Front of my house just fell off « Singletrack Forum

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Front of my house just fell off

92 posts & 44 voices | Started 1 year ago by Mr_C | Latest reply from ernie_lynch

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Jamze - Member

Even if the LA are involved, doesn't seem they enforce much. Just sold a house that was built mid-nineties, turned out the developer never got the building control signed off. They just sold it and vanished.

Buyers solicitors picked it up. Ended up getting the inspector around 15 years after the event to sign the property off. He turns up with a list of outstanding items, which I then had to put right before we could get a completion certificate.

Quizzed the guy why they didn't enforce the sign-off, he just shrugged his shoulders, said we're very busy you know...

...wanders off to check porch...

Posted 1 year ago #
djaustin - Member

Shocking. Had two houses with such porches, the M10 raw bolts should be obvious from the underside of the porch. I'd put a letter through every house on the estate with such a porch immediately, and start propping up the porches with some decent timber. I suspect people may have noticed that it's already fallen off.

I can't seriously imaging Bellway Homes not taking this seriously, to be honest - whatever the sales rep might say. Retrospective refitting of proper bolts isn't that great a deal. The company that built our last house had to completely rebuild a set of garages as the mortar crumbled away - all without removing the roof.

Posted 1 year ago #
slackman99 - Member

Having a quick look at the Fischer manual, a 6mm screw in a standard S plug (similar to a Rawlplug) has a typical recommended load of about 60kg.

I would NEVER just use screws and plugs to hold anything substantial onto the outside of a building.

For reference, we have just had a 450mm deep canopy designed at work and that needed M8 wall anchors at 400mm centres (so 10 in total to take the 4m wide canopy). I think the design weight of the canopy was 130kg off the top of my head. We would have thrown it back to the engineer had he specced screws and plugs.

Posted 1 year ago #
ononeorange - Member

Edited

Posted 1 year ago #
morgs - Member

well - the fixings are pathetic.

I've just put up a punchbag holder on the outside of my house. the bracket is about 10kg....it'll hold a what, 20kg punchbag? and it has a chin-up bar to lift my 18st bulk.....so the [b]6 x 10mm BOLTS [i/b] supplied should be ok to keep the total of 145kg.

now - bearing the aobve in mind.....6 x screws???? me thinks not

Posted 1 year ago #
tony24 - Member

That is terrible I fit these canopy's and we use bolts which are between 120mm and 160mm and 6mm in thickness at every 400mm.

On the other hand these houses have to be thrown together so quickly these days, everyone is on a price which is usually terrible so it no surprise there are corners cut everywhere...

Not to mention most of the builders working on sites now cant speak a word of english let alone read a instruction manual.

Posted 1 year ago #
ernie_lynch - Member

a proper solution to the fixing problem is quite difficult. It’s not enough to simply use stronger fixings. .......The best anchor in the world is useless if it is set in cheese. Cavity walls are cheese for the purposes of cantilevers.

I disagree, a brick or concrete block cavity wall should be perfectly adequate to handle the weight of a porch. And in this case it's clearly the fixings which have failed, not the wall. I am also unconvinced that providing correct fixings now, need necessarily present a serious problem (I can't quite figure out the construction details from the 2 pic which appear to be different) unless of course other porches have started pulling away from the walls - that could be a problem, and might require more or less starting again. Still not that big a deal imo.

Posted 1 year ago #
totalshell - Member

i refer you to the earlier post.. your wasting time and energy. nhbc will have nothing to do with it.. on our new barratt homes the ridge tiles were literally droping off on to cars the road etc etc.. thier reponse ryhmed with puff.

Posted 1 year ago #
ernie_lynch - Member

Just in case the OP gets too despondent by the suggestions of the defeatists on here :

"Figures for claims paid to homeowners that claimed on their NHBC Warranty in 2008/09 went up from £46.4m in 2007/08 to £59.3m in 2008/09"

So it would appear that the NHBC pays out over £1 million every week in claims then.

