Building a Home and Cost of Poor Quality

[Charmed]

Dear Covers:

What is the Cost of Poor Quality? The $40,000 museum mural, with spelling mistakes, provides one example. Here's another. A jury sided with Sandra Bullock in a dispute with a builder she said did lousy work on her Lake Austin home.

Actress Sandra Bullock was awarded about $7 million in damages Thursday. Jurors had to consider 48 questions before reaching a verdict. Among the questions were whether

1. A contract between builder Benny Daneshjou and Bullock was breached.
2. Labor and material costs were inflated, and whether
3. Daneshjou violated federal racketeering laws.

Charmed

 

[Jim Howe]

The new house poor quality syndrome is happening all the time. Best advice is to solicit a professional home inspection before taking possession. I believe it is monies well spent.
In my own case a professional inspection might have revealed that the last three spindels on the staircase were installed upside down, that the dishwasher door could not be opened because it hits the front of the stove, That pieces of 2x6 were left in the fireplace clean out pit where they eventually caught fire, etc, ect.
GET A PROFESSIONAL HOME INSPECTION! PUT IT YOUR CONTRACT!

 

[Hershal]

One other - and absolutely critical - part of the home quality question is to determine the building codes for the area one is buying. Some places are much stronger with codes than some other places. Ask if the building inspector is a Certified Building Official (CBO)....not the home inspector, they are more after the construction, I refer to the Code official.

Look for the right stamps on products for the home, for example, appliances should be listed by UL/FM/CSA or some other ISO Guide 65 accredited product certifyer. Trusses should have a stamp of an accredited inspection agency. Other products (e.g. drywall, insulation) should carry marks of approval from ICBO, BOCA, SBCCI, or ICC ES.

If you REALLY want to be picky.....and if the home is new......ask for the concrete break strength report from the accredited concrete lab.....the builder should have it for that specific homesite.

Hershal

 

[Jen Kirley]

An emphatic "yes" to the above suggestions. In my view, a good builder will agree to an independent home inspection before the last payment is transacted.

This is important because codes do vary. In my rural town, I built a 30 foot chimney and was not required to have a permit or inspection of any kind. Of all things, wouldn't you expect a brick chimney to require this, especially as I'm not a mason?

There should be a warranty too. A cousin of mine had a leaking roof and cracked tile floor after she took posession of the house. She did the roundabout with the builder for several months (they had once been among the best around, but had grown significantly due to demand and seems to have lost some controls) and finally brought in the local TV station's Answer Line; when these folks called the builder and described their intent to come over with a film crew and put the example on the news, the problems were speedily fixed. The costs of this poor quality would have been quite steep, though almost impossible to accurately measure, if the builder's poor workmanship and shameful customer service had been advertised on the evening news.

Third, buyer beware. Research the process, be discriminating. Ask people you know, who have built homes, how they liked their builders. My in-laws' experience is one we will not repeat; the fellow seemed to have cash flow problems, which may have caused the delays in buying things like kitchen cabinets and garage doors.

Certainly, I would research the materials codes and construction process as far as I'm comfortable with. Inspect the thing yourself--(you can be sure I will, when we build this Spring)--appear during the building process, even if only after hours, and take notes to discuss with the builder. A good builder would not want to find out these things after the house is all done and awaiting final payment. Be a visible customer, do not wait until the end to approve the home. Be aware of safety issues, material requirements and be ready to catch details like the ballustrade spindles. My in-laws' builder had a heck of a time with the arches in the kitchen entries. They still look bad to me, but there they stay.

It's my theory that the customer has some responsibility in these matters, and rights too, to help make sure you move in to an acceptable home as soon as possible.

 

[Laura M]

I guess I'm missing something here. In a buyer beware market, yes the buyer of a new home may want to do certain things like an inspection. But I'm surprised no one piped in sooner with putting the responsibility for "Determining customer requirements" and "product realization to ensure customer requirements are met" on the builder. Certainly alot of it is dependend on "Trained and qualified employees" and "statutory and regulatory requirements." (codes)

I guess I found it surprising that we are all for 'inspections' in the home building industry, but in manufacturing, the push is for the workers to be responsible. Mmmm - are their any ISO certified home builders I wonder. If so, is their quality better?

 

[Hershal]

Laura,

You raise a good question. I do not know if there are any ISO 9K registered builders.....but if you want a stell framed building, I know of a number of accredited steel fabricators.

With respect to meeting customer needs, there are some points to look at.

