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brick and block foundation

This current presidential election cycle has confirmed what everyone knows. The system is rigged at all levels. I prefer at this time to be bought out and move on in order to preserve my sanity and relieve the stress on my wife. The days of Mr Smith goes to Washington are possibly gone. This builder claims to have built 800 homes and of those, 500 he says were built in this fashion, there by setting a standard in my area. All here are used to this, including the county inspectors and home inspectors. I had best choose my battles wisely.
 
Sorry to hear that

And you ran into some that is not "Professional"

I think I would stir the pot a little more,

Unless you are getting out without losing money or very little !!
 
buck33k said:
This current presidential election cycle has confirmed what everyone knows. The system is rigged at all levels. I prefer at this time to be bought out and move on in order to preserve my sanity and relieve the stress on my wife. The days of Mr Smith goes to Washington are possibly gone. This builder claims to have built 800 homes and of those, 500 he says were built in this fashion, there by setting a standard in my area. All here are used to this, including the county inspectors and home inspectors. I had best choose my battles wisely.
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Buck:

Are you near the coast subject to hurricanes?
 
& ~ &


buck33,

Sometimes you have to decide; as you have stated, "which
battles to chose."

Although not optimal, ...the stress & strains on your wife
and your own sanity [ may ] not be worth the effort.

I do not know, nor do I want to know how much money you
have at stake to [ possibly ] lose.........Only you & your family
can decide if it is worth it to stay.

Try to take "the Higher Ground" if you can..........Consider
this a Learning Experience and part of your Life-Long
Education in to the world of construction.

BTW, ...that %$@*&% Builder; if you want to call him that,
is guaranteed to get his rewards for his actions.........I would
refer you to a particular section in the Holy Scriptures, but
the Forum Owner has graciously asked us to NOT start
any conversations on religion or politics.........If you want,
...send me a PM and I will provide you with the Biblical
reference.

I; like you, would not like it one bit, but sometimes to preserve
family & sanity, one needs to fold their cards and simply walk
away.........Besides, now you have this GREAT Forum to come
to.

Going back down in to my bunker now ! :D



& ~ &
 
If you decide to get rid of it

I would still contact the media, after the paperwork is all signed

And dump both the inspector and builder
 
North star. You are right. This is a great forum with really good people. I appreciate the privilege to post here and wish to thank the moderators, owners and members. I recall back in the old days (I'm 69 now) we had no internet forums in the electrical trade and answers were harder to come by. Then came the internet and people who were inspired to create forums like this. Its amazing.
 
cda said:
I wonder if North Carolina state regulates inspectors or contractors???
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CDA...I think general contractors must be licensed in NC but no continuing education....don't know about inspectors. I have worked for years as an electrician in Washington state and Oregon where licensing and continuing education are required. I always thought that to be a good thing for the trades and a good thing for the public.
 
buck33k said:
CDA...I think general contractors must be licensed in NC but no continuing education....don't know about inspectors. I have worked for years as an electrician in Washington state and Oregon where licensing and continuing education are required. I always thought that to be a good thing for the trades and a good thing for the public.
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Thought you might either report the contractor to them and or see if they have any enforcement action against him

Or maybe even mediation
 
cda said:
Thought you might either report the contractor to them and or see if they have any enforcement action against him

Or maybe even mediation
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Buck:

That's where I got the handle conarb, originally I was constructionarbitrator and I shortened it when people started calling me conarb, I arbitrated cases against contractors for the California State License Board. if that case came before me you can imagine what I'd award you.
 
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I still don't understand this. I've looked at all the pictures, and read the whole thread, and I can't figure out what you all think the Mayor/City Mgr./CBO/etc. is supposed to do...

The local BI approved the foundation/passed the inspection. An independent, licensed structural engineer, after a site visit, has said it'll work. If you believe even a tenth of what the builder is boasting, then there are ~50 similar homes with similar foundations in this area, all of which I'll assume are still standing. There's simply nothing for the Mayor/City Mgr./CBO to do, except agree with their inspector that this passes code.

Sure, the inside of the walls look like sh!t, but who cares? When it's done you'll not see a bit of it. My advice is build the house, sell it, and hire a different builder to do your next one. If you sell this builder the lot as it is, there'll be a spec house built on the same foundation and the builder will sell it and make the money.
 
