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Not quite a crappy construction tale, more of a crappy code tale. Most places measure setbacks from the edge of the wall/building face. But the language of this one area made it so you only had to measure from the edge of the FOUNDATION. You can probably see where this is going. A guy wants to build an addition, but because his lot had a curved corner, they measured the setbacks and said he was about 5' over on the corner and he'd need to make a 45 degree bevel or something. His addition wasn't 5' over, his existing house was over (was built before the bylaws, but by putting in an addition the whole building has to be compliant now). Dude obviously didn't want to cut a 45 degree notch out of the corner of his historic house. Instead, he just bevelled his foundation and got his architect to make sure his flooring cantilevered over the corner properly. The foundation only stuck up about a foot from the ground so they just hid the overhang with bushes. City passed the design and the inspector admired his solution. Although situations like this just make me so frustrated at the often kafka-esq zoning bylaws builders/designers have to go through to get a design approved.
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Aug 18, 2011 19:32
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| # ¿ Apr 24, 2024 17:39 |
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I've dealt with some old buildings and I have a keen interest in the history of architecture and construction, but 8 feet thick interior wall in a farm house?! You sure there's not a secret room or something in there?
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Sep 6, 2011 21:51
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I've got one from a friend years ago he was working as a helper for a general handyman type guy, the sort that responds to housewife's emergencies and people too lazy or ignorant of basic construction to fix their own stuff. The house was on a slight hill. Typical house-on-a-hill design where the basement is at ground level in the backyard, and there's a ramp coming down from the front access into the basement garage. The ramp was supposed to have a California drain or any sort of drain really along the bottom of it for obvious reasons, but it did not. They get a call from a very upset lady who lives in the house saying that a fire hydrant by her house had burst and water was getting into her basement. They arrive not knowing the extent of it: water is nearly at shoulder height in the entire basement, everything is ruined. This lady said she tried to put towels down to stop the water coming in from her driveway ramp, and then went to buckets but it was just coming in too fast. Realising this was a huge situation, the boss drives off in the trunk to go get a pump truck and says to "look busy, use a bucket or something" My friend goes tot he back of the house and opens the loving back door, the water comes flooding out and goes down the hillside. When the boss came back the dude quick got a bucket and pretended he did it all him self. The lady felt extremely stupid for not just opening her back door and letting the water flow out before it got so high that her entire basement was a write off.
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Sep 11, 2011 22:10
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No clue, all he said was that the house has to be pretty much gutted afterwards. Keep in mind he was just the newly hired helper of a crappy "handyman". Pretty much all he did was open the back door, never went inside until the water was all out.
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Sep 12, 2011 01:46
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Don't forget the doors open IN. I'm more surprised he was able to open it at all. But he mentioned having to replace the door, maybe he kicked a hole in it or bashed it in.
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Sep 15, 2011 18:04
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I live in a city with a lot of old people, quite a retirement city, and they still build in that compartment style as that's what old people apparently want. It's a weird generational thing but they rather have 3 tiny barely usable rooms than one big one. Kitchen, living room, and dining room HAVE to be separate. In their minds more rooms = higher class and cooking is not a social thing you involve guests in. And speaking of cold storage, I just did a fire safety inspection thing on a huge cold storage facility that keeps everything at -28c which is gently caress-off cold. Of course I visited in the summer in summer clothes. Couldn't feel my hands after about a min in there and I was only allowed in without protective gear for 3min. There's so much engineering that goes into the walls of those place, I can't believe that meat packing place did what they did. Could they get any restitution from the builders or was it their own drat fault? Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 04:23 on Oct 24, 2011 |
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Oct 24, 2011 04:19
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maybe it's for tiny kids? In a school?
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Oct 26, 2011 00:34
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Yeah, the whole family is pretty much subsidized by their church/cult. The money from the TV show also really helps, and results in them getting more money from their church as its all advertising for them. They are the sort of right wing americans who would ironically rage against "welfare queens" and honestly think they earned everything in life. Wouldn't surprise me if their rental properties were also simply given to them, or a handout/windfall of some sort. The house is run like a military barracks. Two huge sleeping halls with rows of beds, and all the rules and regulations and even ranks of a military setting. It's super creepy... good christian soldiers indeed. The house is ugly as gently caress but I'd guess it's well built. I do wonder though what's going to happen to it once they move out, how easy it would be to renovate it into a proper house, or what could even be done with the building.
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Oct 31, 2011 19:00
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Building materials aren't cheap... when I see poo poo like that it makes me so mad at the waste of it all.