If the home is a custom home, then the builder designs per the client's input and requirements, and assures that the building meets Code. Requirements can include use of accredited testing labs to ensure that non-certified things (e.g. the concrete slab foundation) are tested and meet applicable requirements.

Tract homes are a bit different. There one buys a cookie-cutter approach with limited customizing options. The other contributors are correct about asking the builder questions and walking the site yourself as the home goes up....

Always ask to see the licenses of the contractors that are putting in the electrical, plumbing, etc., as that is how most of the actual construction industry is regulated on an individual basis.

The builders rarely put together a package like that to show everyone as a selling point, but they do have the information.

Hershal

 

[jhbrand]

I guess I found it surprising that we are all for 'inspections' in the home building industry, but in manufacturing, the push is for the workers to be responsible. Mmmm - are their any ISO certified home builders I wonder. If so, is their quality better?

Laura,

There are a number of ISO certified home builders, although I cannot give you names right now. I recently ran across an article in an ASQ Newsletter (Section??) about one such contractor.

In addition, the National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB) at www.nahb.org has a wide range of quality initiatives, many of which can be found from this page http: //www. toolbase. org/secondaryT.asp?TrackID=&CategoryID=31 -DEAD LINK The general tone of the NAHB seems to be stated on this page http: //www .toolbase. org/tertiaryT.asp?TrackID=&CategoryID=679&DocumentID=4077 -DEAD LINK

NAHB promotes very high quality standards of members and they operate a quality certification program for builders, trade contractors, and insulation contractors. Information on these programs can be found at https://www.nahbrc.org/qualityprogram.asp?TrackID=&CategoryID=1601&Type=.

I believe that it is safe to say that some of the homebuilding industry is taking quality very seriously. From my investigations into homebuilders for investment purposes, it seems that the larger and more favored contractors (by Wall Street) got that way by being efficient and using process control.

NAHB has published much on standardizing building processes.

 

[Icy Mountain]

Inspect the thing yourself--(you can be sure I will, when we build this Spring)--appear during the building process, even if only after hours, and take notes to discuss with the builder. A good builder would not want to find out these things after the house is all done and awaiting final payment. Be a visible customer, do not wait until the end to approve the home. Be aware of safety issues, material requirements and be ready to catch details like the ballustrade spindles.

My brother-in-law built a customized "cookie-cutter" in a developer owned subdivision. You pick the layout and then customize from there (and pay extra). He specified that drywall would be screwed in, not nailed. He showed up the first day that drywall was going in, with nails not screws. This would have been a huge cost for the builder or my b-i-l later, depending on whether it was found before or after closing. Pay attention!

 

[Jen Kirley]

I guess I'm missing something here. In a buyer beware market, yes the buyer of a new home may want to do certain things like an inspection. But I'm surprised no one piped in sooner with putting the responsibility for "Determining customer requirements" and "product realization to ensure customer requirements are met" on the builder. Certainly alot of it is dependend on "Trained and qualified employees" and "statutory and regulatory requirements." (codes)

I guess I found it surprising that we are all for 'inspections' in the home building industry, but in manufacturing, the push is for the workers to be responsible. Mmmm - are their any ISO certified home builders I wonder. If so, is their quality better?

Yes, exactly. I have never seen ISO linked with general residential contractors, who may actually be very small outfits with numerous subcontractors and employees that provide components of building projects.

Building is still considered a trade, with skilled labor and measures of goodness through internal and external (code) inspections. Good builders will certainly work hard to ensure customer requirements are met through product realization, but it's an industry that isn't doing Quality the way we Covers are used to seeing it.

It's one of the things I'd like to change, and I would have worked further on through my SBIR project, but I didn't receive Phase II funding.

There are larger contractors, and I'd expect more often in commercial construction, who develop and register quality systems. If they do, they might be doing it through builder and code organizations. I did a search and found zero examples of ISO registered builders.

 

[Jim Howe]

Personal Inspections

I agree with the suggestion that personal inspections be conducted. I certainly did just that. It paid dividends! For example, the home was to have a sunken great room. This is usually acomplished by leaving off one course of the foundation walls where the sunken room was to be. In my case, this did not happen and I spotted it when I was on one of my personal inspections. When I challenged the forman he presented a set of drawings that were original and not the modified. His drawings did not call for a sunken room. It seems the general contractor had no drawing control and gave him the wrong set.
I now have a basement with one additional course of block plus the (18x27) sunken great room at the builders expense.
The problem is there are way to many things going on when building a home, personal inspections will not catch all of it. Thats why you need a professional home inspection!