Remember the tainted pet food using adulterated products from China that caused massive recalls and many animal deaths several years ago?
Turns out that Hawaii was hit by another problematic Chinese product that is costing millions in damages across the state and, it appears, across the country. This one involves plumbing components that are normally tucked away in the walls of homes and apartments, hidden from view. The problem came to light when frequent plumbing leaks began causing damage in several up-scale Honolulu condominiums.
According to a lawsuit brought by apartment owners in the Hokua Condominium, the problems were traced to decisions made during the developers’ “value engineering” process, when contractors focus on late stage design changes that can cut costs.
According to the complaint, a decision was made to replace the water system designed by the original architects and engineers “with a system composed of cross-linked polyethylene pipe (‘PEX’), brass fittings (‘Brass Fittings’) and stainless steel cinch clamps (‘Clamps’) (‘PEX Components’).”
The brass fittings and clamps started failing in 2006, shortly after owners moved into the new building, causing flooding and damage.
An investigation by the condominium owners association identified a total of 17,150 brass fittings in the building’s 245 apartments at risk of failure.
Brass is made from copper and zinc. Honolulu’s building code does not allow more than 10% zinc in the brass, because excess zinc speeds a process of “dezincification,” basically the disintegration of the metal due to a chemical interaction with water. Brass fittings used at Hokua averaged 36% to 39% zinc, according to the lawsuit. This is not good for a plumbing fixture, as you can see.
The problem was repeated in the Koolani condominium. Koolani owners were awarded a total of $12,344,945.53 in damages for a series of defects in the original construction. The largest single item was $4,833,402.80 to re-pipe the entire building in order to get rid of the PEX piping and defective brass fittings, which were determined to be “defective and unfit for its use.”
Similar plumbing problems are among construction defects being assessed in the Moana Pacific condominium, and other buildings on the Big Island and Maui are also dealing with the defective fixtures.
Some of Hawaii’s largest developers, contractors, engineering firms, and subcontractors have been caught up as defendants in these lawsuits.
And this has become a huge problem across the mainland. In Nevada, there are numerous lawsuits brought by homeowners facing the same issues, and class action lawsuits have been filed elsewhere. Here’s one clear explanation of the problems.
It’s an amazingly large and expensive problem, apparently linked to substandard products. Just do a Google search for “pex plumbing lawsuits” and you’ll get a long list of links.
I doubt all the defective products came from China, but China has been identified as one of the primary sources of defective brass items. Shouldn’t the substandard products have been caught before ending up in thousands or millions of homes and apartments? Is our system of import quality control that lax, or was fraud involved in the sale of these products? You have to wonder.
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Wow… what a terrible quality problem. Having to rip out all the walls to replace the fittings is hugely expensive. And by ANY standard, 40% zinc plus 60% copper is NOT brass There are industry standards for brass content.
I remember another China quality problem wiht construction materials…. inferior grade sheet rock.
It was made (as I recall) with high amounts of sulfur content in the materials used in the “plaster” inner layers that later released hydrogen sulfide and other noxious gasses. The remedy was to gut the houses and re-sheet rock all the interior walls. It was a multi-million dollar lawsuit.
I used to read my father’s plastics books from the button factory. Then my first summer job in New York City was on the quality control staff of a Long Island City electronics manufacturer. I was a bit of a pioneer in “impact” testing, that is, hitting an amplifier with a somewhat outrageous signal and comparing the output waveforms for easily recognizable abnormalities on the oscilloscope. So quality assurance has been an interest of mine ever since–I was imprinted with it at an early age.
Maybe American companies did not have the strict QA standards that the Japanese adopted, but in fact, this country was the pioneer in QA and in material science in general.
As I look at the disintegrating plastic dish drainer in our kitchen (made in China), and think about the defective plastic parts in a few Chinese-made electric fans I’ve owned, it’s clear that American firms are no longer interested in quality, just in profits.
Kevin Talbot is correct–the metal used was not acceptable as “brass”. A substance filled with dirt and made into a dish rack may or may not fit the definition of plastic, but most thermoplastics did not leave an ash when burned, according to my father’s old book. This one did. I used to know something about materials, but that was long ago. Some things don’t change, though.
Now greed runs our country. We don’t have jobs, we don’t have QA departments apparently either. Our corporations don’t care about us. Unfortunately, they are in charge, not us.
Exactly. We can blame greedy US businesses as much as or more than shoddy Chinese products.
Given the two bags of garlic, one from Sam’s Club and the other from COSTCO, I chose the one from COSTCO because it was from California and the Sam’s was from China. Same price and weight, but safer bet that the Gilroy garlic might not be tainted with illegal pesticides or chemicals.
When I got my first apartment, my grandmother gave me her 20-year-old Maytag washer. Ten years later, I replaced it. That one lasted about 18 years and then I replaced it in 2003.
The 2003 washer lasted just five years which is when I found out that Maytag had stopped manufacturing its products in the United States and outsourced the manaufacturing jobs to China.
We bought a Kenmore washer in June, 2008 – no, it’s not manufactured in the US, but at least the extended warranty will carry me beyond five years.
The quality of products manufactured in China is extremely shoddy – and don’t get me started on soybeans.
>>> Is our system of import quality control that lax <<<
I think that's it. The developers trusted the parts to be what they claimed to be.
There’s also a huge issue with counterfeit parts. I work for an Engineering firm with pretty good QA, actually. However we’ve had significant problems with counterfeit parts — we order a specific part and then once we get and test it, we find that it’s not really the part we ordered. Though it has the ‘correct’ part number. Again, it’s up to QA to catch this, and I’m guessing that most construction firms don’t do much QA, if any.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/health/video-limited-options-for-homes-with-toxic-drywall-says-propublicas-joaquin-sapien/8833/
I just happened to catch this the other night on PBS about Chinese toxic drywall as I was channel surfing. The toxic drywall literally destroys the whole house by corroding everything, like the electrical system.
Remember not too long ago we mocked the cheap quality of “made in Japan?” Thing is, back then we had a standard against which to judge quality; namely, “made in America”.
As I read Ian’s story I wondered if there is a “made in America” equivalent for the shoddy parts discovered in these super costly condo buildings. So much of what we used to make, and the jobs too, went overseas leaving our country so much the poorer.
The REAL problem is too much government regulation of plumbing fixture and sheetrock manufacturers! Inferior products increase the GDP.
Case in point, the Hokua. Look how many jobs were created during the corrective renovations:
A demo crew to open the walls, plumbers to swap out the defective fixtures, dry wallers to repair the damaged walls, painters, carpenters to reinstall the African mahogany baseboards and trim, paperhangers to reinstall the grasscloth wallcovering, and accounts and insurance agents. To say nothing about the salaries of opposing legal teams.
If the liberals had their way, the defective fixtures would have been inspected and certified prior to installation, which would have suppressed all this economic activity.
The lesson for us all:
Vote Republican and Grow the Economy!
Not much can be done! We don’t live in America, but ‘Chimerica’. China and the US are conjoined twins economically.
The US gov’t sells T-bills by the trillions in order to pay for the federal debt, and the Chinese buy them to keep the dollar strong so Americans will buy “cheap” Chinese products. The US gov’t cannot upset the applecart because they need the Chinese to keep the US afloat. Negotiations over trade with China are kept tactful and relatively unassertive.
But the sword cuts two ways. If you owe the bank $10,000, you have a problem, but if you owe the bank $10 million, the bank has a problem. China is the bank — and it has a problem.