The housing rot sets in

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Doug Nielson says it took the developers three or four attempts to fix the

water damage in his new n Square apartment.

The housing rot sets in

13.04.2002

For thousands of New Zealanders, the dream of a new home is turning into a

sodden nightmare. ANDREW LAXON and EUGENE BINGHAM.

Doug and Lyn Nielson lay awake at night in their new inner-city apartment in

n Square, listening to the sound of falling rain.

When it grew too loud, they got out of bed, grabbed a couple of old towels

and stuffed them hard up against the wall to catch the leaks.

It was the last thing the couple had expected when they bought the $330,000

three-storey unit in the heart of Wellington's Cuba St district.

The 40 muddy-grey, loft-style apartments were built around an inner

courtyard on top of a three-storey car park in 1996. The following year they

won a regional architecture award, but the owners were already finding

problems.

" Within about three months of moving into a brand new apartment we got water

damage on the inside of the stairwell, " says Doug Nielson. " There was mould

and rot and the carpet was sodden. "

Doug Nielson says it took the developers, Ebert Construction, three or four

attempts to fix the problem. Their bedroom wall was so water-damaged they

could have punched a hole in it.

At number 31 Bernard McBride found rain leaked straight through the ceiling

of his bedroom and through the lights of the bathroom. Nails were starting

to come out of the walls and ceilings.

" When you started to look closely at the finishing, it was appalling. The

gib was starting to buckle and the paint job was atrocious. The architraves

were starting to crack, there were cracks in the roof that were becoming

quite noticeable. "

The Weekend Herald understands that a report by an Auckland-based building

repair specialist, Prendos, found that leaks in some apartments were so bad

that entire wall linings had to be replaced. Many apartments were infected

with a dangerous mould known as stachybotrys - not well-known in New

Zealand, but linked in several American legal disputes to a range of health

problems, from chronic tiredness to bleeding lungs.

n Square residents have now taken legal action against Ebert

Construction. The chairman of the body corporate, Judith Manchester,

confirmed the case was heading for the High Court. Ebert Construction did

not return calls.

In Ponsonby, the owners of one three-storey 1990s-built terraced house on

Rose Rd called in the lawyers when a double bed fell through the floor of a

downstairs bedroom.

" The bed was shortly followed by the washing machine, " said lawyer Phil

Sheat. " When the [owners] took up the floorboards, the whole underfloor area

was saturated and completely rotten. "

Sheat said other houses in the block shared similar problems, as water had

attacked the buildings' substructure. " One [of the houses] is particularly

badly affected and perhaps if this hadn't been discovered, it may well have

led to the whole structure being condemned. "

The Rose Rd body corporate is taking its case to the High Court at Auckland

next week, suing the builder and the Auckland City Council.

Sheat said the body corporate would allege that substandard workmanship was

carried out and question whether the council exercised proper oversight of

the building process. The council and the builder are fighting the

allegations.

n Square and Rose Rd are the latest examples of a leaky-building crisis

gradually seeping into public view. A few industry insiders have known about

the problem for years, thanks to crusaders such as Prendos consultant Philip

O'Sullivan, whose " Dr Rot " columns in the trade press warned that modern

construction methods were creating leaking, rotting houses. Last year the

Herald ran a series of articles revealing the causes of the problem, but no

one seemed to know how many of the 20,000 new houses built each year were

affected.

In the past few weeks that has changed. Last month the Building Industry

Authority, the Government body responsible for enforcing building standards,

announced an inquiry to determine the size of the problem. Industry sources

say the answer is thousands of new homes - including dozens of multi-unit

developments.

A building and dispute resolution expert, Steve , of and

Co, says he knows of 49 new leaking buildings in Auckland, including 10

multi-unit developments. He estimates 560 units are affected.

Robin Wakeling, a building materials biodeterioration expert at the Forest

Research Institute in Rotorua who sees the worst examples sent by building

repair experts such as Prendos, says hundreds of new houses already have

problems but he expects to discover thousands in the next few years.

On the rural hinterland hugging Auckland's eastern suburbs, the Botany Downs

shopping centre, the country's largest retail development, looms over the

intersection of Ti Rakau Drive and Te Irirangi Rd.

Just behind it lies a 153-unit development once described by the Auckland

Regional Council as a vision of future housing areas. Called Sacramento to

reflect the Spanish-Californian theme, the development's $150,000-$243,000

homes were pitched at first-home buyers and couples looking for a

comfortable condominium lifestyle.

The developer, North Shore-based Taradale, specialises in these projects. By

the time Sacramento was built, Taradale already had several showcase sites,

including the 105 houses at The Grange and the 61 terraced houses and

apartments at Vista in Mt Albert.

Sacramento followed the style of Vista , but on a much greater scale. It

is one of the largest housing developments in the country, complete with

mission-style belltowers and archways, communal barbecue area, swimming

pool, gym and tennis court.

Now Sacramento has been struck by the leaky building blight. Owners

considered legal action but have decided as a group to deal with the

problem - for now - by talking with Taradale, which has assigned

Fitzsimmons, an independent director on the board of Taradale Property, to

manage the problem.

" We are as dismayed as the owners are with what's occurring because we are

proud of Sacramento, " says Fitzsimmons.

