Shoddy construction found after Rowlett/Garland Tornados

[Frank]

Just do like the messicans do in there own country, build the fucking houses out of concrete. They catch on fire, tornado comes, it floods and all they need to do is repaint and replace a few things and there good to go lol.

Don't forget to leave some rebar sticking out of the top so you can always add on to the house later.

[FunFordCobra]

I'm sorry but if you're saying if quality materials and skilled labor do not produce a stronger product then youre just fucking stupid.

[FunFordCobra]

A suggestion of one wood is baseless ok.. It was more of an example of how shitty and fast these houses are going up. Especially around the Garland/ Rowlett area on I30. That was part of the I30 condo scam in the 80s if you knew anything and further supports my claim of shitty materials and labor trying to get people in and make money back on land that was flipped around multiple times before ONE apartment was on it.

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/20120531-d.l.-danny-faulkner-face-of-i-30-condo-fraud-dead-at-79.ece

[8mpg]

I think we're going to hear a lot more about this in the coming weeks. We were discussing this in an earlier tornado thread but I thought this can stand on its own. I wonder if North Texas towns will update their building codes. As I said before, building codes are the minimum standard. However that doesn't mean the minimum standard has to be pitiful.

It looks like some builders aren't even following that minimum standard. Will they and the building inspectors be held accountible? It was very fortunate that there were no kids in the school mentioned in this article. We would have had a helluva lot more fatalities if there were.

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/commu...o-wreckage.ece

Inspectors dont care and that is the problem. I hope they find the city liable for not doing their job. They require so many inspections and permits yet they dont do their job and we pay way too much for it.

Like I said they need to stop using this shitty wood!

This isnt a bad wood problem.. this is bad labor/practice and lazy inspectors.

Wood is graded and stamped. It's not the wood. As was stated, the code is a minimum standard, but the problem is that houses aren't even built to that. I promise you that 99% of the houses built in NTX do not meet the minimum requirements for wall bracing. That is the lateral resistance element in the home, and it leads to failures during wind events. In fact, the majority of drywall cracks you see in homes that get attributed to 'bad soil' are due to a lack of bracing. You can find non-compliance in just about every home, especially those with great rooms and tons of windows.

I kind of agree but engineering now a days lets you use structural foam on certain parts of the home for sheer walls and corners. Most houses until the last few years had OSB covering the entire house which should have added plenty of lateral stability and keep walls from racking.

Well, duh, you use illegals to build houses instead of carpenters and this is what you get. Further, you rush to complete the jobs as plug-n-chug housing by volume, and short cuts are gonna happen.

No... thats not the problem. A true carpenter uses the same wood and nails. If you think some higher paid person is going to work harder or better, you are a fool. Contractors shoudl be checking their subs work, and our lazy government pain housing inspectors need to do their job.

wouldn't this fall back on the architect?

Most counties dont require an architect unless the build is over 10,000sqft.

Just use wood a real man would use

Again...unless you can grow better trees that are straighter, bigger, longer, you get what the market can supply. If you dont like it and you ever build a house, you can use engineered studs like timberstrand studs. It is not cost effective and people wont pay the premium.

[Ruffdaddy]

Maybe codes and standards are different in home construction than those im use to in mechanical engineering, but passing the minimum requirements would not indicate a poor product by any measure of the imagination. Are construction standards really that low? Who dictates these standards?

[8mpg]

Maybe codes and standards are different in home construction than those im use to in mechanical engineering, but passing the minimum requirements would not indicate a poor product by any measure of the imagination. Are construction standards really that low? Who dictates these standards?

I dont think so... I honestly think code is fine. I think many people here would want and try to overbuild everything. The code is an international building code that has been researched, engineered, tested, etc. I think a lot of ignorance makes people believe they need bigger pieces of wood than they need. 2x4 framing vs 2x6, engineered trusses vs stick built rafters. The thought of hardwood studs is insane due to the cost.

Everyone here (including myself) do not spec houses and do the engineering on houses, so what do we actually know. Everyone seems to think more wood is better when its not. Properly engineered framing with smaller wood stock is much better than just throwing a bulk of materials at a job because it was the rule of thumb.

One last thing... I havent read the article yet, but are houses designed to withstand tornados? NO. The picture of the school wall falling down while everything else is fine shows shoddy work, but if we expect a wood structure to survive a tornado, that is crazy.

[black2002ls]

I'm sorry but if you're saying if quality materials and skilled labor do not produce a stronger product then youre just fucking stupid.

