Browse Forums Building A New House Re: wrong soil test wrong footings 21Aug 15, 2011 7:05 pm Excellent - if you are indeed on a hill with a steep driveway downhill from the house and all the ground surrounding your slab sloping downhill from the house. Good luck! I'd be interested to hear more about this later when you have some news. Although - you now introduced teh magic word "reccuring" ... but what's been recurring - the drought or the cracks in the house?? My signature is distracting people from my wise posts ... Re: wrong soil test wrong footings 23Oct 22, 2011 10:36 am HI, thought id add my 2c. I two have had the same problems you are having. I built with porter davis in the western suburbs of melbourne. What you experiencing is not uncommon atm. Wehad built less then 18months before things started to move. The problem is with the clay in the soil under the slab. Clay can expand up to 7 times its original size when wet. Since the water can only get so far under the slab it makes the bend at the edges. Which in turn forces the bricks up and pushes the roof trusses up. Since all the internal walls are connected to the roof trusses your internals walls end up hanging in the air. Hence the crack and split in the cornices. Its serious enough in my house there is walls I can see the gap under it. We have a moutain of problems. But the ones you have described are pretty much the tell tail signs. look for Cracked cornices, hairline cracks in joints. Movement in your expansion joins, doors not opening. Movement in walls etc. If your engineer is telling you its water from you hot water and air con or even landscaping there pretty much BS you. Our block is built up and has really good fall around it and we are still having problems. I can't believe that a hotwater system could put out as much water as a 3-5 day down pour of rain. From what I understand their is little they can do about this ATM best thing to do is get the builder to accept responsibility or take it to the relivant body being VCAT or which ever state your in. Where almost a year down the track and still getting surveyors taking levels on the slab every 3 months. A ton of tradies though the house on monthly basis. Yet still no resolution. I'm happy to say thou porter davis has admitted to the problem and are committed to fixing it. To give you an idea of the scale of this problem. Porter Davis have a team dedicated to workiing on fixing the problems with the houses caused by slab movement. Ive heard they have had several meetings about it and are not 100% sure what the resolution will be to it. Ive made a gallery of some of the photos I have taken from our house these are a little bit old now. thinks are a bit worse but give you an idea. If you need any help with anything feel free to message me. http://img853.imageshack.us/slideshow/w ... g0247o.jpg Total Breeze Air Conditioning and Electrical - Based in Melbourne http://www.totalbreeze.com.au Re: wrong soil test wrong footings 24Oct 22, 2011 8:06 pm Hey Ruby52550, how are you going with all of this nightmare? I realy feel for you (: (and now I've read almost the whole thread and realised that I sounded as if I'm interrogating you! Sorry, that was not my intention, jsut to get a better picture and then maaaybe get an idea on how to help out, based on all the collected facts and tiny details ). Anyway, I hope that someone else is held accountable for this. For a house that sits nicely on a hill, it's a bit silly to say that it's the "water coming / puddling under/around the slab" - I can't see that they can get away with that Has your site perhaps been filled at all, eg. the house sits (fully or partially) on fill? My signature is distracting people from my wise posts ... Thanks for your reply. I will just wait and see I guess. Trying to get some more information from our builder. 9 30233 We were lucky in that our old house was so small (86 square metres) compared to the new house, they were able to take enough readings around the old backyard house before… 8 37077 Three options 1 Ask the liquidator 2 Find another PD customer and ask the source of their report 3 Pay for new report 3 12320 |