For Christchurch home owners - Onsold EQC question

Forums › Home Workshop DIY › For Christchurch home owners - Onsold EQC question - next steps?

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Blurtie

468 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2656539 15-Feb-2021 11:19

Thanks guys,

Definitely some food for thought. Guess it's really now a wait and see approach to see what the report comes back with.

On a related note, a friend of mine recently purchased a property where the house was lifted and foundations/piles all redone - I think this was done privately rather than through EQC/onsolds. I guess if anything, it shows that the cost to do that work stacked up financially to the seller and potentially not in the same realm as demolishing and rebuilding..

Blurtie

468 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2666076 1-Mar-2021 11:16

I stumbled upon this article over the weekend. - "A lot of the damage we are coming across is from work done to foundations so it's not always visible on the surface - so yeah it works out more economical to build a new home." Not sure whether to laugh or cry - The engineer they sent out only did a superficial look at our foundation.. We were the ones that had to engage Underfoot for a foundation inspection..

Still waiting on my report to come back though.

Fred99

13684 posts

Uber Geek

#2666256 1-Mar-2021 14:20

Blurtie:

I guess if anything, it shows that the cost to do that work stacked up financially to the seller and potentially not in the same realm as demolishing and rebuilding..

There's going to be a massive difference in cost between lifting and replacing foundations on a simple (more or less rectangular) house on piles with good sub-floor access and lightweight cladding (ie something like weatherboard - attached to framing) compared to a more complex shape house with medium or heavy weight cladding (bricks etc) with the weight of the cladding supported directly by the foundation.

EQC and insurers were heavily "incentivised" to not properly repair houses in the latter category if they thought they could get away with it. Even MBIE earthquake repair guidelines were "revised" to allow repairs to be carried out that wouldn't have met building code before revision, and they were quite open about the fact that this was done to make the cost of repairs "less onerous" to insurers. They increased the "allowable" off-level for slab-on-grade homes to above what was permissible when the house was built, they increased the allowable thickness of "packing" of piles (rather than replacing the pile) etc. That didn't meet "as (good as) new" insurance policy conditions. MBIE also forced councils to loosen up on building consent requirements, doing full reclads for example on brick houses was then possible without consent, with no consent then no council inspections, probably no qualified person even looking at the job - let alone supervising.

In theory you could insist that building consent was obtained, EQC stated that was their policy. In our case Fletcher EQR threatened that if we demanded it, then our claim would get "lost at the bottom of a pile" and we'd be waiting years for anything at all to happen. I insisted, and they carried out that threat. They chose the wrong person to try that with.

I can prove that happened to us - I had documentation that was not on our "official" file "leaked" to me - that proved it to EQC, and the response was a letter of apology and offer of full compensation from EQC.

How many others this happened to, who knows?

Blurtie

468 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2666344 1-Mar-2021 16:50

Thanks Fred99 - the house in question is similar in age/vintage to my place - so I thought it would be fairly comparable in terms work required.

Good to hear you they messed with the wrong guy! I am hopeful that EQC have changed their ways..

Blurtie

468 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2729446 16-Jun-2021 09:23

Time for another update for those interested/commented to date.

We've finally got our report back - well an interim report anyway - which found unrepaired earthquake damage and noted that the damage was most likely structural damage and is significant.

We're a little annoyed that it's taken approx. 4 months to get to the report back, but it sounds like they have a huge backlog of work to shift through..

EQC have accepted this report and we're now in the queue for a structural engineer to come and assess the damage, which I've been told won't be for another 3 months at least (we're just going with UF's preferred engineers)... Based on the way things have tracked so far, it's probably unlikely we'll get the engineers report before the end of this year.

Fred99

13684 posts

Uber Geek

#2729502 16-Jun-2021 10:38

Presumably the engineer will need a geotech survey before design of the foundation repair. If that's needed, then until that design is finalised, cost can't be estimated.

Blurtie

468 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2729514 16-Jun-2021 10:48

Yes, most certainly will need a geotech assessment from what I have been told.

The report also noted liquefaction (although with my untrained eye I couldn't really tell). I think we will also need to try and somehow assess the rest of the foundation that could not be accessed by the crawler at the time, which funnily enough was the side of the house that had the external cracks. So yes, will be a long road ahead.

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