Tony L

He was engaged to get us out of the ground & up to DPC on the outer leaf only, so we're there now. I won't be giving him the opportunity to quote on the next phase of the work, which I'm sure is absolutely fine by him, as he'd rather be working for someone that might be OK with his poor QC. Thanks you everyone for the other comments. I'll not respond to these individually, right now, as I need to do some work ahead of a very early meeting tomorrow, but I will just quickly thank @Russell griffiths for suggesting a laser level survey - I wouldn't have thought of this & I agree, I need to do this before I settle the bill with the builder.

I don't know. Yes, he's probably upset, because I caught him out on overcharging me £7,000. It took me a while to realise, then he denied this at first (going on for over a week), but issued a credit note after I spent hours & hours doing a load of QS maths & setting it out in an email to him. Perhaps he & the wife had booked the Maldives for the new year, with my £7k & now the trip's had to be cancelled. Thanks, @nod & @crooksey for your input on this too.

Thanks, @Mr Punter. Sorry, I wasn't clear: I'm not too bothered about the top of the big IC being too high. I'm concerned the channel at the bottom may be too high - ie not enough fall on the run from IC4. I'm thinking, if the bottom of this big IC (IC5) was at the right height, almost all the water would drain out of it, but there's a lot in there. When I said, , "This is poo...", that was supposed to say, "This is poor...".

IC5 Picture 7 This shows the top cover of IC5. I've drawn the red lines on to show where I'm imagining ground level will be once everything's tidied up. It may lower. I'm thinking the mortar should be a lot tidier than this. I've never seen a IC cover poking out of the ground with anything but neat smooth mortar around the sides. This is poo, isn't it?

IC5 Picture 6 Is it OK to have these untidy nodules of mortar at the top (red arrow)? They could freeze & thaw a load of times then break off & end up in the channel at the bottom

IC5 Picture 5

IC5. Picture 4

IC4. Picture 3 (a video) Ah, I'm not allowed to upload the videos. They're too big. Don't waste your time telling me how to do a link, please: I'll feel bad if I'm too busy to follow your instructions.

IC4. Picture 2

The builder tells me he’s finished putting the drains in for my new build, & I should pay him. My drain plan is shown in picture 1. I went to the site today to inspect his work. I couldn’t get the first few IC covers off (near the house) because they’re held down with a Philips screw & I didn’t have tools with me. I looked in IC4 (between house & garage). I saw sand & soil in the bottom of the drain; there was water on top of this & it was flowing very slowly. There are no taps, etc connected. This must just be water from the ground (storm Daragh over the weekend). There’s a high water table at the site, so the bottom of IC4 would normally be below this in the winter, even without a recent storm. In the video you can see water coming in where the risers join. Also, it’s coming in through one of the redundant inlets (it’s supposed to be capped off). Water looked like it was coming in from up stream, into the main channel, as well. I removed the cover from the final IC, IC5. This one is > 1.5m deep (I think – I should have measured). In here things look even worse. There’s a build up of at least 20mm of sand & soil across the bottom of the main channel. There’s about another 20mm of water on top of this & it didn’t look like it was flowing, although it probably is flowing – just too slowly to see. I could see water coming in at the base, where the concrete floor meets the cylindrical wall. There’s a video that shows a buble right in the first second. It was bubbling away, then as soon as I started recording the video clip it stopped – perhaps because of my weight on the concrete base. In this video you can see water flowing quickly, but that’s because I put a hose into the upstream IC4, to see what happened. There are some pictures here showing a close up of what’s in the bottom. It looks horrible, as mucky drains always do, but it’s just sand & soil – it isn’t backwash from the sewer. I put that little, vertical stick in there, to measure the depth of the soil & sand. I think the bottom of this last chamber is probably set too high in the ground & is flat, rather than with the required fall. What should I do? I’m reluctant to give this builder another chance to fix his work. I think I need to hire a competent person to take charge & do whatever needs to be done. I’ve already told this builder off about his poor quality work. I objected to him leaving IC covers off for several days while he was working near the ICs & allowing debris to fall inside them. He told me he’d clean them out. Perhaps he did (although I doubt it). Perhaps all this sand & soil has come since the storm. Either way, it looks bad. Although I know next to nothing about building, I’m of the firm opinion that the drainage system he’s built is no good. Am I right? Also he told me they’ve been airtight tested. I’ve no idea how this test is done, but given the amount of leakage we can see, I think, if it was done, it would have showed a leak. How much work do you think might be involved in correcting these problems? Might we need to pull everything up, including down the side of the house, out & start again? Picture 1

