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Posted on 01/19/2009 7:01:31 AM PST by LadyBuzz
Some home builders already struggling in Florida's dismal housing market are facing another headache: The Chinese-made drywall they used is causing unpleasant odors and possibly leading to electric problems in dozens of homes constructed during the housing boom.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Undoubtedly, these shoddy builders demanded top dollar for those houses, even though they were made of Chinese junk and built by illegal aliens. The builders probably have or will declare bankruptcy, and the homeowners are left with rotten houses for which they are still making high house payments. No wonder people are walking away from their mortgages.
BINGO, let the builders pay up, make them replace the drywall and provide compensation to the home owner..!!
But.. but it’s for free trade! What’s a few bad odors and fires? It’s for free trade! You protectionists!
Read the article. It mentions sulfur=based fumes that can cause metal corrosion.
That makes sense. Kinda like the high sodium content in chinese concrete corodes steel.
Sheetrock is heavy. They ship it from China?
The other stories I have read indicate problems with pipes, pinholes and wierd corrosion - blackish, but copper tends toward green? Maybe sulfer?
Chinese concrete? You mean in China?
FL was also importing sheetrock from Germany during the boom times...
Why should the American buisinessman be help responsible for the sub-par foreign products? Oh yeah, you don't like American capitalism.
Made in China concrete.
We are well and truly doomed. How in God’s name could it be cheaper to ship concrete from China than make your own. Every material, every tool, even food is becoming completely worthless.
When I think of the cheap Chinese crap that went into 1+ million dollar units, I chuckle to myself a bit.
Ocean freight is relatively cheap per pound.
The stuff is a hazard to produce in the US because of the dust and the environmental and workplace safety rules in place around it. They can make it in China - with its weak to nonexistent safety standards and cheap labor both in the gypsum mines and the manufacturing plant - and ship it to the US and still be cheaper than the full cost of the domestic stuff.
And that, by the way, is why EVERYTHING is made in the China these days. They treat their employees as being expendable (and pay them as such) and pass the savings on to Americans.
I doubt they ship it in it’s finished form. More likely certain ingredients come from China and are mixed with things like sand and gravel here.
In the case of wheat gluten, the wheat was shipped from here, to China, and shipped back as gluten or in any number of other products.
Gives a whole new meaning to “getting plastered.”
I don’t have a problem with product liability laws. If there is a problem with the product, the manufacturer should bear the responsibility, not the installer.
Out to “get” a whole industry. Pretty sleazy and crappy (but wholly expected from you), although I do agree that nobody should ever get away with hiring illegal immigrants. I would like to see every employer of illegals jailed.
I know that there is a USG plant in eastern Iowa where the gypsum mine and drywall plant are together. Transportation costs to the central Illinois market are sky high. Cannot fathom shipping this commodity
“Sheetrock is heavy. They ship it from China?”
There may have been a shortage of it at the time. Back in 2005 when we were at 2 million housing starts in the US, there were shortages of alot of commodity building items. Drywall, concrete, asphalt shingles and other items were in tight supply back then. It probably has more to do with lack of availability form North American producers to keep up with demand than buying something because it was cheap.
The US dollar was also alot higher then. Therefore, there might have been an opportunity to bring in drywall to port cities in the US. After that the weight a truck can carry will limit the distance it travels from the port and still be competitive.
At 600000 housing starts there are NO shortages of anything right now.
Found this online thru Google from onemine.org:
[SME
Summary / Abstract To reduce their sulfur emissions, many coal-fired electric power plants use wet flue-gas scrubbers. These scrubbers convert sulfur oxides into solid sulfate and sulfite sludge, which must then be disposed of. Currently, the major markets for scrubber sludge are for manufacture of gypsum products, such as wallboard and plaster, and for cement. However, the quality of the raw sludge is often not high enough or consistent enough to satisfy manufacturers, and so the material is difficult to sell. Other markets, such as paper manufacture and plastics fillers, have even more stringent quality requirements and will not accept raw sludge at all. In the work described in this paper, several reagents have been examined to determine their ability to selectively improve the flotation of the unreacted limestone contaminant away from the desirable products (calcium sulfite and gypsum). The most success has been achieved using a cationic collector, which shows a higher selectivity between calcium sulfite and calcium carbonate than do the anionic collectors that were studied.]
I wonder if this partly explanatory?
That settles it! I'm completely eliminating Chinese drywall from my diet as of right now.
From now on, my bill of fare will contain only American-grown gypsum products!
Regards,
Lennar is one of the biggies and they build crap houses.
I read the article a few days ago. It was a German company but not German sheetrock. The crap was made in China. Pretty suprising because the German contruction standards are incredibly anal - they build their stuff to last forever.
I think this Chinese drywall had a lot of sulphur which I believe is corrosive plus gave off fumes.
You mentioned FL. Lennar was mentioned in the article and their HQ is in Miami. They always have some problem for some crappy building or scam they have pulled.
something to keep in mind when I invest in FL real estate to take advantage of the coming flood of baby-boomer retirees...
Until recently, there were huge tariffs on cement from Mexico... So it is possible that cement and drywall were imported from China.
Why we allow anything to be imported from the country is beyond me.
The American businessman bought the product to install, the selected products for installation were his choice entirely. He could have bought from a different supplier but he chose to use the CHEAPER product.
It's exactly the same if an American auto company, say Ford, bought parts for it's cars from a Chinese company, and those parts caused the car had problems due to that part. Once the culprit was discovered Ford would be liable and would have to do a recall. Same with the builders.
The Chinese drywall contains sludge from sulfur removal during the burning of dirty fossile fuels. The sulfur compounds smell bad and will corrode electrical contacts. This could cause fires if these wall receptacles overheat from the corrosion.
We demand Obama-money to fix this problem.
sulfur dioxide + water vapor = sulfuric acid. The acid eats metals, especially copper-based alloys in electrical wiring and HVAC tubing.
If you go into home depot check out where the nails are made. I recently bought some cut washers from them as well — they were noticeably thinner when sitting next to some old ones I had lying around. Sometimes a bargain isn’t a bargain.
Would someone please start a store called “Quality Mart” that sells only good stuff that you don’t have to worry about breaking. I would rather pay the money than strip some more gears on a drill.
I don’t know, mine smells pretty good. Kind of a combination of General Tso’s chicken and fried rice.
Thanks for the ping; post. Very interesting. BTTT.
Almost sounds like the Florida Habitat for Humanity "Blitz Building" development that's rotting into the dump it was built on top of.
It is hard to find, but it's out there. Problem is, it is never found locally; and the sellers never seem to to believe in 'free' shipping.
Blame the Obama voters. They learned their economics the same place they learned their politics.
Liberal Economic Axiom 1: It is cheaper to pay half as much three times, than to pay twice as much once. PROOF: X/2*3 = 3*mywalletcontents; X = 1.5*mywalletcontents; 3*mywalletcontents/3 < 1.5*mywalletcontents!
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