DIY & Building Basics How To Spot And Deal With Cracks

Date Published:

28/05/2008

Margaret and Colin Trueman were offered the chance to buy their council house during the great Tory sell off in the eighties but decided against it.

Not long afterwards the front room of the three-bedroom 40's era semi began to develop cracks which ripped through wallpaper and appeared to progress rapidly. At the same time concrete steps to both the front and back gardens began to sink. The council acted promptly to refill the cracks and to repair the external steps, but within weeks the cracks were back, and cold air could be felt blowing in from the outside. At the same time the Truemans began to notice strange scuttling sounds above their heads in the empty loft space which they put down to nesting birds.

This time the council excavated a large hole in the front garden, and discovered a catalogue of problems. The house it seemed had been built on a concrete platform of less than an inch. In a wholly stable area this might have seemed inadequate, but set on a hill riddled with former slate mine workings, and on a ridge which caused passing buses to vibrate the whole house this was a serious concern.

The Truemans' main problem was that the shifting weight of the house had cracked a major waste pipe, and the resulting surges of waste-water were literally blasting away the house's foundations. This was causing one half of the semi to fall over, dragging at the other and causing the rapidly expanding structural cracks. An unpleasant side effect of the pipe being ruptured was the release of sewer rats, who had found their way up through the cavity wall of the house and into the loft space. Now as well as the major remedial work to the home the Truman's now had to cope with a team of pest control officers.

Remedial work was completed in 2000, but recently new cracks in the party wall, and an incontinent overflow pipe suggest that the semi has continued to lean and is still pulling its neighbour over with it.

Despite their troubles the Truemans are philosophical. 'This is the home we raised our kids in so I'm sad to see it in such a stricken shape. The council hindered themselves by not taking the problem seriously enough at the offset. All I can say is, thank god we didnt buy it!'