Tusindfryd 7 – Mistakes happen

Oh oh oh. One would have thought that when they have already built hundreds of houses like that one, mistakes like this would not happen. Welcome to the building site. Millimeters on your drawings no longer matters and mistakes apparently do happen quite often. Not that they could kill somebody, but still, does this have to happen?

Our first candidate. Part concrete, part polystyrene. What has happened here? For those of you who can read drawings see below, for those who can read, I will try to explain it.

Below you can see two parts that collided here. Under the doors, there should be concrete nearly to the foundation block and just a small piece of insulation to break the cold bridge a bit. And all around the house, the cavity should be filled with polystyrene from floor slab to foundation block. And apparently, someone screwed up. And according to the measurements, the openings are in the right place, so it must have been concrete workers. When they were pouring the concrete, they missed the measurements by circa 20 cm, so now you have one more cold bridge next to the door.

Door

No door

And, guess what. It is not the only mistake of this type. Below, check the opening on the next wall.

And that also means that we are missing some concrete to support the frame of the door on the left side of the opening. So when they will be pouring concrete for bathrooms, they have to cut the polystyrene out and pour some concrete here.

Let´s move to the walls. My wild guess is that the contractor wanted to see if the workers are doing their job properly so he is spying on them through this crack. But seriously. These lightweight concrete elements are quite fragile. They can hold the roof, and the house stands properly, no doubt in that. But as you can see, they are prone to cracking, when handled without care. This gap has to be filled with glue or mother, which again, causes little thermal bridge.

And last but not least. The raised polystyrene platform is where the shower will be placed, the polystyrene will be later cut out and sloping concrete will be poured. But there should also be a wall, you can see the cut in the polystyrene where the wall should be placed according to the person who made the floor. On the other hand, it makes more sense to place it next to the window and not in it, that is what the plan says at least. So in the end, the polystyrene is probably going to be cut little deeper, and the wall will be placed correctly next to the opening, but it will only partially rest on the concrete, which might compromise its stability.

Do not judge my sketching skills, I put this together on my phone right after the site visit this time. How are they going to fix these issues? Hopefully we will see later.

Cheers

Ondrej