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I could have benefited from this in the construction of our house. Riddled with inaccuracies, the engineer signed off on the foundations, but we found out when the walls were up that the builders used the internal dimensions as exterior dimensions. So our house is smaller by ~250mm on each side.

We had to make so many compromises and wastages as a result. Bathrooms now smaller if we want to keep other rooms the same, bathtubs couldn't fit, aw man.

Then when the house went up to 2nd and 3rd levels, the staircase was narrow and wasn't connecting between the levels. That alone delayed us by 3 months as we had to get the architect to build a 3D model of the affected area so we could figure it out. We have to hoist furniture up through balconies as it can't fit through the stairs.

I think having some machinery that minimises human error would be very helpful.

Ok and I thought having our inground pool installed crooked was bad. Where you able to get any legal/financial clawbacks because of all the hassle?

Translating for folks not natively familiar with millimeters - this is 25cm, or about ~10 inches.

Doesn't sound like a lot, but you're losing a foot and a half across a dimension of a house. That's very easily into the "Bathtub doesn't fit" territory.

That's awful. I hope you were able to recover damages from the builders

I am an architect who worked as a contractor and as a consultant and I made an account here just to comment on this.

When you found out the builders did that, what you should have done is stopped the work and have them correct their mistake on their own dime. This is an unforgivable mistake and a team of professional should never make something like that.

Obviously I am not in your shoes, but this is insane to me. Any supervisor or consultant or surveyor visiting the site should've caught that.

It's probably the thickness of the foundation wall.

Did you consider adding some buffer to your plan's measurements to account for exactly these kinds of screw ups?

This seems like the just-world response. But how can one force this? If they just say "No" you end up taking them to court and delaying the construction of your house. You endanger the contracts for downstream work.

I had a landscaper screw up just about everything they could building a retaining wall, and they couldn't even get me an extra bag of grass seed after the fact.

Surely, a delayed house is better than a house built incorrectly, no?

We discovered/noticed this when the exterior walls were 2 meters high. They had to move around interior walls but that didn't help much.

My wife and I concluded that we got what we paid for, and you're right that in hindsight we should have taken legal action against the contractor. I don't know how breaking down the whole exterior of a house to fix it down to the foundation would feel though. At some point we thought of selling the partially completed structure.

Did you use a contractor for this build? The neighbors of my parents ran into this, but somehow the foundation team added around a foot in all dimensions. The owner of the property refused to accept anything other than a new foundation. The contractor refused and from what my Dad told me the home owner was forced to sell to the contractor by the courts as their recourse.

This story also seems a litle off unless the contractor didn't allow inspection. It'd be found in 10 seconds with a single usage of a tape measure.

so what? delay it. as you see the house is messed up, that's going to be an issue when it's time to sell. many people will notice a very narrow stairwell or tiny bathrooms. when we were house shopping there were many houses we passed because the stairs were too narrow, or too steep or the bathroom was tiny or some room was so tiny it didn't qualify as a bedroom in our mind or the ceilings were too low. all those tiny flaws cost the seller serious money and reduced the number of buyers.

Depends on the country. In France, and I think in Europe, you have 4 (IIRC) legally mandated visits during the construction. At each one of those visits, you have the right to suspend the next payment (you pay a legally mandated percentage of the house after each one of those visits).

I also had measurements issues and a contractor that tried to force it to me. I just said I will not pay until it's fixed. The next week everything was fixed.

To add more context, the staircase is within local building standards minimums. Our architect at least was able to enforce that.

The bathrooms have slightly smaller tubs, though we scratched one of the larger tubs while trying to fit it in, and the supplier wouldn't accept it. It's still in our garage lol.

We were building on a contract where we paid for material at cost, and the contractor made their fee on the labour. They were inexperienced, I'd obviously never use them nor recommend them. We made them pay for most of the damages that we could quantify, and for things like crooked walls/non-90° corners we couldn't really do much.

To an untrained eye, the house is not bad, but we know where all the mistakes are.

Something something Nintendo video games....

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.

> I don't know how breaking down the whole exterior of a house to fix it down to the foundation would feel though.

Not your problem.

Honestly from what you're describing it should not have been that big of an issue. Exterior walls and trusses are very easily taken down and put back up again.

The foundation would be a pain in the ass but ultimately, as others have stated, that's kind of not your problem.

Well, it definitely is. Now you’ve probably got to wait for a lawsuit to settle and then the work to be redone. Even in the absolute best case, this puts the project behind by months, and that’s if they don’t contest it.

yes but a built house is a lifelong thing. multiple decades. a few months here is not worth decades of pain

You tell the inspector. Point out that the hallway is 25cm short of code. I'm assuming since they are using metric they aren't in the US, but at least here the contractor can't say no the inspector without losing their license.

Also im the US builders routinely create a separate shell corporation for each job so it can simply go bankrupt if they get sued rather than paying out.

The kicker is "on each side".

So the house is now [50cm | half a metre | 20 inches] shorter length overall in "both" commonly rectangular dimensions.

Take any room in your house and remove that much from it and tell me it doesn't detract from the room....

That makes a lot of sense as a system. No courts, just I'm not paying you until it meets specifications