Looks like housing in Texas is cheap and shoddy. One wonders who’s doing the construction on these casas. (<—There’s a clue.)
A forensic engineer, Timothy Marshall inspected the damage done by a recent outbreak of tornadoes in North Texas.
“We saw a tremendous number of improper attachment of the walls to the foundations, which just made walls fall either in or out.”
Which begs the question, who’s building all these homes and schools in Texas that are falling down in a high wind?
Would you believe illegal aliens?
The report by the Worker’s Defense Project Here
When you use taco shells for your reinforcement material it will probably not end well!
Hey wait a minute building sub-standard housing is a job that probably some Americans would do!
Must be all those “structural engineers” we’re importing …
I have been in construction for 42 years and owned my own company for 34.
No professional talks the way that guy did.
If we have an opinion that something should be built better than required by code, we state that as an opinion.
If we say something is not to code, that is never referred to as an ‘opinion’.
All of the construction methods he pointed out have proper applications. A professional would have made clear statements like “Code requires that this wall in this application be bolted to the foundation rather than pinned”. Instead he yapped about his opinion and made the bizarre statement that “no code” allows it.
Contractors doing state work, as with schools, do work to specifications set by the architect and are inspected by state inspectors. If the methods don’t match the requirements and their submittals the state inspector is required to force compliance.
Nope.
It’s Supply and Demand…
…and alot of lazy ass American contractors taking advantage of the situation after the crisis.
Same sh!t in Florida after the 2004-5 (05-6?) hurricaine season.
The construction workers are only too happy to have work, and will do whatever they’re told to do. Sure, there are just as many (percentage-wise?) lazy ass construction workers as American contractors, but….
It does not matter who built the houses (it should not be illegals).
What I want to know is where were the building inspectors, paid off or not doing their job. I could never get away with that on my jobs.
Probably not enough straw in the adobe, either.
The key in your post is “no PROFESSIONAL talks that way.”
See my post below.
Let me add that your post is a good response to the frequent libertarian whine about the “licensing” of professionals being “unnecessary.”
Some years ago in a town and state I’ll keep to myself, the standard way of dealing with code inspectors was to leave a long-neck sitting on a $50 bill in an obvious place. My understanding is that this is not unusual, except frequently a $20 is enough.
My neighbor was a building inspector in a small town. For the first five years on the job he was very honest, For the next five years on the job he was not very honest. For the next five years he was not on the job he was in jail!
Did you read the comment by “Dave Walton” ? Like you he seems to know more about this than the “expert” the very liberal Dallas Morning News hired.
I’ll bet you $1000 to a donut that clown has a license.
All a license means is that you trained to pass the test and paid a fee. In some cases, you actually have to have done work in the field, but even that can be gotten around.
Regardless, raise your hand if you think your house will stand up to a direct hit from a tornado..
Wow, not in our berg! There’s one electrical inspector who is like drawing the hanging judge at a murder trial and you’re the defendant. I’ve met her — she’s a bloody terror. If you tried to bribe her you’d probably be breaking rocks somewhere in northern Georgia (the former Soviet state, not where they grow the peaches).
A lot of shoddy things in Texas. ie: Cowboys, homes, etc. But when they are shoddy they are BIG Shoddy!!!
Just doing the work that Americans won’t do.
Mexican word of the day: Juicy
“Juicy those stupid gringos move into the house I built?”
I built my home in Texas in 1992. It is an unincorporated area of the county and no building codes were in force. Except mine, that is! I subcontracted the work myself and had trusted friends I had known all my life to do the slab work, plumbing, framing, roofing, HVAC, brickwork, and electrical work. The rest I did myself. I went beyond what the building codes were back then and I’m glad I did. My home survived Hurricane Rita with hours of 120 MPH winds and Hurricane Ike that was almost as bad. I did have damage from a fallen tree, but the home withstood both storms. We were inside during both storms and felt pretty safe the whole time. I have to say, Rita was one hell of a storm. The damage left was awe inspiring.
Dallas is ruled and under the total influence of non-anglo officials. It was sliding down a cravasse into the abyss years ago, and because of the majority electorate in Dallas, continues..no surprises there… the wealthy moved north to Allen, Plano, Colleyville, Westlake, Richardson, Farmers Branch, thus leaving the entrails of Dallas for the vultures to pick clean. Even the wealthy Blacks don’t want any part of Dallas proper.
Maybe he was just so fed up about all that crap he just let loose. Saw an asst. fire chief do that on TV once, his emotions about the fire’s causes and effects just got the better of him, it was that bad.
Yeah, yeah…and just imagine the nightmare scenarios with a sea of jerks WITHOUT the training for a license.
The first thing I thought of was the building inspectors. I wonder what they’d have to say.
‘You can buy a brand new, five-bedroom, 3,000-square-foot house near Fort Worth for just $160,000.’ I read that and spit root beer out my nose.
Illegals on construction sites need higher scrutiny than anyone. As a master electrician, former electrical inspector & chief construction inspector for one of the largest water utilities in the US, my ‘Violation Radar’ pegged the meter when I noticed then on the job site. And yes, I’m profiling; get over it. I can site far too numerous incidents where I actually went out of my way to show ‘workers’ how to do things according to code or spec & they violated it regardless.
If myself or any of my inspectors was ever proven to ok anything not up to code, standard or specification, we could be held criminally libel …needless to say, someone in Texas (regardless that this person knows very little of what he’s talking about {h/t Czar & JohnS}) should not pass Go, do not collect $200 & go directly to jail !
but another $100,000 for indoor kitchen and 2 and a half bathrooms.
Anybody remember Gov. Rick Perry bellering about how his state was responsible for 40% of all new jobs in the country? It took well over a year before it came out that 40% of his new jobs went to 3rd worlders. Doncha wonder if they are still there, creating more demand for more teachers and new schools and most administration and more interpretors?
I wouldn’t live out there in a wooden house. It’d be a reinforced cement bunker.
Good to hear from another electrician!
A big problem for contractors is that when inspectors allow faulty installations our industry gets the bad reputation rather than placing the blame where it belongs. On both sides.
What this guy was doing was reprehensible on many levels.
Theoretically the architects, engineers, and inspectors are superior to the contractor on this type of project, the contractor is little more than hired help.
Going after a maid because you realize 10 years later that she didn’t clean the kitchen right but you couldn’t be bothered to notice is a rather indefensible position.
I want to make one thing very clear.
This was a state job as it was a school. If you hire a contractor to do a job at your house he is 100% on the hook for his work meeting the UBC at minimum.
State jobs are designed by architects and engineers and are allowed to deviate from the UBC. I learned long ago that bringing up the NEC to a state inspector or engineer was a ticket off the job site.
A Realtor on the N.C. outer banks, a guy I had known for several years because he supervised maintenance at the condo were my family and I stayed on vacation, once advised me that if I ever decided to buy property there to seek out older houses or condos because the construction of the new ones was poor. Corners cut and the use of weaker materials. He doubted they’d survive a good hit from a serious hurricane.
When I worked construction, 40 years ago in MD, building schools, the Inspector showed up, went into the shed – 10 or 15 minutes – got in his truck and left.
Never saw him go “on-site” other than the shed.
And I was there from ground breaking to clean-up.