"Brian Gaff (Sofa)" wrote in message
...
Yes is the bungalow built on a concrete raft over an old clay quarry?
There is a house not far from me like that and the raft is beginning to
crack, one assumes due to subsidence under it, the road outside has also
developed cracks and a definite dip, and the porch fell off a couple of
years ago.
How long are such fixes supposed to last I wonder, these were put up in
the 1960s.

Don't talk me about mining subsidence. My school in Wakefield was right
under where the Coal Board wanted dig new tunnels to mine a new seam. This
is back in the days when we *had* mines - "You remember them? Dinosaurs,
dodos, miners." (Brassed Off).

The Coal Board knew that there might be subsidence, so they dug a six-foot
deep trench in the grounds all round the perimeter of the buildings, filled
it with ash (how many bonfires did that take?) and tarmacked it over. This
was supposed to make sure the whole school dropped/twisted as a single unit,
as if it were on a raft. Right load of old ******** that was! For the rest
of the time I was there, the front of the school was propped up by an
enormous wooden buttress, and there was scaffolding and planks that you had
to clamber over when going up and down the main staircase. There were cracks
(some 1/2" wide) in the plaster all over the place. Goodness knows how much
the school got in compensation because the so-called subsidence prevention
trench hadn't worked. My friend's house, just down the road from the school,
also developed nasty cracks and the family were put up in a hotel for
several months while the Coal Board did remedial work.

Still, it was probably cheaper than what the Coal Board paid British Rail to
divert the East Coast Main Line between Selby and York because of the
subsidence that the Selby Coalfield mine was expected to cause. I'm not sure
whether there *was* much subsidence to buildings in the area, but it was
wise to take precautions and BR benefited by the removal from the main-line
route of the notorious reverse curve north of Selby station and the even
more notorious swing bridge over the Ouse.