I think the real point is that this happens so rarely that, when it does, it makes global news.
Having said that, I don't see that they need a strong void-proof floor. Arranging the main timbers of the house as a space frame should allow part of the house to be undermined without falling into the hole. That should not be significantly, if any, dearer and it would be lightweight, which would reduce the risk of the void roof collapsing in the first place.
Colin Bignell
Surely, that assumes that the floor wasn't just an inch or two of concrete, poured on compacted soil. To be fair, would a normal brick-built British house have worked any better in those circumstances. Many have a poured concrete base, and the element with the greatest tensile strength is probably the DPM.
Presumably why it's going to take 10 days to sort out the problems in Regent Street
so does every cenote in Yucatan
What gets me is the guys standing on the edge looking in...
Andy
I doubt it would have worked any better, but possibly no worse. Plenty have survived subsidence in the UK.
Colin Bignell
England has had the odd sinkhole .. albeit man made;!...
Dig trenches in a spider web sort of pattern, about 500 m across and fill with reinforced concrete. build houses on that.
You can see a sink hole as the ground vanished beneath the grid and you can get and/or fix.
Shouldn't cost much. ;-)
They are quite common in any limestone area. The Cheddar gorge was formed the same way. One appeared in a neighbour's field. We filled it up with rocks he had collected from his/my fields over the years. Probably a couple of hundred tons.
Very handy.
No, not really. The Cheddar Gorge was carved out by water flowing on the surface. The Winnats Pass may be a collapsed cave system, although it's thought that it may be a preserved ravine between coral reefs.
Sinkholes are common in Cheshire where a layer of clay lies over a large deposit of rock salt. A small hole in the clay that permits ground water to reach the salt will rapidly create a sinkhole. These fill with water and produce circular lakes referred to as "meres."
first reaction of a chav to any landscape feature seems to be to fill it with crap.
They appear there quite often. Standard practice. They ruin a field. Would you want one in your garden?
Alternatively dissolve the salt yourself to make caverns, then store gas in them.
Hmm, now they appear to be filling it in. But if it's 30' across and 100' deep, it's it going to take a very long time to do it using their current method?
Tim
Perhaps they need expanding polyurethane gravel?
Called Shake Holes - at least on old OS maps.
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