Ceiling collapse
After the recent collapse of a parking garage in Ramat Hahayal, engineer Ron Arad was asked whether there are ways to know a parking garage has defects serious enough to call in a building inspection engineer. In other words, which signs should raise a red flag, and is there a way to tell if a garage has a serious engineering failure?
Leaving that judgment to the residents would be irresponsible, so a new building's common areas, not just its apartments, deserve their own inspection. Structural cracks, meaning cracks in load-bearing elements such as columns, beams, or supporting walls, are one red flag.
Sagging precast concrete ceiling panels are another, and so is concrete that has started to crumble. Dampness in the garage can also lead to failures over time, and rust stains in the concrete are worth watching for: rust usually means rebar corroding and expanding inside the concrete, which over time cracks and breaks it.
These failures rarely happen all at once. There are usually early warning signs, and a building inspection engineer can spot them before the failure occurs.
The engineers of Arad Bedek Bayit, led by building engineer Ron Arad, whom courts appoint as their own expert on construction defects. The company has been inspecting apartments and buildings since 2001. Engineer Ron Arad · More about the company