Chinese drywall in your SW FL home............. (Tampa, Lehigh Acres: short sales, rent)

[HomeStager]

wellsme,

He or you , would have had to take the plate off of the HVAC system in doors, to look at the copper coils, and have taken the outlet covers off in several places and looked at the copper wiring. If neither of you did that, there may have been nothing evident of it to see. The mirror and chrome corrosion in bathrooms I think doesn't start to show until 2-3 years later.

Some people can not smell it at all either, even when it is bad from high heat or humidity. Or, they smell something, but not all of it is offensive and so it can be easily dismissed as new construction smells. I've been in maybe 6 Chinese drywall homes now, and I never smelled rotten eggs. It's closer to the smell of a stricken match to me.


Timing seems to be different from house to house, because of air volume/ventilation differences, amount of bad drywall used, which manufacturer the drywall came from, differing temperatures the place is kept at, ect.

The copper in your place would definetly be showing signs of blackening by now if you have it. Someone needs to look at that to put you at ease.

Blackening copper is the single common symptom found in every CDW home.

[wellsme]

Thanks HomeStager,
I did notice there was no problem with a couple of ground wires while adding a couple of
dimmers. I must check the wires in a few more locations. Also, I'll somehow check the AC coils.
Thanks again.

[bboddie]

We too have been searching several months for a second home in Cape Coral. We have seen several properties over the past few months. In fact we can very close to purchasing a new home in the NE.


Over the past several days we went through several houses again. We went through one particular house that presented with a strong odor that was hard to describe. My husband looked under the sink and the fixtures as well as the copper pipes were either pitted with black covering. We went out of the house and the copper pipe leading to the air conditioning unit was definitely black and the black coating could be scraped away fairly easily. The pipe almost appeared as though it was painted with flat black paint. The realtor we are working with notified the listing agent of our findings. The listing agent simply responded by saying. "I don't think the house has Chinese drywall." ?????

We did purchase a small home in the Yacht Club area that was built in 1965. No Chinese drywall here. The risk of purchasing a home contaminated with toxic drywall is just to great for me.
[SIZE=3] [/SIZE]

[yoko]

America's Consumers' Watchdog in its website: ChineseDrywallComplaintCenter.com writes:

"What is known about toxic Chinese drywall? It was first imported to the US in 2001, it is toxic enough to corrode copper, & other metals. In humans, exposure to toxic Chinese drywall is causing upper respiratory issues, severe headaches, nose bleeds, rashes, severe allergy type symptoms, for many of the occupants, who live in these homes. Exposure to the gasses emitted by toxic Chinese drywall may also cause electronic failures in TV sets, DVD players, LID displays, light bulb failures, air conditioning failures, etc. According to Americas Watchdog, "the $64,000 question is will short, or long term exposure to toxic Chinese drywall kill US citizens, their children, loved ones, or give them cancer?"

It also reports that because of Chinese-German dry walls U.S. home owners face "the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history".

A company in its website: www.drywalldisaster.com has some pictures of "greed" !!

Since Cape Coral was the center of mad over building of cheap houses, one can imagine what is ahead. I hope whoever wants to move to Cape Coral does his own research on real Cape Coral via Google search.

[Angelala]

We called about a gulf access house on 3722 Tropicana Pkwy and the listing agent told my agent that when we walk into the house that the odor that we smelled is not chinese drywall it's just the carpet that needs to be replaced. So we go into the house and the smell hit us like a brick and I looked down on the floor and someone had left a match on the floor by the front door, which I thought was very odd. So my husband brought tools and proceeded to take out a couple outlets and pulled them out and sure enough the copper wiring was black. So at that point we already knew but he looked at the AC coil anyway and sure enough it was totally black! That house does have chinese drywall! I am so disgusted that the listing agent is telling people that it doesn't. She ought to have her realtors license yanked. I would like to thank everyone who posted about this stuff because we might have been stuck with that house had I not read about it here. So, THANKS EVERYONE!!!!!!

[wellsme]

Try a buyer's agent. They look out for you.....at least mine did.
Good luck.

[yoko]

If you have any problem with Chinese-German dry walls, you should write to:
www.ChineseDrywallComplaintCenter.com

[OrlandoRE_Miracle]

You should be proud of yourself that you did your homework first and didn't get stuck in a terrible situation.

Originally Posted by Angelala

We called about a gulf access house on 3722 Tropicana Pkwy and the listing agent told my agent that when we walk into the house that the odor that we smelled is not chinese drywall it's just the carpet that needs to be replaced. So we go into the house and the smell hit us like a brick and I looked down on the floor and someone had left a match on the floor by the front door, which I thought was very odd. So my husband brought tools and proceeded to take out a couple outlets and pulled them out and sure enough the copper wiring was black. So at that point we already knew but he looked at the AC coil anyway and sure enough it was totally black! That house does have chinese drywall! I am so disgusted that the listing agent is telling people that it doesn't. She ought to have her realtors license yanked. I would like to thank everyone who posted about this stuff because we might have been stuck with that house had I not read about it here. So, THANKS EVERYONE!!!!!!

[dreemcatcher]

Okay-for those of us who cannot read everything on this topic, can someone give a "drywall for dummies" synopsis of what to look for? What are some signs and what "tools" should I bring in order to check? I think I'm going with a very legit realtor to look, but I do like to do my own homework.

[nhkev]

Originally Posted by dreemcatcher

Okay-for those of us who cannot read everything on this topic, can someone give a "drywall for dummies" synopsis of what to look for? What are some signs and what "tools" should I bring in order to check? I think I'm going with a very legit realtor to look, but I do like to do my own homework.

Copper Corrosion Case Defition Possibly Associated with Imported Drywall

this link has lots of good pictures to show differences of corroded vs normal