Chinese drywall fears widen in SW Florida
Richard Cestaâs on his third air conditioning coil in a few months at his Bella Terra condominium. The air in his home sometimes smells of sulfur. Like other Lee County residents, heâs worried he may be victim of Chinese drywall leaking corrosive chemicals into his home and endangering his health. âYou can actually see all the copper tubing that deals with the air conditioning system has turned black,â said Cesta, 61, a retired truck driver from Long Island, N.Y., who bought the condo in south Lee County in 2006 and retired there with his wife, Virginia, last summer.
Chinese drywall fears widen in SW Florida
December 21, 2008
By DICK HOGAN
Richard Cestaâs on his third air conditioning coil in a few months at his Bella Terra condominium. The air in his home sometimes smells of sulfur.
Like other Lee County residents, heâs worried he may be victim of Chinese drywall leaking corrosive chemicals into his home and endangering his health.
âYou can actually see all the copper tubing that deals with the air conditioning system has turned black,â said Cesta, 61, a retired truck driver from Long Island, N.Y., who bought the condo in south Lee County in 2006 and retired there with his wife, Virginia, last summer.
Cesta said he contacted the builder, Lennar Homes, which sent out an air quality inspector but stopped answering Cestaâs questions after the inspector said âthere were no human health effects.â
Lennar officials were unavailable for comment Friday and Saturday.
Aubuchon Homes has moved one family from its home in Fort Myers while the builder determines whether itâs drywall-related, and Engle Homes has encountered the problem twice and fixed it by taking out the drywall or sealing it with paint.
Doug Hoffman, executive director of the National Organization of Remediators and Mold Inspectors, said heâs been getting reports of problems associated with Chinese drywall mainly in the Southeast.
Dan Reid of Intuitive Environmental Solutions in Fort Myers, said heâs started to encounter the Chinese drywall issue in the past three months.
âIâve been in some homes, Iâve heard a lot of complaints, Iâve heard of a lot of coils failing, Iâve done a lot of research,â Reid said.
His conclusion: At least some drywall imported from China during the homebuilding boom years of 2004 and 2005 was made with waste materials from scrubbers on coal-fired power plants.
Those materials leak into the air as gases and combine with the moisture on an air conditioning coil to create sulfuric acid, which appears to be dissolving solder joints and copper tubing â creating leaks, blackening the coils and even causing the system to fail, Reid said.
âIt appears that every case will need to be evaluated individually,â he said.
Cesta said heâs worried about the health implications of continuing to breathe the sulfur compounds in the air if he stays in his home but others with similar situations have decided to live with it.
Karen Kuenz, 69, a retiree from St. Louis, has smelled sulfur for years in her house at The Legends, a Lennar subdivision in south Lee County.
A ditch dug by Lennar around the house and filled with rocks lessened the problem although âthey found no waterâ but thereâs still one room where the âstinky sulfur is just nasty,â she said.
Charles Jans, a former vice president of McGarvey Construction in Bonita Springs who started this month as a partner in commercial real estate agent Grubb Ellis / 1st Commercial, said the importing of drywall from China is a practice of the past.
âI think weâre pretty much back to the local sources now because the demandâs way off,â he said â thereâs no need to buy more expensive foreign products.
Drywall isnât usually a problem, he said, because itâs thoroughly sealed off.
âIt goes on the wall and they tape it up and then they sand it really well and then they spray a primer on and a final coat of paint,â he said. âAll this acts as a sealer.â
Regardless of whoâs at fault, lawsuits appear to be one likely result of the problem.
Fort Myers-based attorney Kevin Jursinski said heâs representing one Bella Terra resident with Chinese drywall. âThe way they found out about it was the air conditioner kept going out.â
A builder is legally responsible to fix the problem, he said.
âItâs a latent defect,â he said. âIt manifested itself late but as soon as itâs discovered, the builderâs responsible even if itâs gone past the one-year warranty.â
The builder in turn âcan go back on his supplier, on up the chain. Each one of those people up the chain is responsible,â back to the actual manufacturer, Jursinski said.
Charles Phoenix, a Fort Myers-based attorney, said residents likely will be filing two kinds of lawsuits: claims to repair the defective drywall and personal injury claims in the event someoneâs health is damaged.
The issue is even the subject of dark humor.
âIn Bella Terra, there was a guy actually dressed up as Chinese drywall at Halloween,â Jursinski said. âThe terror of the neighborhood.â
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