been paid for up front, which means the money we need as our excess payment for the work now needing to be done (£1,000) is in the hands of the carpet suppliers/fitters with the rest of their paid-up bill!

Our Insurance Company is sending an Adjustment Loss surveyor over to take a look in this next day or so, so meanwhile we are living in utter chaos, which could continue for many weeks and even months to come! Two of our other rooms are currently filled with furniture etc. out of the computer room, and it now looks as though we're going to have to move out of our bedroom and empty that too! (There's us thinking we could put up with the chaos for one or at most, two days???)

This is really bad news, especially at this time of the year with several birthdays and Christmas coming up as well. We are going to have to somehow raise the necessary up-front payment of £1,000 so that the work can be carried out as soon as possible. We will manage it I guess... Somehow... I'm SO grateful we're covered for subsidence by our Insurers, because this is looking very much like an underpinning job on its way!

















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