Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Apr 15, 2015 2:08 pm Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Hi guys, As you can see from our pictures we have a dilemma! Long story short - from these pictures we will be unable to access the left side of our house. It is suppose to be 1175mm (as per drawing Pic 1) gap from our bricks to our neighbour but due to the retaining wall and hot water system (Pic 2) my 18 month old won't even fit past this? If it helps the reason we have this ugly retaining wall is due to underpinning of our neighbours garage being required as second engineering showed his foundations were compromised and this is what our builder came up with and it has eaten into our land. Any advice? Thanks in advance Re: HELP! No access down left side of house. See pictures! 2Apr 15, 2015 2:36 pm Do you need access on this side? It was never going to be much anyway. Just concrete it all and forget about it? Jen (& Dave) Plantation Bronte, Ormeau Ridge, Gold Coast QLD 12/03/2015 - Commencement... 26/08/2015 - Handover! viewtopic.php?f=31&t=76446 Re: HELP! No access down left side of house. See pictures! 3Apr 15, 2015 2:40 pm That's only a temporary retaining wall. A more permanent one will need to be built. The best place for this might be right on the boundary. It might only need to be 150-200mm deep, leaving close on 1m to your wall. You'll also want to slope the land between your house and that wall away from your house, and have some means of draining the water that collects in it. Have you cut below natural ground level alongside the adjacent house, or have they built up? If they've built up, the the onus is more on them to sort out a solution. Re: HELP! No access down left side of house. See pictures! 4Apr 15, 2015 2:42 pm Hi EmmaW84, What a bummer this is. How frustrating for you. The thing is though that the HWS and the retaining wall was shown on this drawing so your builder may argue that you should have known about it. I know this doesn't help you much. Sorry. Is there an opportunity to change the type of HWS? Do you have gas? In this case you could change your HWS to an instantaneous one and have it recessed into the wall. This could help alleviate the problem there. In terms of the retaining wall, is it installed as close to the boundary as possible? If it is then there is not much else that can happen. If not, maybe it can be pushed over a bit. So sorry I can't offer more to help. Best of luck with it all. Cheers, Jenny. Need hints, tips and inspiration? Join me on my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ournewhomecoach Who am I? See my LinkedIn page: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jennifer-crawford/1a/429/296 Re: HELP! No access down left side of house. See pictures! 5Apr 15, 2015 2:44 pm I hear you Ilaeria... Here are some of my additional thoughts: - I have not heard of homes where one side was not accessible - As this is our 1st home not dream home, but will it affect resale value - Surely this is a mistake or sloppy job from our builder, should there be compensation? We also have an independent inspector but haven't had any inspections yet as we are getting inspections done at framing, pre plaster and pci only.... Re: HELP! No access down left side of house. See pictures! 6Apr 15, 2015 2:54 pm Thanks oneJohn and Jenathome. From what we've been told that retaining wall is peemanent and has been concreted in so moving it right to the boundary wouldve been ideal... From the plans it's suppose to be 1175mm to neighbours boundary and as you can see its barely even 800mm.... Totally stumped and husband fuming!! Re: HELP! No access down left side of house. See pictures! 7Apr 15, 2015 9:37 pm So do you mean it's 800 from house wall to wall, or 800 from the retaining wall to your wall? If 800 wall to wall, it sounds like someone's house is in the wrong spot! If that wall is meant to be permanent, once backfilled you can still walk along the top of it, between the retaining wall and the neighbour's wall. It's not ideal, but not the end of the world either. The alternative will be to build another retaining wall to replace that one, but in a better location, bearing in mind the ground level next to the house needs to be below the lip on the slab that the bricks sit on. Re: HELP! No access down left side of house. See pictures! 8Apr 16, 2015 8:44 am If you have gas available, then Jenathome's suggestion of changing to instantaneous gas HWS would be a good idea. I see on your plan that you have solar panels and I assume that these are for solar hot water. If you want to stay with the solar HWS then you could change from a split solar system, with the hot water tank on the ground to an integrated solar HWS, with the tank integrated with the panels on the roof. This could require some re-engineering of the roof trusses to carry the extra weight of tank. "- Surely this is a mistake or sloppy job from our builder, should there be compensation?" Unfortunately not as you must have signed off on the plans as shown. This is a problem with many estates having small blocks these days. Re: HELP! No access down left side of house. See pictures! 9Apr 16, 2015 9:07 am Something is really wrong here. Where is the boundary in relation to that wall? You need to know this to understand where your problem really is. Also who built hat retaining wall? You, the Neighbor, or the developer? Sent from an elegant mobile device using Tapatalk. The Blog for my new house build is http://customaussie.blogspot.com.au and my forum thread is at viewtopic.php?t=74944 Re: HELP! No access down left side of house. See pictures! 