# Forum More Stuff At the end of the day  Another Balcony Collapse

## pharmaboy2

This one in Yamba, 8 people injured, and looks like ledger gave away again  https://www.dailyexaminer.com.au/new...se/3172141/#/0 
apparently its a holiday rental, but I haven't seen if it's a brick veneer or clad building

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## Marc

It should be illegal not to brace a balcony and rely on the ledger

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## METRIX

Lets wait and see what caused this one, what was the outcome of the one in QLD ?

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## intertd6

It's the old " what is the industry coming to when builders aren't even making a decent wage , so the lowest shifty common denominator wins the work trick!"
inter

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## pharmaboy2

> Lets wait and see what caused this one, what was the outcome of the one in QLD ?

  By the time that's released, you'll have forgotten all about it - you've gotta wonder why the delay when it would be obvious from approximately the first minute of the qualified person seeing the failure. 
noticed today that police were carrying out investigations....  journo should have asked "have you thought of getting an engineer or a building inspector to investigate?"  
Inspector plod.....  :Wink:

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## commodorenut

> Inspector plod.....

   Reminds me of this expert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHVerMBO-zE 
Confuses a pre-heat fitting (aka heat riser) with a "screamer pipe." 
A heat riser is simply a heat shield fitted over the exhaust manifold, which has a fitting that allows a flexible pipe to be attached, and the other end is attached to the air-cleaner housing, with a vacuum-flap that is temperature controlled.  The theory is that a cold engine draws ambient air via that fitting - the air drawn past the rapidly warming exhaust manifold.  This assists warm up.
Once the motor is warm, a temperature switch allows vacuum to swap the flap across to the "fresh air" inlet.  Most old cars from the 70s through to the 90s with carburettors ran a variation of the air pre-heat system. 
A screamer pipe on the other hand, is where the wastegate of a turbo is allowed to vent exhaust gasses to the atmosphere.  The wastegate is a form of control for boost, and when boost rises past the set limit, opens to allow exhaust to bypass the turbine, thus reducing/controlling boost, and this exhaust gas is normally directed into the exhaust system.
What some like to do, is allow this to vent directly to atmosphere, either for the obscene amount of noise (not to be confused with the blow off valves fitted to the intake side), and/or the chance of getting some decent flames out of there when backing off after building boost. 
The car in the video has neither a turbo, not a screamer pipe....but that doesn't stop Inspector Plod.....

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## sol381

A real estate agent friend of mine told me that at least 50% of the homes she sold had building work done that wasn't approved. Now you can get a certifier or building inspector in, but most of those knuckleherads arent experienced in building and dont know what the hell they are looking at..Therein lies the problem.

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## MorganGT

> Reminds me of this expert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHVerMBO-zE 
> Confuses a pre-heat fitting (aka heat riser) with a "screamer pipe."

  We had the opposite situation occur years ago when pulled over in a mate's Datsun 1600. Plod looked under the bonnet and spotted the draw-through carby turbo setup. When asked what it was, my mate told him with a straight face that it was an 'air injection pump' of the sort many 80's cars had to pump fresh air into the exhaust manifold to improve combustion of exhaust gases/reduce emissions, and that it was a factory part as the engine had come out of a later model Bluebird. It hadn't of course, and that car had a 'screamer pipe' of sorts (no pipe connected to the wastegate outlet which sat right by a hole in the firewall so on boost half the exhaust gases and noise from the wastegate came into the car!). Mr. Plod let us go, fortunately I had been strategically standing leaning on the front guard to prevent him reading the word 'TURDBO' stencilled there in big letters (intentionally misspelled as a reference to both the poor quality turbo conversion and the baby-poo brown factory paint).

