Grand Designs dream property caves in on itself leaving £200,000 worth of damage

dailyrecord.co.uk:

A Grand Designs dream home was met with a nightmare end, suffering £200,000 worth of damage when it collapsed inwardly, an incident dismissed as "lunacy" by the Channel 4 show's host Kevin McCloud.

Richard Hawkes, 49, and wife Sophie, 50, invested their ambitions into constructing their "gravity defying" abode near Maidstone, Kent, only to witness disaster when an unsupported arch, showcasing the property, gave way which was reportedly composed merely of Plaster of Paris and a thin layer of tiles.Traditionally, such material is used for domed constructs; however, the pair were allegedly warned to avoid applying pressure on the segment during the development phase of this revolutionary design, the Mirror reports.Scarcely before issues started surfacing, Kevin was caught off-guard while broadcasting live as the structure crumbled down behind him, incurring a massive £200,000 increase in project cost and adding an extra week onto completion time as rectifications were arranged.Narrating the ordeal to The Sun, homeowner Richard shared: "I was standing by the camera person looking at the camera.

You hear this almighty crash."One of the things they were told not to do was lean on the first layer of tiles. It's extremely delicate.

It's the subsequent layers that make it stronger. "[The stonemason] leaned too much. It made part of it fail and whatever that was left fell with it.