Need to fix addition separating from Town Home

[chakeeoyen]

My wife bought a 4 story town home and we decided to extend the back and front. The front extension is just fine, but the rear is starting to separate from the original structure. More on one side than the other.

 

After the crap job our contractor and his team did on the rest of the house, I'm not going to trust them to fix this.

 

I'm looking for information if anyone has experience or knows if there's a normal process to fix this. Also, if anyone has construction companies they can recommend that would be able to do such a fix I would greatly appreciate it.

[blackcab]

Photos would help a lot.

[KhunBENQ]

Better fits to the DIY housing forum.

Moved.

 

27 minutes ago, chakeeoyen said:

Also, if anyone has construction companies they can recommend that would be able to do such a fix I would greatly appreciate it.

For that you should specify where (which region) the house is.

Bangkok? Which district?

 

[chakeeoyen]

Photos would help a lot.

I live in Bangkok. The pictures are the first second and third floors.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[blackcab]

Settlement like this is often caused by inadequate footings/piles. You mentioned your building is 3 storeys high.

 

How deep are the footings, were there any piles and what is the soil type?

[CGW]

Don't believe there will be a quick & easy (& cheap!) solution to this problem?

Looks like they have not tied the new building into the old, I would guess the footings on the new building portion are also inadequate?

Good luck solving this problem, looks like you will need it. 

[chakeeoyen]

19 hours ago, blackcab said:

Settlement like this is often caused by inadequate footings/piles. You mentioned your building is 3 storeys high.

 

How deep are the footings, were there any piles and what is the soil type?

The building is 4 storeys high. Piles were used and the footings are quite deep I just don't know how deep. 

 

As for the soil, I don't know, I can't imagine it being good as this is Bangkok after all.

[blackcab]

Is the house moving away from the extension or is there extension moving away from the house?

 

The builders probably didn't use lateral restraints and tie bars, but then again with single block construction  there isn't much to tie to.

[wayned]

 

Hopefully it won't end up like this:

 

650 × 435 - awesomeinventions.com

[steve187]

as said poor footings and not tied in, 

[eyecatcher]

The first thing you need to ascertain is whether its still moving and you can do this by measuring the crack width over periods of time.

One clue also would be to watch that electric cable and see if its beginning to stretch or the cable ties pop out.

 

if your extension has only been added in the last two years then very possibly it hasn't decided whether to stop settling or not.

 

pound to a penny the cause is settlement and cannot be avoided or designed against ever, though cosmetically tying in with straps or masonry would help minimise cracking

 

incidently those bricks? is there any evidence of mortar in them? looks like they are handmade block pavers built on their ends to me.

 

Anyway, however wide the crack, strapping it now isn't going to withstand any further forces but if you are confident its no longer moving then you can simply replace a few of those abyssmal brickwork course and re wall them back up to the original line.

Quite honestly though if the standard of workmanship (cracks aside) is akin to that brickwork and painted on block joints then this crack is the least of your problems.

 

I just wonder why you didnt say something during the build process....be very careful how you spend YOUR money on building work here.