Helter Shelter
A couple weeks back, I went up to Gallatin to take a look at houses that were hit by the April 7 tornadoes. I did it because I’d heard from folks who had seen the houses, and they suspected that some of the damage might have been caused—or at least made worse—by just plain bad building.
I know, I know: when a tornado hits a house, bad things happen. Even a perfectly built house can’t stand up to a tornado. But if careless builders purposely ignore good building practices and local codes inspectors ignore obvious building-code violations, the result is a house that’s weaker than it should be and that comes apart easier than it should. That’s what I saw in Gallatin.
Usually when I dissect a house, the house is pretty much intact and the homeowner doesn’t want it torn apart. If I want to see inside the walls, the best I can do is open up a few holes and get a few good looks. If I see something particularly bad or interesting, I make bigger holes so I can get better looks.
When a tornado hits a house, it opens up plenty of holes, many of them big. In Gallatin, I could stand on the ground and see through attics. I could walk down the street and see into walls. I could walk around a house and see how well the walls were fastened to the foundation, if they were fastened at all.
I expected to find broken house parts that were simply overpowered by wind, pressure and projectiles. I saw plenty of that—shredded lumber, shattered glass, pieces of plywood that had sailed like kites. But the longer and closer I looked, the more I realized that a lot of house parts broke because of sloppy workmanship and bad inspections.
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For instance, I saw what was a grand two-story porch that used to be held up by fiberglass-composite columns. The porch collapsed during the storms, and it might’ve collapsed even if it had been built right. But I think it would have held up better if the column bases, shafts and caps had been fastened together instead of just stacked up without any fasteners. The second-story porch floor might have stayed put if the connections between the porch and the house had been kept dry. But since the folks who built the porch didn’t install any flashing (which is required by the building code), water got into the connections, the wood parts rotted, then shredded in the wind.
At the same house, a lot of the roof had blown away and a lot of the rafters were broken. Sure, tornados rip roofs off houses, but this roof was built to break. The rafters were cut carelessly during construction. Notches in rafters (called “bird’s-mouth” cuts) shouldn’t be more than one-fourth the depth of the rafter. Carpenters, building superintendents and codes inspectors know this, or ought to know it. At this house, the rafters were notched to about three-quarters of their depth, so a lot of the rafters cracked when the storms came, destroying the roof structure and sending sharp pieces flying through the neighborhood.
Also at the same house, part of the garage wall was intact, but another part flew off the house. It was easy to see why. The intact wall was bolted to the foundation as it should be. The wall section that went airborne wasn’t bolted down. Walls are supposed to be bolted down. Everybody who builds or inspects houses knows this, or ought to know it.
At every brick-veneer house I saw, it was obvious that the bricklayers didn’t bother to put in all the brick ties that they should have. Brick ties are metal strips that keep brick veneer attached to walls. If you leave out too many ties, high winds can peel the brick right off a house. Brick ties have been required by the building code for a long time and every builder, bricklayer and codes inspector should know that. In Gallatin, I saw 30- and 40-foot-long, two-story walls with few, if any, brick ties. One of these walls fell apart during the storm and injured two people.
The defects I saw in Gallatin aren’t unusual. They’re typical of the problems I’ve been seeing for the last 20 years. It’s bad enough that just about every house that’s been built around here in the last 20 years is substandard. It’s bad enough that homeowners have to spend time and money fixing things that wouldn’t have broken if their builder had built their house to conform with the building code—the minimum standard for an adequate house. Here’s what’s worse: from what I’ve seen, a whole lot of builders will cut as many corners as the local codes inspectors will let them cut. And the local codes inspectors, who seem to be willing accomplices in the builders’ shenanigans, will let the builders cut just about any corner.
Best I can tell, if you want a new house that’s built anywhere close to right, you’re going to have to find a builder that’s much better than the ones we’ve had for the last 20 years. That probably means choosing a builder who builds fewer than 50 houses a year. Besides that, you’re going to have to demand that the local codes agencies get the manpower and training they need to do decent inspections, and that they actually enforce the building code.