The call came at 9 PM on a Tuesday. A homeowner in rural Chatham County, North Carolina had raw sewage backing up into his master bathroom. He’d owned the property eighteen months. The inspector signed off. The system was installed…
I got a call at 7 a.m. on a Friday. The homeowner in Cherry Hill had a pool shell that looked like a network of spiderwebs—hairline cracks propagating from the deep end across the entire floor. Cost to repour: $85,000.…
I learned the hard way. Mid-rise mixed-use building in a cold-humid climate. Northeast exposure. We spec’d a curtain wall system that looked right on the elevation. Glass, aluminum, clean lines. Three years in, water was weeping down the interior of…
Three weeks before construction documents were due on a community center addition, the contractor called. The entry doors had been installed. Clear opening: 32 inches. ADA-compliant clear opening for a pair of doors: 34 inches clear at the latch side…
Three months into a 40,000-square-foot warehouse project in Georgia, the fire marshal rejected our entire sprinkler riser diagram. Not a detail here or there. The whole thing. His comment: “Heads exceed 200 square feet per head in this zone. NFPA…
A contractor called three years ago about a permit rejection. The second one in two weeks. His drawings showed 4×4 posts, 4×8 beams, decent spacing. But they didn’t show where the ledger bolted to the house, what the flashing looked…
The worst RFI I ever dealt with on a slab job wasn’t about bar sizing or cover. It was about corner reinforcement at an exterior column on a flat plate in Durham, NC. The contractor had 600 tons of rebar…