Building crisis from leaky to ‘defective’
Leaky buildings are proving to be the tip of the iceberg when apartment owners call in inspectors.
One consultant says he’s dealing with repair bills of tens of millions of dollars, and deeper inspections often open up ‘‘a can of worms’’.
‘‘We’re finding that we’re [opening] these buildings up and there’s fire protection issues and structural issues and all sorts of other issues,’’ Stuart Wilson of Maynard Marks said.
‘‘Fire collars, sealant around plumbing penetrations and dampeners in mechanical ventilation systems – anything that can create fire cells within units.’’
Such problems could also be ‘‘massively’’ costly to fix.
The most expensive leaky residential building to come to light so far is rumoured to have a repair bill of $40 million, but Wilson said he knew of one that had clocked up $70m.
He said often building owners suspected a problem, while at other times his firm was called in to do a check before the 10-year statute of limitations on the Government’s weathertight building claims expired.
Everyone was focused on weathertightness. ‘‘But you open the buildings up and the interior of the building is constructed as badly as the outside.’’
Wilson is involved with the Mountain View apartments in Auckland, which have multiple problems and will cost at least $32.8m to fix.
He said many of the problems stemmed from the 1990s and early 2000s when apartment construction was still relatively new.
‘‘We would have been used to building residential buildings and people just didn’t understand this fire protection stuff,’’ he said.
‘‘You’re talking far more complex buildings, heavily reliant on fire protection components.’’
However, buildings of any decade could have problems and he had dealt with defective buildings as new as about 2010. Nor did they always feature plaster or fibre cement cladding, materials characteristic of the leaky home era.
John Gray of the Home Owners and Buyers Association said many of the defects being unearthed could not be seen until the building was effectively ‘‘torn apart’’.
‘‘And the stuff we’re uncovering, disturbingly, is liferisk defects where it’s lack of passive fire protection and structural issues,’’ he said.
‘‘It’s not a leaky building crisis any more; it’s a defective building crisis.’’
But Gray said the issue was compounded by an unlicensed and underqualified industry doing prepurchase building inspections.
Some inspection businesses were up for sale with no experience required and just three days of training given. As a result, Gray said, many problems were not being picked up.