Crazy stuff you've seen on building sites

kelty

Plasterers putting washing up liquid i.e. fairy liquid into plaster to make it smoother and easier to work with but also making it alot weaker.

So now theres houses around the country only a few years old with plaster falling off the walls and ceilings.

LETHAL LADY

Hubby tells me the pushing over of occupied portaloos is a regular occurance.

3ndahalfof6

LETHAL LADY wrote: »

Hubby tells me the pushing over of occupied portaloos is a regular occurance.

I just keep thinking of the American forces every time I read this post.

stovelid

Vacancies.

Capt'n Midnight

kelty wrote: »

Plasterers putting washing up liquid i.e. fairy liquid into plaster to make it smoother and easier to work with but also making it alot weaker.

That's funny except they they did the same with concrete too :mad:

phasers

How come you all hang out on building sites?

I've never seen anything crazy in one because I'm not a builder.

Absurdum

fryup wrote: »

:pac:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGfFYB-AghI

lolz english people are stupid morons :P

housetypeb

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

That's funny except they they did the same with concrete too :mad:

They add washing up liquid to the mortar for the brickies too.,it's cheaper than plasticiser.

Sundy

Saw a lad down in a 3 metre trench laying pipes while the wall above was being held up by a digger.

An old trick was for when someone went to the portaloo before lunch was to park the digger against the door and leave it there for a while.

bbam

I know of an estate and when foundations were inspected with steel in, the steel would then be taken out and placed in the next foundation for inspection..
About 75% of the houses have no steel in their foundations...

I reckon if we ever get any sort of earthquake here people will be buired in their beds in alot of the recent estates

Radon membrane cut into strips and placed along outside bolck walls to give the impression the house was done... cuts cost down to about 20%

Some of the most expensive estate houses in the history of the state are also the worst build houses..

galwayrush

bbam wrote: »

I know of an estate and when foundations were inspected with steel in, the steel would then be taken out and placed in the next foundation for inspection..
About 75% of the houses have no steel in their foundations...

I reckon if we ever get any sort of earthquake here people will be buired in their beds in alot of the recent estates

Radon membrane cut into strips and placed along outside bolck walls to give the impression the house was done... cuts cost down to about 20%

Some of the most expensive estate houses in the history of the state are also the worst build houses..

I saw that happen in Galway in 2 different large estates.

flanum

saw a lot of made-up stuff on the overhead projector at the 2nd safe pass course, a makey uppy course taught by a person that has absolutely no experience on building sites.... there was a lot of money made by them safe pass crowds... ridiculous!

chrismon

I seen a forman in 2 seperate fist fights with labours, he lost both times :pac:

bbam wrote: »

I know of an estate and when foundations were inspected with steel in, the steel would then be taken out and placed in the next foundation for inspection..
About 75% of the houses have no steel in their foundations...

I reckon if we ever get any sort of earthquake here people will be buired in their beds in alot of the recent estates

Radon membrane cut into strips and placed along outside bolck walls to give the impression the house was done... cuts cost down to about 20%

Some of the most expensive estate houses in the history of the state are also the worst build houses..

Thats actually terrifying:eek:

AhSureTisGrand

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj_DeVHd0NM

bbam

chrismon wrote: »

Thats actually terrifying:eek:

Indeed... One woman got the lads in before the estate was done with a crack in the plasterboard of the joining wall.. The crack was big enough to put your hand into... Solution ?? New plasterboard and re-skim, woman was delighted :eek:

Like I said.. an night time earthquake of 3 on the Richter scale would kill allot of people sleeping in these estates, I'd say they'd fall like cards on a windy day.




I heard of a lad installing Alarms... He'd take a dump in the box and leave in the wardrobe... Nice welcome to your new home !

Mike 1972

galwayrush wrote: »

Saw about a dozen 240 V extension leads joined by insulating tape, strapped to the scaffolding on the Eyre Sq shopping centre when it was being built.

[Irrelevant pedantry]Standard mains voltage in Ireland (and across the EU) is 230 Volts[/]

Outdoor power tools are supposed to use a stepped down 110 volt supply.

couldntthink

up for anything wrote: »

You must be quite young only to remember the six odd years that that happened.

