New homes 'crumbling due to weak mortar'

stuart45

EachPenny wrote: »

I think this is one of the fundamental issues. The old arrangement meant a homebuyer was purchasing a product from a company. The reputation of that company was important and it depended (amongst other things) on the quality of build.

The livelihood of the employees of the company depended on the fortunes of the company, which related to the quality of the product and reputation. In essence, if the employees did a sh*te job then ultimately they would be on the dole. There was a direct causal link between each employee's standards of workmanship and the job security of himself and his colleagues. Furthermore, each employee cared about the quality of work produced by colleagues, because the 'bad apple' placed all of them at risk.

As a result there was a self-enforcing system. You didn't need a Building Inspector standing over each bricklayer because each one knew that it was contrary to their personal interests to do a bad job. Corners would obviously still be cut on occasions, but the scale was limited by a form of mutual self-preservation.

The modern approach of sub-sub-sub-contractors employing agency staff to carry out a specific task on a project leads to a wholly different approach. The target is getting the job done quickly, getting paid, moving on to the next job.

It would be interesting to know whether the individual bricklayers involved in building the affected houses could even be identified. I have my doubts.

In other industries such information would be recorded. If a problem were identified with the workmanship of one person, then the records could be checked to find out what other items/projects they worked on so those could be checked too. Perhaps that is what the construction industry needs to think about doing, and maybe banning people who carry out consistently bad work.

I would agree with all of this, but I can't see anything changing much in the near future.
When I left school many boys were encouraged to take up a trade. Being trained at an early age meant certain things could be drilled into them. The key thing was to do a really good job.
Back then tradesmen had a lot more backing from the unions, so they tended to be really stuborn in their attitude to workmanship. Even if it meant losing money for the boss, the job had to be done their way.

Samsung_Note2

stuart45 wrote: »

Years ago being a hod carrier was like having a trade. Even an experienced ordinary labourer would struggle to carry the hod up and down the ladders all day long, so the hoddies would normally have enough knowledge to knock up the mortar etc.
Nowadays the movement of materials on to the scaffold has been made much easier.

Completely agree..was on the hod in my early days of site work and would bump out bricks with hod then chippy would knock up some ply sides so hod would carry three times as much muck as standard (heavy doesn't come close lol) and off you would go up and down ladders all day.

Had a brickie ask me for a roll of polythene to cover up brick work before as it looked like it would freeze over night...when i said do you mean Hessian,he got the right hump and told me "I know my f..ing job been doing it long enough" the lad hadn't started shaving lol.

Kids building houses...think i"ll stick to my bigger older house.:beer:

charlotte1994

Not sure what it's like for everyone else but the new builds around my area are shocking quality. They look so cheaply made and have many complaints, yet they sell for £160k +, just because of the area. It's so wrong. 70% of the houses are old houses and cottages, so young people with the Help to Buy Scheme have no choice but to get one of the shoddy new builds.

sal_III

jimbog wrote: »

With an old build you, well, know it's old and so have a survey carried out. You shouldn't need to worry as much with a new build. Or do you??

Yeah, because there aren't enough horror stories of issues with old builds despite a survey.

Who is worrying with a new build? You have the survey in the form NHBC (or equivalent) inspection + 10 warranty and you can do a snag list and get issues fixed for free before moving in.

How many new builds have you lived in? Because I have lived in 4 different blocks of flats ranging from 2009 to 2018 and all of them have been excellent quality, well insulated for both heat, damp and noise. On the other hand I have lived in 2 '60s blocks of flat and in both cases there was no insulation, damp a plenty and I could here the neighbours snoring.

Unless there is some fundamental difference in how new build houses are build compared to blocks of flats, based on personal experience I would always pick the new build over the old if available at the same location.

sal_III

EachPenny wrote: »

I think this is one of the fundamental issues. The old arrangement meant a homebuyer was purchasing a product from a company. The reputation of that company was important and it depended (amongst other things) on the quality of build.

The livelihood of the employees of the company depended on the fortunes of the company, which related to the quality of the product and reputation. In essence, if the employees did a sh*te job then ultimately they would be on the dole. There was a direct causal link between each employee's standards of workmanship and the job security of himself and his colleagues. Furthermore, each employee cared about the quality of work produced by colleagues, because the 'bad apple' placed all of them at risk.

As a result there was a self-enforcing system. You didn't need a Building Inspector standing over each bricklayer because each one knew that it was contrary to their personal interests to do a bad job. Corners would obviously still be cut on occasions, but the scale was limited by a form of mutual self-preservation.

The modern approach of sub-sub-sub-contractors employing agency staff to carry out a specific task on a project leads to a wholly different approach. The target is getting the job done quickly, getting paid, moving on to the next job.

It would be interesting to know whether the individual bricklayers involved in building the affected houses could even be identified. I have my doubts.

In other industries such information would be recorded. If a problem were identified with the workmanship of one person, then the records could be checked to find out what other items/projects they worked on so those could be checked too. Perhaps that is what the construction industry needs to think about doing, and maybe banning people who carry out consistently bad work.

I don't believe the problem is with the individual brickies (at least not in most cases), they have nothing to gain from using 3 times as much sand as cement. Maybe in the olden days they could do that to steal some cement but today construction sites are full of CCTV and controlled access so don't think theft is feasible on that scale. And even then it's only possible of the brickies are making their own mix which is rare on large sites, like the ones in the article.

