Civil Works - “Right Said Fred” Edition

[Citroënbender]

Council does first stormwater pit audit in my historical memory of the area. Nothing happens.

A year later, a rooster with fancy van turns up, shunts a camera up the pipes in each pit, writes up his report. Nothing happens.

Nine months later, infrastructure subcontract auditor comes around knocking, can I please move my car off the pit? I point out the pit’s all cracked from when the energy provider put their stabilisers out on the crane or borer for pole replacement. No problem he says, we’ll be doing something about it. I wasn’t fussed if they did or didn’t.

This week (some weeks later), a civil works crew turn up, can I please move Povo Ute off the pit? They explain they were sent to “repair the lintel” but immediately declare it’s beyond patching and rip it off “for safety”, thence calling the council’s stormwater engineer to get his posterior pitside, post-haste.

Engineer appears. Declares old pit not big enough, so not just a new lintel but a new pit. It grows twice in their discussions, eventually settling on 2x1m floor area. Subbies say “We’ll come back to this one tomorrow, it’s too big for today” and waste the next three hours on the council’s coin. They secure the site and shoot through, forgetting the tools they left on the footpath. I pick up the dropped toys and stash them out of view.

So this morning they dug halfway across the street to remove the old pit materials and resize the hole. Bit of mesh and concrete, another 90 minutes of not doing a whole lot afterwards (other than remembering their tools today).

Kind of looking forward to Wednesday’s instalment where they decide it all has to come up again for some reason. Nice enough chaps, not grubs who hoick and litter. I’m looking forward to getting my kerbside parking back but it’s not a huge issue.

[snap0964]

Standby when they hack into a water pipe or telephone/fibre optic lines.

[Craig@AUDI]

You can imagine a Monty Python sketch along these story lines!

[Citroënbender]

I had a look this arvo, at what they'd got up to. Nicely formed up pit walls, all inlet pipe penetrations cut in tidily and taped to seal.

Outlet pipe not cut in. Bit of an oversight there.

This pit will be very good at filling with water, but it currently has nowhere to drain.

[Citroënbender]

This job is like The Terminator.

The lack of outlet pipe was attempted to remedy by “forming” a wrap of corflute between where the pipe was chipped off and where the formwork face started.

It worked. OK, 2/3 of it did. So the granny-flat sized drainage pit now has two thirds of its original outflow capacity. Yet to be rectified.

Then we had a new crew on the gig, all yalla-yalla. Not the melting pot of before.

They were supposed to trim back the kerb, excavate, place the pit lintel and hardware, and form for new kerb. When they weren’t chattering, they mis-stood the digger and cracked the road pavement heavily. Excavator basics fail, or laziness.

Next they chewed up some more stormwater pipes by attempting to rake 200mm of dirt off them with the excavator bucket rather than use a shovel. The centrepiece of all this chaotic glory was lintel placement. “Whaddaya mean there’s a pipe in the way?”. So they cut half the height off an inlet pipe to sit the lintel flat as designed.

I guess if they were OK with restricting the water flow out of the pit, it follows that they’d not be fussed about stopping it from coming in. The final salute from our yalla-yalla crowd was a 2 metre diesel slick across the road surface, new 14 months ago.

The Melting Pot crew are back today, shifting the pipe that was sectioned. It’s raining on them, washing out under their kerb forms and sludging up the new pit.

[Franco Cozzo]

Where do I sign up? This job sounds like it'd suit me to a T

[roddy1960]

Can't resist....Bernard Crimmins (legend) version

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5XX9LX2es4 ..

[pauljh74]

Originally Posted by Craig@CumberlandFord

You can imagine a Monty Python sketch along these story lines!

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2nedgv

Starring these guys?

[Citroënbender]

The fiasco rolls on.

Yesterday morning they poured new kerbing. My car trailer provided an (apparently) ideal spot for lounging and sunning whilst waiting for the concrete to stiffen and front form stripping. It’s been a real asset to them through the job; they’ve sat on it, hung coats on it, stored their site fencing flat across it.

Today the rest of the forms were stripped and they buried their smashed pipes (I haven’t finished with the council on this one yet)... Topsoiled the nature strip and I was offered the leftover metre of really nice soil. Rotten timing so I had them dump it on a neighbour’s driveway. He was ecstatic with a $50 dirt freebie, but his wife much less so. (She knows he hasn’t settled his last two invoices with me.)

So now there’s only the road repairs and then rectification...

[383hq]

Welcome to the service industry.

where some business and individuals prefer to collect more revenue through more "touch points" and interactions.

I.e. why deal with something once, do it right the first time, when you can deal with it 6x and bill for six separate ocassions?

great for the invoicing, not so good for the country in the long term. Might rename Aus "Nanny Rework Nation"

[outback_ute]

Reminds me of one near my old man's place; there used to be a shallow gutter in the bitumen running across the road for storm water flow due to a quirk in the way the system was designed probably in the days before the roads were sealed.

Finally someone decided they should take out this dip in the road (right near a T-intersection so it wasn't even much of a 'reverse speed hump'), which was great until the next decent rain and somewhere got flooded. Next thing they've dug it all up to add a pit or two and a pipe under the road. All the old blokes at the council who knew the story must have retired.

[roKWiz]

These guys are professionals compared to ARTC, after all these years they finally get the Albury to Melbourne railway line right and now they want to dig it up again to double deck freight ........WTF.

[Citroënbender]

I thought they were one of the last bastions of “a job for life”? (Even if it’s 50% rework.)

Still pretty unimpressed with the job out front, now hotmixed and rollered. At least I’ve got my “workshop” back.

In summary, there was a cracked lintel over a pit that hadn’t flooded since ‘84. This was replaced by a double size pit with 2/3 the outflow capacity and a now crushed 150mm inlet line. One of the citrus trees I planted in the nature strip was butchered by ineptness (dropping temp fencing onto half of it). At least I’d got it harvested some weeks before.

[Citroënbender]

The reprise...

I had occasion to meet the “service counter” people at my local Council this morning for another matter and showed them the photos of damage/defects. Service counter woman horrified.

There were works staff on site within 40 minutes.

Right said Fred,
Dig up all the topsoil
Fix the broken pipe and steady as we go...