Progress???? Who dares to hope?

Progress? Tomorrow I believe the last of the first floor ring beam goes in.  That means that the long-suffering Engineer will do the dreaded DEE,  ( Detailed Engineering Evaluation). Dreaded because this is the document that measures the percentage of the Building code relating to earthquake safety that has been achieved. A building must now reach 66% of the current code.  If you do not reach 33% of the code you are in deep trouble, demolition or major repairs is your only hope.  66% lets you reopen the building.

Below is a photo of the last 2 steel 9 metre lengths to go in tomorrow.  Should be interesting to watch.

Once this stage is reached we can start on the re-bricking the large air-conditioned hole in the wall. I would be interested in knowing what % the Christchurch Cathedral is at?   Silly CERA/Government/Church, bet you Italy will repair their Church’s and buildings.  This has all been a result of a media campaign by CERA and Brownlee telling people that old buildings are dangerous, it has been deliberate and mischievous.  Especially if you consider the number of modern concrete building that are currently being demolished.  And you wait until they start in Wellington. There are going to be demolitions all over New Zealand.  Be warned, if you own a building get the DEE under way now, because in a very short time there will not be an Engineer in the country willing to do one.  This has already happened here.  Engineers are refusing to do them.  For a variety of reasons, too busy, too much stress and not enough Engineers capable of doing them.

I have also made progress with the insurance company. NZI.  Now that is a surprise.  They maintain that there was not a problem about the upstairs office area and EQC.  A Tui moment I am afraid, “yeah right!”.  At least I have now retrieved $100,000 that can be spent on repairs.  Insurance in Christchurch is all about Deny, Delay, Defend.  They deny liability, delay payments and litigate against you.  I can not help but wonder if it may not have been sorted in a much easier fashion.  I resent having to bring in a lawyer for what we were rightfully entitled to and have to wait 14 months for the privilege.  Now for the next battle, the party walls!  Joint walls between properties.  The Insurance company only wants to pay for half the repairs and make me responsible for collecting the balance from my un-insured neighbours. So I get half a wall you might ask.  reinstatement it is not!  Consider it this way, next time some one crashes into your car YOU will have to go to the owner of the other vehicle and try to recover half of the cost of repairs.   Humm there are obviously two sets of rules here, one for cars and one for building owners.  Did not see that stated in the policy anywhere. incidentally I am slowly becoming more adept at reading Insurance policies, trust me on this one, they can send you to sleep but it is vitally important!  Word of advice, ask your insurance company for the full policy document not the abridged version you usually get from your broker and start to read it.

Ah, I see an email in my inbox, my feisty friend Bruce is in trouble with CERA over a load of bricks, on the ground?   really?  they are dangerous? on the ground, in the red zone,  behind a container???? tell me more. I am off to read his emails. I will do another post  for him I think. This is the garbage we have to put up with!  CERA really does not want us to do repairs in the Red Zone, that is obvious.

 

We begin to walk away from CBD Christchurch…

Today we have began the process of removing ourselves from the CBD.  We will get these presses wired in over the weekend and hopefully by next week we will be independent again and capable of filling our orders.  We are now “backyarders”  a not very friendly word used by many larger printers to refer to those small one man operators who have plant at home. Needs must….

Love the photo, I think those kayaks will have to be rehoused!

How not to Rebuild High Street…

Surprise!  Not.  The High Street Duncan’s Building 1905 block looks like it might be in trouble.  Heritage is finally getting worried.  Sorry, you have left your run too late. It would not surprise me if we will lose our frontage.  I have been predicting this for some months now, I get no feeling of satisfaction from this.  I suspect that we may as well do no further work on trying to save it, because it looks like there are going to be some big holes in the block and there is no point in us being the only one left with a heritage frontage.

Demolition by neglect I call it.  This has happened for a number of reasons.

1.  The Christchurch City council was negligent in its duty to the city in not enforcing stricter Earthquake standards.  Following the September 2010 quakes building owners with Red stickered buildings were not forced to take action immediately.

The negligence actually goes further back than that, it also relates to the way they continued to allow the demise of the CBD area by refusing to alter the destructive one way street systems. As well as creating a mall system and then not altering it when it was obvious that it was failing.