He says the problems at Sacramento will affect one or two other Taradale

developments, but emphasises that not all sites were built the same way.

According to the company, the problem has been caused by a failure of the

jointing system holding the exterior cladding to the frame.

Last year, as a temporary measure, Taradale and the two main construction

contractors squeezed adhesive sealants around the joints and anywhere else

there was a risk of water getting in.

Fitzsimmons says the company and the builders were working on a way to fix

the problem long-term, but have decided to wait to see if the Building

Industry Authority inquiry comes up with a standard answer. .

While owners believe the issue has dragged on too long, Taradale believes it

has moved quickly. In some ways it had no choice.

" Sacramento is very prominent. One of the things in this business is that

you can't hide, " says Fitzsimmons.

Last month the Weekend Herald revealed leaks in another high-profile

Auckland housing development, the 93-unit Summerfield Villas on the old

Sleepyhead factory site in Grey Lynn, which was finished only last year.

Marketing manager Dyson says every unit in the $32 million block is

being checked and so far nine out of 17 older homes have been affected, with

rot spreading 15cm into the sodden timber frames. He blames the problem on

inadequate flashings (metal coverings designed to seal joints) on the

parapets placed at every second or third unit.

Why do so many new houses leak? Experts disagree on the details but

generally agree on the main factors involved - design changes, new building

materials and falling standards of workmanship.

Until the 1980s most New Zealand houses had pitched roofs, with eaves to

keep out the rain. They were usually made of weatherboard, brick or perhaps

stucco on an open, ventilated timber frame.

The houses leaked but water had room to drain away or dry out inside the

walls. The timber framing was treated for borer, which made it more

resistant to rot as well.

Over the past 20 years - and especially the past five to 10 years - most of

these conditions have changed. Mediterranean-style houses with flat roofs,

no eaves and floor-level decks and balconies tend to let more rain in. New

water-resistant, but slow-drying, stucco and fibre cement claddings,

combined with compulsory insulation from the early 1980s, give this water

nowhere to go in the tightly packed wall cavities.

Some argue the real cause of the problem is abolition in 1996 of the

compulsory use of treated timber, which means wooden frames in new houses

rot much faster.

Others say the worst problem is sloppy builders who do not seal these new

materials properly.

, chairman of an industry weathertightness group set up last

year to tackle the problem, says the new claddings are not the problem.

" By and large it's not the materials, it tends to be the junctions between

the materials, " says , who is also the weathertight buildings manager

for the Building Research Association of New Zealand (Branz).

Whatever the reasons, the effects have been dramatic and are getting worse.

Two years ago a survey of pre-purchase building reports on Auckland houses

found 60 per cent of the 287 houses inspected had some leaks. More

alarmingly, half the houses built since 1990 leaked and these houses had

more leaks at a higher failure rate than the older houses.

The highest failure rate came from stucco. Prendos' latest study into 1990s

multi-unit housing, which found average repair bills of $32,000 in houses

with problems, suggests the problem is getting worse.

Another potentially serious problem is the health effects of mould in new

homes, which can cause problems such as asthma and flu-like symptoms. The

worst is stachybotrys, a fungus that produces poisonous spores.

In New Zealand, stachybotrys was rare a decade ago. But in the past year

scientist Ebbett, of the Auckland laboratory Biodet Services,

estimates she has seen between 50 and 100 samples.

Stachybotrys needs very particular conditions - plenty of cellulose material

to grow on (wood, paper, carpet backing), and plenty of water. The area has

to be saturated for a long time.

New Zealand building repair expert Steve , often called in to

investigate leaks in new buildings, says he regularly finds stachybotrys.

He says it generally does not become a health hazard until builders move in

to repair the problems, knocking down walls and setting the toxic spores

airborne.

In America, since the mid-1980s large-scale outbreaks of illness in areas

with mouldy homes have been attributed to stachybotrys. Sick families have

even taken lawsuits against landlords.

Most seriously, in Ohio, doctors have linked bleeding in the lungs of 45

children over the past seven years to the presence of the fungus. Sixteen of

the children died. Research into the exact causes of the deaths continues,

but all of them lived in homes where stachybotrys was found.

While stachybotrys-related health problems have not yet led to the courts in

this country, our courts are already experiencing a steady trickle of leaky

buildings cases.

The growing question is: who will pay? says he knows of one

three-year-old $1million central Auckland property where the cost will be

six figures.

" There has been severe timber decay and we're having to take off probably 75

per cent of the cladding and perhaps rebuild 25 per cent of the outside

walls and decks, " said . " Some of the timber framing had no

structural integrity at all - you could break it with your fingers. "

If the worst predictions are right, many New Zealand homeowners could end up

like Malcolm Fort, whose multi-level Mediterranean-style Devonport dream

home has turned into a nightmare.

Water leaked from the balcony straight into the main bedroom and poured in

through the back wall. Similar leaks have rotted the timber framing of the

garage.

Builder Dempsey Morton says the 14-year-old house has had three owners and

was sold before completion, but has offered to contribute to the repair

bill, which Fort puts at $12,000.

Fort says he's fed up with the endless repairs.

" I bought this house by the beach and here I am spending all my time fixing

bloody botch-ups. I've spent two years - virtually all my spare time - doing

jobs. "