Case study 3

One couple’s story - the emotional stress of a leaky home.

Relaxing on the deck in the evening sun listening to Joan and David tell their leaky home saga, it is hard to take in the emotional roller coaster the family has been through.

Emotions are raw and close to the surface as the hurt and despair of living in a badly designed and constructed home are recalled.

It is this emotional side that is rarely discussed or acknowledged. Here is Joan and David’s story.

Damp carpet

The hard facts:

• They bought their dream house six years ago, from the builder who had lived in it for a year.
• A Code of Compliance was issued the day before settlement day, at the insistence of Joan and David’s lawyer.
• Within six weeks of moving in skirtings were swelling and shifting. Mushrooms began growing on wet timber.
• When approached about these problems, the builder simply “headed for the hills”, says David.
• An independent appraisal revealed the widespread extent of the leaking caused by both poor design and construction.
  Joan and David registered a claim with the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service (WHRS).
• They received a thorough report. David thought “the report was excellent as it used lay language and diagrams to clearly explain why our house was leaking”.
• After getting legal advice, Joan and David decided to use the WHRS’s mediation service. “It was tempting to want to have our day in court but it simply was too costly for us”, says Joan. “Also, we wanted to get the problem fixed and move on”.
• Although the mediator was excellent in Joan’s view , the builder walked out partway through when the going got tough.
  David was particularly happy with the WRHS mediation service as it was clear and produced a result.
• Eventually a confidential settlement was negotiated with the builder and the local council who had issued the consent, conducted the construction inspections, and signed off with a code compliance certificate.
• Over a period of six months the house was pulled apart and rebuilt.
• So, after waiting 2 years for the WHRS process, 6 months getting over the shock, 6 months to fix, the house is now weather-proof.

Problem solved? Yes, except for the major $100,000 repair bill (the settlement was only a fraction of this), except for the emotional trauma, and except for the formal notice that must go on any Sale and Purchase agreement. It is the latter that now haunts Joan and David.

They want to get on with their lives in another house. But as part of the mediated settlement, the council requires any sale and purchase agreement to have a statement that the house had been the subject of a mediated leaky homes settlement and that the council had settled and was no longer liable for any issues with the property. This is “a real turn-off for prospective purchasers”, says David.

Cantilevered joists

The council’s role

David is quite clear that “the real villain is the council. They provided the Code Compliance Certificate for the house before we bought it. For us the Certificate was a form of insurance – an experienced, reputable organisation had given a “seal of approval” for the house. The council had monitored construction, as they were required to do. What a joke! When the house was deconstructed for repairs the extent of poor construction and non-compliance to the consent plans was revealed.  Surely these should have been picked up by the council’s building inspectors?”

What really hurts, adds Joan, is that the “council required us to pay for another consent to get the repair work done”.

The builder is still building

The mediated settlement cost the builder some money, but he is still out there building more houses.

David believes the WHRS, or the building industry, should have a publicly available list of builders who have been responsible for leaky homes.

The dark side

Damage inside a wall

“There is more to having a leaky home than water slowly rotting away your dream home. You won’t see any of these issues raised in a WHRS or consultant’s report,” says Joan.

• How to cope when an expert advises you to “bulldoze your (dream) house into the valley and start again”.
• How to cope week after week with tarpaulins covering huge holes in the walls.  Builders around day-after-day – the noise and sight of your house being demolished before your eyes.
• Two dehumidifiers operating 24/7.
  Having your insurance company immediately cancel your policy when it was advised the leaky home was to be repaired (eventually it was re-instated but the cancellation had huge implications for Joan and David’s mortgage).
• Even though the house is now repaired and water-tight, when it rains heavily the whole family is on edge.
• “I don’t know how we coped and survived as a couple, and a family,” says Joan. “Some days we simply did not want to go back home”.

By Joan’s account “what helped us immensely was being able to share our problems with another family going through the same trauma. We suddenly found we weren’t alone with our harrowing experience. Also, having a sympathetic and supportive project manager gave us the confidence that there would be an end to what we were going through.”

“Discovering you have a leaky home is like experiencing the sudden death of a loved one. It is a grieving process – huge ups and downs, recriminations, stress, anger and personal doubts about being able to go on. I just wish the government or councils would establish local support groups, or provide a counseling service, to help families through their ‘loss’. This is done for other victims, and that is what we felt like – victims of a shoddy builder and a lax council”.

David’s view is that WHRS have set up a good process, but it doesn’t provide a support service. They also weren’t able to get from the service a list of builders experienced in leaky home repairs or names of experienced project managers.