In short: The hardware that ties a roof to the walls and the walls to the slab costs very little and is checked by almost nobody. Missing washers and untensioned braces are the items we record most in this corridor.
A continuous path to the ground
Wind does not lift a roof off a house in one piece. It finds the weakest connection in the chain that runs from the sheeting to the trusses, the trusses to the top plate, the frame to the slab. Tie down is that chain, and a chain with one link missing is not a chain.
The items themselves
Washers missing from a tie down. Triple grips at a truss tie that were not fixed as specified. Bracket fixings in the roof framing that were short. A bottom plate overhanging its support by twenty five millimetres. Each one is a few dollars of hardware and a minute of labour, and each one is load path.
Why Catherine Field
Catherine Park is the estate here, and the Camden Council area is building steadily rather than explosively. That helps, but the pattern is the same as everywhere in the south west: a framer works quickly, hardware is installed by eye, and the surveyor's sign-off is a compliance check rather than a hardware audit.
Catching it
All of this is visible at frame stage and invisible a week later. A frame inspection in Catherine Field takes a couple of hours and the report is with you within 24, referenced to the Guide to Standards and Tolerances 2017 and specific enough to hand to the site supervisor without rewriting it.
Written by our local inspection team from work carried out in Catherine Field. Licensed building practitioners.
