Couple's £725k retirement home must be demolished five years after it was built
A couple's dream retirement home is set to be demolished just five years after it was built.
The £725,000 countryside property has metre-long cracks and its owners can't even open the front door.
Madeline and Alastair Price, aged 70 and 69, bought the five-bedroom house in the village of Wicken, near the cathedral city of Ely, Cambridgeshire, in 2018.
But the detached home, which overlooks open fields is being "lifted up" by swelling soil.
Insurers have blamed poorly-constructed foundations and ordered the house to be torn down and rebuilt as the damage is too severe to repair.
Mrs Price, a retired banker turned gardener, said: "It's a nightmare, really. The cracks are pretty much everywhere. None of the floors or work surfaces are level.
"Doors won't shut - I can't even open the front door because it's stuck. The insurance company said they can't save it. It's not just a building, it's our home."
The couple's home has five bedrooms, three bathrooms, underfloor heating, a wine chiller and a wood burner.
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The double garage has a two-metre-long crack inside that is about half an inch wide, while the kitchen and living room also have cracks.
Mrs Price said the issue was with the house's foundations - about 1.5m to 2m deep - being moved by the clay soil below, which is expanding due to ground heave, which means the swelling of clay soils that expand when wet.
The couple claim that builders should have accounted for this when building the home, which came with a 10-year guarantee under the Local Authority Building Control.
"The soil is bone dry with evidence that tiny tree roots are still there," said Mrs Price. "It's lifting the house up.
"They should have known what the land was like when building the house. We first noticed little cracks after a couple of years but we put it down to normal new house stuff.
"It started in the hallway, on the staircase and in the back bedroom.
"A structural engineer visited and said it was clay heave, which is where the soil has expanded beneath the house."
The couple, both retired bankers, must move out of the house they share with their golden retriever when the demolition notice is given.
They will be given compensation to rent a property for six months - but say they don't know if they'll return to their home or sell it off once it's rebuilt.
"They're going to demolish everything and do the foundations again," said Mrs Price.
"It could be at least two years out of the house. We wanted to live in the countryside, we thought this would be our home for a few years and then we would move onto our final home.
"We don't know at the moment if we'll come back. We might just put it straight on the market when it's rebuilt."
