[nevi-me]

I could have benefited from this in the construction of our house. Riddled with inaccuracies, the engineer signed off on the foundations, but we found out when the walls were up that the builders used the internal dimensions as exterior dimensions. So our house is smaller by ~250mm on each side.

We had to make so many compromises and wastages as a result. Bathrooms now smaller if we want to keep other rooms the same, bathtubs couldn't fit, aw man.

Then when the house went up to 2nd and 3rd levels, the staircase was narrow and wasn't connecting between the levels. That alone delayed us by 3 months as we had to get the architect to build a 3D model of the affected area so we could figure it out. We have to hoist furniture up through balconies as it can't fit through the stairs.

I think having some machinery that minimises human error would be very helpful.

[asibahi]

I am an architect who worked as a contractor and as a consultant and I made an account here just to comment on this.

When you found out the builders did that, what you should have done is stopped the work and have them correct their mistake on their own dime. This is an unforgivable mistake and a team of professional should never make something like that.

Obviously I am not in your shoes, but this is insane to me. Any supervisor or consultant or surveyor visiting the site should've caught that.

[nevi-me]

We discovered/noticed this when the exterior walls were 2 meters high. They had to move around interior walls but that didn't help much.

My wife and I concluded that we got what we paid for, and you're right that in hindsight we should have taken legal action against the contractor. I don't know how breaking down the whole exterior of a house to fix it down to the foundation would feel though. At some point we thought of selling the partially completed structure.

[jvanderbot]

This seems like the just-world response. But how can one force this? If they just say "No" you end up taking them to court and delaying the construction of your house. You endanger the contracts for downstream work.

I had a landscaper screw up just about everything they could building a retaining wall, and they couldn't even get me an extra bag of grass seed after the fact.

[muppetman]

Ok and I thought having our inground pool installed crooked was bad. Where you able to get any legal/financial clawbacks because of all the hassle?

[pavel_lishin]

Translating for folks not natively familiar with millimeters - this is 25cm, or about ~10 inches.

Doesn't sound like a lot, but you're losing a foot and a half across a dimension of a house. That's very easily into the "Bathtub doesn't fit" territory.

[_carbyau_]

The kicker is "on each side".

So the house is now [50cm | half a metre | 20 inches] shorter length overall in "both" commonly rectangular dimensions.

Take any room in your house and remove that much from it and tell me it doesn't detract from the room....

[LeifCarrotson]

It's probably the thickness of the foundation wall.

[TheSoftwareGuy]

That's awful. I hope you were able to recover damages from the builders

[sidewndr46]

Did you use a contractor for this build? The neighbors of my parents ran into this, but somehow the foundation team added around a foot in all dimensions. The owner of the property refused to accept anything other than a new foundation. The contractor refused and from what my Dad told me the home owner was forced to sell to the contractor by the courts as their recourse.

This story also seems a litle off unless the contractor didn't allow inspection. It'd be found in 10 seconds with a single usage of a tape measure.

[nevi-me]

We used a contractor yes. Oddly, the civil engineer signed off on the foundations. I think what happened is that the foundations might have been correct, but when they started laying bricks, they used the internal dimensions.

The foundation is normally 500-600mm wide.

Another funny story is that we have a concrete column in the living room that was meant to be 250mm x 250mm. The subcontractor decided to box it in and pour it before we came to inspect. He made it 450mm x 450mm.

So we have this giant concrete thing in the passage.

If some of it wasn't as embarrassing, I'd blog about it with photos.

[dom96]

Did you consider adding some buffer to your plan's measurements to account for exactly these kinds of screw ups?

[xp84]

Given his bathtubs didn’t fit, I would guess he didn’t