Slab heave is alive and well, watch out.

Hey guys ive totally forgot to mention last winter my ducted heater stopped working and since we had RACV home Assist I called them with in the hour a local plumber came and also had his registration number or ID on his shirt, anyhow i showed him the manhole so when he opens the manhole asked me how old is your house I asked why? Do you ask? He replied because your heater is non complaint no service platform and no light in place, he asked me if I had a certificate of compliance I said no! So he told me to send a complaint to the VBA plumbing so I did with that I thought to contact Energy Safe Victoria and see what kind of certificates were actually lodged, Now to my disappointment I found out that the plumbing had no compliance certificates for plumbing the only certificate the VBA had on file was the Roof Plumbing.
Now from Energy Safe Victoria they sent me an email stating the ONLY certificates they had on file was Temp in, nothing else was ever lodged to my address so my question is if a certificate cost around $100 dollars per certificate how much is the builder saving lets just say over 3 years its a lot of dollars they are saving. How does this even happen or allowed to happen. Or how many houses are been exposed to serious injury to consumers. Any thought are welcome.

Building Surveyor is required to sight Plumbing Compliance before issuing occupancy permit

Ha? so how did this get passed once again your correct by its the builders responsability to call the RBS to inspect , so when that does not happen and the RBS gets a call for appointment to sign off on this property should he be asking why didn't you call me for the other inspections or is it just a handshake, and turn the otherway and pass it. So who do we hold accountable for this f******k up iam not sure if all the builders do it not call the RBS for the inspections and make sure everything is within the compliance.
Any feedback welcome.

How do you know that the work was even done by a licensed plumber who was qualified to do the work in the class performed?

http://www.vba.vic.gov.au/practitioners ... d-licences

A reputable plumber would know better than to not give a compliance certificate and the builder's quality assurance should have assured that a compliance certificate was received. This would usually be attached to the invoice and must be issued within 5 days of the work being done. If a compliance certificate is not issued, it is the plumber saving money, not the builder unless the builder is saving money by not having a qualified practicioner do the installation and also had the building surveyor in their pocket. Building surveyors do not inspect many things and they are not to be relied on to ensure compliance on everything!!!

Compliance certificates do not guarantee that work performed is compliant but building surveyors assume that they do and they are not qualified to inspect for compliance in many trades in any case.

Speaking about plumbing, the law of probability is that your stormwater drainage is also most probably not compliant because most new homes are not and non compliance has been endemic for years in Victoria.

You should also consider having your under slab plumbing forensically examined for peace of mind because quite a large percentage of slab heave houses have also been found to have leaking/broken drain pipes under the slab.

Agreed I have a friend who is a plumber i showed him and he cannot understand he also asked me if I had the compliance certificate for the toilet sewage, since he has to provide so much paper work when he does plumbing work and apperantly they cannot backdate the certificates he does not know how an RBS would not ask for them at inspection date my situation is so what's the word ( f******kd ) he is just a small plumber does not have the equipment to do the inspections so we are waiting for a local company to get back to us on dates to when they can come out and also have mains water pressure tested as well God only knows what the s***t is going on here. How can a builder get so many things wrong in one house its out of my understanding, I didn't think things like this was even possible go figure.
If I get spelling wrong I apologize in advance my brain is so gone its crazy. Thank you

Well...the VBA has confirmed that they don't have a compliance certificate on file for your ducted heating installation and logically one would think that the plumber, the builder and the BS (how appropriate an acronym is that?) would have a few questions to answer but these are corrupt industries with inadequate governance run by ostriches.

How many people have to die before there is a shake up and just how bad is it that gasfitters in Victoria do not regularly have to update their regulatory knowledge and skill set?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-27/inquest-gas-heater-carbon-monoxide-poisoning-sonia-sofianopoulos/9794986

Well I didn't know till the ducted heating became a problem even though he got in the Roof to fix it for me due to been winter he had to crawl on his back under the trusses to get to the heater iam not sure if the trusses are in compliance anyhow, its been a s***t so far, will see next few weeks which way this goes.
Thanks

I wonder what would happen mauromario if you did advertise a open house for example, malaka builders, come and see the wonderfullly large crooked cracks along with world class slab heave, government certificates not a problem, theres none we care to have got.
Besides ensuring your home will almost never sell, it would have to send shivers down the builder, especially if it was quite a big one, as it would cost them big time, I hope you win a big lottery and do exactly that, aarrseolles deserve nothing less.

