She had tried to track down Andreas but wasn't able to reach him. I pull over at a rest stop as she is going on and on.
The gist of the 40 minute conversation was that the Ministry of Labour : Workplace Safety inspector had come by the house again. Since the stucco scaffolding had not changed or moved; he ordered a STOP in the work and for the scaffoldign to be taken down immediately. The inside was all ok from a safety perspective so no stopping there!
The guy also tells my neighbour that the stucco people have bolted their scaffolding to her roof and it will be completely ruined...she of course panics and calls Andreas...but then has to track me down. Andreas is away in Utah at the moment. He also says that the scaffolding needs an engineer to review her house to see if it will hold.
In the mean time he also decides that he is a building inspector as well and starts to tell my neighbour that our eaves are hanging way too far over the lot line and therefore over her roof; he also says that her chimney will smoke into our attic. He speaks to her as if we are the worst neighbours and that we obviously must be breaking all the building codes secretly behind her back, rendering her property worthless. Needless to say she gets a little worked up about the whole thing.
The only thing I could do was say, look the safety of the site is my builder's responsibility and the building code is the building inspector's responsibility. ...at this point I am thinking to myself, well, the building inspector has been at the house for several inspections already and didn't seem to even mention the eaves....but I gave her the name of the building inspector so she could call the City and see what they say.
I eventually got off the phone and once back in town I stopped at the house. Thank goodness we started off with a good relationship and that she is a realist!
I got the whole story again while watching the stucco people take down all their scaffolding. Still haven't heard anything from the builder as to when OUR stucco will get completed.
She asked to come into the house to see where the scaffolding was bolted in. I said of course, any time! Anyway, we looked at it for a few minutes out the side bedroom window and really even she shrugged and couldn't figure out what the heck that safety inspector was talking about. There was maybe 4 screws anchoring some of the scaffold onto her roof. We had spoken to her months ago about needing her roof and she was ok with it, and now after looking she is still ok with it since the safety guys seems to have blown it out of proportion.
But, she still wants to call the City about the eaves; apparently she did already but they didn't do anything about it. I tell her to please go ahead but I am not sure what I can do at this point considering the city stamped the plans and have inspected the house several times. She just walked away grumbling about the stupid City!
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