Building standards seem to be slipping
Iam going to depart this week from my normal question and answer to tackle an overdue topic.
I’ve been writing this column for more than 23 years. It was my original goal to help you get the most for your money when you hire a contractor or builder to make your housing dreams come true.
Over the years this goal has been distilled to a sentence at the bottom of my free newsletter: “Do it right, not over!” Sadly, as each week passes, I feel like I’m pushing a boulder up a mountain.
I say this based on what I see with my own eyes and in the vast number of emails and comments I receive each day at AsktheBuilder. com and on my YouTube videos.
In the New Hampshire town where I live, a new house is being built. What I see every time I pass shocks me.
The day the subcontractor poured the footing, I was there. The footing of a home is perhaps the most critical aspect of its construction. The foundation rests on the footing. It must be strong. It needs to have reinforcing steel in it. Period.
This house won’t have it. One of the workers told me, “Oh, the builder didn’t want to spend the money for steel.”
As the weeks progressed, more and more mistakes and poorquality issues have blossomed at the house. One of the biggest was allowing the insulation and drywall contractors to proceed with their work while the outside of the house was not weatherproof — amid winter weather and rainstorms.
I have no idea how much wind-driven rain penetrated into the walls, soaking the insulation, but I’m sure some did. It’s unacceptable to allow this to happen.
Oh, I hear you saying: “But, Tim, what about the building inspectors and the building code? Won’t those two things protect me and my investment?” No. In many locations, there are no building inspections.
It gets worse. The building code is a set of minimum standards. If you build a house to code, it’s like getting 70 percent on a test. It means you pass by the skin of your teeth. You can build many things with little additional cost and greatly exceed the standards in the building code.
It’s painfully obvious that millions of homeowners need a quality-control checklist before starting a project. I’ve put together a basic one you can get at my website for free. I hope it helps you “do it right, not over!”