I’m sure the people who live in similar high rises all over the Florida coast aren’t sleeping very well right now.
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These buildings are designed for this kind of exposure. There is something going on here more than just normal exposure to the elements.
It’s probably just 40 years of neglect and no one wanting to pay for repairs.
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Boomerdecay
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Right, but people are now going to be looking for anything and everything that “doesn’t look right” and assuming the worst.
True.
They aren’t designed to withstand exposure for 40 years without proper maintenance. The thing that’s most likely going on is HOAs trying to be cheap. I’d be willing to bet this isn’t the only condo in Florida that is/was in this kind of peril.
In Florida the statute of limitations on latent construction defects is 4 years, so that 2018 report creates the possibility that the builder could be liable if the defect is determined to be latent among and that report was the first time it was made apparent.
What’s a latent construction defect?
IANAL but I amaretto sure that is not how Statutes of limitations work. If someone is aware of a fact and neglects it that should not trigger a limit on being responsible.
Seems more likely that if it comes out +4 years after the collapse that some person/ company was responsible, they could not be sued anymore.
Having a timer on being responsible for repairs you can just keep your fingers crossed does not seem how this would work.
This is pretty common among concrete work actually. During installation the concrete is lab tested to ensure mix and structural integrity. If lab work was botched or standards let slip a little it would be totally hidden until failure.
I’m not saying that happened here. I have no idea. Just giving you an example of latent defect.
Another famous example, is several plane crashes caused by microscopic manufacture defects leaving hairline cracks that wear over decades resulting in catastrophic failure.
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Passing around the report without context is not good. It is going to cause lots of people unneeded stress because people have no way of differentiating normal concrete wear and tear and indications of critical failure.
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There are statue of limitations on this and contracts and Varies by state. I’m not a lawyer but am a contractor. If the building collapsed months after being built or within few years then everyone is getting sued down to the manufactures of the materials.They aren’t going to go after the builder 40 years later. Also if the contractor built per engineer specs he did nothing wrong. This really seems like a maintenance issue combined with not wanting to address the massive issue of pool/parking garage problem. I also would be worried if I was in other similarly built buildings built during the same time period.
People do that anyways. I have spent far too much time in my life having to assure customers that hairline cracks in concrete are normal and expected.
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Ya that’s true for sure. As president of my condo board I’m just imagining all the screaming calls so many boards are going to get about “obvious structural failure” based on cursory similarity to pictures in this report.
It would make sense for a contractor to be off the hook if they were not aware of the problem. ViridianDreams post makes it seem like everyone is off the hook if they are aware of the problem, but wait long enough while doing nothing, which still would seem pretty bizarre to me.
I explain it to people this way- Imagine you had a roof/window/whatever installed at your house. Two years later you notice water damage all around where you had the window installed. Upon further inspection it’s readily apparent that water has been coming in for a long period of time causing damage to the surrounding framing/flooring/whatever. The water wasn’t due to some catastrophic event like a tree falling or a windstorm blowing the roof off.
It’s latent in that there was damage occurring for a good amount of time but unnoticed. It’s a construction defect because there was likely faulty construction and/or products that caused the damage.
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Your job just got that much harder.
“What about that Florida building?”
it usually takes design as well as good maintenance though. it always amazes me that people just blindly believe in good design. but i grew up in an area where people didn’t follow any codes, and just compensated with meticulous fixing.
I just wonder how many buildings have reports like this that the public isn’t aware of. It obviously doesn’t mean they’re going to collapse but general neglect of maintenance responsibilities seems like a pretty common thing.
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