Drywall Check

Your humble correspondent had his visit with Tom Schramsky today. He is the person from KB Home doing the preliminary inspection looking for obvious signs of problems caused by the now infamous Chinese drywall.

He went into each room and checked behind some of the outlet and switch plate covers. He looked behind the refrigerator and at the air conditioning coils. He arrived promptly at noon and left by 12:35.

Schramsky says he found nothing alarming and that KB Home will send a written statement to that effect in about two weeks. Another couple in this building got a similar clearance. He says that if one unit in a building is free of the Chinese drywall it is likely that the whole building is OK but he recommends that every homeowner have him come check their units anyway.

(Contact Schramsky at (772) 360-6896 to arrange an inspection.)

People in other buildings have not been as lucky. Their cursory checks showed symptoms typical of problems associated with Chinese drywall such as corrosion of copper wiring and air conditioning coils.

In these cases, Schramsky calls a third party to do a more thorough inspection to determine for certain whether Chinese drywall is the culprit. At least one homeowner here in St. Charles Place has reported getting a phone call saying that the tests had come back positive for Chinese drywall.

Schramsky said that the only remedy he knew of was moving the people and their belongings out of the home, tearing it down to the studs and starting over. He promised that KB Home intends "to do the right thing" for affected owners.

As far as what the HOA's role in this could be, we've asked Mary Fritzler from our property management company to check with our community lawyer. (We have one. He's the one who drafted the letter explaining the possible consequences if we had not reached a quorum at our last attempted turnover meeting.)

Mary's understanding was that it was an individual warranty issue. If that turns out to be the case, the spirit of the HOA board is that we'll do whatever we can to facilitate communication among affected owners so that they can take the best action possible.

If you have news to share about this, or any community issue, you're welcome to contact any of your board members or stcharlesblog (at) gmail (dot) com.