Seismometer to monitor construction vibration

Two neighboring properties are about to undergo construction. The contractor for both houses also last year constructed a house on a property about 90′ from our house and used a pile-driving method to put corrugated sheet metal “walls” in the ground to save on the foundation pouring and underpinning. It’s faster and hence cheaper for the contractor since they can do their pour in a week instead of two months, or that’s what I was lead to believe. Anyway, when they were driving those sheets or piles (not sure), our house was shaking. Mind you its a 12-year old house with brick/masonry construction. We noticed our plaster crown moldings were separating from the ceiling and walls, nails started popping up through sheetrock walls’ paint, cracks started appearing in the masonry, etc. We brought our insurance company down to inspect the damage, but of course they blamed it all on just our perception noticing the damage only after the construction was taking place and that this was just normal wear-and-tear and the settling of our house. Furthermore, they claim that the contractor’s noise and construction vibration was all within city regulations as per the contractors records. Maybe they’re right? Or maybe they just didn’t want to accept that our house was damaged from the construction and pay up? (Of course whenever we poked our head by the site, we noticed that their vibration equipment was always mysteriously lying on its side, as though somebody accidentally knocked it over and never remembered to correct that.) In any case, we want to monitor the upcoming construction to make sure that its within regulation and we need our own monitoring equipment that won’t be “accidentally” tampered with by the the contractor. Any ideas where we can buy or lease that? I suppose we will now photo-document our entire property, being that we just spent around 30k so far repairing porch, steps and house masonry, repairing cracked paint all over the home, reaffixing moldings, etc. Am I missing any other precautionary measures we could take?

iceberg

in Roofers 10 years and 9 months ago

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iceberg | 10 years and 9 months ago

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@Cate, the bulk of that went into the masonry work- porch, steps, stone window casements, etc. and the rest was pretty much a painter using a combination of caulking, spackling compound, paint, etc to touch up the walls, fill in gaps between the moldings and the ceilings/walls, pushing light fixtures back into ceilings. There was no plastering work at all, its just what the moldings are cast from.

cate | 10 years and 9 months ago

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Hire an engineering firm to do a pre-construction survey for you. They will take photos, etc. They place markers inside your house to monitor the change in any cracks. BTW, $30,000 to fix all the damage — what a nightmare. How did you deal with all the plastering while you were living there? We have to do more plastering too.

iceberg | 10 years and 9 months ago

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Thanks @jockdeboeraia – are you referring to the guys with the tripods?

jockdeboeraia | 10 years and 9 months ago

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Hire a surveyor. They can take care of it for you.