Underpinning - insurance, saleability etc - and experience?

[Blu]

We've found the ideal house to buy, only to be told that it has been underpinned. I am seeking more details, but the estate agent says the vendors had it done 'as a precaution' 4 years ago. It is a 30s semi in London in good nick. Nicely done up and currently owned by responsible-seeming people who have lived there 14 years.

I called the co who insure us atm, and they said they won't ever insure any underpinned properties, unless they themselves have had it done.

Is this house insurablee? if it is, would we be able to sell it again? the underpinning has a 10 year guarantee, with 6 years to run.

I am going to ask the company which insures it at present if they would insure it if it belonged to a new owner - and if they would insure it once the guarantee has run out.

I think there is a specialist insurers for underpinned properties, is it very expensive?

Any views / experience welcome.

Thank you.

no we aren't, taht would have made life EASY

Erm - could you maybe ask for one to be installed ? (I know you might not want to be billed according to use, but if the repair could run into thousands, it might be cheap !)

Did the blokey allege this possible leak then just with his ear on the end of a listening stick ?

hello hub

well there has been the noise of running water in the pipes for as long as I can remember

I thought it was next door, because they virtually always have their hose on, or my combi boiler, and I didn't give it much thought until a guest mentioned it this week

so I called out the waterboard

man comes with listening stick

manages to turn off house stop cock and listens to pipe coming in - still water noise

goes to pavement stop-cock but it has been concreted over so not sure of anything else

so we are waiting for that to be replaced

but he said that as my house is a 1950s council house it is most likely to be at my end - he said the pipes look shite

so all will be revealed soon - just got to wait for pavement end to be replaced

can I just butt in and ask: Hub, how come you always know everything there is to know about everything??
[awestruck emoticon] (and frankly a bit of )

The noise as long as you can remember does not sound very good at all, mp.

You might want to attempt to find out who concreted the pavement cock as you could perhaps claim that you had been unable to stem / test the flow IYSWIM (was probably the council).

If you want to be daring, and depending on the material your ground floor is made of, you could perhaps lift a floorboard in-line between street cock and kitchen sink and have a look... possibly some drain cleaning firm could do a neato job with a high-tech camera on the end of a flexible lead IYSWIM.

Also, possibly crawling around on hands and knees with ear to floor and bum in air very late at night whilst everyone is sleeping and all is quiet you might be able to narrow down where the leak is ?

How crap.

crawling around on hands and knees with ear to floor and bum in air very late at night

Now that sounds VERY unwise

I honestly had thought it was probably the combi boiler - actually the engineer who came yesterday said first of all "Do you have a combi boiler, it's normally that" but .. it isn't

Concrete floors throughout the ground floor, so I don't think I am going to find anything by crawling around

Oh bloody hell, mp, this sounds a right horror story - really sorry!

BUT it does sound as if this could have been the cause of movement in your house, mains and drains leakage are a big cause of the ground shifting. So if they are realated and the insurance co will pay, at least the problem will have been fixed for good. Better than landslip.

Doesn't count as a silver lining, though. What a headache.