Much more plausible scenario is that either the construction company consciously orders/uses poor quality mix to lower cost or is not controlling what is delivered by the cement mixing sub-contractor who is in turn lowering cost by delivering sub-par product or both.

And here comes the problem, large corporations just do the maths and as long as the cost saving from using poor quality cement are higher than payouts to a hand full of people that catch up to them within the warranty - they will keep doing it.

This is not a matter of Government regulation or oversight, this is matter of NHBC etc. doing their job better inspecting what they provide warranty for.

There was a Government regulation and manufacturer recommendations for external cladding didn't help the poor souls in Greenfell

EachPenny

sal_III wrote: »

I don't believe the problem is with the individual brickies (at least not in most cases), they have nothing to gain from using 3 times as much sand as cement. Maybe in the olden days they could do that to steal some cement but today construction sites are full of CCTV and controlled access so don't think theft is feasible on that scale. And even then it's only possible of the brickies are making their
own mix which is rare on large sites, like the ones in the article.

I don't think it has anything to do with bricklayers or anyone else on the site trying to nick a bit of cement. That's not the issue. The real issue is ignorance or laziness which means if the wrong material is provided, the modern worker will just use whatever they have, whereas the traditional craftsman would refuse to use it.

That means if the pre-mix machine is producing the wrong mortar, or if the person mixing doesn't know the difference in mortar types, a bad batch of mortar will get to the bricklayer who rather than rejecting it will just slap it on because it isn't his problem if it isn't the right stuff.

sal_III wrote: »

Much more plausible scenario is that either the construction company consciously orders/uses poor quality mix to lower cost or is not controlling what is delivered by the cement mixing sub-contractor who is in turn lowering cost by delivering sub-par product or both.

And here comes the problem, large corporations just do the maths and as long as the cost saving from using poor quality cement are higher than payouts to a hand full of people that catch up to them within the warranty - they will keep doing it.

I also don't think this is the case. It is too much of a conspiracy theory. Construction companies simply wouldn't notice a saving in using slightly less cement, the costs involved are absolutely trivial. If they really wanted to pinch a few pennies then the obvious thing for them to look at is the waste produced.

In the last week the block of four flats being built near my house has had two skips taken away - each was filled with nothing but insulation materials, including whole (unopened) rolls of rockwool and half-sheets of celotex. This is not atypical of what goes on in UK construction sites. It is cheaper to over-order and waste materials than to risk running out or have labourers looking through a pile of offcuts to find the right bit.

sal_III wrote: »

This is not a matter of Government regulation or oversight, this is matter of NHBC etc. doing their job better inspecting what they provide warranty for.

Inspection costs money. Much cheaper to pay out on a few claims than employ an army of inspectors.

sal_III wrote: »

There was a Government regulation and manufacturer recommendations for external cladding didn't help the poor souls in Greenfell

What is emerging from the Inquiry is a similar story. Issues of workmanship, incorrect use of materials, elements of the construction (e.g. firestops) not being installed as designed.

TW_Weak_Mortar

AdrianC wrote: »

Not the end of the world. The brick facing is just a facing - it's not structural. All it needs is repointing.

At the absolute outside, even taking the facing down and starting again won't be that massive a job.

It may not be the end of the world to you, however Taylor Wimpey have denied and knocked this back for over 18 months and denied and lied of their use of weak mortar on our Estate in the Scottish Borders. Mortar testing, structural engineers and solicitors do not come cheap and they will not refund our fees incurred for exposing them, costing us in excess of £11,500 in specialist and solicitors so far, despite us proving what they have done. Had we not exposed them, the estimates for repointing our house which I can assure you, is crumbling, is in the region of £45,000/£50,000 if we had to do this ourselves, do you still think its not the end of the world to average working couple? I am one of those directly affected and yes it was my house and the video of me pulling a cable tie out of one of the very many holes in my home that was on the Victoria Derbyshire programme and I do know what I am talking about. Dont even suggest the NHBC, they do not assist the majority of homeowners, particularly in our case as its a very expensive problem for them with over 100 houses badly affected.

Sapphire

I suspect an increasing number of problems with new-builds will show up as they age even a little bit. Too much of this stuff has been thrown up, using cheap imported labour at the lowest possible cost. I wonder how often it was even required for such labour to prove it had the experience and ability required to work on the construction of buildings?

Time will tell – slums of the future, as I've always said.

AdrianC

TW_Weak_Mortar wrote: »

It may not be the end of the world to you, however...

I'm not denying this must be incredibly stressful when you're that close. All I'm saying is that that brick facing is not structural. It's cosmetic.

Mortar testing, structural engineers and solicitors do not come cheap and they will not refund our fees incurred for exposing them, costing us in excess of £11,500 in specialist and solicitors so far

Do you have legal cover on your buildings insurance?

despite us proving what they have done.

So did this go to court, and were you awarded costs?

Had we not exposed them, the estimates for repointing our house which I can assure you, is crumbling, is in the region of £45,000/£50,000 if we had to do this ourselves

That I very much doubt.

robatwork

My tuppence...

I too would never buy another new house, unless it was one I commissioned, and employed the builders and brickies myself.

I did buy one back in late 90s. Occasional visits to see it and neigbouring houses going up was eye opening. Huge gaps in the mortar in the thermal blocks, really sloppy. Finishing wasn't any better - tiles, floors, kitchen all sloppy or just plain wrong. Bringing this up with the site foreman didn't help as it was a different foreman several times during the build.

I would trust Barratts to make black jacks and fruit salads, but houses... never again.