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Apr 4, 2013 19:55
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I've never seen a sump-pump before. I assume they are needed when the city's drains are higher than the basements? Wouldn't it just be easier to not build a basement that deep, or not at all? All the houses I've seen just have a drain or two in the basement that goes to the storm water system or whatever, no pumps involved. The idea of depending on a pump to not have a flooded basement seems kinda scary.
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Jul 25, 2013 19:51
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What did they do before electric pumps were a thing? Did people have an ox down in the basement or a steam engine or something? Most all the houses here are turn of the century-ish. How did basements manage before sump pumps?
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Jul 25, 2013 20:14
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Man now I want to learn all about the history of sump-pumps. Although now that I think of it I did know someone with one. I had a friend in a more suburban area (is it a suburban thing?) that was also sort of low-lands that I think used to be marshy swampy land (or is it just a terrain thing?) and they had one. They did a big reno in the basement to put in a suite and one of the things was having to put in a back-up sump-pump as well as a ton of other drainage and plumbing related things. That was a reno from hell, ended up costing over 100k to just fix up an existing suite to meet code. They found all sorts of horrific stuff like structural drywall and an entire outer post for the house being taken out so a window could go in leading to the whole house actually sagging a couple inches in that corner. Also the toilet's plumbing went down, then up, then down again, leading to poo-smell water being trapped and sometimes backing up, so they had to re-do all the plumbing as well. The dumbest thing was the stair issue. To get into the suite there was a door level with the back yard that you'd open, there was a small landing then 2 steps down. Well, that just doesn't meet code, the landing had to be bigger otherwise it was clearly a horrible death trap. But the stairs couldn't be moved because of sump pump being right there plus doors. So what they had to do was dig a big external stairwell that also cost a fortune because it needed a drain at the bottom. PS Just asked a bunch of my friends about sump pumps, many didn't even know what they were and none reported ever having one or knowing anyone who did. I guess my city just has good deep pipes.
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Jul 25, 2013 20:22
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I'm in a very rocky/hilly area that continuously slopes towards the ocean which isn't very far away, most people have big chunks of solid rock (some of the hardest in the world so blasting was too expensive) in their basement. So I guess not pump-country. Also the bottom of our basement floor is well above even street level, so you could just run a pipe from the basement to the front of the property and it would all come out onto the sidewalk. Actually a new house went in a few years ago and they needed to do a little bit of blasting just for the garage. The company ended up losing money on the job because they ended up using over 5x the explosives and about twice as much time because they underestimated just how solid our Gneiss is. I was surprised because they were a local company and surely blasting dudes would know their geology? Small drain question though, we used to get some flooding in the back of the basement and we found it was coming out of one of the floor drains hidden under a work sink. So, we just poured some concrete down there and patched it all over and haven't had any flooding since. Is this a crappy construction tale or did we do the right thing? There's another drain near the front of the house that never floods. I assume water was just coming in from the high side of the property and seeping into the basement since the house was acting like a dam, while at the low side of the property the water is being pulled away from the house. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Jul 25, 2013 |
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Jul 25, 2013 20:38
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Are you sure my basement drains aren't connected to the storm water system? My downspouts and perimeter drain are and I seem to remember them doing something with the front flood drain when the house got an addition. If they aren't connected, where does the water go? "The cement floors in your basement should be slightly sloped to the floor drain. The floor drain should be connected to the sanitary sewer system and should have a trap." Sounds like it's supposed to be connected to the sanitary line. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Jul 25, 2013 |
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Jul 25, 2013 22:15
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Yeah that's pretty normal, as are glue-lam beams made out of many small pieces. It's all engineered to hell.
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Aug 9, 2013 21:08
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My friend just moved into a fancy beach-front apartment in a converted house. The very first thing I noticed was a huge soft spot in the floor which she says is just the laminate, but it's wayyy too move movement for just badly laid flooring. The wood all around the door is rotting too. But the main thing is that the entire living room is on a slant. Not a slight "oh hey is this floor totally level? Let's place a ball to find out!" but a full on visible to the naked eye lean. It looks like when the place was converted into apartments they made about a 10' addition. The house is built on a cliff/hill on the ocean so this entire portion of the house is over-hanging and has some boat and bbq storage under it. Not only that but the whole place is wierd. There's 5 huge floor to ceiling windows but they aren't quite spaced perfectly, then a 5th window that is of a totally different style and higher up than the others. That's just ascetics though. I went outside to check out the big 6x6 posts holding up the addition. The posts are just sitting on little pre-cast concrete footings just sitting loose on an old concrete patio. Those then go up and have some big beams holding up the addition, which go back and don't really connect with the house, they just sort of sit on top of the old foundation. Where the posts meet the beam there's a good 1" of space because the beams are coming down on such an angle. A similar amount of space exists where there beams "connect" with the house. When inside the house the full-height windows combined with the very noticeable slant towards the ocean makes one feel that they're going to just slide down the floor and fall out into the ocean. I'm almost entirely sure the addition will fall off and roll down the cliff into the sea at the next medium sized earthquake. I should take some pictures next time I'm there because it's pretty amazing.
