Browse Forums General Discussion Re: 3 Year old slab moving, now blamed on Landscaping 6Oct 16, 2011 10:43 pm Some people apparently have nothing better to do than comment on other people's sigs. Re: 3 Year old slab moving, now blamed on Landscaping 7Oct 16, 2011 11:03 pm Quote: If you can't see why that may happen then think of a newly constructed house in the same way as a brand new car - if you don't follow the recommended and schedule by getting it serviced at the end of the "run-in period" and the car's engine subsequently seizes later on due to the debris that has accumulated in engine oil, do you think the dealer will be considered to be liable? No where in my contract does it say that i have to landscape around the house or that if i don't add a path or change the grades or drainage that the builder installed that the house will crack. A new car HAS to be serviced at the appropriate intervals to keep the warranty. Why would the builder leave my property in a manner that would be detrimental to the house? Its like buying a new car that was not filled with oil. By the way the ground does slope away from the house and has grass on it for at least 2 m (away from house). That is why i believe a 1m path would have 0 effect. The problem ****** in the area between the drain (starts at the edge of the garage prob 6m from house and then heads diagnaly towards the house but comes withing 4m of house) that THEY INSTALLED and the FLAT ground that meets the slope. Re: 3 Year old slab moving, now blamed on Landscaping 8Oct 17, 2011 5:50 am Hi Jimmy, a few comments / questions from me ... not everything is too clear about the situataion ... JimmyL I contacted the builder and they came around and instantly blamed it on my landscaping. JimmyL I was not happy with that so they sent engineers around to check drains and all of my slab levels. The slab has lifted on one side (no cracking in tiles) JimmyL I was also told by the builder to pay extra to have agi drainage installed around all of the lower cut sections of the slab (non of these are blocked and fill with water when it rains) JimmyL According to the builder i should have installed a 1m concrete path around the house that would have stopped water getting under my slab.......At the back of my contract they included a doc from the CSIRO that states what they recommend should be done with landscaping. There is no signed reference to this inside the contract. JimmyL They also told me that the drains that i paid them extra to install was to stop water getting under my garage, even though they are installed all the way around the cut section. JimmyL Does anyone have any idea on where i stand???? Surely the builder would leave the house/land in a condition that would not be detrimental to it. Is it not their fault that the drains they installed are too far from the house?? JimmyL The builder said that if i fix the moisture problem as good will they will come in and patch my cracks up!!! But apparently they never do this and i should feel privileged at the offer. JimmyL My mum built with the same company across the road and she has the same cracking appearing. I took them over and they blamed it on the shrubs planted against 5m of wall. She also had the drains installed. What is the soil type (hard clay, sand, ??) at your place? And at your mum's? My signature is distracting people from my wise posts ... Re: 3 Year old slab moving, now blamed on Landscaping 9Oct 17, 2011 8:43 am cmhamilton is right, if you drive your car and have not performed regular services and your engine blows up and you take the car manufacturer to VCAT... what do you think your chances are? What site supervisors do on handover is provide you with the CSIRO Foundation Maintenance and say "follow this, yadda yadda". This is where they see that they absolve themselves of slab issues. Or in the case of our (insert bad language verb & noun) site supervisor, he got it mixed up an said that we can't have the whole house encircled in a 900mm path. What a douche. As for your second question regarding water finding itself to the slab regardless of a 1m concrete path, yes you are right. If you have cracks in the path, a 2 story house next door with their water coming off a gradient into your block, cracked pipes and even the water tap dripping water onto an exposed area will cause water to get close to your slab. Now once you have entertained all of these issues and installed preventative measures, your house is still sitting on a slab that is less than the thickness (between 85mm - 100mm for a single story) of the front footpath. AND it's sitting on 450mm footings with styrofoam voids? What it boils down to is that YES, the builder should have ultimate responsibility for your houses structural integrity. But all in all as consumers of houses, we shop around and buy best valued house (sometimes cheapest). Builders meet this need and build us the best valued house which contains a 85mm slab, styrofoam voids and prefab roof trusses. All of this on P clay type sites which happens to be a majority of the west of Melbourne. See what I mean? Re: 3 Year old slab moving, now blamed on Landscaping 10Oct 17, 2011 8:54 am JimmyL Quote: If you can't see why that may happen then think of a newly constructed house in the same way as a brand new car - if you don't follow the recommended and schedule by getting it serviced at the end of the "run-in period" and the car's engine subsequently seizes later on due to the debris that has accumulated in engine oil, do you think the dealer will be considered to be liable? No where in my contract does it say that i have to landscape around the house or that if i don't add a path or change the grades or drainage that the builder installed that the house will crack. A new car HAS to be serviced at the appropriate intervals to keep the warranty. Why would the builder leave my property in a manner that would be detrimental to the house? Its like buying a new car that was not filled with oil. By the way the ground does slope away from the house and has grass on it for at least 2 m (away from house). That is why i believe a 1m path would have 0 effect. The problem ****** in the area between the drain (starts at the edge of the garage prob 6m from house and then heads diagnaly towards the house but comes withing 4m of house) that THEY INSTALLED and the FLAT ground that meets the slope. Unless you had a complete turnkey package including landscaping then the onus is not on the builder to ensure that your house is landscaped in a appropriate manner to take all reasonable precautions to limit the chance of water penetrating into the soil around the footings, because their job ends with the construction of the house itself. You have noted that nothing has been done since handover wrt landscaping and thus the recommendations for preventative measures to protect the slab footings were not followed (not deliberately as there are obviously extenuating circumstances but still not followed all the same). I'm not trying to bust your chops here - just indicating that the failure to follow the recommended preventative course of action on you part may be seen to have contributed to the problem at least in some small part. Simply dismissing those guidelines as "something you shouldn't have to do" might not cut it if/when you do take the issue further (if that is the path you choose to follow) - we have had some rather extraordinary weather in terms of rain events in the past 18-24 months across most of the country, so if water has been heavily pooling around the slab then (at least in part) that others may have exacerbated any other problems there might already have been. Without having an engineer look at the drainage schematics for your build nobody can comment on whether things have or haven't been done correctly by the builder and you're looking for a caveat to lay sole responsibility at the builder's feet when there is at least some grey area as to the root cause(s) of the problems you are having. Nobody here on H1 (I don't care who they are) can really make an accurate judgement one way or the other without having all of the facts at their disposal - including survey results both from before/after the build and now, your house plans, a visual assessment of the pad your slab is built on, the drainage that was installed, etc. A situation like this would be rather unpleasant for anybody and we're not trying to beat down your point of view or anything - just playing devil's advocate to shed some light as to what you might have thrown back at you if you do decide to take a more legally-oriented course of action. It's a highly stressful situation I know, but you need to work through it in an as calm and collected manner as you can - start off by contacting the BCAV (http://www.buildingcommission.com.au/www/html/1196-building-advice--conciliation-victoria.asp) to discuss you situation and work from there. Good luck getting it all sorted out - it totally sucks and I'm sure everyone here empathises with you. Some people apparently have nothing better to do than comment on other people's sigs. Re: 3 Year old slab moving, now blamed on Landscaping 11Oct 17, 2011 9:14 am JimmyL According to the builder i should have installed a 1m concrete path around the house that would have stopped water getting under my slab.......At the back of my contract they included a doc from the CSIRO that states what they recommend should be done with landscaping. There is no signed reference to this inside the contract. For the record I just checked out build contract and we had to initial that same document in our contract to acknowledge that we understood that landscaping provisions were necessary to prevent water damage weakening the soil around the footings. This is at the "back" of our HIA contract as it is in yours, but it is still part of of the contract booklet and as I mentioned we still had to initial it to acknowledge that we understood it (not sure how that tees up from a legal standpoint, but they did take the time to explain the basics to us which we appreciated). Lex That doco is so generic and it only confuses people. IMO, builders should "gain" the responsibility to advise the best course of action according to the site, house and soil, just like they do the surveying and all the other prep things. Things like correct landscaping in order to protect the foundations should not be left to the owners, as many of us may think that we are doing the right thing, only to be actually doing the wrong thing. Not from negligence but from not being able to "engineer" the correct