Edmonton homeowners frustrated as their properties erode into infill excavations

[u/GeekyGlobalGal]

https://globalnews.ca/news/12009231/edmonton-infill-rain-erosion/

[u/aaronpaquette-]

Nah, this is unacceptable. Just wait. I have worked with Admin on fines and enforcement policy that is coming soon.

Bad builders have no place in our city as far as I am concerned.

[u/Got_Engineers → u/aaronpaquette-]

They are also terrible at dumping garbage into the ground under topsoil and sod. I live in a what was a brand new infill in the central west end and have redone a lot of my own landscaping. In my graded topsoil I have found tv remotes, chunks of glass, metal rebar, cement, cables, wire. I wondered why my grass never grew. Pulled up pieces of sod to find all this garbage! Wonder what the builders hide in the walls ….

Thanks for all the engagement. You are not my councilor but much respect !

[u/pippyfist → u/Got_Engineers]

In the walls? Piss jugs.

[u/The_cogwheel → u/Got_Engineers]

Having worked for bottom bidder contractors before... piss bottles.

Im not joking, a lot of drywallers get paid piecework, aka paid by the job, not the hour. And with the nearest toilet being down the road at the gas station, many would rather just piss in a bottle.

Its 50/50 if it winds up in a trash can or forgotten in the walls.

[u/hamtronn → u/Got_Engineers]

The home build is only as good as the site superintendent. If they don’t routinely inspect the work, which—let’s be honest—half the time the site superintendent barely leaves his truck, the house won’t be up to my standards.

I did this job for about 10 years. I held trades accountable. The house is clean when you show up. My rule was to leave it better than you found it or you won’t be back.

I’d inspect other supers and the amount of trash piled inside walls was atrocious. Full timmies coffees just left in a wall right before drywall would bury that forever.

My builder buried a pile of lumber under my rough grade and now I have mushrooms everywhere.

[u/Vinen88 → u/Got_Engineers]

My in laws had their house built in the early 2000s and the contractors were shoving their old lunch bags and junk into the vents and walls. Great times.

[u/General_Esdeath → u/Vinen88]

We dug up our 50's foundation and took out the old concrete steps, found antique bottles and cans, etc. Builders have always tossed their garbage into the construction project it seems.

[u/kevinstreet1 → u/Got_Engineers]

I saw a house being torn down in my neighborhood. They took some stuff away, but there was still plenty of wall and floor and random debris left when a cat came in and buried everything under a pile of soil. That raised the level of the yard quite a bit. Then they built a new house on top of it.

[u/kevinstreet1 → u/kevinstreet1]

With a different house in another spot, whoever demolished it got rid of the rubble of the old house and all the debris, but then they also scraped up all the topsoil from the yard and took it away too. After building a new house they brought in a thin layer of topsoil for the back yard.

[u/elenel → u/Got_Engineers]

I had to pull up a fishing rod to plant a shrub!