Hi, I am thinking of buying a house (victorian) that has suffered some subsidence in the past, although there appears to have been no movement for some decades now (this is yet to be confirmed when I have the full structural survey carried out). This subsidence has caused some of the floors in the house to have a pronounced slope to them. Is it possible to do anything about these sloping floors without having to rebuild the whole house or is it a quaint quirk that I shall have to grow to love? Thanks for any advice that can be given
Historic Subsidence and sloping floors
- Thread starter simonh
- Start date
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Hi, thanks for replying.
I'll try to describe this as best as I can, There is a central passageway beyond the front door. to the left is a dining room and kitchen, these appear unaffected. to the right is a lounge which runs the full length of the house, this slopes noticeably towards the back right of the house. The stairs going up seem to slope slightly and the landing slopes a little bit more, again to the right. This floor has three bedrooms and a bathroom, the bathroom seems fine, the bedroom facing the stairs has the most pronounced slope of all, falling towards the landing/rear of the house, the other two bedrooms have slight slopes again towards the rear of the house. The next flight of stairs seem to be reasonable unaffected but the two attic bedrroms have slopes to the rear also, particularly the right hand one. Its difficult to quantify the amount of slope, i.e. so many inches across the width of a room, as I didn't have a spirit level and tape with me, but I should think that the worst room has a four inch difference between front and back. I won't be able to get decent measurements of the degree of slopeage (is that even a word!) until next weekend but I hope there is enough information there to allow you to give some help.
I'll try to describe this as best as I can, There is a central passageway beyond the front door. to the left is a dining room and kitchen, these appear unaffected. to the right is a lounge which runs the full length of the house, this slopes noticeably towards the back right of the house. The stairs going up seem to slope slightly and the landing slopes a little bit more, again to the right. This floor has three bedrooms and a bathroom, the bathroom seems fine, the bedroom facing the stairs has the most pronounced slope of all, falling towards the landing/rear of the house, the other two bedrooms have slight slopes again towards the rear of the house. The next flight of stairs seem to be reasonable unaffected but the two attic bedrroms have slopes to the rear also, particularly the right hand one. Its difficult to quantify the amount of slope, i.e. so many inches across the width of a room, as I didn't have a spirit level and tape with me, but I should think that the worst room has a four inch difference between front and back. I won't be able to get decent measurements of the degree of slopeage (is that even a word!) until next weekend but I hope there is enough information there to allow you to give some help.
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There is no guarantee the subsidence has stopped as we are now getting more rain & flood than ever before. The structural survey report will be worded very carefully to protect their salary.simonh said:
I'm not trying to put you off but think very hard for long term problems ahead. Are there nearby property having subsidence problems ?
A friend of mine has 2 underpinning done as the 1st one failed and cost so far by the household insurance £34,000.
Also if you do go ahead make sure you can get insurance cover which might be difficult or might have to pay a higher premium.
I have noticed the word insurance I've typed is highlighted in blue for a website link which I didn't do and came up automatically unless this is to do with advertising via Diynot. Oh it's not doing it now
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