Buying house - should i underpin?

alsiet2011

Looking at buying my first house. It's built roughly 1955. Had an engineer take a look at it the other day. He noticed some cracks on wall in front and also the back of house so he suggested underpinning.

he said it would ok for a while anyway but since am planning on putting extension in back then i may as well do it all at once.

contacted the owners and they had an engineer to look at it, a while back around 10 years and he said there will never be problems with the foundation given that the entire estate rests on some sort of really strong bed rock ... slate i think he mentioned. also that the cracks in the walls were there for many years and haven't caused any problems since.

so i am wondering if i should go ahead and do the under pinning. could the cracks be simply down to age or should i be concerned that there is something else going on?

the engineer afterward mentioned to check the foundation for cracks during the building of estenstion and if none are there then probably won't need to underpin .
really dunno what to do. would like the peace of mind but don't want to spend a lot of money on something that may not be required.

handlemaster

What the seller says means nothing. You have paid for an engineer I would suggest you takes his/hers advice and knock the underpinning cost off the purchase price