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Foundations Inspection

  • 14-09-2015 1:23pm
    #1
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2


    Hi,
    We have purchased a site with 9 year old foundations on it. We are hoping to build our house using some/all of the foundations as a means to saving on costs. Does anyone have any advice or recommendations as to how we should proceed? Will we need an engineers inspection report to test their viability? How much would we be expected to pay for this? Plus does anyone know if its feasible to add on or remove part of the pre-existing foundations (bear in mind they are laid 9 years ago) without compromising them??

    I appreciate any advice anyone has on this as a quote for e1500 has been given to us for an engineers report, which I thought was excessive!


Comments

  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 40,361 Mod ✭✭✭✭Gumbo


    Grehoe555 wrote: »
    Hi,
    We have purchased a site with 9 year old foundations on it. We are hoping to build our house using some/all of the foundations as a means to saving on costs. Does anyone have any advice or recommendations as to how we should proceed? Will we need an engineers inspection report to test their viability? How much would we be expected to pay for this? Plus does anyone know if its feasible to add on or remove part of the pre-existing foundations (bear in mind they are laid 9 years ago) without compromising them??

    I appreciate any advice anyone has on this as a quote for e1500 has been given to us for an engineers report, which I thought was excessive!

    The engineer has to stand over the existing design and put his PI insurance on the line for something that somebody else done 9 years ago so I'd imagine he is reflecting the risk in his quote.

    Who is singing off on the full house for you? Can they not inspect the foundations? Who is preparing your construction drawings?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,395 ✭✭✭Drift


    €1500 sounds cheap for an Engineer to put his insurance on the line certifying a foundation that was installed 9 years ago that he didn't design, supervise or see during construction.

    If the house cracks in future due to weak foundations will you be expecting the new Engineer's insurance company to pay for the damage?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 615 ✭✭✭Strolling Bones


    Grehoe555 wrote: »
    I appreciate any advice anyone has on this as a quote for e1500 has been given to us for an engineers report, which I thought was excessive!

    Ask the enginner to roll all up into an overall design fee. You may get some economy then.

    But as a stand alone service that fee is not excessive for reasons others have stated.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,822 ✭✭✭✭galwaytt


    ....exposed foundations for 9 years means they were exposed to http://http://www.met.ie/climate-ireland/weather-events/coldspell10.pdf and this

    ....I'd want a really good inspection and maybe a core, to eliminate any potential for frost damage.........

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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2 Grehoe555


    kceire wrote: »
    The engineer has to stand over the existing design and put his PI insurance on the line for something that somebody else done 9 years ago so I'd imagine he is reflecting the risk in his quote.

    Who is singing off on the full house for you? Can they not inspect the foundations? Who is preparing your construction drawings?

    Thanks for your reply, our architect is preparing drawings but will hire this engineer on our behalf for this amount. So its adding to the overall architects fee. I thought that perhaps if we went independently with our own engineer that we might save some money on the e1500 quote. But perhaps that I a fair figure, given the fact this engineer will be standing over foundations laid by someone else.


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