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## commodorenut

We should start a new thread on silly cops.  The 1600 reminds me of the HR I shared with a mate when I was 18.  Triples down the side of the engine were all shiny because my mate's brother worked at an electroplater..... it worked.  We kept breaking handbrake cables in it (had a shonky HZ setup put into it to replace the archaic umbrella brake).  Cop says "jump in, drop the handbrake, pull it up 7 clicks" - I duly complied.  He tried pushing the car & it wouldn't budge.  Got back in & my mate says "how the hell didn't it move?" - I said "he never told me to take it out of gear did he?" 
When I was a teenager, my neighbour was a HWP cop.  The stories he'd tell me were off the wall.  Most drivers didn't realise he'd been a mechanic for 15 years before joining the cops.  One clown tried to tell him 16" tyres fit on 15" wheels.  Tinted tail lights were his favourite defect.  The number of guys who would say "nah bro, it's factory like that" but the crappy matte finish gave it away as a cheap spray job with "nite-shades."   I caught up with him a few years back, and he said the biggest thing now was young kids on green P-plates buying the atmo versions (legal on Ps) of common turbo cars (not legal on Ps), like Skylines, Silvias & Supras, and dropping a turbo into it - thinking the cops would be too dumb to work it out.  Then they go & put an external blow-off valve on it.... might as well stick a neon "pick me" sign on the roof..... 
With the nationalities that overtook the VL Turbo scene, quite a few of us have nicknamed yellow turbo VLs as VL "Tur-Bros" but that's the first time I've heard of @@@@-bro.  I like it!

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## MorganGT

> the biggest thing now was young kids on green P-plates buying the atmo versions (legal on Ps) of common turbo cars (not legal on Ps), like Skylines, Silvias & Supras, and dropping a turbo into it - thinking the cops would be too dumb to work it out.  Then they go & put an external blow-off valve on it.... might as well stick a neon "pick me" sign on the roof.....

  I did much the same and got away with it, although in my case I wasn't on P plates (which was long enough ago anyway there were no capacity/power restrictions on P platers). I had a Datsun 180B SSS that I bought with a dead motor, but that had been professionally fitted with a Nissan FJ20DE motor, including full engineering approval. After replacing the motor and getting it re-registered, I looked through the engineering documents and realised that there was nothing in there that specified whether it was the turbo or non-turbo version of the engine that was approved, so later fitted an FJ20DET.

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## OBBob

Another in Melbourne ... doesn't look like timber though.    Balcony collapse in South Yarra - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

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## r3nov8or

> Another in Melbourne ... doesn't look like timber though.    Balcony collapse in South Yarra - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

   Yeah, place was built in the 60s, bricks placed on their sides to expose the cavities for lovely 60s aesthetics and bugger all holding one brick to the other. One TV news report last night I saw said all balconies on the block will need to be assessed and probably rebuilt.

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## lazydays

> Lets wait and see what caused this one, what was the outcome of the one in QLD ?

  I walked past the awning collapse in James St Burleigh that killed one pedestrian a few days after it happened. I'm not even qualified but in 30 sec could see that the render over the wall was layed on pretty thick and dynabolts not even penetrating into the wall. You could see a slab of render on one bolt that had come away from the wall and still held on with the dynabolt.. Never did hear of the official results. 
Reminds me of two other story's when the last big hi=rise boom was on in the early eighties. 
First was a fence I had to put on top of a block wall. Ran the chalk line out and I forget how far in the holes were in from the edge but good enough. Drilled the first hole and the side just blew off, tried to drill a few others and the same result. When the render started to pop off it was very clear on how crooked the wall was and just straightened up with render. 
Second was when I was talking to a formworker and he told me of a building that when they were pouring the columns for the basement it ended up being way past knock off time so the cartons of beer came out to ensure the pours was finished that night. Next morning they noticed how crooked all the columns were so they put acro props between them and pushed them straight.

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## lazydays

> I walked past the awning collapse in James St Burleigh that killed one pedestrian a few days after it happened. I'm not even qualified but in 30 sec could see that the render over the wall was layed on pretty thick and dynabolts not even penetrating into the wall. You could see a slab of render on one bolt that had come away from the wall and still held on with the dynabolt.. Never did hear of the official results.

  Found the coroners report.
Accident happened in Dec 2012, Coroners report Oct 2016
Goes into more detail about water leaks and rust but.....  *(c) After the western end failed, the remaining embedment depth was inadequate to hold the anchors and they have pulled out of the concrete.  * Funny but the builder was Claus Sievers (long gone) that I did some work for. Probably best known for building "Barinton", at the time the largest house on the Gold Coast and built for Sir Justin Hickey, he also constructed  Currumbin Bridge on the Gold Coast Highway...hope the bolts were embedded deep enough on that one.

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## sol381

Seems he is still around..Just saw his website.. it states...... *Our Mission ... To give you the best. Our Goal ... To be the best. Our Culture ...  Always do the right thing.*...love that last sentence.

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## lazydays

Hmmm......must be a different Claus. The Coroners Report says he built the building in 1974 and I did a couple of jobs for him around about 1984. Website says they were first established in 1987.

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## sol381

mmmmm...quite a unique name.. maybe the son.

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