[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.

[sidewndr46]

So a 250 x 250 column became 450 x 450? That's a 3.24 times increase in cross sectional area. This would imply something like a safety factor of 12 if the standard safety factor of 4 was used in the original engineering.

I guess concrete must be really cheap whereever you are? I don't know many subcontractors excited about using 3 times the concrete for something.