Tony, I agree 100%, 40mm is the minimum and they do seem to rely on the render as a structural part. All the builds I see going on in our area they are using round river stone that is much larger than 20mm; no way to get "aggregate" around the bar properly. We had one major screw up (major to me) where they forgot to put in the metal tabs in the fence/wall columns for the back gate. They had to chip out the concrete to weld them to the rebar; the only positive is that I was able to see how good the concrete coverage was and it took a lot of work to chip out because the concrete mix is pretty stout. Shawn
It get's better , have a look at the cold joint in the concrete post , in line with the bed joint on the top course of blocks , it is completely cracked and open , that structure is completely unsound View attachment 10339 Tony
I think that place has been sitting like this for at least 5 months now. With those voids and the salty air...you know it is into the rebar. It also looks like you can see a couple of the stirrups on that beam.
