This is Carmelo's house taken from my house. The roof looks good from a distance. Below you can see that the sag was about 6 inches in the center but it went all of the way across. It looks more like a pagoda. These beams are 6" C channel welded together. The thing couldn't support it's own weight.
Here is a double beam attached to another double beam with a piece of re bar!! if you can believe it.
This is a piece where the angle was cut wrong and so they just toe welded it.
I guess they needed to extend this beam so this is the way they did it with a little piece of re bar.
This double beam was about an inch too short and so they tack welded a couple of pieces of re bar to hold it in place. It is supposed to be recessed into the concrete so they solved the problem by driving a couple of pieces or re bar into the concrete and tacking it to the beam. I knew it was bad but I was stunned at exactly how bad it was.
I just returned from a quick trip to Panama and I am back already. It was a 'business' trip so to speak the purpose of which was to sort out the issues of the problems with the roof on our friend Carmelo's house.
We left on Sunday and got back the following Sunday. What a whirlwind trip it was. We managed to get everything accomplished that we set out to do. In a nutshell we had to have the structure assessed, fire the builder, fire the project manager, set up a bank account and get power of attorney so that I can conduct business related to Carmelo's house on his behalf in his absence. It appears that I will be the new 'project manager'. Lucky for him I will work for half the price and do 10 times a better job!!
It turns out that the entire roof needs to be removed and replaced. It needs more strengthening with support columns and had to be re-engineered. The problem was that it was designed to hold a roof constructed of cement fiberboard but Carmelo decided to put tiles like mine on. To accommodate the extra weight of the roof tiles they put the steel cross beams closer together not taking into consideration that the roof structure would then need more support. It was sagging under its own weight. To add to that there were many other deficiencies with bad cuts, poor welds insufficient support and to top it all off the whole thing was constructed 6 inches off the center of the house. I have attached a few pictures so you get the drift. I had told Ivan the project manager last April to stop construction on the roof until it was inspected when it appeared to me that the workmanship was bad. I told him that the workers were out of their league. He refused to listen and now it is going to cost him about $16,000 USD to rectify it. Coincidentally that is more or less how much money Carmelo owes him so isn't that serendipitous. I have a few more pictures of my pad to post later but was basically we were so busy that I didn't have time to wander around and take many new ones.
We left on Sunday and got back the following Sunday. What a whirlwind trip it was. We managed to get everything accomplished that we set out to do. In a nutshell we had to have the structure assessed, fire the builder, fire the project manager, set up a bank account and get power of attorney so that I can conduct business related to Carmelo's house on his behalf in his absence. It appears that I will be the new 'project manager'. Lucky for him I will work for half the price and do 10 times a better job!!
It turns out that the entire roof needs to be removed and replaced. It needs more strengthening with support columns and had to be re-engineered. The problem was that it was designed to hold a roof constructed of cement fiberboard but Carmelo decided to put tiles like mine on. To accommodate the extra weight of the roof tiles they put the steel cross beams closer together not taking into consideration that the roof structure would then need more support. It was sagging under its own weight. To add to that there were many other deficiencies with bad cuts, poor welds insufficient support and to top it all off the whole thing was constructed 6 inches off the center of the house. I have attached a few pictures so you get the drift. I had told Ivan the project manager last April to stop construction on the roof until it was inspected when it appeared to me that the workmanship was bad. I told him that the workers were out of their league. He refused to listen and now it is going to cost him about $16,000 USD to rectify it. Coincidentally that is more or less how much money Carmelo owes him so isn't that serendipitous. I have a few more pictures of my pad to post later but was basically we were so busy that I didn't have time to wander around and take many new ones.
1 comment:
Looks like you have found a new career and need to make up some business cards! Carmelo is lucky to have you.
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