Monday 26 September 2011

Meeting with our MLA

We had a meeting at our house today with our MLA.  He was definitely very sympathetic, as well as shocked at the extent of damage and the cost of repairs.  Our contractor was also able to talk to him about how they have been seeing similar problems with many other houses.  Of course, the government can't really do much to help us personally, but perhaps they can work to change the regulations to help prevent this from happening to others in the future.

Construction started!

They started construction on our house today!  It will be good to get it done.  So far they have removed the stucco and building paper on most of the front of our house.  So far NONE of the windows have been done correctly.  There is nasty water damage and mould under our front living room windows - the plywood sheathing is rotting away.  It doesn't look too bad under daughter #1's bedroom windows (above garage) although the paper was lapped incorrectly there also.

Start of construction - the big blue bin on the driveway!


Rot and mould under the front living room window - definitely going to have to replace some plywood here.


Daughter #1s bedroom windows - building paper lapped WRONG!!!


Below living room window - building paper lapped WRONG!!!


The contractor gave us some spray paint and told us to "decorate" our house!


Our family :-)

Sunday 4 September 2011

Sign up

Our house backs onto a pathway where a lot of people walk.  Since some of our stucco is off and our Tyvek is showing, we have seen a lot of people look (and even point!) at our house.  So we decided to put up a sign, with a link to this blog, so people know what is going on. 



Construction on our house is likely going to start the 3rd week of September, so I'm sure people will be wondering even more what we are doing!

Thursday 1 September 2011

Insurance changes?

We got our annual home insurance renewal this week.  It had some interesting changes:


This makes it sound like the insurance industry has some studies that show there are a significant number of homes with "latent or hidden defects" or "faulty workmanship".  It sounds to me like they are (at least partially) referring to errors that home builders make.  Insurance is not covering a lot of our repairs, but now it sounds like they won't cover anything for issues like this (although it shouldn't really be an issue for us, since we already have our claim in). 

Of course "proper and regular maintenance" is not really possible for a building envelope that is inaccessible below a home's stucco!  It's impossible to even know what your issue is until you start tearing your home apart!

A meeting with our MLA?

Since building codes are a provincial issue, we contacted our MLA, Lindsay Blackett, about our leaky house issues.  His assistant got back to me right away, and set up a phone meeting for my husband to talk to Minister Blackett.  He wasn't really aware of how big of an issue this may be for many of the neighbourhoods he represents, but he seems fairly interested in doing what he can about it.  He has been talking to other government people about it, and may actually come meet with us and see our house for himself!