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Groundwork & Foundations

Huge cavity under living room floor

Anonymous user 16/03/2024 - 2.41 PM

Hi, I recently uncovered the portion of floor by my front door. Was covered with carpet but I removed it as it needed replacing but I found lovely old red tiles and decided to keep it like it. A few weeks later one of the tiles that butt up against the living room entrance had broken off and disappeared. It revealed a hole, which when I looked through, I could see a huge gap that extends all the way under my living room floor. I'm confused as to why it's there and what exactly is holding my living room floor up? I contacted a surveyor who was also perplexed by the hole. My home dates from around the 1950s I'm now really worried the rest of my floor will go, does anyone know why the cavity is there. Is it by design or has something catastrophic happened?

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2 Answers

JTC Construction Ltd

Rating: 5 out of 5
Greenhithe
The floor tiles will be sitting on a floor structure of some sort, what I would say has happened is that you more than likely have a floating floor which is why you have the cavity for ventilation and services, when you have looked in the gap can you see floor joists? These are the beams that the flooring sits on then the tiles lay over that. I wouldn’t say it’s a major problem and your floor is not just going to fall through completely maybe need to pull the tiles up fully, to inspect the issue properly but I would say there’s some sort of rot under the area where the tile has fallen through.
Answered1 April 2021
6

Anonymous user

It sounds like the old quarry tiles which are laid on to ash, over time the ash sinks or gets washed away by leaky pipes (which is the most common problem). Worse case would be the floor needs taking up and either a concrete floor or suspended timber floor will need to be installed.
Answered1 April 2021
0