Can Sewer and road work Repair Work Damage The weak (most of them) Junction houses?

 



A while back a reader of this blog in the Upper Junction town-homes posted a comment about the retaining wall construction at the 30 Weston Rd development. The comment was concerned about " vibrations that are a regular feature of our day here at Weston road townhouses affect the structure of our houses".

This concern also was great when the West Toronto Diamond project was pounding large round steel piles in to the ground. Sewer and road repair work that involves digging up the street can harm the most Junctions block’s residential houses. If it does, what recourse house owners have.

Emergency road, sewer and water main repairs occur all around the greater Junction area almost every few weeks. An area that bordered in many areas by train tracks and many of the homes are over 100 years old, resting on rubble and field-stone foundations

City and private ontractors regularly cut through the asphalt or break up concrete surfaces streets, using large hydraulic diesel-powered backhoes  to break up the asphalt and concrete component of  the street  requiring excavation, pound steel supports into the trench and dump excavated dirt into trucks used to haul it away. House holders believe that this severe shaking is causing irreparable structural damage to their historic homes.

Often this pounding is so severe that it severely shakes houses.

As an alternative, many people we would like to have the contractor push and not pound pilings into the trench and  slowly lift into the trucks and onto the street so that they do not experience the excessive vibrations in our houses that we are now being subjected to. This would prevent our homes from being harmed structurally without delaying the needed repair to the sewer line.

People are often told they can file for damages after the completion of work. That is not a satisfactory response, why must there be a wait and see model.  Why not a regulatory mandated and technically monitoring system used? An industry exists  to deliver testing, monitoring and work methods advise, simply the elected person need to create tighter legislation so all companies doing such work have a equal starting point to  achieve the goal.