Foundation Trials and Tribulations and a Bad Constructeur

Some time ago, on a couple of occasions, I’ve posted about replacing the wooden foundation on my now nearly 330 year old house.  It’s funny how I’ve gotten so used to saying 325 years, that now 5 years later it’s a struggle to get used to the new number.  Since it’s truly become the bane of my existence over the last several months, it’s time to both post an update to let everyone interested know what’s going on, and to take the opportunity to publicly tell off Duyts, the architectural bureau that’s been the biggest source of problems as of late.  It’s really amazing how many problems can be caused by a bad architect!

Like I mentioned in my last post, I share a common wall with one of my neighbors.  It’s a complicated and age old problem.  I own the land under our common wall, and in fact a bit of the land under my neighbors house as well.  I have the larger house, and my house is older than my neighbors, by around 100 years.  Taking all of these things into account, the city said the common wall was my responsibility.  I have to take care of providing a foundation and support for this wall, but my neighbor has to pay the extra costs associated with supporting the weight of that part of his house.  In addition, my neighbor has the right to do his foundation together with mine if he wants.

While my neighbor is not very technical, and probably does not understand fully what’s going on, he said very firmly at the beginning he does not want any dependency between our houses, and he will pay the extra costs of my doing that wall, if that’s what’s necessary to keep our houses independent.  It’s worth noting that my neighbor taking that decision is turning out to be a very expensive one, as I warned him it probably would be.  In layman’s terms, it leaves him a house that has to be supported asymmetrically by his new foundation, as well as having to pay me the costs of supporting that side of his house from my foundation.

Then Comes the Constructeur

There are two architects working on this project.  The first one, who is also my advisor and project manager, made the initial drawings of my house that were the basis of the new foundation design.  The other architect is called a ‘constructeur’, and is a technical architect.  He is the one who actually designs my foundation, as well as the associated building plan.  He plans the number and layout of the piles, as well as how deep they have to be.  This is really a lot more complicated that it might seem, given the age of my house, the common wall with my neighbor as well as all the stresses a new foundation will put on the house itself, both during and after the building work.  If this is done wrong, my house could collapse or I could have long term structural problems.  On the other hand all the safety supports which are part of the building plan are very expensive, and erring on the cautious side could costs tens of thousands of euros unnecessarily.  A number of steel beams have to be placed before and after the work, and these have to be planned very carefully.

At the beginning we asked for a number of quotes from constructeurs, and we choose Duyts, mostly because they were the least expensive.  They started by making a draft drawing of a proposed foundation, that we could use to get feedback from contractors and others, so that minor changes could be incorporated later into a final version.  This draft was also used as a way to get quotes from contractors for the work, and in this way we have already chosen a contractor.  This draft seemed okay, but honestly there were some problems, mostly requiring extensive work around the existing stairway that didn’t seem necessary.  We also had a number of rather stupid issues, like the constructeur forgot an important support structure, during a new phase I was asked to accept extra charges that in fact we had in writing were part of the original quote, and some other smaller things that are a little hard to explain clearly here.

Then it was time.  We had accepted a quote for the work from a contractor, had a tentative start date for the work, and signalled the constructeur to do the final drawing incorporating the feedback on needed changes.  We were promised the drawing in a week (it was complicated enough that he probably spent most of that time working on it), and even though he was a week late he finished and sent the drawing directly to the city for their final approval before the work would begin.

The only problem was the constructeur totally changed the drawings in the meantime!

Since my neighbor who decided did not want a connection between our foundations also started work on his foundation, and choose the same architectural bureau, the constructeur decided to combine our houses.  When I called on the constructeur to explain himself, explain why he didn’t let us know in advance he was going to do that, and correct the mistake by redoing the drawings, he was indignant.  It was simply better, he said.  He said that because he now had the drawings from my neighbor, he had new information of the situation being different and he didn’t need to tell us he was going to change anything.  I’m still seething at the arrogance that lies behind a statement like that, and the idea that whatever this architect says he thinks I have to accept, because he knows better what my house needs than me.

Besides the fundamental problem of combining my foundation with my neighbors, there are other obvious technical problems in the latest drawings, including not enough space being left for my stairway, the only means of getting into my house.

Starting Over

So now I’m in a situation where I realize what a total idiot this constructeur is, I guess it’s my fault for choosing the cheapest, and I suppose you get what you pay for.

His position is still that he hasn’t done anything wrong, and while perhaps I could eventually convince him to redo the drawings, I’m far beyond that now.  My house is too important for such an idiot to plan my foundation, so I will look for someone else to do the drawings and do the building plan.

Of course he is expecting me to pay thousands of euros for the incorrect drawings, which I won’t, and this may lead to confrontation in court.

Of course there is no guarantee another constructeur will be able to use the original draft drawings as a basis for my foundation, because they may be wrong or the constructeur may simply have a different methodology.  This would mean the current quote that I’ve accepted for the foundation work can’t go forward, that may result in the contractor asking me to pay compensation.

It’s also very likely starting from scratch could mean it takes a month or more extra time, delaying the project that much further.