I was lying in bed with the light off at 11.07pm on Monday, typing "is Sheffield built on old coal mines" into my phone. The search pack had arrived that afternoon: four reports as PDFs, about 60 pages altogether, with a covering note from our conveyancer that was nine lines long. I'd read the note at my desk and felt fine. It was the 60 pages, at home, in the dark, that undid me.
What a search is for
The searches are reports about the house that the title deeds can't tell you, such as what the council plans for the road, where the drains go and what's underneath. They cost £326 for the set. They aren't part of our conveyancer's fee but bills that the conveyancer pays to other organisations and passes on. They were slow to come back, partly because of the council and partly because it was December.
The four that mattered
The local authority search came back with nothing frightening. Our road is adopted, which means the council maintains it, and that's a word I had to look up and then felt quietly pleased about. No planning permissions nearby that would surprise us, no enforcement notices, no road schemes, and the house isn't listed. I'd assumed every road was adopted. They are not. Most of the pages after that were questions with the word "No" beside them, which is the best kind of page.
The water and drainage search says we're on mains water and a public sewer. The pipe from our house shares a run with Maureen's before it joins the sewer, which our conveyancer said is normal in a terrace. I'd add that it's a good reason to be pleasant to Maureen, and Matt added that it's a good reason not to put anything silly down the sink.
The environmental search put us in Flood Zone 1, which is the lowest risk on the Environment Agency's flood map, and gave us a very low risk of surface water flooding. We live on a hill, so water has somewhere better to be, though I'd imagine the people at the bottom of the street see it differently. Nothing flagged on contaminated land.
The coal mining report was the one that had me googling. It came from the Coal Authority and says the house is in a coalfield area, with past underground workings recorded at depth. It also says there are no known mine entries (shafts or old drift openings) within 20 metres, and no subsidence claims on record for the property.
What I googled at 11pm, and what I was told
My search history that night read like a person having a small crisis:
- "what is a mine entry"
- "coal mining subsidence claims Sheffield"
- "can you get a mortgage in a coal mining area"
- "is Walkley built on a hill because of a mine" (no)
I emailed our conveyancer at 11.32pm and had an answer at 7.52 the next morning, in about four lines. It said that past workings at depth are ordinary for our part of the country, that nothing was recorded within 20 metres, and that nothing in the report needed anything further from us. The lender had seen the same report and had no questions. I'd like to tell you I slept better after that, but I read the whole thing again over breakfast, to be sure.
If I did it again, I'd read the pack in daylight with the covering note open beside it and a pencil, and leave my phone in another room. Sixty pages of official language at 11pm will make a problem out of anything. The report that scared me most was, as far as our conveyancer was concerned, the most routine of the four.
There was also something nice in the pack, which isn't a search at all. Karen found a FENSA certificate in one of Dennis's drawers for the uPVC windows, fitted in 2006. FENSA is the scheme that registers window installers, and the certificate shows the work met the building regulations at the time. Without it there'd have been a hunt for paperwork from nearly 20 years ago, so thank you, Karen, and thank you, Dennis's drawer.
Contracts are next, apparently from tomorrow. I've told Matt to expect a lot of signing.