10Apr 16, 2015 9:12 am I would be asking for a signed copy of the engineering that went into that retaining wall , I can't see how that poxy sleeper wall has rectified any encroachment into the angle of repose of your neighbours slab and foundation , therefore the retaining wall is effectively useless as anything more than a sloppy attempt to cover up a problem , ( would you be happy if your neighbour,s builder created a problem with your foundations and tried to pass this off as the solution ? ) I would recommend getting a third party / independent inspector to assess this and advise you Re: HELP! No access down left side of house. See pictures! 11Apr 16, 2015 11:36 am Adriang thanks for your reply, I guess thats an option arising from this problem but I really want to get to the bottom of the problem if that makes sense. TheBigHouse, the Builder came up with this solution which our neighbour had to sign off on. From their boundary to the retaining wall its just over 200mm encroaching on our land. GlennC74, we agree we think its been a sloppy fix up job on behalf of our builder and are wanting to try and get a better solution. I do have the "re- engineering" reports.... argh! We are having inspections for preslab, frame and pci... im not sure if I need to get one in purely just for this issue???? Re: HELP! No access down left side of house. See pictures! 12Apr 16, 2015 12:25 pm Dumb question, but if I was to get this inspected, what stage would it fall under? Also, looking back, I have been told this is also due to a footing probe being required in addition to compromising neighbours garage foundation. Re: HELP! No access down left side of house. See pictures! 13Apr 16, 2015 12:44 pm Was it your fault his foundation was compromised, or his fault? If it was his fault, it should be his responsibility to find a solution. A couple of other things to note: 1. The hot water system position is indicated on your plans which you presumably signed off on. You were always going to have issues getting around that, so unfortunately, that's not the builder's fault. 2. Unfortunately based on your site plan it appears that when they originally planned it your neighbour had not been built, so there would be no reasonable way for them to know there was going to be this problem, so again unfortunately, not their fault in the original planning. But in any case, now you have a problem and have been presented with (and I guess probably approved, if your neighbour had to approve it I assume you did too) a non-ideal solution. You've got a couple of options, I would think, but they may result in you violating your contract, I'm not an expert... 1. Insist the builder stop work because you are not happy with this solution and want to get independent advice. If you get an inspector it would probably be considered slab stage. But bear in mind that depending on where you are (I'm not sure what state you're in) an inspector is not necessarily licenced (they are in QLD) but are pretty much never engineers. An independent engineer inspection may be a better option. 2. Accept the solution so they can continue work, and talk to them about the best way to make that side of the house accessible using this solution, bearing in mind that as others have said, you can't really raise the path above the bottom of the bricks. It's hard to tell from your photo which direction the ground is sloping. It's a pretty horrible situation to be in when building your first house. Try to work with the builder, express your concerns and see what they say. If you're combative it won't make it better for anyone and you still have a long way to go! Good luck Jen (& Dave) Plantation Bronte, Ormeau Ridge, Gold Coast QLD 12/03/2015 - Commencement... 26/08/2015 - Handover! viewtopic.php?f=31&t=76446 Re: HELP! No access down left side of house. See pictures! 14Apr 16, 2015 2:03 pm Building inspector , the same one you are using for the rest should be fine , so long as they are i dependant of the builder . Also surely they can relocate the hot water service to the rear of the house ( depends on your windows there ) but at least that lets you have some sort of access , Re: HELP! No access down left side of house. See pictures! 15Apr 16, 2015 2:14 pm How is your relationship with the neighbour, I know if it were my garage's structure that was compromised I'd be all over this to ensure it was rectified. Cover yourself, ultimately if there is a failure of any sort the neighbour could litigate. Having appropriate reports from those qualified to give them affords you some protection. Re: HELP! No access down left side of house. See pictures! 16Apr 16, 2015 2:49 pm Ilaeria and GlennC74, definitely going to speak to them about the possibility of relocating HWS. I have since spoken to our Independent Inspector who was very prompt and helpful in answering my questions, from his point of view, noting he has all our full documentation.... he has said that our builder have complied and this is something that he sees often... so, that has helped us in terms of this being a slop job. FantasticFour our rship with neighbour is fairly new. In terms of what we have heard from them and others we are the ones who lossed out in this situation as in laments term (I needed laments terms) they have got a super reinforced garage from the underpinning and our retaining wall hasnt encroached on their land so their Happy Days! Re: HELP! No access down left side of house. See pictures! 17Apr 16, 2015 2:51 pm Well, relocating the HWS definitely seems to be your best option at this point then, so you can at least still have some access on that side. Hopefully the builder is reasonable about that. Fingers crossed you get a solution you're happy with! 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