CrispDust

Very grateful for all the advice here. Re possible foundations issue. I have checked both inner and outer walls - no signs of any cracks thru blocks or motar, vertical or horizontal. No cracks evident on concrete floor. Im pretty confident this issue wasn't present 6-9 months ago as I took almost everything out of the garage to clear out juck re-position shelving units and sweep the floor. Again, many thankis for all your advice. There's always small claims court...... if push comes to shove!

Re the 6 years delay to movement. I did wonder that myself. I am in and out of the gagrage almost on a daily basis as all my car tools/equipment, gardening stuff and woodworking tools, garden furniture/BBQ/pizza oven etc are kept in there and have never noticed the tilting blocks previously. As an aside, I think my notion of a correctly constructed wall plate being a strain ring has some merit?

Looks like the roofer is in for a big bill.

Ill get some info on the tiles. The garage was built whilst we were renting. So the bottom line is, the roofer (who was not linked to the builder) should have put some horizontal joists across the rafters?

Thanks for answers. My son is an architectural tech but for commercial not domestic builds. He says a hipped roof doesn't normally have horizontal joists. I was surprised at this. Here are some photos:

Hello all, First post so I hope this i in the right section. We have a detached garage that was built about 7-8 years ago. We purchased the property recently, after renting for some time. The garage is about 12' wide by 20' length with a hipped roof. inner block leaf and an artificial "stone" outer. We have noticed over the past few months that the top 2 or 3 courses of the block work on all 4 walls, to a varying degree, have started to tilt/bow outwards. Most of the top course are at a noticable tilt and have seperated from the mortar. There is obvious bowing of the soffit on the external walls. I assume this has occurred due lateral thrust from the roof? The roof is hipped construction. There are no horizontal joists. On closer inspection I have noted the following issues which don't meet NHBC regs: The wall plate does not have half lapped joints at the corners. There is notable seperation of the joints on 3 or the 4 corners. There are no angle restraints/joists across the wallplate corners. My understanding is that the wall plate acts as a strain ring to resist the lateral thrust. There are only 2 vertical straps on each short wall, 3 on the longer wall. All at least 3 to 4m apart with 3 nails tapped into the mortar, not the blocks. Do vertical restraints add to the thrust resistance from the roof or are they solely just as anti lift restraints? The wall plate over the door simply sits on the metal lintel, no obvious fixings. As mentioned previously, there are no horizontal joists between the joists, although I undestand this is usual for a hipped roof design? There has been no loading on the roof from storage or hanging items tools etc. Any comments before I get the original builder and original roofer round? Anything else I should be looking out for? Thanks in advance.

Sorry to resurrect an oldish thread. Presumably said fixing screw or nails for the vertical restraint straps should be fixed into the block, not the mortar between the blocks?Thanks.