There has been a doubling of construction defects between 2000 – 2005 in new homes

There has been a doubling of construction defects between 2000 – 2005 in the United States according to the Bloomberg Business Week reports.

“How?” you ask in a modern society can we be having these kinds of problems? A lot of it comes down to education and a lack of project over site. Let’s talk about the education factor first;

Education: A lot of General Contractors have been building houses in the same way for the past two or three decades. A lot of contractors only made changes when they are forced into it by a few things. These are as follows;
• Price of older material or techniques compared to newer cheaper manufactured and better engineered    for installation ones
• designers or architects that have made changes because of cosmetic or trends
• Continued governmental building code changes.

If the builder changed for any of the above reason they probably didn’t take the time to become educated on the new product that they were using. With new products come new installation methods, also when you bring a new product into the building envelope of a home it can have an effect on a lot of the other components of the house. This lack of education in the products that you are using can and does leads to part or all of the building’s failing’s. This can show up in a matter of months or can show up a decade later, but it does eventually show up. When this happens it usually ends up costing the homeowner money, discomfort and stress.

Taking the time to educate yourself on new products is not as hard as it used to be in the modern world. Contractors used to have to go to seminars that ran for multiple days just to find out all the new trends and products that are being applied to new homes. In today’s computer era a lot of the information can be found on the internet. It can be found from many different sources as well; bloggers, company websites, magazines and newspaper articles that are available online. Contractors are also able to contact the manufacture directly by email, allowing them to have installation specifications sent directly to their in box.

Over site:  Now that you have taken the time to educate yourself and the employee’s in your company about how and why the new products and techniques are to be installed you have to take the time to make sure that they are followed. Most general contractors do not employ people to do every facet of a home build. They hire sub-trades to do things like the plumbing, mechanical, tiling and electrical. Because of this you will have to make sure that your sub-trades are informed about the changes so that they know what they have to do and why they are doing it. You also have to make sure that you have a supervisor that is on site to watch the sub-trades to make sure that they know what they are suppose to be doing and what is expected of them in the form of quality and craftsmen ship. You also need your supervisor there to answer any questions the sub-trades might have because of the new techniques and products.
This is the best way to make sure that as a contractor you are giving your client a worry free home for decades to come and also to save yourself money and time in costly repairs in the future.

So when you are looking for a general contractor to build your next custom home make sure that you find out if they are up to date in all the latest building practices. This will help insure that you don’t have to have costly repairs done in the future.

 If you are looking for a builder that is continually at the front edge of new construction technology please checkout Village Builders at www.villagebuilders.ca

Rob Abbott
Operations Managers
Village Builders Inc.

Statistics were gathered from a Fine Home Building magazine article “The Trouble With Building Science” summer 2012 no.227