Reaper
Tells it like it is.
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2004
- Messages
- 6,494
- Reaction score
- 11,583
- Points
- 113
- Location
- SE Suburbs, Melbourne
- Members Ride
- RG Z71 Colorado, 120 Prado , VDJ200, Vantage
If anything we should have more owner builders as it increases competition in the market and gets more houses bullt. My parents (along with a young me who was roped into it) built their first house in the late 1990s.
Yeahnah. Unqualified people having a crack at building what is a very complex 'thing' nearly guarantees a drop in overall standards. Just a tip for you: Overall building isn't particularly profitable, particularly now. Every week more and more are going under and there are plenty to come. Some were badly managed and should go but there are also a fair amount of great builders who were just victims of circumstance and have gone under as well.
Old man has always been a “do it once and do it right” kind of person so built a solid slab double story brick with a steel frame. That place isn’t going anywhere in a hurry and I’d be surprised if there were any cracks in the slab to this day.
Your father sounds the exception to the rule. Pitty you didn't learn more from the experience.
Sure, but it would be easy for a dodgy builder to add more cheaper foam instead of expensive concrete.
Actually it's not but go on.....
I‘m sure a lot of that kind of fraud or “error” does go on in house builds where the owner doesn’t give a fuk (landlords). The only times I’ve heard of cracked slabs is in build to rent houses where (presumably) the person paying for the build doesn’t really care (or bother inspecting themselves) as it’s just something they are renting out.
I've seen a lot of dodgy/wrong stuff but that isn't one of them. Waffle pods come in hights of 165, 225 or 300mm Getting anything but those sizes is a real fuckaround even if it's possible at all. Certainly not worth the effort. Putting higher pod in than what is required will be picked up by the building surveyor during his mandatory inspection. About the only opportunity to cheat is to reduce the cover (thickness) of the slab at the top but that means resetting all of the boxing involved with the job after the inspection. Say you wanted to halve the slab thickness from min 100mm to 50 - that's a saving of around 11m3 on a 225m2 slab. That adds up to around $2000. Less the day delay and resetting everything for 4 or so guys, all of a sudden the "savings" end up to be less than $1000 with a shitload of risk attached to it.
Further, around 60% of developments (100% if flood zone or heights close to max are involved) require a land surveyor to certify FFL's before a occ cert is issued these days. If somebody has cheated it'll 100% be found then. Put simply your conspiracy theory is unfounded and not plausible what so ever.