Buildings

Finding a Trustworthy Builder

Q: My wife and I are ready to make the big plunge and buy our first house. I'm a research technician for a drug company, and my wife is a reporter for a local paper. Both of us are used to doing a lot of background research before making major decisions. Unfortunately, the more we learn about the home-building industry the more frightened and confused we get. We've talked with so many people with horror stories, and read so many articles about problems, mistakes, disasters, and boondoggles, that we're starting to think all builders are either stupid or crooked. What's a consumer to do?

A: Over the years I've worked with, yelled at, been cussed out by, and otherwise known hundreds of builders, and I can say without question that, as a group they are among the smartest people I've known. I can also say that I've known very few builders who set out to rip people off. Have I met stupid builders? Yes. Have I run into some who are as crooked as a rum-soaked cigar? For sure. But I really don't think builders are any more dishonest than bank tellers, doctors, teachers, preachers, researchers, or reporters.

So, you're wondering, if they're not stupid and they're not crooks, why are there so many horror stories about houses? Why do we keep running into people who can't get comfortable or who have mold growing in their bedroom or who pay unconscionably high utility bills? Why do the inside of ducts look like science experiments gone berserk, and why does it rain in crawl spaces? And why are there increasing reports of people being made sick by carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, dust mites, pesticides, and a zillion other things I can't pronounce, let alone spell?

After looking at literally thousands of houses, my colleagues and I have concluded that the vast majority of the problems we see are problems of education: the people doing the work simply haven't had the training to do it properly. Much of this results from the fact that houses have changed dramatically over the last fifty years. Where we once used planks with spaces between them for subfloors and wall sheathing, now solid sheets of plywood or other sheet materials are the choice.

Earlier houses had wood paneled walls and ceilings. Now we use drywall. Fifty years ago, most houses didn't have insulation or central heat or air conditioning. All of these changes have subtly altered the house. Now we can turn on a giant fan and move warm or cool air all through the house. In some modern houses, though, turning on that fan also sucks moisture and termite poison in from the crawl space, carbon monoxide in from the water heater, warm moist air in from the front yard, and insulation fibers in from the attic.

We've made changes in materials to make construction more efficient and houses more affordable. We've created ways to make us more comfortable at lower costs, but we haven't paid a lot of attention to how some of those changes affect other parts of the house system.

As consumers, most of us look only at the surface. We want more space. We demand crown molding and bathrooms big enough to have parties in. We yearn for rooms for our cars to sleep in that are bigger than many of our grandparents' houses. But we don't demand that the insulation be installed meticulously or that the ducts be actually air-tight or that the air conditioning system not depressurize the house.

We agonize over what kind of counter top to put in the kitchen, and assume the heating system will be fine. After all, it's built to code. [Definition: the building code is the "minimum" standard permitted by law. That is, the worst house one can legally build.]

So we have a building industry that's having trouble keeping up with all the changes going on, using workers who haven't been properly trained in some of the consequences of what they do, selling houses to people who are much more willing to pay money for appearance rather than quality.

My best advice is to look for a builder who has specific performance standards for house air-tightness, duct air-tightness, and insulation, and also backs these standards with testing.

This doesn't guarantee a good house, of course, but it indicates a level of knowledge and commitment to quality that will often lead to a more comfortable, healthier, and more energy-efficient house.

Good luck!