landscaping for our houses. Employing an engineer privately is the only option, but where do we start and which field of engineering should it be? This is not covered anywhere in "the docs". And some sites are trickier than others. Add the 'charged system' into play, especially on wrong-way-slopes (land slopes to where there is no council stormwater discharge), and you have even more issues. I think that regulations should be changed and each newly built house should be handed over with at least recommendations of the most appropriate landscaping/drainage needs - and this should be designed by engineers. Totally agree with Lex on this one - like a lot of business regulations far too much onus is placed on the purchaser to be fully aware of things such as preventative measures like these (while at the same time they are being inundated with a multitude of other things in the contract signing), when there is really no reasonable expectation for them to have even a rudimentary understanding of such issues. This leaves the purchaser open to issues with poor workmanship even if they do try to do the right thing and get a licensed landscaper to design their landscaping only for them to not follow said guidelines (damage to your house is an unpleasant thing to have happen, no matter who has to pay to get it fixed). It happens everywhere in pretty much everything we hand over our hard earned $$$ for - hopefully regulatory bodies will one day get off their backsides and embed provisions for for full disclosure regarding purchaser responsibilities in terms they can actually understand into sale contracts, instead of just leaving it in the "too hard" basket (we can only hope). Some people apparently have nothing better to do than comment on other people's sigs. Re: 3 Year old slab moving, now blamed on Landscaping 12Oct 17, 2011 9:27 am At the end of the day the recommends state that you "only should" place 1m of concrete around the house. They do not say must. Either way after 3.5 years it would be unacceptable. I am sure any judge would see this. If it was such a problem then why don't they included it in the building of a house as standard?? Re: 3 Year old slab moving, now blamed on Landscaping 13Oct 17, 2011 9:51 am B STAR At the end of the day the recommends state that you "only should" place 1m of concrete around the house. They do not say must. Either way after 3.5 years it would be unacceptable. I am sure any judge would see this. If it was such a problem then why don't they included it in the building of a house as standard?? Are you a VCAT judge or a solicitor experienced in resolving such matters wrt building regulations? If not then sorry, but it is not prudent for you to be making such expansive statements. The op needs to discuss his issues with BCAV, not have someone on H1 pass an arbitrary judgement when they are neither qualified to make such a judgement nor are in possession of all of the relevant facts. Some people apparently have nothing better to do than comment on other people's sigs. Re: 3 Year old slab moving, now blamed on Landscaping 14Oct 17, 2011 10:04 am cmhamilton B STAR At the end of the day the recommends state that you "only should" place 1m of concrete around the house. They do not say must. Either way after 3.5 years it would be unacceptable. I am sure any judge would see this. If it was such a problem then why don't they included it in the building of a house as standard?? Are you a VCAT judge or a solicitor experienced in resolving such matters wrt building regulations? If not then sorry, but it is not prudent for you to be making such expansive statements. The op needs to discuss his issues with BCAV, not have someone on H1 pass an arbitrary judgement when they are neither qualified to make such a judgement nor are in possession of all of the relevant facts. I am not a judge, If your a judge you are not allowed to comment in the public forum about any topics what so ever I am an engineer. However I have read 100 of cases and outcomes like this. They are all available publicly for you to read. Anyway what i would be doing is getting my own engineers report to determine the true reason for heaving. There is more likely another issue. The op talking about shear movement as well. I would love to get an Xray of the slab to ensure that the steel reo is all in the correct place. What needs to be established first is what actually failed. Then what was the likely reason. There is a possibility that even if the 1 meter concrete was placed around the slab that this would have still happend. Re: 3 Year old slab moving, now blamed on Landscaping 15Oct 17, 2011 10:16 am That is exactly what I was suggesting - the OP's case needs to be fully investigated to determine the root causes of the problems and/or whether the builder has been negligent before any sort of judgement can be passed. The BCAV is where the OP should start his process as they'll be able to point him in the right direction in terms of what course of action needs to be followed from this point (he has already raised it with the builder and gotten their response so that is step one ticked off), rather than taking off-the-cuff advice from someone on a discussion forum who is not in possession of all of the facts. Some people apparently have nothing better to do