2. Access: it has been too difficult to get access.  The first access we had to do repairs was in May 2011. Three months after the February 22 2011 earthquake, and we were allowed 10 days. Too slow, not enough time. We were also the only ones working in the street. The system did not force the others to do repairs.

3. Insurance companies.  Deny liability, Delay payments, Defend ie litigate, look for loop holes.  The Insurance problems are legendary.  Getting payments for contractors is a massive mission, one big stall.  Business interruption insurance has proved to be a joke.

4. CERA/Government: have created a structure so onerous that it is unworkable.  Many building owners have pulled buildings down rather than face repairs, the 10 day notice period for the section 38 repairs/make safes was unworkable. The Section 39′s for demolish were even more difficult.  As is the red tape and “Fletcher’s style” health and safety paper work nightmare.  The Certified Contractor fiasco further delayed repairs in the CBD.  The CERA structure was and is still targeted at demolitions, they appear to have ignored the fact that repairs are a whole different proposition, requiring different contractors and time lines. Communications from CERA are non-existent and have been all the way along.

5. Engineer shortage. Overworked, not able to produce the work required in a timely fashion.  There are not enough experienced Engineers in the city to do the Detailed Engineering Evaluations required.  (Over 7000)   As well many of the Engineers employed by CERA initially had no understanding of Unreinforced Masonry buildings, which was why so many were pulled down hastily.  This problem was exacerbated by the ridiculous pricing that was done by contractors when costing repairs, particularly of Unreinforced masonry (URM’s).

6. Labour shortages. Skilled Brick layers are in short supply, as are skilled builders, ones used to doing the types of repairs on URM’s.  It is not a job for a home build!  Coupled with labour shortages, is the problem of some contractors not wanting to work in the Red zone as the conditions are still onerous and some of the staff do not want to take the risks perceived in working in URM’s.

7.  Lack of informed media analysis, of the performance of CERA/Government as well as their own lack of journalistic skills.  Combined with a code of silence from the other political parties.

8.  In the High Street situation there are a number of other issues.- Uninsured building owners, both by choice and inadvertently.  Years of neglect by building owners. Party walls, in many cases in poor condition, and little prospect of forcing building owners to comply with the existing out of date party-wall legislation. Lack of certainty that the block will survive is going to slow repairs further.  The problem we have getting safe access to our building, at the moment we are being forced to walk beneath a 3 storey URM in grave danger from another quake, and to make the situation worse CERA is so stupid that they have blocked the escape route by putting up a 6 foot netting fence in the one direction that you could escape to.  The silence from the other building owners is deafening, many have not done any repairs at all since February 2011, this is intolerable.  go figure.

Quick update on our repairs,   we have done one days work since the 18th December 2011- when the front wall was pulled back into position.  I have just been informed that the ring beam for the first floor is at least 6 weeks away.  So no progress there.  But on a much happier note-we shift our new machines into the garage on Tuesday next week, so hopefully by the end of the week we will be independent again!  And we can start to run again!.  Than I can crank up our mail order, which I know will please many of you. We have applied for “Permission” from the CCC to do this, but to be honest who cares, we will proceed regardless. There is only so much one can put up with and this last year has sorely tested my patience. (Never my strongest trait.)

We Give up waiting…

We have purchased 2 second-hand printing presses from another Printer who is closing down.  They have kindly let us take them over, rather than selling on the open market.  Many thanks to the team at Foster and Paul!   True Canterbury spirit at its best.

We will be moving these next week into the garage at home.  It will mean the mail order is going to be BACK up and running!   It will allow a larger degree of flexibility for both the mail order and our printing clients than we have had.  I am now filling in the paper work for temporary relocation permissions”.   fun!   We will go ahead even if they refuse.

The problems of access in the CBD, labour and general uncertainty have finally driven us to do this.  It is looking unlikely that we will return to the High Street premises.  That will not be decided until we get better access.  It also depends on the fate of our neighbours, which is looking increasingly shaky.

I might have a job after all! 

The Future….

Progress again,  I have popped a few photos of the new brick wall slowly emerging from the floor.  A beautiful sight I must say.

Small steps forward.

A new wall rising from the ashes!

