Ask the Architect

Doesn’t a contractor know everything?

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Q. There are cracks in our basement and garage floor and in corners of our new family room, all part of a new addition built less than a year ago. And the tile floor we tried to match between our kitchen and breakfast room now has a crack that seems to be getting bigger. Can this be fixed? We thought the contractor would know what to do, but he says it’s a design error by the architect and wants over $50,000, with no guarantee that he can fix the cracks. What should we do?

A. Sounds like you need an independent professional, impartial to the conditions, who prepares plans and knows what to look for. Unfortunately, there’s a huge disparity between a homeowner’s assumptions of a contractor’s scientific or engineering knowledge of how materials interact and methods needed to install them, and the training and actual engineering knowledge of a state-licensed architect or engineer.

Licensed architects and engineers have at least five years of college-level training, followed by three years of internship before they can even qualify for the 36 hours of state-administered exams to get a license. A contractor’s license, from their county Office of Consumer Affairs, verifies their criminal background and basic business practice, but no technical knowledge is required. No tests are given, and no construction knowledge needs to be demonstrated for a contractor in your county to obtain a license.

Unfortunately, the assumption that your contractor knows how materials should be assembled is based on experience. Any other schooling is a plus, but not a given. Your architect or engineer is not presumed, however, to be a great communicator who fully details how materials should be assembled, and from many of the plans I review, there is less and less information being shown by many design professionals, a problem that leads to some contractors simply adopting the passive/aggressive attitude that “If it isn’t on the plans, we don’t need to do it.”

Sometimes when I’m meeting a potential client for the first time and show them examples of details, I’m met with a response that tells me they have no idea about the differences in what various professionals provide, and some homeowners will even assure me that their contractor knows just what to do. Do you think your contractor knew? Joining materials is a science in itself, and the load paths of structure, the right thicknesses of materials to avoid internal stress and properly located reinforcing are all part of the problems you’re describing.

Whether making a chair or a big building, the wrong assumptions can lead to disaster. Using the wrong type of connectors for a salt air-exposed beam versus an interior beam, placing wrong-diameter steel reinforcing in the wrong place in a concrete form before pouring, leaving out expansion joints or not using an anti-fracture membrane in a tile floor can make for very expensive repairs. Good luck!

© 2017 Monte Leeper. Readers are encouraged to send questions to yourhousedr@aol.com, with “Herald question” in the subject line, or to Herald Homes, 2 Endo Blvd., Garden City, NY 11530, Attn: Monte Leeper, architect.