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[jerry]

Had an eventful evening last night following the rain and thunder when we had a landslide of mud run into our street when the "supporting" wall behind a recent new build collapsed. As you can see it fell onto the steps and narrowly missed a young lad. All the locals are not surprised tbh as before the house was built weve had mudslides before in heavy rain and unlike a local guy who built his own house into the cliff but spent about £100k on piledriving and shoring up before he even started to build his property this lot just quickly threw the place up with seemingly scant regard to any thought of properly shoring up around it. Anyhow, spent last night helping the builders clear up and make safe though the guy in charge seemed more concerned about what all the locals were saying to the press ;DIn fact today he has been doing his best to intimidate both locals from making comments to the press/TV and the journalists themselves so obviously this hasnt endeared him much. Guilty conscience perhaps? Luckily no one was hurt but the houses have been sold with one buyer due to move in in a couple of days. Im no builder or engineer but from the photos I think its pretty obvious that the land behind the property wasnt shored up correctly nor adequate drainage provided. Another case of trying to make a quick buck on the cheap?

[jerry]

oops-no photos!
Thought I knew how to do this-obviously not :-[Can anyone tell me (in idiot proof form!) how I insert images onto this post from "my pictures" ?

[twiglet]

oops-no photos!
Thought I knew how to do this-obviously not :-[Can anyone tell me (in idiot proof form!) how I insert images onto this post from "my pictures" ?

http://www.omegaowners.com/forum/index.php?topic=52309.0 

Or email me the pictures at j.taylor7@uea.ac.uk and I'll post them for you. 

[jerry]

cheers twiglet

[marrus69]

sounds like if thay where pile driving for the house that the soil was no good.the supporting wall would of been designed by an engieer with dranage beehind it,so the biulder our engieer  has mest up.blame game now.i have done a few now with what looks like egg cartoon stuff to back off wall to allow water to run down into a land drain normally 4"pipe with holes in it going to a drain and souronded by pee single.

[jerry]

sounds like if thay where pile driving for the house that the soil was no good.the supporting wall would of been designed by an engieer with dranage beehind it,so the biulder our engieer  has mest up.blame game now.i have done a few now with what looks like egg cartoon stuff to back off wall to allow water to run down into a land drain normally 4"pipe with holes in it going to a drain and souronded by pee single.

When you say "soil was no good", I take it that having a load of sand in it (we're 100yds from the beach) would come under that category then

[twiglet]

Posting pics for Jerry...

[jerry]

cheers Twiglet
jerry (the ludite )

[marrus69]

yes sandey soil no good.but that wall is no good how did thay think that wall was going to stand up, the plastic sheet up aganst the wall is no good any water will run to bottom and wash it out,the wall itself is no good not thick enough no upright supports,made from blocks have no sheer strengh.even if thay had used this system in pic below it would have still colapsed,weve done ones smaller and the walls where three times that thick.

[marrus69]

the membrane has a drain at bottom and is not air tight,the capping on top allows air in and out top of pic is the rain water pipe connected to the drain so it does not wash out soil below.

[jerry]

Yep, like I said Marrus, Im no builder but its pretty obvious this hasnt been done correctly/safely at all. Surely there are some building regs governing this sort of work? Anyhow, their boss hasnt been around for the past couple of hours-something to do with the combination of journalists and the inspector from the council maybe?  Mind you, isnt there any sort of monitoring system in place by relevant council officers to try to prevent such things?

[twiglet]

There are building regulations that should be adhered to, and an inspector should visit the site and carry out inspections at key stages of the build.  Also, as they are new homes, I would have expected an NHBC inspector to sign off stages of the build, for their 10 year warranty. 

[scimmy_man]

retaining walls unless part of the building are not covered under the Building Regs.

[twiglet]

retaining walls unless part of the building are not covered under the Building Regs.

Well that makes a huge amount of sense! 

[Marks DTM Calib]

There are building regulations that should be adhered to, and an inspector should visit the site and carry out inspections at key stages of the build.  Also, as they are new homes, I would have expected an NHBC inspector to sign off stages of the build, for their 10 year warranty. 

Depends on the type of building regs applied for!

If full plans then it will only be inspected at the end of the build (with maybe a single site visit at the start).

If building notice then it will be inspected at key stages of the build.

Also, as we all well know, the NHBC inspections are pretty much non-existant.

Some advice for all, if your ever having building work done then get full plans produced but opt for the building notice approach.

This means that the builder is quoting against the specifics of the detailed plans but, his/her work is being checked at regular points.

I dont trust the building trade one bit!

Problem is that if a retaining wall is detached from the structure of the house or does not provide support to the house its not covered by builidng regulations