than comment on other people's sigs. Re: 3 Year old slab moving, now blamed on Landscaping 16Oct 17, 2011 10:23 am anything in this forum is just an open discussion. It gets people thinking and spreading ideas its always upto the individual to make sense of it all and determine which process should correct. Lets face it if anyone here was that good we would not be spending all our time on here you would be out in the real world getting paid for your words. We are all "wannabes" to some degree. Re: 3 Year old slab moving, now blamed on Landscaping 17Oct 17, 2011 11:23 am “Wannabes” is such a harsh label IMHFO. I would like to think “people with either experience or just an opinion” is a better term. Have you heard of the saying “The difference between a smart person and a genius, smart person learns from their mistake, genius learns off a smart persons mistakes”. Under no circumstances should opinions or even fact should be taken as gospel and professional opinions should be rendered. But then again I have received professional opinion on housing matters that have been as equally as inadequate. Re: 3 Year old slab moving, now blamed on Landscaping 18Oct 17, 2011 11:54 am I would certainly be getting an engineer to make an evaluation on what when wrong and why. I don't have an understanding of your drainage, but it sounds like you paid for something extra to do something, but didn't get it. Putting a 1 metre path all around the house is not possible in many cases. My Council requires 35% permeable land on my block. My house, driveway and paths have used up this entire quota (as I suspect is the case for many others). So, I'm not allowed to put a 1 metre impervious path around my house. If a builder hands you a CSIRO document at the start of a build and expects you to find it, let alone follow it, at the end of the build then good luck. If it's important the builder should hand another copy at the end of the build and get you to sign that you have read and undersood it. Even better a 3-month follow-up courtesy visit to check that everything is OK and discuss the importance of any issues would be good. We're not talking about buying a $20 toaster that requires very little follow up, but several hundreds of thousdands of dollars of blood, sweat and tears that, if it does require maintence to ensure it is not damaged, should be conveyed by the builder to the owner. It's in both the builders and owners interest. I'd love to run a business in which I bombard customers with all sorts of onerous warnings and request and when something goes wrong... Demolition August 2009, Construction Started September 2009, Completed December 2010 Re: 3 Year old slab moving, now blamed on Landscaping 19Oct 17, 2011 11:57 am I found the following in my contract - you might want to check if you have something similar in yours. First, in the generic section for construction of brick veneer homes: Quote: 28. SITE CLEAN 28.2 Earth (Soil) to be graded away from the perimiter of building to avoid water ponding against building Additionally, the soil test stated this (my emphasis): Quote: * Surface site drainage is generally poor. It is recommended that an agricultural drain or similar be installed prior to commencement of construction along base of cut or around the high sides of building, and connected to a legal point of discharge. Do you think my builder did this? Of course not - they left the house with water ponding on nearly every side, and said "You're supposed to fix it with landscaping". If we were supposed to fix it with landscaping, how did they handle drainage during the 9 months that the house was being built? They didn't. You can ask your builder how they prevented water getting under the slab during construction. Guess what else my builder told me - they said that it's actually no problem at all for water to pond against the house and sink into the clay underneath. They said it wouldn't cause any problem with the foundations. Never believe what the builder tells you - all they want to do is avoid any extra work and get onto the next house. Metricon Riva 33 - http://herlihy-riva.blogspot.com Site start 15/03/2010 - Handover 23/12/2010 9 months and 8 days (284 calendar days) from site start to handover Re: 3 Year old slab moving, now blamed on Landscaping 20Oct 17, 2011 12:15 pm Adam.M “Wannabes” is such a harsh label IMHFO. I would like to think “people with either experience or just an opinion” is a better term. Have you heard of the saying “The difference between a smart person and a genius, smart person learns from their mistake, genius learns off a smart persons mistakes”. Under no circumstances should opinions or even fact should be taken as gospel and professional opinions should be rendered. But then again I have received professional opinion on housing matters that have been as equally as inadequate. wanna be's in the sense we are not paid professional. I put my self in that basket as well dont worry. Your house roof does not show rusting other than some surface rust on the flashings. In my opinion you dont need to replace or paint the roof other than treat surface rust… 1 10737 Hello everyone, I have a question regarding moving a chandelier after it has been mounted. The chandelier in question is quite large, measuring 4 meters… 0 72718 9 26044 |