Hebel Issues / Plaster First Stage Finished

The plasterers worked through this week to complete first stage of the plastering. The entire house has been plastered, bulkheads formed, joins and screws filled and cornices done. Today the ladder and platform to access the first floor was removed in preparation for the stairs to be installed on Monday and the kitchen cabinets to go in same day or Tuesday. So fixing stage is well and truly in progress.

As previously mentioned, the Pre-Plaster Inspection report identified that there are still defects with the side walls of our concrete slab (an item carried over from our frame stage report and yet to be rectified correctly) and issues with the the installation of the hebel. Here are the issues:

The hebel panels along this side of the house do not extend down the wall far enough to align with the ones where the garage and laundry have been stepped down. This has left the floor slab clearly exposed.
The CG solution will be to clear the soil from the side of the house and apply a render coat to the concrete slab, hopefully creating a neat interaction between the hebel. We have been told it will be no problem concreting or paving against the render. Hopefully this is correct.

The ground floor hebel panels along every side of the house have not been finished along their bottom edges. Clearly visible in these photos. Also, the edges of the floor slab have not yet been aligned and finished in with the bottom of the hebel wall panels. You can clearly see the hebel overhanging (and at variable amounts) the slab. In other areas, it's actually the reverse, with the slab protruding further than the hebel. The other problem is the black plastic under the hebel panels is visible.

So the problem is that it's very difficult to concrete, pave and even landscape neatly against these edges. Not only will it be uneven and unsightly; we've been told that paving/concreting under the hebel panels could result in unwanted slab heave - no good as this could crack the render finish. The alternative is to pave/concrete/landscape against the hebel itself which we have been advised not to do as this creates problems in itself (eg water ingress).

We have a meeting with our SS first thing Monday morning to discuss these issues. Apparently our building inspector also had a meeting with CG today to discuss these issues too. We are hopeful CG will address the hebel issues and come up with suitable and sustainable rectification methods to fix these problems now so they don't become bigger problems in the future. Given CG presently only build using hebel, it's in their best interest to detail proper solutions to these issues.

There are still areas of the slab where the concrete coverage is honeycombed and the steel reinforcement exposed. Apparently the relevant building surveyor certified these works as being complete, which is alarming and disappointing given the present state of the slab (see photo). Works have either not been done as requested or have not been done in accordance with the engineers design. We've been told the concreter is returning next week to complete the slab works in accordance with the design engineer's specification and slab repair detail.

Prior to this, we've been advised the design engineer should actually inspect the slab and make complete recommendations on how to best treat and rectify so that our floor slab can be fully and correctly repaired. We've also been advised the relevant building surveyor should actually be present to supervise the rectification works when they are undertaken. We will confirm these two points when we meet our SS on Monday. We simply want CG to get this right and trust these slab works will be done correctly and entirely. We would not be happy if slab issues were still identified as defects in our next independent inspection report.