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Sep 24, 2013 19:11
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Detroit Q. Spider posted:Huh...and here I thought they just stuck to fasting and self-flagellation. They build terrible additions too! (drat you auto-correct)
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Sep 24, 2013 19:26
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McSnatch posted:This room sounds like it was previously a porch that was then enclosed, the slant is so that rainwater runs off. Maybe. Nah you could actually see where nails had been pulled away from the wall and everything was angled. Like it was built straight but then settled, probably because the footings were poo poo.
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Sep 25, 2013 04:19
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Blistex posted:So my cousin bought a house. How does stuff like this get missed in the inspection??
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Oct 1, 2013 16:44
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tiananman posted:Holy poo poo the weight! By my back of the napkin estimates, that could be over 30,000 lbs on that roof if it's a 1000 sq ft. Estimating 250 lbs or so for a square of shingles... Our friends were renting a house and it had a lovely shed in the back. It had a VERY similar roof, and it did collapse. They complained about it to the landlord a few times, not to fix it but to just tear it down since it was dangerous. He tried to blame them for it collapsing and said he'd take it out of their damage deposit. They had enough pictures of it per-collapse for that NOT to happen. The roof was sponge-like rotten cedar shake and plywood with a good 7+ layers of shingles over top. Upper levels of the roof couldn't nail anything anything and big chunks of he roof would just slough off time to time. The shed its self was probably 100+ years old too.
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Oct 2, 2013 18:47
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NancyPants posted:Rofl did he think he could explain how a ROOF COLLAPSE was somehow the fault of the tenant? Tenant didn't like the shed and illegally demolished it them self!
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Oct 2, 2013 19:17
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There was a house near mine for 10+ years that didn't have front stairs. As a kid they had started big renos and I always assumed they just ran out of money or were lazy or just weirdos and never finished. Apparently they were using some loop hole and declaring the house still under construction due to the lack of any front stairs to the front door. The city still got them though because they were living there and free-men on the land style magic-words to get out of paying taxes don't actually really work out. They ended up having to sell the house to pay for a lot of the back-taxes. Oh the city also got them on permits since their original construction permit ran out and they never got new one. You can't fight city hall.
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Oct 28, 2013 21:12
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Leperflesh posted:There are regulatory solutions. Some properties come with easements or building restrictions that would have prevented that dude from putting up his 40' wall. The neighbors could all get together and petition their local government (town or, if unincorporated, county) to try and get the lot re-zoned or something. But, once the wall is up, it's probably a lot harder to do. Holy poo poo this happens so much here. I love reading loving letters to the editor about idiot rich people from all over the world "falling in love with the rural charm" of some new subdivision, building their million dollar "cabin" and then flipping their poo poo when 1,000 people exactly like them do the exact same thing. Then they get into these ridiculous pissing matches. Two idiots here recently spend over 200k EACH on legal costs over a tall spite fence they both claimed was built over the other's property. These are like huge 10+ acre properties too and in the end it turned out the fence was on like a fraction of a degree angle so one half was built a couple inches onto the other's property.
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Nov 22, 2013 00:00
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So it's basically a tiny water-tower hiding in your attic? Never seen something like that and most all the houses here are 100+ years old. But I guess we've had good water pressure for longer.
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Jan 13, 2014 21:53
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Maybe it pops up like the roof of an old VW camper van?? Or maybe their roof was so hosed up they just build a big box over top rather than re-finish the existing roof? OR maybe there's a sweet hillbilly loft up there? It seems too low to actually really give any extra space. Is there maybe like solar water heating or something up top?? I love how the house is just sort of up on blocks, like it got its foundation stolen by parking in the wrong neighbourhood.
