3 Year old slab moving, now blamed on Landscaping

Hi guys,

I have built a single story house with *** 3 years ago in Arndel Park, Truganina. 2.5 years later I'm getting some cracking inside and some step cracking in the brickwork.

I contacted the builder and they came around and instantly blamed it on my landscaping. I was not happy with that so they sent engineers around to check drains and all of my slab levels. The slab has lifted on one side (no cracking in tiles)

Background Info

My block has poor soil and apparently had a P Class slab poured.

The block is not level so it was cut and filled. I was also told by the builder to pay extra to have agi drainage installed around all of the lower cut sections of the slab (non of these are blocked and fill with water when it rains)

A few months after i moved into my new house my partner and I split and went through a pretty crap 2 year separation. In that time i was unable to touch the house and thus did no landscaping what so ever. It has basically been left (besides gravel driveway) the way the builder handed it over.

According to the builder i should have installed a 1m concrete path around the house that would have stopped water getting under my slab.......At the back of my contract they included a doc from the CSIRO that states what they recommend should be done with landscaping. There is no signed reference to this inside the contract.

They also told me that the drains that i paid them extra to install was to stop water getting under my garage, even though they are installed all the way around the cut section.


Does anyone have any idea on where i stand???? Surely the builder would leave the house/land in a condition that would not be detrimental to it. Is it not their fault that the drains they installed are too far from the house??

The builder said that if i fix the moisture problem as good will they will come in and patch my cracks up!!! But apparently they never do this and i should feel privileged at the offer.

Thanks for your time

James




PS: My mum built with the same company across the road and she has the same cracking appearing. I took them over and they blamed it on the shrubs planted against 5m of wall. She also had the drains installed.

Can't see how you are to blame. With the attitude you are facing I would go to VCAT... cheap, easy.

Ed

Builder?

New houses built on clay, will experience slab movement especially if:
a. you have built on a P class soil type (P = Problem Site)
b. you have used a waffle slab, and
c. your roof is one of those prefab trusses that gives you non load baring internal walls.

To add to the amount of slab movement, it will increase if:
a. you do not have a 2.5degree fall away from the house
b. a tree has been planted close to the house itself
c. efforts have not been taken to avoid water away from your slab (1m wide concrete path all around the house)
d. leaking pipes
e. you don't have eaves, or
f. water pools/flows into/towards/around your slab.

What is happening is what the engineers call "doming" and "cupping". The clay around your house depending on the amount of rain expand (water) or contract (lack of water). So, if it has rained, the clay will expand and you slab lifts. BUT, the middle of your house under the slab, the clay is at a constant and does not expand. So your slab "cups" and you should see cornices opening up, architraves cracking, doors jamming etc. So when summer comes around, the opposite happens and the clay contracts which causes "doming".

So enough of the technical stuff. What your builder has said is true that you need to get the water away from the slab. One way to do this is by building a min. 900mm water tight path around the house. This moves the expanding/contracting of the clay effectively 900mm away from your slab and should keep the whole house slab constant. The other way to do this is with drains (known as french drains) of which you have in another area.

My recommendation, avoid the impending expensive loss at VCAT. An engineer will have to be called in to write out a VCAT prescribed engineers report which will cost you just to start $2,500. Look into building a min. 900mm path around the house. This should make soggy clay laden areas now "usable" for sheds, storage or walkways. The other is to install drains. Thank the builder for their generosity for bringing in an engineer and take up their offer for repointing the brick mortar.

Thanks for the reply but it sounds like you work for the company.

How the hell will a 1m path stop water going under the house? Water will find a path and 1m is not enough to make a difference.



I have all of these but shouldn't the builders take this into consideration when they design their houses? Shouldn't the design accommodate the fact they they have been told that the soil is poor.
When the house was being built i was told by the builder that i would have to pay extra to have the required drains installed in the lower areas to stop water from pooling. Their recommendation was followed and they even installed the drains. They then graded the block to suit.

I have seen a few people on here who have faced similar problems and had cracks blamed on landscaping. Could you please contact me through here if you read this.

