This isn't a mine...
Sep. 1st, 2013 02:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnMy mother's house is, strictly speaking, in Devon, not Cornwall, but it is close enough to Cornwall to fall into what it is tempting to call the Cornish Emmenthal Zone - ie, the area that is riddled with subterranean tunnels all over the place. So, of course when she bought her house, she had a mining search done, to check it wasn't on a mineshaft. Unfortunately, the gamble you take when you live on a Swiss cheese, is that your house isn't on a mine that was dug before about 1820, when it occurred to someone that actually making records of where all the holes were might be a good idea. Anything dug before that time is mostly unrecorded, and may leap out and bite you on the bum.
The parking area outside her house had 'sunk' a bit, and been filled in, and now it has 'sunk' again, and she was all poised to have it filled again, when a helpful relative of the builder pointed out that actually, when the ground keeps disappearing in Swiss Cheese land, it might be worth investigating. So, she got the Cornish Mining guy round, and he has poked spikes into the ground, and thinks there is probably a Shaft.
So now she is being advised that she needs to get the Cornish mining people to come and drill, at a cost of two grand (plus a skip for the debris, and making good afterwards, whatever THAT is likely to involve). And her insurance company say 'do nothing as the shaft is not actually under the house' - which seems something of a leap of faith, and surely an area right outside the house and surrounded by it on two sides, that you walk past to get to the front door, is close *enough* to the house to be at the very least, something of a worry. The mining bloke has told her not to walk over it!
Note to self: find out name of insurance company so that if my Mum and her house disappear into the Shaft, I will know who to blame.
The parking area outside her house had 'sunk' a bit, and been filled in, and now it has 'sunk' again, and she was all poised to have it filled again, when a helpful relative of the builder pointed out that actually, when the ground keeps disappearing in Swiss Cheese land, it might be worth investigating. So, she got the Cornish Mining guy round, and he has poked spikes into the ground, and thinks there is probably a Shaft.
So now she is being advised that she needs to get the Cornish mining people to come and drill, at a cost of two grand (plus a skip for the debris, and making good afterwards, whatever THAT is likely to involve). And her insurance company say 'do nothing as the shaft is not actually under the house' - which seems something of a leap of faith, and surely an area right outside the house and surrounded by it on two sides, that you walk past to get to the front door, is close *enough* to the house to be at the very least, something of a worry. The mining bloke has told her not to walk over it!
Note to self: find out name of insurance company so that if my Mum and her house disappear into the Shaft, I will know who to blame.
