we could have a straw poll to see who’s houses are suffering from subsidance.

My house does not have subsidance.

Maybe she’s visited 30% of the UK’s households.

She’s not a wee lass you know…. 😉

I think most houses suffer from an amount of settlement which produce cracks further down the line.

Depends on whether you’d class that as settlement I suppose.

No subsidence here – that I know of! Settling cracks in the plaster since new, but no massive middle of the wall subsidence cracks.

That programme should be renamed:

“Help! I’m too stupid to have paid for a full structural survery before I paid lots of money on a death trap house!”

Will still watch it for the nicely preganant Sarah Beeny though 😉

Utter bollox! As above, settlement maybe but not subsidence! Imagine the cost of insurance if that was the case!!!

excuse my ignornace, but what’s differential subsidence about and how’s it different?

With the number of kids she’s having, I’d say 30% of Sarah Beeny will be suffering from subsidence before long.

Settlement = movement of foundations caused by compaction of the ground by the building’s own weight. If properly designed this will be uniform and thus not a problem.

Subsidence = movement of foundations caused by an outside influence, e.g. groundwater change, trees, mining effects, nearby excavations, broken drains etc. Usually won’t be uniform thus a problem.

cheers guys. Does make me wonder how much of a probelm my porch is. All the houses on the street do it. Somebody once said something about them being on different footings/foundations or something. From what’s been said above, it doesn’t sound too serious.

Onzadog – your porch sounds like it has suffered from differential settlement, i.e. it’s on shallower foundations than the house, and has settled by a greater amount being on slightly softer ground. It’s probably reached a stable point by now and won’t settle by much more, so not really a long term problem. Whoever told you it wasn’t subsidence was probably correct.

“Lets buy a dirst cheap falling down property, and we’ll forgoe the survey so we have more money to paint the walls in pretty colours!”

These people seem to be more money than sense though – as do many of the house owners on the series, I don’t think any of them have had a survey done, wouldn’t be entertaining if they had would it?

@Onza, have you tried zipties and/or gaffa tape yet?

Onzadog, tim41 and farmer giles are both right, but also, seeing as the foundations for the porch were put in after the foundations of the house it could be that the porch has settled since it was built and so has moved slightly in relation to the orginal house. Settlement always happens when a new structure is built on land, regardless of location, soil conditions, foundation types etc. It’s just a fact of life. Even if the new structure is tied in to the old with wall ties or similar.

Chances are it settled in the first couple of years of it being built but hasn’t moved since. you could repoint the gap and see if it reappears, if it does, its progressive movement and get someone in, if it doesnt reappear, you’ve just repointed the cracked brickwork and prevent any further moisture ingress to the building, happy days!