A suggestion of one wood is baseless ok.. It was more of an example of how shitty and fast these houses are going up. Especially around the Garland/ Rowlett area on I30. That was part of the I30 condo scam in the 80s if you knew anything and further supports my claim of shitty materials and labor trying to get people in and make money back on land that was flipped around multiple times before ONE apartment was on it.

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/20120...dead-at-79.ece

My issue with it was that your post came after me posting a picture of my Company's model home in a rowlett neighborhood thatvwas less than a year old. THAT is why I took issue with your comment. Maybe you could have clarified that you were speaking of something different.

Or, maybe you couldn't come up with a reasonable domestic solution for your claim that my company uses sub par materials to construct our homes. So you had to reach way back to divert the attention from your assinine comment.

I work for one of the highest regarded production home builders in the state. Not only from an industry stand point but from a buyer stand point as well.

So, I was honestly interested in your opinion about the poor quality of lumber that it seemed that you were implying that we are using. Though I realized that you were probably full of shit once several members asked you to clarify until finally you brough up some kind of exotic lumber.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

[4king]

Could have sworn I already posted this, but the wife and I visited our house twice a week when it was being built and had our contact for Dr Hortons builder manager. Basically us visiting twice a week and my wife nagging the Dr Horton builder rep while the work crews were there made them spend a little more time to get things right

Like when our straight case was being built my wife didn't like that 3 different pieces of wood had cracks in them so they were replaced. She didn't like how they divided our pantry and kitchen walls and she took measurements from the model home we visited and made them re make the structure to how she wanted it, or how far the pantry was suppose to be into the kitchen.

Now the other side of it is the spec homes being built around us. There were several completed in 3 months time spans and we saw lots of issues with quality and more noticeably spec measurements were being eyeballed. One of the spec houses with the same floor plan as ours was 8 feet narrower on the foundation and the inside of the house. No one else probably notices to this day, but having lived and built our house the wife and I immediately walked in and felt something major off

[FunFordCobra]

OK so you're taking it as a personal attack against your company? Grow up.

[Strychnine]

TIL: You can lack any sort of reading comprehension and still be a computer gamer.



What you said:

Like I said they need to stop using this shitty wood!

Just use wood a real man would use

lets just say if all those homes were build of quebracho the tornado woulda cried.. I'm willing to bet those homes were busted out in a month or so too with cheap products and labor.

maybe for the lower class... enjoy your plywood.

didn't see that. all I know is that if people didn't use such shitty wood Rowlett would still be here.

I'm sorry but if you're saying if quality materials and skilled labor do not produce a stronger product then youre just fucking stupid.

And the the point the article was making:

“We saw a tremendous number of improper attachment of the walls to the foundations, which just made walls fall either in or out

“Walls not attached properly, and they’re just falling down like a house of cards.”

Marshall said he toured the damaged school with school officials this week, and he was shocked by the lack of proper attachments linking the walls to the rest of the structure.

Someone “tried to nail a steel bottom plate to the concrete,” he said. “There was no connection [between] walls, there was no connection at the roof, and it was simply nailed to the concrete foundation. That’s not going to cut it in my book, and it won’t cut it in any [building] code I know.

Marshall posted a photo of the damaged school on his Facebook page this week, commenting that the walls “were in essence free-standing.” The post drew dozens of comments and attracted notice from experts in his field.

“The vast majority of houses we looked at did not have proper attachments,” Marshall said Wednesday. “It didn’t matter what size of house. It didn’t matter what city it was in.”

Many of the improvements are as simple as attaching walls to structures securely, Simmons said.

There really needs to be more accountability in this world for spewing uninformed nonsense.

[juiceweezl]

lets just say if all those homes were build of quebracho the tornado woulda cried.. I'm willing to bet those homes were busted out in a month or so too with cheap products and labor.

You can build a perfectly good house in a month to just over if scheduled properly. Again, you didn't read my post and you won't listen to others, so you don't understand that houses aren't being built to the code standard. Even if they were, the wind speed here for the 2012 code that NTX uses is 90mph measured in a 3 second gust. If the home experiences 125-130mph winds, guess what -- it's going to fail. You have to build to withstand the higher winds if you expect it to stand up. Substituting lumber from the moon used in the same manner as a finger jointed and graded 2x4 won't matter.

Maybe codes and standards are different in home construction than those im use to in mechanical engineering, but passing the minimum requirements would not indicate a poor product by any measure of the imagination. Are construction standards really that low? Who dictates these standards?