JCraver said:
I still don't understand this. I've looked at all the pictures, and read the whole thread, and I can't figure out what you all think the Mayor/City Mgr./CBO/etc. is supposed to do...

The local BI approved the foundation/passed the inspection. An independent, licensed structural engineer, after a site visit, has said it'll work. If you believe even a tenth of what the builder is boasting, then there are ~50 similar homes with similar foundations in this area, all of which I'll assume are still standing. There's simply nothing for the Mayor/City Mgr./CBO to do, except agree with their inspector that this passes code.

Sure, the inside of the walls look like sh!t, but who cares? When it's done you'll not see a bit of it. My advice is build the house, sell it, and hire a different builder to do your next one. If you sell this builder the lot as it is, there'll be a spec house built on the same foundation and the builder will sell it and make the money.
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Two things

If it was your house being built would you accept it?

If the builder that is going to build the rest of the house, that was involved in the foundation build, what craftsmanship do you think the rest of the house will look like??


Might be an idea build the house and sale!!
 
Buck:

Thanks for posting this, now we know why every time a hurricane hits the southeast coast we see pictures of 2x4s scattered from Hell to breakfast.
 
cda said:
Two things

If it was your house being built would you accept it?

If the builder that is going to build the rest of the house, that was involved in the foundation build, what craftsmanship do you think the rest of the house will look like??

Might be an idea build the house and sale!!
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Sure. A building inspector and an independent engineer have both told me it'll be fine. :)

Hard to tell what the rest of the house will look like - maybe this guy is a fantastic carpenter, and the rest of it will be spectacular.

I just think this has maybe got blown out of proportion a bit. In the pictures we have, the outside of this foundation looks fine. The inside, which everyone is complaining about, gets backfilled and compacted and a slab gets poured on top of it. No reason to make it look pretty - it will never be seen again. You ever seen a brickmason point the inside courses of a multi-wythe wall? Same thing...
 
my250r11 said:
Nope just better contractors.
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You can't get better contractors because you can't license based upon intelligence, Chief Justice Burger said in Griggs vs. Duke Energy that intelligence testing had the disparate effect of discriminating against certain minorities that on average were less intelligent:
NAACP said:
In 1971, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling in Griggs v. Duke Power, which transformed our nation’s work places. As a result of LDF’s advocacy, the Supreme Court embraced a powerful legal tool – now known as the “disparate impact” framework – that has proved essential in the fight to eradicate arbitrary and artificial barriers to equal employment opportunity for all individuals, regardless of their race.

Shortly after Congress passed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made it illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of race, Duke Power stopped expressly restricting African-Americans to the labor department and announced new standards for hiring, promotion, and transfers. In order to work in positions outside of the labor department, Duke Power now required a high school diploma or scores on standardized IQ tests equal to those of the average high school graduate. These new requirements were not an improvement, however. They effectively perpetuated the discriminatory policies that Duke Power had utilized prior to the enactment of Title VII. Although the testing and diploma criteria disqualified African-Americans at a substantially higher rate than whites, Duke Power never established that they successfully measured ability to do the jobs in question. Indeed, the white employees hired before the requirements were imposed performed entirely satisfactorily.¹
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With the passage of the ADA in 1990 requiring contractors to be more intelligent would discriminate against morons, idiots, and imbeciles. Better get used to seeing some work being performed by some pretty dumb people.

¹ http://www.naacpldf.org/case/griggs-v-duke-power-co
 
conarb said:
You can't get better contractors because you can't license based upon intelligence, Chief Justice Burger said in Griggs vs. Duke Energy that intelligence testing had the disparate effect of discriminating against certain minorities that on average were less intelligent:


With the passage of the ADA in 1990 requiring contractors to be more intelligent would discriminate against morons, idiots, and imbeciles. Better get used to seeing some work being performed by some pretty dumb people.

¹ http://www.naacpldf.org/case/griggs-v-duke-power-co
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We can still test people here. Generally, you see testing that directly relates to the field. Basically, the business sets minimum performance standards on a test for each employee to meet. Generally intelligence tests (IQ or aptitude tests) are still completed, but are not typically used as a determining factor for employment, more to gage where someone is likely to end up in the organization.

The issue with general intelligence tests is that they are adjusted to a certain gender, race and age group. Once you start moving away from the three groups you've adjusted your test for, you start to introduce a margin of error. Sometimes this margin of error can render the test results meaningless.
 
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