Hi. Joker I will try my hardest hold these people accountable for the s***t they have created and greed they have the need for to take consumers money, I'll keep everyone posted in tbe next few weeks ill find out if i wiil post everything i have on line and i mean everything that is all the documents and photos i have in my possesion regarding cor***** tion with in this industry i am going to bring them accountable for everything I Will, keep everyone posted Iam also doing this for all the people out there that have been conned and life's distroyed by these builders.
If any volume builders are reading this be awere there is the old saying every dog has its day, and you builders will have yours.
Regards

Mauromario unfortunately the chances of a poor build experience is high in Australia, government regulaters listen way too much to big volume builders and associations whom represent builders, not enough advice from ground level, many on this forum guys like building expert, save h20, bashworth, structural bimguy etc, this is the type of connection missing from regulation makers.
Knowing all this, before I built I pretty much interviwed my best 3 choices of builders, then after choosing one, I checked out his last 3 builds and spoke to home owners and trades and suppliers he dealt with, then I learned whatever I could every day, my build experience went unbelievably well, but in my case it was no fluke, I left no stone unturned, we all live and learn, im sure next time after a burning, and now armed with huge knowledge, you will kill it.

Hey joker I live in Melbourne when we decided to build in portarlington after
30 plus years of coming up here for fishing we decided to build a new house a house that was going to fit my 7 metre boat on trailer, when we finally decided we thought what can go wrong with building with a large builder, even though not trusting fully I was busy so it was hard to be in portarlington every day so you put some sort of trust in these people after they pored the wrong slab this is when I started going up every weekend and staying at the hotel up the road few weeks at a time, I had no idea that people like this excisted them taking short cuts promising me things that now I know was never given after paying so much money to have custom garage built so I can fit my boat it never happen now I see it as it's falling apart around me i am glad I took as many photos as I did, if i had not taken the time to drive 1.5 hours every time I may not have the proof I have today but all for the wrong reasons because Now its costing us s***t load of money just to get what we paid for in the first place.
Since all of this has started my blood pressure has sky rocketed iam not well at all stress is out the window and trust with our legal team well not sure yet.
I hope the rott in hell. I will post few more photos as i go along.
Thank you to you and everyone on this forum you have opened my eyes to things which I had no idea off, now I am going to deal with these items that I have and see how our solicitor will answer since they are the experts they should know about plans drawings and computations. Will see where this goes.
Once again thank you to everyone I really appreciate all your feedbacks.

I have just had my eyes opened up on this forum by a few of you guys out which I really thank you. I just rechecked all the plans again its like we have looked at these plans so many times and yet we did not realize that with our plans we should also have engineer disign and computations of our roof trusses with a compliance certificates. S***t we don't have this, and also that our house is approximately 500 metres from beach does that change how the house is built does that make our house non compliant with the AS Codes. We dont have any engineering computation for roof trusses, nor we have any geotechnical engineering computations on the Ys estimates. So I know the top of our trusses in the Roof has come a part as in the photos I have posted. Can anyone give me any input on this. Iam lost to how our legal team have missed this important drawing if it's part of all homes been built in Australia should we all have engineering disign and computation to how the Roof trusses should be installed at what points or how the trusses should actually work. Since I don't have any of these where does this leave me. All feedback welcome so far this forum has opened my eyes so much. In advance I thank you all on here.
Thanks to everyone in advance.

It is common for builders to apply for a building permit and get it on a proviso that truss manufacturer's computations be submitted prior to the frame construction. If you ask your relevant building surveyor for full documentation it is likely that thrust computations will be included. If not they yes you have another problem.
However given the slab movement in your home it is likely that the roof frame is damaged because of that.
Roof truss manufacturers do thousands of frames and it is unlikely there is a fault there, it is more likely to be how the frame is put together and then any ground movement.

The truss Manufacturers Computations are worthless as your truss connection on site are non-compliant as per AS4440 Installation of nail plated Roof Trusses. An Engineer is now required to do a full assessment..don't bother with your Building Surveyor, it appears he has let your down . hth

Mauromario

Has the VBA fined the plumbers for not issuing compliance certificates? I know that the plumbing side of the VBA issues rectification orders to plumbers so you should be able to get your plumbing/ heating fixed by the original plumbers. Have you lodged a complaint with the VBA? Also you might be interested in Metropolis Solutions:

http://metropolis.melbourne/

They are a forensic plumbing company who work to achieve plumbing compliance using the plumbers insurance money. David is a very kind man who will take the time to answer your questions even if they don't end up doing any work for you.

There is a lot of information (and exposures of often dangerous non compliant plumbing) on the Metropolis plumbing site.

Yes. If it hadn't been for Metropolis going to the press about incorrectly installed multilayer gas pipes I would never have been able to get this problem rectified through the VBA. See my thread on this topic:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=85816&p=1659453#p1659453

Something else to check Mauromario.