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I could have benefited from this in the construction of our house. Riddled with inaccuracies, the engineer signed off on the foundations, but we found out when
by nevi-me 1y ago
I could have benefited from this in the construction of our house. Riddled with inaccuracies, the engineer signed off on the foundations, but we found out when the walls were up that the builders used the internal dimensions as exterior dimensions. So our house is smaller by ~250mm on each side.
We had to make so many compromises and wastages as a result. Bathrooms now smaller if we want to keep other rooms the same, bathtubs couldn't fit, aw man.
Then when the house went up to 2nd and 3rd levels, the staircase was narrow and wasn't connecting between the levels. That alone delayed us by 3 months as we had to get the architect to build a 3D model of the affected area so we could figure it out. We have to hoist furniture up through balconies as it can't fit through the stairs.
I think having some machinery that minimises human error would be very helpful.
- muppetman 1y agoOk and I thought having our inground pool installed crooked was bad. Where you able to get any legal/financial clawbacks because of all the hassle?
- pavel_lishin 1y agoTranslating for folks not natively familiar with millimeters - this is 25cm, or about ~10 inches. Doesn't sound like a lot, but you're losing a foot and a half across a dimension of a house. That's very easily into the "Bathtub doesn't fit" territory.
- LeifCarrotson 1y agoIt's probably the thickness of the foundation wall.
- _carbyau_ 1y agoThe kicker is "on each side". So the house is now [50cm | half a metre | 20 inches] shorter length overall in "both" commonly rectangular dimensions. Take any room in your house and remove that much from it and tell me it doesn't detract from the room....
- TheSoftwareGuy 1y agoThat's awful. I hope you were able to recover damages from the builders
- asibahi 1y agoI am an architect who worked as a contractor and as a consultant and I made an account here just to comment on this. When you found out the builders did that, what you should have done is stopped the work and have them correct their mistake on their own dime. This is an unforgivable mistake and a team of professional should never make something like that. Obviously I am not in your shoes, but this is insane to me. Any supervisor or consultant or surveyor visiting the site should've caught that.
- jvanderbot 1y agoThis seems like the just-world response. But how can one force this? If they just say "No" you end up taking them to court and delaying the construction of your house. You endanger the contracts for downstream work. I had a landscaper screw up just about everything they could building a retaining wall, and they couldn't even get me an extra bag of grass seed after the fact.
- kiddico 1y agoSurely, a delayed house is better than a house built incorrectly, no?
- segmondy 1y agoso what? delay it. as you see the house is messed up, that's going to be an issue when it's time to sell. many people will notice a very narrow stairwell or tiny bathrooms. when we were house shopping there were many houses we passed because the stairs were too narrow, or too steep or the bathroom was tiny or some room was so tiny it didn't qualify as a bedroom in our mind or the ceilings were too low. all those tiny flaws cost the seller serious money and reduced the number of buyers.
- dom96 1y agoDid you consider adding some buffer to your plan's measurements to account for exactly these kinds of screw ups?
- xp84 1y agoGiven his bathtubs didn’t fit, I would guess he didn’t
- sidewndr46 1y agoDid you use a contractor for this build? The neighbors of my parents ran into this, but somehow the foundation team added around a foot in all dimensions. The owner of the property refused to accept anything other than a new foundation. The contractor refused and from what my Dad told me the home owner was forced to sell to the contractor by the courts as their recourse. This story also seems a litle off unless the contractor didn't allow inspection. It'd be found in 10 seconds with a single usage of a tape measure.
- nevi-me 1y agoWe used a contractor yes. Oddly, the civil engineer signed off on the foundations. I think what happened is that the foundations might have been correct, but when they started laying bricks, they used the internal dimensions. The foundation is normally 500-600mm wide. Another funny story is that we have a concrete column in the living room that was meant to be 250mm x 250mm. The subcontractor decided to box it in and pour it before we came to inspect. He made it 450mm x 450mm. So we have this giant concrete thing in the passage. If some of it wasn't as embarrassing, I'd blog about it with photos.
- sidewndr46 1y agoSo a 250 x 250 column became 450 x 450? That's a 3.24 times increase in cross sectional area. This would imply something like a safety factor of 12 if the standard safety factor of 4 was used in the original engineering. I guess concrete must be really cheap whereever you are? I don't know many subcontractors excited about using 3 times the concrete for something.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]