Hi all,
We've just had our ground floor bricks put up and I'm a bit concerned about the quality of the mortar work the brickies have done. Please see the attached picture where you can see many gaps or overfill. On the outside face the work looks good, but it's just an illusion, as the mortar has not been spread evenly over the surface of the bricks nor has it been buttered properly on the ends in many places.
Should I be concerned about this, and if so, what is my recourse? I'm not really allowed on site apparently (even though it's my house), so complaining about this issue could get me in bad water with the builde, but I'm worried.
If I didn't go inside, and they put the plaster up, then I would never know, but in my opinion, the wall strength comes from the mortar. A uniform fill of mortar over the surface of the bricks distributes the load more evenly and would make the wall less condusive to cracking, am I correct?
I have a standard building contract through HIA, and this means that no matter what quality of work is done, that when the builder asks for money I have only FIVE DAYS to pay, otherwise I am in breach of contract. I didn't realise this the first time after the slab, and when I witheld payment because there was some re-bar protruding from the slab sides and told them to fix it, they didn't respond until after the 5 days and then said I was in breach for not paying. So now I'm worried that I have to pay for poor quality work.
Coming back to the mortar issue... What should I do? If I didn't know this was like it is, and I wanted to attach something through the mortar on the outside face, and it just crumbles away because there's nothing there, that's BS...
What grounds do I typically have for issues like this?
I have another issue with room sizes but I'll post in another thread later as I don't want to confuse too many issues.
Any advice is very welcomed, and apologies for the long post.
Regards,
Mike
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