Covered weep holes :(

Keep having troubles with my concreter. I did make a mistake myself when I told him that I want concreting to be done up to weep holes. Which was a bad idea since somehow I missed it while reading a lot of topics on this forum that most of the time people choose it to be 7-10 cm below weep holes. However I told him to do it up to the weepholes I did not tell him to cover them. And now after the job is done I found that on one stretch of concrete 4 weepholes are covered for up to 1-2 cm. I am pretty stressed about it as I think that this may cause water to be accumulating beside weepholes and this can stop weep holes from working properly. Besides, reading my building contract I found it mentioned there that weep holes should not be covered. I cant believe that a company that states they are in business for 15 years dont understand what weep holes are for and dont know not to cover them.
What should I do? I did not talk to them yet about it but I am pretty sure they will find an excuse for it in no time as they always do. I dont understand why should I put up with their incompetence but from other side i cant see how this can be fixed at all. Would I be able to legally force them to fix this?

this is nothing stop worrying. You are allowed to cover weep holes by 50%. Water should never have to drain from it. Only problem is that if the concrete slopes into the weep holes

No, it does not slope towards weep holes, slopes away from it, othewsise would be a complete disaster. Although not as much as it says it should in the building contract ( 5 cm slope for 1st one meter). Now that I am reading it

With your weep hole half covered, water is only half your trouble you are also providing a nice little unseen path for termites/white ants.
Did you have any form of protection laid prior to the slab going down? If not I'd recommend getting a pest controler around for some advice.

on the subject of weep holes, what happens if you build a garden bed in front of your house and the soil covers the weep holes? What will happen then?

You are sending out an invite to moisture and pests. Try and keep any external surfaces below your damp course (usually one course of bricks below your weep holes) this can be seen as a thin black plastic strip in the mortar.

Really bad things could soon be happening

Your design has "wet stuff" (dirt // plants // garden // mulch) ABOVE the dampcourse and against the brickwork so there's nothing protecting your bricks from moisture........

And equally (or as evo says, possibly worse) you have given termites and other pests "direct entry" into your house.

And possibly worse of all, you have removed all possibility of eye-balling termite entry.

Remember, the premise behind the (basic) Termimesh (and some other) treatments is NOT to prevent the little buggers entering your house, it's to force them to enter in highly visible way so that they can be seen during regular inspections before they do too much damage.

Your job over the Easter Break is to clean your garden from your house, or AT LEAST lower then your dampcourse !!

P_D

This document has some pictures and a description of what can happen when your paving or garden bed is too high.. http://www.concrete.net.au/publications ... mpness.pdf

We have the same issue now and it's my mistake for not doing my homework before we got the tiling done. But our walls with weepholes are undercover and the floor is sloping away. Am stressed thinking about it. We also plan to do a acrylic render later on .. will this help?