Good questions. I wish Randy (Vertnut) was still around. He seemed pretty knowledgeable on that subject.

I'm very knowledgeable as I a) sit on a committee that is writing code proposals for the 2018 cycle, and b) am an educator in the construction industry. To answer your question, Ruff, yes, they are that different. Residential construction in this area falls under the IRC which is a prescriptive code. We use the cookbook analogy -- it's like baking a cake where you follow a recipe. The code tells you that a 2x4 stud can go up to X height, a 2x10 floor joist can span X, use this many nails, have this much bracing, etc. There is no engineering if you truly follow what's written and build within its parameters. When something falls outside the code, accepted engineering practice can be used. This is where there's a lot of grey area in enforcement because some shady engineer can stamp something that a code official won't question (despite being legally empowered to do so). Other areas of the country scoff at the way homes are built here (and also in many other areas). The code you use as a mechanical engineer probably falls under the IBC or similar. It's very different because it's an engineered code. From a construction standpoint, an engineered code tells you what forces act upon a building during a wind event. Then, it provides you equations and information to design the resisting elements. Sure, there are span tables, etc. to assist, but it largely goes back to math and software. It's the complete opposite of prescriptive building and is the reason commercial structures are simply stronger and better.

As for who dictates the standards, well, today it's everyone. Builders put the first code together to level the playing field from a cost perspective. Today, proposals are written by individuals or committees (composed of builders, code officials, manufacturers, lobbying groups, etc.). Everyone has a say, and it becomes give and take during votes to decide what goes in or comes out.

I dont think so... I honestly think code is fine. I think many people here would want and try to overbuild everything. The code is an international building code that has been researched, engineered, tested, etc. I think a lot of ignorance makes people believe they need bigger pieces of wood than they need. 2x4 framing vs 2x6, engineered trusses vs stick built rafters. The thought of hardwood studs is insane due to the cost.

Everyone here (including myself) do not spec houses and do the engineering on houses, so what do we actually know. Everyone seems to think more wood is better when its not. Properly engineered framing with smaller wood stock is much better than just throwing a bulk of materials at a job because it was the rule of thumb.

One last thing... I havent read the article yet, but are houses designed to withstand tornados? NO. The picture of the school wall falling down while everything else is fine shows shoddy work, but if we expect a wood structure to survive a tornado, that is crazy.

The code being fine depends on your definition of fine and what you want to get out of it. Do you want a residential home in NTX to withstand the majority of storms it faces? If so, then the code is fine, but don't expect it to stand up to anything EF1 or bigger. The mean reoccurrence for those wind speeds isn't great enough to raise the wind speeds here (funny that the seismic design categories are changing with all the activity though), so you can't expect a code compliant house to stand up to the recent storms in a direct hit. If they had been built to a code plus standard, then it's likely many would have been unscathed, but that's not a legal requirement since it's above and beyond the code. As for being designed to resist a tornado, you can't make that blanket statement. You can cost effectively build to resist wind speeds which you can cross to EF0-2 storms. You can build to resist an EF3 for a little more cost, but anything above that becomes substantially more expensive. Shelters are a much better option there. Oh, and you can absolutely expect a wood structure to survive a tornado the likes of what we just saw. Ever go to say Myrtle Beach, Charleston, or even parts of Florida? Many of the homes there are stick framed and stand up to hurricane force winds > 130mph. The same is true for many homes on the TX coast.

[juiceweezl]

There really needs to be more accountability in this world for spewing uninformed nonsense.

Can I get a sticky for this!!!!!!!!

[Ruffdaddy]

Cool, thanks for the detailed info. That definitely is disappointing to hear.

Side note: The standards i use are mostly ASME, API, ANSI...or similar. They are typically very solid, and often over engineered. It sucks that my house most likely doesnt come close to what i should expect.

[FunFordCobra]

Because this dfwmustangs is just soo full of people at the height at their profession, also the utmost authority in what they THINK they do well, and everyone is a millionaire. I get it. I've been here since 2001. This site should run for president.

[DON SVO]

Because this dfwmustangs is just soo full of people at the height at their profession, also the utmost authority in what they THINK they do well, and everyone is a millionaire. I get it. I've been here since 2001. This site should run for president.

You've had 3 different people who are well-versed in their profession (home building and code) tell you what best practices are, what minimum code is and the reality of how the wood used means jack shit: the problems were structural in nature.