Cheers

That's a simple one - having a path all the way around the house stops water from soaking into the disturbed soil next to your slab and instead directs it to run off away from the slab to soak into the ground further away, hence it does not soften the soil/clay immediately next to your footings over an extended period of time and thus they have a better chance of staying in place.

Having plants or lawn then minimises the amount of water that pools next to the path (especially if the grading is still way from the house) further reducing the risk of water finding it's way into your footings.


He's not just making this up you know - every single builder gives the same advice to their customers indicating that the owner needs to take further measures after handover to protect the footings (such as sloping landscaping away from the house, putting in paths, etc), so unless they're all in some sort of grand conspiracy then there must be something to it.

Personally I think there are two grey areas here - whether the drainage around the slab was installed as it should be (and if that has contributed to the problem) as well as whether your failure to exercise due care in following the recommended preventative measures to ensure the stability of your footings has contributed to the problem.

(After all unless you are in WA then we've had a bucketload of rain in Australia the past 12-18 months and I'm not surprised that a house that is still in it's handover state with no landscaping having been done whatsoever is having problems with slab movement)

I'm no arbiter or VCAT magistrate, but given that you have not followed the normal recommended course of action for an owner taking possession of a newly constructed residence I can easily see that there is some possibility that you may be considered to be at least in some small way jointly responsible along with the builder (if they have indeed been negligent to some degree) - that's what you need to prepare yourself for if you're going to take the legal route (ie. you might very well win in the end if there is substantiated evidence of builder negligence that has contributed to the problem, but it may not be without cost for you if you get that less-than-perfect judgement).

If you can't see why that may happen then think of a newly constructed house in the same way as a brand new car - if you don't follow the recommended and schedule by getting it serviced at the end of the "run-in period" and the car's engine subsequently seizes later on due to the debris that has accumulated in engine oil, do you think the dealer will be considered to be liable?

No where in my contract does it say that i have to landscape around the house or that if i don't add a path or change the grades or drainage that the builder installed that the house will crack. A new car HAS to be serviced at the appropriate intervals to keep the warranty.

Why would the builder leave my property in a manner that would be detrimental to the house? Its like buying a new car that was not filled with oil.

By the way the ground does slope away from the house and has grass on it for at least 2 m (away from house). That is why i believe a 1m path would have 0 effect. The problem ****** in the area between the drain (starts at the edge of the garage prob 6m from house and then heads diagnaly towards the house but comes withing 4m of house) that THEY INSTALLED and the FLAT ground that meets the slope.

Hi Jimmy, a few comments / questions from me ... not everything is too clear about the situataion ...

From what I've seen so far, this is what they do, easiest for them.

In which section is the lifting - cut or fill??

Are you saying that water accumulates against the slab when it rains (and you have no ag drains anywhere)?

That doco is so generic and it only confuses people. IMO, builders should "gain" the responsibility to advise the best course of action according to the site, house and soil, just like they do the surveying and all the other prep things. Things like correct landscaping in order to protect the foundations should not be left to the owners, as many of us may think that we are doing the right thing, only to be actually doing the wrong thing. Not from negligence but from not being able to "engineer" the correct landscaping for our houses. Employing an engineer privately is the only option, but where do we start and which field of engineering should it be? This is not covered anywhere in "the docs". And some sites are trickier than others. Add the 'charged system' into play, especially on wrong-way-slopes (land slopes to where there is no council stormwater discharge), and you have even more issues. I think that regulations should be changed and each newly built house should be handed over with at least recommendations of the most appropriate landscaping/drainage needs - and this should be designed by engineers.

Sorry, I thought you said earlier that there are no ag drains anywhere??? Did they install some drains even during the build??

How far from the house are the drains?

This doesn't seem like a favour to me. In fact, if moisture gets completely diverted away from the house, I would think that in several years the soil would dry out and you can have new movements of the slab, and not only setting it back to where it was originally


What is the soil type (hard clay, sand, ??) at your place? And at your mum's?

cmhamilton is right, if you drive your car and have not performed regular services and your engine blows up and you take the car manufacturer to VCAT... what do you think your chances are? What site supervisors do on handover is provide you with the CSIRO Foundation Maintenance and say "follow this, yadda yadda". This is where they see that they absolve themselves of slab issues. Or in the case of our (insert bad language verb & noun) site supervisor, he got it mixed up an said that we can't have the whole house encircled in a 900mm path. What a douche.

