A couple’s newly-built home near Fairlie is slowly sinking at one end, causing an ongoing dispute between them, the council and the building firm over who should foot the $200,000 bill to fix it.
John and Susan Simpson don’t feel they should foot the bill because, they say, it was built in the wrong place. They reckon that the builder, McRaeway Homes in Timaru, and Mackenzie District Council are to blame.
John said McRaeway didn’t stick to the specifications and plans laid out in the building consent, and then the council shouldn’t have signed off on the work.
But neither of the other parties accept liability.
Susan and John’s home near Fairlie is sinking at one end, but are they, the council or the builder responsible for putting it right?
They wouldn’t explain their position directly to Fair Go, so our understanding of their stance is based on their discussions with John and his lawyer.
The building firm and the council say the signed building contract states the owner is responsible for both setting out the building site, and then ensuring the consents and plans are complied with.
They claimed John requested a change in location, shifting the building site pegs that determine where the house should sit, and asking for a change in-person during an on-site meeting.
John denied shifting the pegs, saying, “No, why would I do that when I’d just spent all that money on consents?”
Getting resource consent had taken three attempts and set him back $5000-6000.
The plans were clear
The house is situated near the Opuha Dam, an area of natural beauty, so conditions were strict, John said.
“One condition was that the roofline couldn’t break the ridgeline, so we had to dig a great big bloody hole,” he explained.
John employed a surveyor to draw up the plans and an excavator to cut into the rock to provide a building platform that matched the plans.
Excavator Nigel Blair said the plans were very clear. He said he shifted the fill that he’d excavated to a position further north — ready to create a lawn — but instead, this is where the house was built.
The problem went unnoticed until after the Simpsons had moved in. You might wonder how you can miss a house being shifted 12 metres, but it’s a big site, set in a vast area.
John said it wasn’t something they’d have ever picked up on. But once living in the house, the problems became clear — starting with the guttering.
Susan explained that “as soon as we first had rain out here, we saw leaking — the spouting was leaking”.
John tried to get the gutters fixed, but was told there was nothing wrong with them. The problem was the house wasn’t level.
Unstable ground
After other problems came to light, such as windows not closing tightly, John paid for a geotechnical investigation.
Expert Ben Parry from Davis Ogilvie was able to link the problem to unstable ground at the north end of the property.
He was looking for what’s referred to as “good ground”, which means it’s stable enough for a simple foundation, such as the one used with John’s property.
Good ground existed at the southern end, but not towards the north. At the northern end, it was built on soft fill which would require a much stronger foundation.
If the house hadn’t been shifted by 12 metres and was on the original site, it would all have been on stable ground.
John got a lawyer on board. All parties made an effort to reach a resolution, but couldn’t agree on where fault lay.
McRaeway claimed John had wanted to move the house to the north for a better view and to fit a bigger garage in behind. John refutes this.
Either way, it means the builders ignored the only plans and specifications that had been consented.
Communication stalled
As for the council, it had approved the build on a site that wasn’t suitable and had signed off on the code of compliance despite the instability that has since been confirmed by two geotechnical reports.
Furthermore, the new house location means the dwelling now breaks the ridgeline that the council had been adamant couldn’t be broken. John has since had to apply for a new resource consent to cater for this, and it has been granted.
Four years on from when the dispute began, there is still no resolution. Last year, communications stalled, and John decided to come to Fair Go.
We got in touch with McRaeway and the council, and within 10 days an offer was made. However, it didn’t cover the full cost and John turned it down.
He said he’d already spent $70,000 on lawyers’ fees and reports, on top of paying for a new house, and didn’t feel he should pay anymore.
Fair Go has been attempting to talk to McRaeway and the council for four months since John refused their offer.
We want to understand their reasoning and to put some of John’s counter-arguments to them. We have had replies to say they won’t discuss the matter.
Council chief executive Angela Oosthuizen said: “We don’t comment publicly on active negotiations, but remain hopeful the parties are able to reach an agreement.”
John is worried his house is only going to sink further and cause more problems.
Both McRaeway and the council have said they want a resolution but with disagreement remaining over who is to blame, it’s hard to see how that can be achieved, so John is preparing to go to court.