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Jan 14, 2014 05:53
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I think the main thing with Grover House is that at the time he was a mod, and a mod no one really respected because he was some right wing gun nut who couldn't stop giving the US military hand-jobs, that and not a very good mod. So they jumped at the chance to mock him for something very mockable. A guy like that can't laugh poo poo off and other mods got sick of the "drama" so made it bannable to even mention his house. Also I THINK some goons in the area tried to visit the house and even alert the local authorities as to his insanely unethical (and probably illegal if investigated) "inspection" which was seen as touching the poop or what ever. I don't know how hosed the codes are where he built his house but there's no way his place should have passed inspection in any developed country.
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Jan 15, 2014 18:12
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He should have been banned for building the house rather than the people making fun of him.
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Jan 15, 2014 23:31
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Man I really hate setbacks, specially when they were "upgraded" in the 60's to suburbanize urban areas. You'll have these whole neighbourhoods of dense row-houses and things built only a couple meters to the sidewalk all technically illegal under the new bylaws that was big stupid front yards and poo poo. So any time anyone wants to fix up their old house it's a nightmare because of the setbacks and historical designations. Sometimes the legal/red tape costs most than the reno.
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Jan 27, 2014 18:14
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As I understand it, arrested development is basically a documentary regarding the american housing development industry.
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Jan 28, 2014 22:40
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It's absolutely amazing how expensive cheap housing is. We gently caress our selves over driving the upkeep costs of buildings up just to save a few thousand on purchase cost. Yet we keep rewarding the industry because people are so dumb they rather save 10k off their purchase price even if it means spending 20k more on upkeep. Even just simple poo poo like upgraded insulation pays for its self in just a few years. poo poo like that really should be mandated in building codes because otherwise builders just have a race to the bottom to keep initial prices low.
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Jan 28, 2014 23:41
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Indolent Bastard posted:This type of blatant scamming combined with rampant alcoholism and other substance abuse on the job is no small part of why modern houses are built so drat poorly. My in-laws had a house built in Kiev and after I showed up and found a ton of problems and just started working there my self we got most everything sorted. After I went home they said they were cleaning up the pile of construction waste and realized the mound was just construction waste on the outside, the core was almost solid vodka bottles.
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Jan 29, 2014 07:57
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So how many b's all together?
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Feb 4, 2014 17:55
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Things grover has no business talking about: -Construction -Military -Politics -Ethics
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Feb 4, 2014 18:24
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It's a cultural/generational thing but there was a time when the idea of the "open kitchen" was a totally gross and unthinkable concept, so even tiny tiny apartments need the kitchen sealed off and out of view. That's been one of the greatest design and cultural changes lately, the idea that the kitchen is basically part of the main room and cooking and food are an extremely social activity. I mean what party doesn't always gravitate to the kitchen? But it absolutely is a generational thing. When I used to design apartments and things we'd do them all open and spacious for the normal market, but the seniors market would always be tons of tiny claustrophobic rooms. You can't just have a big open kitchen/dining/living area. No you need a sealed off kitchen with doors that can hide the shame of its existence. You need a dining room, and you need a living room. Old people love that poo poo.
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Feb 6, 2014 18:29
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Never trust anything a REALTOR(tm) says, ever.
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Feb 6, 2014 21:43
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I have radiators so I can't even control the heat room to room. It's always kinda hot so we leave the windows open even in the -10 winter.
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Feb 7, 2014 16:57
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I think just hot water. But hey it's free, or at least included. There's little valves but after turning some all the way one way and all the way the other they don't seem to have much effect and the heat only comes on or off every few hours so it's just something you live with. I'd still take this system over electric any day. But I do miss being able to adjust the temp on the fly. I'm never too cold but often too hot, but that's just a matter of opening up the windows and letting the landlord's money go out.
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Feb 7, 2014 17:01
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I had a friend who converted a normal door to the basement into a door like that. It wasn't actually metal, was all just foam, but he painted and detailed it super well and even hooked up a little wheel in the middle of the door that was hooked up to the standard door hardware, was a cool touch.
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Mar 7, 2014 22:58
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Ghostnuke posted:gently caress those things forever. The guy who did my job before me used a bunch of those in 12 volt applications and they work like poo poo. I can't even imagine using them for 110. These things are used a lot for model railroad wiring but you HAVE to get the 3M made ones, any other brand is unreliable poo poo.
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Mar 12, 2014 22:10
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| # ¿ Apr 24, 2024 17:39 |
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A lot of people like having shells in their bathroom as decorations + kids are loving awful.
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Mar 14, 2014 23:19
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