As for your second question regarding water finding itself to the slab regardless of a 1m concrete path, yes you are right. If you have cracks in the path, a 2 story house next door with their water coming off a gradient into your block, cracked pipes and even the water tap dripping water onto an exposed area will cause water to get close to your slab.

Now once you have entertained all of these issues and installed preventative measures, your house is still sitting on a slab that is less than the thickness (between 85mm - 100mm for a single story) of the front footpath. AND it's sitting on 450mm footings with styrofoam voids? What it boils down to is that YES, the builder should have ultimate responsibility for your houses structural integrity. But all in all as consumers of houses, we shop around and buy best valued house (sometimes cheapest). Builders meet this need and build us the best valued house which contains a 85mm slab, styrofoam voids and prefab roof trusses. All of this on P clay type sites which happens to be a majority of the west of Melbourne. See what I mean?

Unless you had a complete turnkey package including landscaping then the onus is not on the builder to ensure that your house is landscaped in a appropriate manner to take all reasonable precautions to limit the chance of water penetrating into the soil around the footings, because their job ends with the construction of the house itself.

You have noted that nothing has been done since handover wrt landscaping and thus the recommendations for preventative measures to protect the slab footings were not followed (not deliberately as there are obviously extenuating circumstances but still not followed all the same).

I'm not trying to bust your chops here - just indicating that the failure to follow the recommended preventative course of action on you part may be seen to have contributed to the problem at least in some small part.

Simply dismissing those guidelines as "something you shouldn't have to do" might not cut it if/when you do take the issue further (if that is the path you choose to follow) - we have had some rather extraordinary weather in terms of rain events in the past 18-24 months across most of the country, so if water has been heavily pooling around the slab then (at least in part) that others may have exacerbated any other problems there might already have been.

Without having an engineer look at the drainage schematics for your build nobody can comment on whether things have or haven't been done correctly by the builder and you're looking for a caveat to lay sole responsibility at the builder's feet when there is at least some grey area as to the root cause(s) of the problems you are having.

Nobody here on H1 (I don't care who they are) can really make an accurate judgement one way or the other without having all of the facts at their disposal - including survey results both from before/after the build and now, your house plans, a visual assessment of the pad your slab is built on, the drainage that was installed, etc.

A situation like this would be rather unpleasant for anybody and we're not trying to beat down your point of view or anything - just playing devil's advocate to shed some light as to what you might have thrown back at you if you do decide to take a more legally-oriented course of action.

It's a highly stressful situation I know, but you need to work through it in an as calm and collected manner as you can - start off by contacting the BCAV (http://www.buildingcommission.com.au/www/html/1196-building-advice--conciliation-victoria.asp) to discuss you situation and work from there.

Good luck getting it all sorted out - it totally sucks and I'm sure everyone here empathises with you.

For the record I just checked out build contract and we had to initial that same document in our contract to acknowledge that we understood that landscaping provisions were necessary to prevent water damage weakening the soil around the footings.

This is at the "back" of our HIA contract as it is in yours, but it is still part of of the contract booklet and as I mentioned we still had to initial it to acknowledge that we understood it (not sure how that tees up from a legal standpoint, but they did take the time to explain the basics to us which we appreciated).



Totally agree with Lex on this one - like a lot of business regulations far too much onus is placed on the purchaser to be fully aware of things such as preventative measures like these (while at the same time they are being inundated with a multitude of other things in the contract signing), when there is really no reasonable expectation for them to have even a rudimentary understanding of such issues.

This leaves the purchaser open to issues with poor workmanship even if they do try to do the right thing and get a licensed landscaper to design their landscaping only for them to not follow said guidelines (damage to your house is an unpleasant thing to have happen, no matter who has to pay to get it fixed).

It happens everywhere in pretty much everything we hand over our hard earned $$$ for - hopefully regulatory bodies will one day get off their backsides and embed provisions for for full disclosure regarding purchaser responsibilities in terms they can actually understand into sale contracts, instead of just leaving it in the "too hard" basket (we can only hope).

