Did you use a contractor for this build? The neighbors of my parents ran into this, but somehow the foundation team added around a foot in all dimensions. The owner of the property refused to accept anything other than a new foundation. The contractor refused and from what my Dad told me the home owner was forced to sell to the contractor by the courts as their recourse.
This story also seems a litle off unless the contractor didn't allow inspection. It'd be found in 10 seconds with a single usage of a tape measure.
We used a contractor yes. Oddly, the civil engineer signed off on the foundations. I think what happened is that the foundations might have been correct, but when they started laying bricks, they used the internal dimensions.
The foundation is normally 500-600mm wide.
Another funny story is that we have a concrete column in the living room that was meant to be 250mm x 250mm. The subcontractor decided to box it in and pour it before we came to inspect. He made it 450mm x 450mm.
So we have this giant concrete thing in the passage.
If some of it wasn't as embarrassing, I'd blog about it with photos.
So a 250 x 250 column became 450 x 450? That's a 3.24 times increase in cross sectional area. This would imply something like a safety factor of 12 if the standard safety factor of 4 was used in the original engineering.
I guess concrete must be really cheap whereever you are? I don't know many subcontractors excited about using 3 times the concrete for something.
This story also seems a litle off unless the contractor didn't allow inspection. It'd be found in 10 seconds with a single usage of a tape measure.