Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Aug 27, 2012 9:15 pm Today I inspected house frame that was well built and by a competent team of framers. You would be excused for thinking: why waste money on frame inspection, this looks so good? However my client wanted peace of mind and as it turned out it was a good call. Builder's supervisor and the building inspector will pick up if anything's wrong,right? Wrong! There was only one simple error but potentially very serious. It seems to me that in the lapse of attention framing carpenter swapped lintels. One lintel was to go over non load bearing wall and the other into a wall bearing roof truss loads. Load bearing wall got the undersize lintel. At the time of my inspection roof was loaded with tiles and the deflection of top plate over the lintel was visible to a sharp eye. Annotated photo on my blog http://www.buildingexpert.net.au/blog/h ... rfect-but/ Foremost Building Expert in Australia,assisting with building problems/disputes, building stage inspections,pre-contract review advice for peace of mind 200 blogs http://www.buildingexpert.net.au/blog Re: House frame inspection, almost perfect but? 2Oct 23, 2012 7:30 am i agree with you expert. an inspection is a good idea. apart from anything else, the building inspector isn't on site long enough to find all problems. that they dont use a check list surprises me. i now encourage my clients to get an inspection. i do however warn them about the dangers of the advocate vs the expert. advocates can cause a lot of trouble. experts find defects that matter, not take the owner down a path of arguments about things that really are not defects. too many advocates running around, in my opinion. Re: House frame inspection, almost perfect but? 3Oct 23, 2012 8:41 am leighton i agree with you expert. an inspection is a good idea. apart from anything else, the building inspector isn't on site long enough to find all problems. that they dont use a check list surprises me. i now encourage my clients to get an inspection. i do however warn them about the dangers of the advocate vs the expert. advocates can cause a lot of trouble. experts find defects that matter, not take the owner down a path of arguments about things that really are not defects. too many advocates running around, in my opinion. Leighton, I think you make a very good point about advocate vs expert, there are too many pretend experts running around hiding their lack of expertise by becoming "Rottweilers" going for the builders throat" to show the owner how good they are", I have seen it, I don't support it and I don't condone it. You have the greatest chance of getting the best outcome by working with the builder rather than against and there always has to be opportunity for redeeming because anyone is capable of making a mistake. The best advice is the "balanced perspective" and the starting point is always what is reasonable. It's a minefield because builder's are their own worst enemy when they don't deliver and fail to communicate and owners are their own worst enemies because they sign off on contract they don't understand and in many cases their expectations are unrealistic. My approach has been very successful and I have been able to diffuse many disputes or find creative solutions http://www.buildingexpert.net.au/blog/b ... f-balance/ However once all reasonable avenues are exhausted and promises broken and there is no chance of satisfactory outcome, only then will I morph into a "Rottweiler" Foremost Building Expert in Australia,assisting with building problems/disputes, building stage inspections,pre-contract review advice for peace of mind 200 blogs http://www.buildingexpert.net.au/blog We used a smaller qld builder who went bankrupt about 12 months after completion of ours. It was a shame as they were good and relatively cheap and I would have used… 3 4705 This is 100% true. You can not hang anything on steel frames. very frustrating 8 8026 Hi, We have a single story MacDonald Jones house, on a waffle pod slab with steel frame. Are we able to build a second story extension? Other info is we are 900mm from… 0 8476 |