Mrs and Mrs Dreyer had a brand new multi storey home built in Cotswold Downs estate in Hillcrest. During the build process they realized that the builder was not building according to good building practice. The Dreyers noticed that the house was not been built according to how they had visualized it. The architect who had designed the home was supposedly supervising the build but he erred as the house had many design flaws visible to the owners.
As it turned out, once the roof was installed the owners were dismayed because the open roof truss design where specially constructed roof trusses were supposed to be utilized was not done by the builder and ordinary roof trusses were installed.
Due to the very poor quality of the roof structure it was then decided to put in ceilings to hide the poor workmanship and quality. In so doing this contravened the building regulations where the ceiling height was supposed to be a minimum on 2.4 in sub economic dwellings. The ceiling height ended up in 2.3 meters which is well below the ceiling height regulations. This meant that the house was non habitable and non saleable. Fortunately the owners called in Inspect-A-Home, who ended up testifying as expert witnesses against the builder and the architect with the result that the builder through arbitration lost the case and had to reimburse the owners R1.2 million. The house now has to be rebuilt with the walls 300mm higher. Obviously the whole house is going to have to be restructured. Bathrooms are going to be affected, floor surfaces, etc will have to be rebuilt.
What is not commonly known, is how Inspect-A-Home can avoid having such a disaster by offering new home owners a “quality control” service where we will supervise and “police” the build process or the construction of your home to ensure that the builder is building correctly. What one must realize is that most builders have very few qualifications and it is very hard to find anyone that is had building work done that is satisfied or happy with their builder.
