BROCKVILLE RETAINING WALL HELD UP BY NO. 8 WIRE, FOUR FENCE POSTS AND ONE BLOKE'S GOOD FEELING
The hill is moving. The wall is moving with it. The builder says that's the design.
A retaining wall on a Brockville section has been holding back roughly nine tonnes of hillside for five years using No. 8 wire and four fence posts of visibly different lengths. The bloke who built it says the rest is optimism. His words.
The wall sits below the house of Lorraine Dunphy, 58, who paid a 2021 price for it and won't say what. The wall came with it. So did a LIM report that mentions it once, under "other". "It bulges when it rains," Dunphy said. "This is Dunedin. It rains. So it bulges. My neighbour's clothesline is now on my property, geologically speaking, and neither of us has the energy to discuss it."
Gaz Whitlock built it in 2019. Cash job, previous owner, "a long weekend and a bit". He rejects the No. 8 wire characterisation. "It's not holding the wall up. It's holding the wall together. The hill's holding it up. Big fucking difference, and I'd expect a paper to know that." The timber, he added, came off a demolished flat on Castle Street. "Been through two couch fires. Already stress-tested. You don't get that at Bunnings."
Dunphy does not dispute any of this. "He's a good cunt, Gaz. Turned up, did the job, didn't charge GST. I just wouldn't let him near a spirit level again. Or a hill." Whitlock said he used a spirit level on the first post and eyeballed the rest off that one. He calls this standard.
A Dunedin City Council building inspector was due to assess the wall on Wednesday. He was redeployed to the central city over the hotel transformer business, on the basis that hydrogen cyanide "outranks a fence". A council spokesperson said the structure "does not currently meet the definition of a retaining wall". Nothing has fallen on anyone, the spokesperson added, "which is the standard we can resource at present".
Whitlock has offered to come back and do it properly. Tuesday. Dunphy has moved her car to the street and the neighbour has moved the clothesline. The wire has not moved. Whitlock says that's the whole point.
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Reader Letters
★ BarryBishopdale
Back in my day, standards mattered. We'd never rely on no bloody No. 8 wire and optimism to hold a hill in place. The council also took its job seriously. Wouldn't have happened in '94!
tired_in_riccarton
The council can't even manage footpaths without supervision. This is why our city’s so buggered!
fed-up-fay
Barry, were standards ever good in '94?
★ Trev_Hornby
Gaz is a good cunt. She'll be right mates! If things stay put through two couch fires, that's bloody resilient.
★ Margaret_F
Honestly, in our day, Gerald wouldn't trust a hill unless it was bolted down by professionals. These youths today with their DIY spirit levels!
waynelaflak3
Lol.
★ BarryBishopdale
@fed-up-fay, better than today’s standards, that’s for sure! We had real builders, not backyard blokes who eyeball their jobs.
gadgetgreg
Just get the fence fixed already.
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