At the end of the day the recommends state that you "only should" place 1m of concrete around the house. They do not say must. Either way after 3.5 years it would be unacceptable. I am sure any judge would see this.

If it was such a problem then why don't they included it in the building of a house as standard??

Are you a VCAT judge or a solicitor experienced in resolving such matters wrt building regulations?

If not then sorry, but it is not prudent for you to be making such expansive statements.

The op needs to discuss his issues with BCAV, not have someone on H1 pass an arbitrary judgement when they are neither qualified to make such a judgement nor are in possession of all of the relevant facts.

I am not a judge, If your a judge you are not allowed to comment in the public forum about any topics what so ever I am an engineer. However I have read 100 of cases and outcomes like this. They are all available publicly for you to read. Anyway what i would be doing is getting my own engineers report to determine the true reason for heaving. There is more likely another issue. The op talking about shear movement as well. I would love to get an Xray of the slab to ensure that the steel reo is all in the correct place.

What needs to be established first is what actually failed. Then what was the likely reason. There is a possibility that even if the 1 meter concrete was placed around the slab that this would have still happend.

That is exactly what I was suggesting - the OP's case needs to be fully investigated to determine the root causes of the problems and/or whether the builder has been negligent before any sort of judgement can be passed.

The BCAV is where the OP should start his process as they'll be able to point him in the right direction in terms of what course of action needs to be followed from this point (he has already raised it with the builder and gotten their response so that is step one ticked off), rather than taking off-the-cuff advice from someone on a discussion forum who is not in possession of all of the facts.

anything in this forum is just an open discussion. It gets people thinking and spreading ideas its always upto the individual to make sense of it all and determine which process should correct.

Lets face it if anyone here was that good we would not be spending all our time on here you would be out in the real world getting paid for your words. We are all "wannabes" to some degree.

“Wannabes” is such a harsh label IMHFO. I would like to think “people with either experience or just an opinion” is a better term. Have you heard of the saying “The difference between a smart person and a genius, smart person learns from their mistake, genius learns off a smart persons mistakes”.

Under no circumstances should opinions or even fact should be taken as gospel and professional opinions should be rendered. But then again I have received professional opinion on housing matters that have been as equally as inadequate.

I would certainly be getting an engineer to make an evaluation on what when wrong and why.

I don't have an understanding of your drainage, but it sounds like you paid for something extra to do something, but didn't get it.

Putting a 1 metre path all around the house is not possible in many cases. My Council requires 35% permeable land on my block. My house, driveway and paths have used up this entire quota (as I suspect is the case for many others). So, I'm not allowed to put a 1 metre impervious path around my house.

If a builder hands you a CSIRO document at the start of a build and expects you to find it, let alone follow it, at the end of the build then good luck. If it's important the builder should hand another copy at the end of the build and get you to sign that you have read and undersood it.

Even better a 3-month follow-up courtesy visit to check that everything is OK and discuss the importance of any issues would be good. We're not talking about buying a $20 toaster that requires very little follow up, but several hundreds of thousdands of dollars of blood, sweat and tears that, if it does require maintence to ensure it is not damaged, should be conveyed by the builder to the owner. It's in both the builders and owners interest.

I'd love to run a business in which I bombard customers with all sorts of onerous warnings and request and when something goes wrong...

I found the following in my contract - you might want to check if you have something similar in yours.


First, in the generic section for construction of brick veneer homes:


Additionally, the soil test stated this (my emphasis):



Do you think my builder did this? Of course not - they left the house with water ponding on nearly every side, and said "You're supposed to fix it with landscaping". If we were supposed to fix it with landscaping, how did they handle drainage during the 9 months that the house was being built? They didn't. You can ask your builder how they prevented water getting under the slab during construction.

Guess what else my builder told me - they said that it's actually no problem at all for water to pond against the house and sink into the clay underneath. They said it wouldn't cause any problem with the foundations. Never believe what the builder tells you - all they want to do is avoid any extra work and get onto the next house.

wanna be's in the sense we are not paid professional. I put my self in that basket as well dont worry.