Re: Brother, have you been converted?

In article <f54934lptffvctcm7r8v6a084ifu6f8gho@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
 Les Albert <lalbert1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

> On Wed, 21 May 2008 19:23:36 GMT, bill van <billvan@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> wrote:
> > ...
> >(I covered strata title issues as a re****ter during B.C.'s leaky condo 
> >era, and I've been a member of my building's strata council off and on 
> >for 14 years.)
> > ...
> The leaky condo era?  Were they *all* built poorly for a period of
> time?  What's the story?
> 
Not all, but at least a quarter and possibly as many as half of condo 
buildings built on the B.C. coast from the early 1980s to the late 1990s 
had leak problems.

Early 1980s, the federal government had just mandated airtight walls as 
an energy efficiency measure. There was a building boom on the Wet Coast 
and strata-title owner****p was catching on in a big way. Contractors 
rushed into the market, mainly with quickly built four- and five-storey 
wood-frame multi-unit buildings, whose upper storeys were more exposed 
to wind and rain than single-family wood-frame homes used to be.

Older apartment buildings were often brick, and when they were 
wood-frame, the walls weren't meant to be air- or water-tight, so they'd 
leak some, but they'd dry because air got in. When water got into the 
walls of the new buildings, there was no way for it to get out and the 
walls would rot.

Lots of water got in. Architects and engineers got into fancy designs 
suitable for much dryer climates. There was a huge labour shortage in 
construction trades, and pretty much anyone could work, regardless of 
experience. That made for shoddy workman****p, which meant that areas 
around windows, doors, balconies, etc. were imperfectly sealed.

Developers had no need to demand quality work because with strata 
owner****p, they could sell all the units in a building and within a 
year, they'd turn common property over to the strata council and be 
clear of all liability. To be sure, they'd use a separate numbered 
company for each project, so there were no assets to sue for if anything 
went wrong.

It took five years or so for rot problems to start showing up, and by 
the early 1990s the whistleblowers were going public. About then, claims 
started flooding in to the construction industry's warranty program, 
which promptly collapsed.

The best official government estimate is that 65,000 condo units 
suffered water damage over 15 years or so, and that they cost $1.5 
billion to repair. They were clearly low-balling and the actual numbers 
were at least two to three times that. That's with a coastal population 
of maybe 3 million at that point.

There's a government-mandated warranty program in place now that 
provides a lot more protection, and building codes have evolved to 
require "rain-screen" wall construction, which includes a cavity between 
the outer and inner walls through which any water that gets in can drain 
out again.

Any amount of detail available on request. I covered this story 
full-time for well over a year.

-- 
bill
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