Concerns about subsidence.....

We don't have a hosepipe ban but we do have a water meter. During prolonged hot dry weather we find the front door won't open due to the ground shrinking and changing the way the door hangs. We slowly add water too the right hand side of the frame and in an hour or so the door is easily opened. We are on heavy clay. During the winter this is not a problem. Our house is old without deep foundations.

MawsRosie

faringdon59

Just a random shout out to grans/grandads on here! Has anyone on here in their working life been a surveyor?
If so, what do they think about the idea of running a hose pipe near the external wall of my house? In order for moisture to sink down and protect the foundations.
Would rocket my water bill (just when I've been really careful about conserving water), but as friend has told me when her lawn cracks badly she does this on a gradual trickle basis with a soaker? hose.
Any thoughts on this subject?

I think you would be infringing the current hosepipe ban big time and given the present official state of drought in much of the country it would be a very selfish and illegal - and ultimately pointless- thing to do.
Your friend is also probably breaking the law as her water usage would possibly reveal were the water company to check her usage. It only needs a quick look from eg a drone for them to spot who has still got a green lawn as who, like the rest of us, has a layer on Weetabix for a lawn.

It happens. A neighbour of mine was unaware that she had a sizeable leak on her property until the water board contacted her Re the sudden rise in her usage.

The workers hovels haven't survived, I know of only one. branches rather than timbers, living room about 6ft by 9ft. It is somewhere in Bucks and I rmember visiting it some years ago.

Even the smallest timber frame cottage still being lived in now would have been for a man with a skill, rather than a farm labourer.

Our last house was a village centre farmhouse in a village that was not enclosed until the 1870s, then the farmer moved his home to his compact new land holding and the old house was divided up into labourers cottages, one per bay. Then unified again in the 1960s

Yes timber framed too mostly built with very shallow foundations, often just flagstones. Of course many houses built over 100 yrs ago fell down years ago and we are left with a few survivors. The workers hovels have been tarted up to be sold as retirement or second homes.

We too live in a 15th century timber-frame house. Just moved into our second one last year. I lay in bed last night listening to odd creaks and groans from the house

David49 you are fortunate your SiL is a builder and understands these old houses. Over the last 30 years we have owned 2 15th century houses and recently have moved from an area where builders did , generally, understand these problems to one where the builders answer to everything is plasterboard and cement and we have to explain to every builder why they must use lime plaster and old bricks and why we do not have plastic windows.

My daughter lived in a very old house in Somerset it was continually "moving" with the seasons, creaking and groaning in the process. Her husband is a builder "entirely normal" that's what they are supposed to do, it's built with lime mortar, as long as you don't use cement it's fine.

It must have been, they sold it for £800k two years ago

Three words OP
Drought
Hosepipe
Ban

J52

My friend had severe subsidence in her house due to water leakage from a drain.
I’d leave well alone.

Yes, we had a neighbour with a similar problem. The pipe that took away the bathwater cracked underground. The soil was gravel and enough was washed away to form a hole big enough to cause subsidence.

My friend had severe subsidence in her house due to water leakage from a drain.
I’d leave well alone.

MawsRosie Good point.

faringdon59

Just a random shout out to grans/grandads on here! Has anyone on here in their working life been a surveyor?
If so, what do they think about the idea of running a hose pipe near the external wall of my house? In order for moisture to sink down and protect the foundations.
Would rocket my water bill (just when I've been really careful about conserving water), but as friend has told me when her lawn cracks badly she does this on a gradual trickle basis with a soaker? hose.
Any thoughts on this subject?

I think you would be infringing the current hosepipe ban big time and given the present official state of drought in much of the country it would be a very selfish and illegal - and ultimately pointless- thing to do.
Your friend is also probably breaking the law as her water usage would possibly reveal were the water company to check her usage. It only needs a quick look from eg a drone for them to spot who has still got a green lawn as who, like the rest of us, has a layer on Weetabix for a lawn.

Subsidence is caused more by underlying geology than how much water you put in the ground.

We used to live on the heathlands of the Surrey/Berkshire/Hampshire borders and subsidence was a problem there because the subsoil was a mix of layers and lenses of sand and clay, and the clay shrank and expanded when it was wet, while the sand didnt. I lived there more than 20 years and I never heard the idea of watering the ground put forward as a way of stopping the shrinkage and expansion.

We then moved to an area where the geology was uniformly clay, again, we were there more than 20 years. We lived in a road of medieval houses and none of them showed any signs of settlement, and they were up to five hundred years old.

Personally I think your friend has been told something she misunderstood. If houses in the area you live in have never shown signs of settlement in the past, what she is doing will be good for her lawn but have no effect on the stability of her house. If the house is in an area that does have settlement problems, then the amount of water she can put in the ground, will be only a drop in a small reservoir of water that would be needed to solve what is a geological problem over a large area.

All houses, old and new, settle a bit in their first 5 years, but watering the lawn will not alter that.

Depends on what kind of soil the foundation ms are built on.
Clay can shrink & crack in hot weather.
TBH I’ve never heard of that being done.
Our house was underpinned.
Is it an old property?

The moisture would protect the foundations?
Not sure about that.

I do know a couple of surveyors who owned a terrace house with subsidence.
They themselves got a survey done. All was basically well.
But they were glad when it worked out that they moved house. Just in case.

Hope this helps.