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A private building inspector says that of about 80 new homes he has inspected this year, he's found problems with the way roof trusses are installed in almost all of them. Roof trusses are triangular wooden frames that support a home's roof and prevent it from flying off in extreme winds. Properly installed trusses are particularly important in hurricane-prone areas.
"Nearly every new house I've been to and seen these problems was built after the problems that came up before," said Tony Kunich, a licensed home inspector who has several years of experience in home-building and inspecting. "There were only maybe one or two that didn't have problems."
He doesn't know how widespread the problem might be because the new homes he has inspected represent only a portion of those built since 2007, when improperly installed trussed were first discovered in Sun City. Most of the homes where he has found truss problems are on Spring Beauty Drive, Knotweed Court and Honesty Lane, and on smaller side streets off of those roads.
Just as before, Beaufort County building inspectors apparently missed the problems spotted later by Kunich -- trusses that weren't fastened together or braced according to specifications. Despite the problems, county building inspectors issued certificates of occupancy for the homes, declaring them in compliance with construction guidelines and ready to live in.
"All the inspections I've done have been after the county inspectors had already been there," Kunich said. "County inspectors had a chance to catch some of these problems."
Most of the inspections Kunich does in Sun City are on homes whose one-year warranties are about to expire -- he calls them "11-month inspections." Homeowners hire him because they want to know about any defects while their warranties are still in effect. County inspectors' check homes before Kunich does -- while they're being built. County inspectors are responsible for making sure new homes are suitable for habitation. They check different things -- the foundation, framing, wiring and roof trusses, for example -- to determine whether they comply with the county's building code.
Kunich's findings apparently didn't sit well with one county inspector. He objected to Kunich noting in his reports that some trusses didn't have braces -- reinforcing boards that prevent trusses from failing.
"I was inspecting a house for a client one day and (the county inspector) showed up and said, 'You need to quit writing down that the bracing is incorrect,' " Kunich said. "He told me, 'Don't put that in your reports anymore.' "
"I told him that I have designs and plans that I go by, and that's what I'm going to keep doing,"Kunich said of the Aug. 25 encounter.
He identified the county inspector as Tony Mulligan, who works out of the Bluffton office of the county building codes department. Mulligan confronted Kunich a second time on Sept. 21 at a different home and again urged him to stop reporting the bracing problems, Kunich said.
Mulligan declined to comment Thursday and referred questions to Ed Nelson, deputy director the building codes department. Nelson would say only that he found it impossible to believe that problems with trusses were turning up again.
"They'd have to be put in correctly," Nelson said. "We've jumped through all the hoops there are on this thing."
The head of the building codes department, Arthur Cummings, was on vacation late last week and did not return calls.
County administrator Gary Kubic, however, said he planned to talk to Mulligan about any discussions he had with Kunich. Kubic also will investigate the truss installation problems reported by Kunich, according to county spokeswoman Suzanne Larson.
"(Kubic) will be inviting the private inspector to meet with him and county staff to exchange information and make a determination as to an appropriate course of action," Larson said. "He will review the acquired materials in order to understand them on a site-specific basis."
Kunich's wife, Jennifer, who manages the office for their company, Professional Home Inspections, said the company will continue to note any problems with braces "because we have been given no documentation to verify that bracing is not needed."
THE 'HOOPS'
The "hoops" mentioned by Nelson, the deputy building codes director, are numerous performance standards that have been imposed on his department. In April 2007 the department came under fire for missing hundreds of improperly installed trusses in Sun City. The county spent $150,000 to bring in an independent inspection team that checked 2,749 homes suspected of having truss problems. Of those, 668 homes needed repairs.
Afterward, Kubic hired California-based International Accreditation Services to review the building codes department's procedures and recommend ways to improve. That process, expected to cost about $15,000, is in its final stages. If the department meets the higher standards, it will receive "accreditation," the equivalent of an A-plus for the way it operates.
International Accreditation Services gave the department generally good marks in a preliminary evaluation issued in September. More than 110 criteria were reviewed. On the issue of truss inspections, International Accreditation Services said the department "has taken appropriate measures to train inspection personnel to identify improperly installed wood trusses and require corrective action." County inspectors were given "focused training" on proper truss installation, the evaluation said.
Evaluators from International Accreditation Services interviewed the department's employees and spent time with them in the field; contractors and homebuilders also were interviewed to get their impressions of the building department, said Richard Archer, program manager for the organization.
How did the evaluators miss the truss installations problems Kunich spotted?
Archer said he wasn't sure. But he added that his organization "can't work with the building department day in and day out. There comes a point where you have to take a leap of faith."
Archer emphasized that the evaluation of the building department is incomplete and accreditation isn't assured. "I would stress the fact that this process is ongoing," he said.
DEVELOPER'S VIEW
Pulte Homes, the developer of Sun City, said it is "confident that our building practices meet applicable building codes and are in compliance with manufacturers guidelines."
We appreciate the importance of this issue and are prepared to respond to customer service inquiries," corporate spokesman Eric Younan said in a brief statement.
Younan criticized Kunich's use of "generic drawings" for checking truss installations, rather than more detailed "engineered drawings."
Building inspectors often check the actual workmanship in homes against diagrams showing how it's supposed to be done.
Kunich said flatly the diagrams he used "are not generic."
"They are current truss plans that we got directly from Pulte," he said. "If there are more current plans, they should have been given to me."
He also said bracing problems cited in his reports are easy to avoid.
"The company that makes the trusses puts green stickers on them that say lateral bracing is required. Neon green stickers. They tell you what to do," he said. "It's a no-brainer. Even if a truss doesn't have a sticker, the diagrams say that the brace is needed."
Kunich said he is not looking for a fight with Beaufort County or Pulte. He decided to speak up, he said, after reading a story in The Island Packet about the building codes department seeking accreditation.
"Why didn't (International Accreditation Services) ask to look at any of the reports we've done?" Kunich said.
He complimented Pulte for promptly responding to homeowners who ask the company to correct problems that he has found. "If we write up problems in our reports, our clients say Pulte gets on them and fixes them," he said. (Pulte's spokesman said the company's "service logs do not show customer calls related to roof systems.")
Kunich added that he sometimes sees homes in Sun City built to extremely high standards.
"I'm not trying to hurt what Pulte is doing," he said. "Some of the work I've seen is better than work I've seen in custom-built homes.But problems with trusses shouldn't still be happening."
