These pillars are 12 days old. Yesterday the soil was back-filled (JCB) and the soil level raised to the level of the concrete on the pillars. Next task is attaching more rebar and shuttering to raise the pillar level concrete to floor beam level. Four or five pillars are cracked - impact damage from JCB I'm guessing.....see photos.

What would be a professional remedy? I'd say the only solution is to demolish and start again. What do you think?

 

 

Personally l wouldn't go as far as demolition that said you could get the uncaring dickheads to reinforce the surroundings of the existing damaged ones and then a continuation of vertical height of the columns could be carried out. 

Agree with the former posting ask them to reinforce the existing concrete, welcome to Thai building standards. Now you wont want to hear this but if you try to have all the work done to the standard which you are hoping for you may need to re-evalute things, I now do all my own work not by choice but by the fact that I have spent more than enough money putting things right after a series of needless mistakes and errant stupidity

Wish I could be more positive about this but my own house has and is still costing me a lot of money

My advice to you is to be there constantly to monitor the work and if your not sure then research the work because you will suffer later on both financially and stress wise

I wish I had known about this forum before as it is a very good basis for advice

25 minutes ago, Anythingleft? said:

Agree with the former posting ask them to reinforce the existing concrete, welcome to Thai building standards. Now you wont want to hear this but if you try to have all the work done to the standard which you are hoping for you may need to re-evalute things, I now do all my own work not by choice but by the fact that I have spent more than enough money putting things right after a series of needless mistakes and errant stupidity

Wish I could be more positive about this but my own house has and is still costing me a lot of money

My advice to you is to be there constantly to monitor the work and if your not sure then research the work because you will suffer later on both financially and stress wise

I wish I had known about this forum before as it is a very good basis for advice

 

You need to be on site 25 hours a day, and even then they manage to mess up things.

 

Most of the house I built was redone 2 times before it was as I initially had requested.

 

A house that was meant to be completed in less than a year took 3 years to be finished, and I'm sure there are still some mistakes that I'm not aware of.

 

As advice to the OP, I assume that the cracks are only at the top of those footings, which should be about 1 meter in height.

 

If so, remove the loose parts of concrete and repair with 2 component epoxy cement. There is a special cement available at the hardware stores for issues like this.

Edited September 11, 20169 yr by Anthony5

Not a big problem. Just break away to the cracks. The surface of the concrete needs to be scabbled anyway. Meaning the outside chipped back to expose clean fresh surface. The column formwork should go around these stubs. Put a bonding agent on the exposed surfaces if you like. Such as "bondcrete", or some thai equivalent.

Edited September 11, 20169 yr by Goanna

The builder and his Burmese labour arrived this a.m. They have excavated 500mm around all the pillars (not just the cracked ones). The builders will then be off-site for 5days and we must water the soil around each pillar daily, to compress the soil. After 5 days all pillars will be scabbled and cracks cut back, then all pillars will have reinforced concrete to surround them before proceeding with shuttering and raising to correct level.

This was explained by the builder/architect. He seems honest and conscientious, but is being let down in execution by his labourers and their Thai supervisor.

 

Thanks to all for responses. 

 

Looks like the mix was too wet.

16 hours ago, Goanna said:

Not a big problem. Just break away to the cracks. The surface of the concrete needs to be scabbled anyway. Meaning the outside chipped back to expose clean fresh surface. The column formwork should go around these stubs. Put a bonding agent on the exposed surfaces if you like. Such as "bondcrete", or some thai equivalent.

 

this is the answer OP. You need obviously to dig all that soil back out from around the column to ascertain the severity of those cracks. it does look like the jcb bucket has clipped the rebar and it simply broke off the connie at its weakest point.

 

the second stage on concrete will involve the shutter boxes cloaking this stub column but really its not necessary to use any bonding compound at all.

 

the majority of the load will be carried within the rebar cage but you could look at each crack and when they are building up the next set of cages, get them to drill into the edge if a big spall and knock in a steel dowel and burn it to the new cages.

 

careless yes, but a severe tongue lashing and then firing him will certainly help not to repeat the incident.