I remember the thirty years before where construction workers pulled in a living wage if they were lucky, where they dispersed to all corners of the earth to find work because there was none here, where if they took a job on price and finished it by working 15 hours a day, the 'employer' felt within his rights to hold back some of the price because obviously the job couldn't have been worth that much because it got done in three days instead of six. I remember weeks when their greedy employers didn't pay wet time/snow time/frost time so there were no wages or cut wages. I remember lots of times when the subbie would be a distant memory while the lads waited anxiously on site on a Friday afternoon into evening waiting for him to turn up with their money. I remember banking cheques that cost me money because they bounced and no reimbursement.

During the Celtic Tiger I remember wage slips where my husband paid nearly equal tax to what he took home. Yes, great wages but spread across the weeks where there were no wages the money wasn't so great. There were lots of those weeks even during the CT.

I remember the local Union rep (BATU) laughing at me when I handed him €600 subscription for the year because I asked him what my husband would gain from being a member. Apparently a big FAT NOTHING but he was expected to down tools when they needed him to make a point and not get paid for it.

Begrudgery is still such a large part of the Irish make up. People are still fixated on the apparent woes done to them by the ordinary working person but don't get enraged, beyond mouthing off on here, by the real gougers. People moaned about the prices charged by construction workers but most were well able to meet those prices.


:mad:

You're right, I am quite young. So my only experience of building sites is overpaid tradesmen. I'm also a tradesman but not in any building trade. I worked on a few sites and I certainly saw no misery but I saw lots of my friends go into building trades thinking it would last forever. I got to listen to them take the piss because at the time I was in the second worst paying trade in Ireland (motor mechanic). I'm also in a trade that doesn't have it's own union, and wages are set by the SIMI, which is basically garage owners deciding how much is a mechanic's fair wage.

Several of my friends were making more as 2nd year apprentices than the qualified guys I was working with. And that is a joke as far as I'm concerned. In the end it all worked out for me because I think of all the trades I'm probably in the best one at this stage. I'm not gloating or anything like that, and I do realise that a lot of young people like my friends have had to immigrate because they chose the wrong career path. Your stories of the old days are probably going to be repeated a lot over the coming years, but I am still entitled to say what the craziest thing I've seen on a building site is, without being patronised by you with your "the old days were terrible" routine. By all accounts it's not only builders that a tough time down through the years.

At the end of the day builders milked as much as they could while they could. And who could blame them, we would have all done the same. But things like blocklayers getting 1.50 to 2 euro a block, that's sounds pretty crazy to me.

Duggy747

Was tiling a bathroom on a site before when the guy I was working with decided to come up behind me and said: "Look what I got for ya!"

I turn around and the twisted face of a dead mink is staring back me a few inches from my face.

Next thing his phone rings, he goes outside to take it and I carry on working................only to get a horrible smell. I turn around to see the rotten corpse of the mink in the bathroom with me while he chatted away on his phone.

Suddenly, the ham sandwich I was looking forward to just didn't taste right that day

That smell of rotten flesh took an age to go away.

couldntthink

Duggy747 wrote: »

I turn around and the twisted face of a dead mink is staring back me a few inches from my face.

Surely someone will have some kind of rascist comment about this.:D

charlemont

flash1080 wrote: »

Architects really are useless.

The Architectural Draughting teacher I had was absolutely pathetic so I used to help my classmates with it and the spiteful ol' bat hated me for it but the coin flipped as I hadn't a clue at AutoCad as I had no prior computer experience and our teacher was from Baghdad so his English was fairly rough.
I notice the lads who were used to computers and had no problem at AutoCad couldn't even hold a pencil right though.


I knew two guy's who would drink vodka every Friday afternoon at work and then race each other home.

Andrew33

kowloon wrote: »

Archaeologist.

Na, making the tea!

Actually, I once caught the "nipper" stirring the big teapot in the hut with a fukkin sewer rod, he was kicked from one end of the site to the other.

saintsaltynuts

MrStuffins wrote: »

I hope the lazy c*nt didn't get paid for a full days work?

Na the boss clocked him off before he hit the ground.

B_Fanatic

Someone said ass cracks... One thing that astounded me in my summers on site was just how stereotypical it is. At least every one in two builders has an ass crack showing at any given time.

Killer Pigeon

s20101938 wrote: »

1 saw scaffolding collapse
2 saw tower crane fall over
3 saw huge dump truck overturn
4 saw precast slab break while being lifted by a crane and fall narrowly missing chippies.
5 saw guy fall 3 storeys off scaffolding and walk away.

Please share your stories...