On a more positive note…

Today we have progress, scary eh! This might be habit forming. We now have 2 SHS columns, one in each corner of the frontage, both sitting on nice new concrete foundations. We have demolished most of the nasty loose bricks at the top of the building, and in a few days the brick layers are going to start to close the building back in.  We also have an extra ring beam going in as extra strengthening.  In a few days we will have met CERA’s “Make safe”  requirements,  8 weeks late. Whoops.  I am still amazed that they have not hassled me.  ( I hope I am not tempting fate)

I am back on the paper war, filling out an “Amendment to Building Consent”- more money to the council, oh what joy.

I can’t believe the number of phone calls I have had from our card making clients, you have all been amazing.  The positive support has been welcome and heartwarming!  Thank you.

this is a view looking out of the building at the POly Tech Jazz school. Open plan!

More progress… this is promising

On friday we craned in the new RHS on the right hand side of the building and poured the new concrete foundation. We can now start to deconstruct the horrible mess of hanging bricks at the top of the building.

I went and had a look at the container mall in Cashel street today, humn, maybe it was me. Boring. A pity Paul Lonsdale from the central city Business association has not put his energy in to helping retailers in other areas. The sole focus on this area has been to the detriment of the rest of the city. It lacks heart in my view.

The walk into the square has been nicely “sanitized”, you get a better view of the mess if you look down high street at the St Asaph st fence, or Manchester st/st Asaph street.

Pity they did not let people see it before the “sanitisation”.

I looked at the Cathedral and felt nothing. Just another wrecked building. I must be getting hardened. Too many days looking at Lichfield/high street I think,

We are having thoughts about moving to a new building, thinking of single storey wooden sheds! This is something we may need to look at in the future. The insurance bills for the High St site are now horrific.

One of the issues that continue to puzzle me is the fact that the contractors are not working in the red zone over the weekends, idle diggers, no builders no trucks. How can a city recover from this inactivity?

And progess… sort off?

Well we made progress today, although I must confess it looks worse not better!  The hole in the front got bigger. But that is the beginning of the fix.

We had a productive day, the window is out, some more bricks are down and our new RHS is in. The Engineer now tells me that we need a similar RHS on the other side of the building, but I can live with that.  Below is a pix of the current air-conditioned hole in the wall.

The next step is to get the safety cage down, happening next week and the new scaffold up for the brickies to work on. At the same time we will put the last 2 steel columns in upstairs.  We can not start on the new RHS until the neighbour has finished installing theirs!

Slowly forward…

Well we have a new foundation pad for the RHS (steel post), the concrete was poured on Wednesday 19th October. I have attached a photo.  Looks like a hunk of concrete to me!  The RHS is going to be installed on Wednesday next week.  Than we can start to sort out the big air conditioned hole in the wall.  Now that is going to get messy.

Patience…

After 8 months of lock out my patience is wearing thin! I do wonder about compensation for an illegal lock out. Any ideas? Is this feasible?

I was in the red zone yesterday, there are almost no repairs occurring in our block.  They probably all have the same troubles as us, Access, getting tradesman and the biggie insurance (incidentally I am having trouble getting NZI to pay my contractors, July Invoice, it is not fair, they have done the work, pay them! I am thinking of printing a huge banner and hanging it from the top of the building saying, “Repairs delayed by NZI”, maybe I should send them a link to this blog.  I believe we have a new Accessor, number 5 I think, have not see hide nor hair of him yet.)

The safety cage has been modified, I have attached the modification!  Carpenter starts digging the new foundation on monday 17th.  Humm this is going to get interesting as we will miss the “Make safe Date” that we initially specified.  20th October.  Bet you I get some more CERA nasty emails!  Considering they have messed us around for 4 weeks it’s hardly surprising.

The Globe Building is to be demolished. The Back is munted!

The old Para Rubber building is also to be demolished

There are 2 large buildings close to us yet be demolished, so my bet is that they will lock us out of the street again.  I will get some pictures for you!  ( The globe building is 3 stories and the old Para building has 16??? apartments in it, 2 stories)

Here are the 2 versions of make safe cage!  The left hand side of each picture shows  what is left of the neighbours building.At least this will save the carpenter from any rouge bricks!