One of the strange things cooked up by the Cornish is Mundic block. It’s a building material made from mine waste that was widely used between 1900 and 1950. When we bought our house, we didn’t think there would be any problem with its construction – it’s too old to have been made from Mundic.

Well, that’s what we thought BUT unbeknown to us, there was a small bit of wall, lurking in a corner that no-one had ever bothered to test. We had it tested and, extremely scarily, it was declared to be Mundic. This is a massive problem because it effectively makes the house un-saleable because it’s not possible to get a mortgage to buy a house with Mundic. The problem happens when the block gets wet and then it effectively dissolves. The annoying thing is that the wall is an internal wall and therefore should not, in any conceivable circumstances, get wet but this is no “let off” with regard to mortgage-ability. Not only that but it’s a criminal offence to hide a Mundic test that’s gone awry because it’s basically fraudulent.

In order to give us peace of mind and to solve the problem, we had to have the wall knocked down and rebuilt with modern block. This is Darren doing just that! Mundic gone. All we have to do now is to get it retested and the house’s karma is restored. You see, the testing system is set up to make money for the testers. They won’t accept our word for it or the photos of the old one coming down and the new one going up. They insist on a retest and therefore make a fat wad from the misery of others.