What do we think? Should I knock it all down before the mortar sets too hard, & start again. If I'm keeping it, I suppose I should scrub all those mortar splashes off the outside of the black bricks before they set hard, or have I left it too late to do that already?

Thought so. Thanks @Russell griffiths, & if anybody else would like to agree (or disagree), it would be good to be able to tell my builder (former builder), "I've shown this to 3 people who know about this and..." Sorry: I posted this picture in my other thread from this evening. It should have gone here, really. Will it be OK to build the inner leaf up off this block that's been bedded down at an angle on the edge of the B&B? & is it OK to have these two blocks on top of the periscope like this? I'm guessing the builder is supposed to have put an air brick under here, to take the weight, but I'm wondering whether I should smash one of these blocks off to check that these blocks are not just resting on the periscope. There's a very heavy wall going on top of this. Even if there is an air brick in there, is that enough? I'd have thought air bricks might need a lintel over them on the inner leaf.

Last picture. Will it be OK to build the inner leaf up off this block that's been bedded down at an angle on the edge of the B&B? & is it OK to have these two blocks on top of the periscope like this? I'm guessing the builder is supposed to have put an air brick under here, to take the weight, but I'm wondering whether I should smash one of these blocks off to check that these blocks are not just resting on the periscope. There's a very heavy wall going on top of this. 12

& there are a lot of instances of perps out of line. NHBC says the centre lines are not supposed to be further off than 15mm over 5 perps. Here, we exceed that in just one. The builder was already told to pay special attention to these after some were spotted very close to one another on successive courses that are now underground. I could put up a similar picture for two of the other walls, but I'll spare you.

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Missing mortar again. Is this OK? I don't think so, but I'm not a builder. 9

Internal corner - ie I was standing on the B&B to the the picture. It looks untidy to me, but I don't know what level of untidiness is acceptable on the inside. 8

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6

I used an absolutely straight piece of wood for this picture. I cleaned excess mortar off the tops & put the wood down. It's resting on the bricks in the red ellipse. See the gap in the blue ellipse. Is it OK to have so much mortar missing above the blue arrow? What about the smaller gaps in the mortar by the red arrows? 5

Here, I used the back of my tape measure as a straight edge. It's resting on the top of the brick between the vertical red lines. The bricks to the left are too low. 4

In this picture, the line is touching the top of the brick to the left of the air brick. 4 bricks along, at the end, the corner is 13mm too low. Look how wonky the brick above the arrow is. 3

There are loads more examples of this kind of step in the level of bricks/height of mortar bed. NHBC has a formula for determining whether the thickness of any bed joint is acceptable. I didn't come across this until this evening, so perhaps I'll have to go back & measure 8 successive bed joints & do the maths, although I don't know where to measure them, because my bed joints can have several mm difference from one end to the other of just one brick. NHBC is saying +/- 1.5mm from the average across 8 succussive, so it looks like the difference in height from one brick to the next above will be way out of spec'. 2

My builder says he’s finished this stage of the build & I should pay him. The last jobs on his list were to build the outer leaf up to DPC then put the crushed concrete base down for the scaffolding to go on. The build up to DPC is 4 courses of black bricks, as pictured. I’m not happy. I wasn’t pleased with what’s beneath this either, but at least it’s underground & can’t be seen. Should I knock all these black bricks down & pay somebody to do it properly? Obviously, I’d be deducting the cost of work (by a competent person this time) & materials, from the approx. £18k the builder wants me to pay. Picture 1