And the breakdown is as follows :

"NHBC claims figure for 2008/09 include 17.3% of claims related to foundations, substructure and ground floors (subject to building control inspections). The building envelope including intermediate floors accounted for 34.6% of all claims, again a fundamental structural aspect. The roof accounted to nearly as many claims at 33.9%, services, fixtures and finishes accounted for 11.5% and finally ancillary buildings such as garages 2.7%."

I think we can safely assume that the porch falling off the front of your house represents a serious structural defect. Unless of course it can be proved that the OP went round removing all the expansion/chemical bolts and replaced them with 4 inch screws and brown plugs.

Posted 1 year ago #
geordiemick00 - Member

as someone who has spent many years selling technical construction products to the housebuilders I'd suggest the following:

Ascertain who manufactured the canopy, probably someone like canopies.co.uk and ask their technical dept to give you a technical installation manager. It was most definately fitted contrary to their instructions which makes the house builders liable.

Issue a small claims court for the cost of a new canopy and professional fitting and another £1500 for stress, hassle etc and you'll sail through the courts.

I've had Persimmons to court twice for various issues and won on both occasions.

Posted 1 year ago #
takisawa2 - Member

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-QNAwUdHUQ

Posted 1 year ago #
piedi di formaggio - Member

Sooooo......

Any update? Anything else fallen off?

Did the neighbours notice?

Posted 1 year ago #
bassman - Member

Bump

Any update how have you got on with the builders.

Posted 1 year ago #
Gary_C - Member

Any update how have you got on with the builders.

Perhaps he's now part of a new builds foundations.....

Posted 1 year ago #
stumpy01 - Member

Perhaps he's now part of the foundations down at number 84?

Posted 1 year ago #
ernie_lynch - Member

Maybe the rest of the house followed soon afterwards and he's been a little busy clearing up ?

Posted 1 year ago #
bagpuss72 - Member

info here

someones probably already posted this but I dont have time to read all posts.

I had a problem with the lintel over my patio door in year 6 and struggled ALOT with Jones Homes depends on builders for some reason I thought your 'contract' was with the NHBC people to sort but it took a long time and alot of messing - Good Luck xx

Posted 1 year ago #
piedi di formaggio - Member

Maybe he knocked on a neighbours door a little too hard and instead of warning them about dodgy porch fixings, he demonstrated instead and used his head to stop it's fall?

Posted 1 year ago #
Mr_C - Member

Sorry to disappoint/thanks for your concern but I've not ended up under a pile of rubble or someone else's canopy - I'm working away from home this week so I don't have much chance to get on here. It might have been a close thing with ending up under another canopy, at least one of the neighbour's canopies looks like it won't be up for much longer as I could have got my fingers into the gap between the wall and the top of the support truss and I felt nervous just standing under it.

I contacted Bellway customer care on Monday morning and spoke to a very helpful lady who took all the details and seemed genuinely concerned. She rang me back in the early afternoon to tell me they would be replacing my canopy and retrofitting all the others with the correct fixings within ten working days. I must say I was very surprised it was this easy - I won't be home until tomorrow so don't know if anything has actually been done.

Posted 1 year ago #
wwaswas - Member

takes the wind right out of your sails when they're nice, concerned and offer to rectify the problem for all affected without quibble, doesn't it?

Posted 1 year ago #
Gary_C - Member

takes the wind right out of your sails when they're nice, concerned and offer to rectify the problem for all affected without quibble, doesn't it?

+1

Also, if every issue was resolved like this us lot on here would have nothing to discuss/argue about. The forum would be barren.

Posted 1 year ago #
ernie_lynch - Member

I must say I was very surprised it was this easy

Well I'm surprised you're surprised.......a dirty great big porch full of roof tiles fell off the front of your house ffs. I would expect a major house builder to deal with the issue as fast as possible and to be extremely apologetic, it's not a question of "oh well these things sometimes happen you know".

Still, as long as you're happy and no one's been hurt, all's well that ends well eh ?

Posted 1 year ago #