"Irish Construction Industry: Apocalypse"

REFLINE1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz71eVreMDc

mattjack

couldntthink wrote: »

You're right, I am quite young. So my only experience of building sites is overpaid tradesmen. I'm also a tradesman but not in any building trade. I worked on a few sites and I certainly saw no misery but I saw lots of my friends go into building trades thinking it would last forever. I got to listen to them take the piss because at the time I was in the second worst paying trade in Ireland (motor mechanic). I'm also in a trade that doesn't have it's own union, and wages are set by the SIMI, which is basically garage owners deciding how much is a mechanic's fair wage.

Several of my friends were making more as 2nd year apprentices than the qualified guys I was working with. And that is a joke as far as I'm concerned. In the end it all worked out for me because I think of all the trades I'm probably in the best one at this stage. I'm not gloating or anything like that, and I do realise that a lot of young people like my friends have had to immigrate because they chose the wrong career path. Your stories of the old days are probably going to be repeated a lot over the coming years, but I am still entitled to say what the craziest thing I've seen on a building site is, without being patronised by you with your "the old days were terrible" routine. By all accounts it's not only builders that a tough time down through the years.

At the end of the day builders milked as much as they could while they could. And who could blame them, we would have all done the same. But things like blocklayers getting 1.50 to 2 euro a block, that's sounds pretty crazy to me.

Nobody really is patronising you...I,ve never seen a second yr apprentice earn 500euro unless he works a lot of overtime...the vast majority of us are governed by union rates ..I,ve 20plus years on sites well before safe pass was heard off..sites with no safety concerns,no toilets,running etc..the best rate I ever heard off was 1.80 a block and they worked for that ...most site trades ..if you get a look a their log books etc will say "industrial contracting" before their trade ..contracting literally means you go where the is...you may be lucky and last a few years with a company or just a few weeks..most of us get very little continuation of work with any employer.

cruiser178

up for anything wrote: »

You must be quite young only to remember the six odd years that that happened.

I remember the thirty years before where construction workers pulled in a living wage if they were lucky, where they dispersed to all corners of the earth to find work because there was none here, where if they took a job on price and finished it by working 15 hours a day, the 'employer' felt within his rights to hold back some of the price because obviously the job couldn't have been worth that much because it got done in three days instead of six. I remember weeks when their greedy employers didn't pay wet time/snow time/frost time so there were no wages or cut wages. I remember lots of times when the subbie would be a distant memory while the lads waited anxiously on site on a Friday afternoon into evening waiting for him to turn up with their money. I remember banking cheques that cost me money because they bounced and no reimbursement.

During the Celtic Tiger I remember wage slips where my husband paid nearly equal tax to what he took home. Yes, great wages but spread across the weeks where there were no wages the money wasn't so great. There were lots of those weeks even during the CT.

I remember the local Union rep (BATU) laughing at me when I handed him €600 subscription for the year because I asked him what my husband would gain from being a member. Apparently a big FAT NOTHING but he was expected to down tools when they needed him to make a point and not get paid for it.

Begrudgery is still such a large part of the Irish make up. People are still fixated on the apparent woes done to them by the ordinary working person but don't get enraged, beyond mouthing off on here, by the real gougers. People moaned about the prices charged by construction workers but most were well able to meet those prices.


:mad:

Great post ufa. Lot of memories in that post for me, I went through over 20 yrs of that shít myself.

Unregistered.

A Donkey.

mattjack

Unregistered. wrote: »

A Donkey.

Was it Irish or Polish ?

Apanachi

Arrived to work one morning and a crane had fallen over and crashed on top of and crushed no less than 4 cars every single one of them were Mercedes!!!

bodhrandude

Appropriate I reckon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ht75VAnquoA

scatter

One time on this job ,this fella started ,real attitude problem.Anyhow ,there was a portacabin set up as the toilets,3 cubicles all tiled and hot water etc.This cnat thought it was okay to leave toilets like a bomb had just hit it.So one day I said get a water hose and stick it down toilet to unblock it ,what he didnt know was that it was a compressor hose and it was hooked up to the compressor ready to go,i told him to hold the hose in the toilet and id turn on water.Well when we turned on the valve you never heard the likes of it and he came out of that cabin covered from head to toe in shi??.A very humbling experience for him,we never saw him or his attitude after that.:D:D

Johny 8

housetypeb wrote: »

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

That's funny except they they did the same with concrete too :mad:

They add washing up liquid to the mortar for the brickies too.,it's cheaper than plasticiser.

Are you mad washing up liquid is way too dear. Motarciser is 9 euro for 25 litres