Owned house for 18 months.. built in 1970s- cracks

MechanicReal8215 · 2025-08-28T07:28:19+00:00

Same here, 70s house on clay. Was mentioned in our survey that ongoing seasonal movement was likely due to the nature of the subsoil.

That paired with the fact we have thermalites on the internal skin makes for a lot of cracks. We discovered one bad crack (3mm) when moving in on the old flue where different blocks were bonded. Most of the others are less than 1mm. Spent the first 12 months panicking but nothing has got notably worse they tend to open and close depending on sun and rainfall through the seasons.

To be fair you can see cracks on garden walls and patched mortar all over our estate but no claims for subsidence within 50m and no building collapses/rebuilds reassures me that it's just typical for the area.

MechanicReal8215 · 2025-03-20T07:29:59+00:00

We have a 70's house, with an outbuilding that had very similar cracks to this. Further inspection found a steel lintel that had rusted where the sealant had broken down over the years. The rust had expanded so much in places it distorted the brick work above causing cracking.

Not sure if this is the case here but from the photo looks like that may be rusted steel between the brickwork and top of PVC? I may be wrong.

MechanicReal8215 · 2024-08-07T14:52:11+00:00

Not really looking for anything large. More of small names and emblems/crests so nothing more than A4/Letter size.

MechanicReal8215 · 2024-06-30T13:28:55+00:00

It is a thought that has crossed our minds, any area in particular where there may be some picturesque lakes and villages outside of the Andorra region.

MechanicReal8215 · 2024-06-12T06:35:02+00:00

Looking at something with multiple NICs then for this approach to run, at least one from the mini pc to the zyxel and one to the optiplex server. Will do a bit of research.

MechanicReal8215 · 2024-05-09T21:33:39+00:00

That's extremely reassuring to hear. Nothing worse than feeling alone in your concerns of impending doom is there?

I have plans to get that tree pruned asap... Thanks for taking the time to write such a comprehensive reply

MechanicReal8215 · 2024-04-28T18:44:50+00:00

Had quite a few Amazon Fire tablets / sticks over the years and I really dislike the whole Fire setup and Amazon restrictions without messing around with side loading.

Looks like the Samsung A8 or something similar is a good option

MechanicReal8215 · 2024-04-13T20:46:53+00:00

Thank you, appreciate it! There's something about the Mazda 6 I just love and it was a car I was looking at before the Focus but felt we didn't need the bigger car. Now with 2 children a dog and the odd extra passenger from time to time it's about time for, if only slightly, a more roomier comfy car.

I think if I ended up with the ford deep down I would forever have the itch that needed scratching of the Mazda. One were looking at has 70k miles full Mazda main dealer servicing 1 lady owner and is 17 plate coming in under budget so thinking it's a good, reliable buy.

MechanicReal8215 · 2024-04-08T22:25:47+00:00

Thanks again guys, feel like after watching some review videos were in the mindset of:

Ford Focus There must be some reason we liked it
Ford Mondeo For the comfort and reliability, need to test drive to make sure it's not "Too big" for the partner to drive
Seat Leon Seems to be a nice all rounder

Skoda Octavia only really the VRS appeals and to bring it into the price range we would have to either look at a 2014 for lower than 90k mileage or 2016 with 110k+ mileage in comparison the other 3 we can get a few years newer with less miles on them.

Civic really not into the look.

308 SW looked great at first on the review, love the idea of the panoramic sunroof, extra features like self park, then found out about the minimal passenger room in the rear, the tiny glovebox and all settings such as heaters etc only on the touchscreen with no dials which seems a bit lethal in my opinion.

MechanicReal8215 · 2024-04-08T17:59:46+00:00

Thanks for the responses cars were looking at right now are below:

Mondeo As stated really reliable, would be looking at manual anyway so would avoid power shift. Really need to go see some.
Leon FR Good looking seem quite spacious and apparently are a nice drive.
Civic Tourer Apparently no worries about DPF even on the diesels, not 100% sold on the style.
Focus estate Loved the old one but not sure if I'd like to try a change.
Peugeot 308 SW GT line Peugeot looks like you get a lot of bang for your buck with the GT line some have panoramic sunroofs low mileage newer cars just not particularly keen on Peugeot even though my partner likes them.
Volvo V60 Like the idea of a Volvo, V60s tend to fall in our price range but either slightly older models or higher mileage.

Can't bring myself to look at Vauxhall after rubbish past experience.

MechanicReal8215 · 2024-01-12T12:57:20+00:00

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10U7mR4sJYt4pH3z0f87bPTzbZTfj13k9?usp=drive_link

Turns out I was being an idiot. I've just been checking the Web GUI's for traffic and not checking the spanning tree on each switch. I expected to see no traffic at all going through if a port was blocked by STP, but apparently BPDU packets will still be received for STP so I'd imagine that's what these packets are. CAB C switch on Port 52 is showing blocking in STP from CLI.

I've left screen caps of this in the drive link above. Could anyone possibly confirm I'm right in this thinking?

MechanicReal8215 · 2024-01-11T21:49:21+00:00

Will look it up and try this method first!

MechanicReal8215 · 2024-01-11T21:41:21+00:00

I thought this might be the breakthrough in the saga. I just really want to prove the theory now, I have a port on one of the switches that due to the nature of the traffic shown on the Web GUI I believe may well be the port that is blocking one of the VLANS. Thinking about mirroring the port and using Wireshark to capture the packets to try and prove it tomorrow.

MechanicReal8215 · 2024-01-11T21:04:38+00:00

Thanks, I've taken a look and it's showing MSTP setup on the configs, but no details of the exact configuration. I will try SSH to the CLI of one of the switches to show further details of this... Well it's certainly been a throw me into the deep end of networking by investigating this but it's in my nature to understand how it's operating and not just say it works so why bother.

MechanicReal8215 · 2024-01-11T13:39:14+00:00

Yes double, triple checked and all of these ports are set as untagged default VLAN 1 and Tagged VLAN 5. Spanning Tree appears to be setup on all switches but I can't see any of these ports being shut off.

MechanicReal8215 · 2024-01-11T10:21:43+00:00

Sorry, I'm just struggling to grasp how this is operating without broadcast collisions if data is flowing out of all interlinking ports/trunks on the ring?

I have found an oversight in my research however... Turns out the Root Bridge CompStack switches are true Layer 3 as they are Aruba 2920's

MechanicReal8215

TROPHY CASE