Bad drywall causing Lehigh family problems
When you walk into the rented house occupied by Manny and Jennifer Bermudez, a weird smell of sulphur hits you like a smack in the face. You know the smell is not good, but after a few minutes you become used to it.
But for the Bermudez family, which includes Mr.and Mrs. Bermudez and their two children and a son and his wife and their grandchild who come to visit, what’s happening to their home is becoming a nightmare and a concern about their future health and what’s happening to some of the possessions they have in the home located at 2802 Beth Ave. in Lehigh.
The landlord, Tim Brown, who lives at New Smyrna Beach, told The Citizen that it has become a nightmare for him, too, and he has hired an attorney to try to get things settled.
“I paid to have wall board tested because the first thought was that it was Chinese drywall, but apparently it’s not,” he said.
Brown worked for Adams Homes in Lehigh when the house was under construction and actually worked on that particular house. After it was finished, he purchased the house for $217,000 but now he says because of the ailing economy, the house has is probably not worth even $90,000 and for all practical purposes, isn’t worth anything, not until the problem in the house can be resolved.
Jennifer Bermudez said she and her family moved into the rental house in January of 2008. The four-bedroom house, three baths and a three-car garage was great because she and her husband worked and they needed the space because of their family, which at that time included a son who has moved out, but still lives in Lehigh.
“The house was beautiful inside. It has a beautiful kitchen with granite countertops, privacy fencing and a pool. And to put the icing on the cake, the landlord accepted pets.
“The house fell into our hands at the perfect time. We jumped at the chance of renting it and found out that it was hardly lived in since being built in 2005. Only the owner, our landlord, lived in it for a short time. This became our dream house,” Bermudez said.
But the “dream house” isn’t all the dream they thought they were renting, and it was no longer a prize house for its owner, Tim Brown, when he found out about all the problems the Bermudez family was having.
Bermudez, a process server in Lee County, said everything was going fine until around March of 2009 when she and her family began hearing about Chinese drywall.
“One of the TV newscasts said what to look for and the best way to check is to go to your crawl space so you can see the back of the drywall.
“We were supposed to be looking for words like “China” in big letters or Knauf.
“I was a little worried because I knew when the house was built that there were drywall issues with a lot of builders.
“I had my husband go into the crawl space but he didn’t see anything resembling what to look for that would indicate that it was defective drywall. Instead he saw a bunch of numbers and ‘made with recycled paper’ printed on the backs of all the sheets he could see.”
So Bermudez and her husband were relieved that they didn’t have Chinese drywall.
“So I just put it in the back of my mind,” Jennifer Bermudez said. And so did her husband, both feeling relieved.
But then things began happening when their new air conditioning unit backed up and water seeped under their carpet in the hallway where the air handler is.
She said they called the landlord and he sent someone out to work on it.
“Then a few weeks later, our new refrigerator stopped cooling. The house had all new appliances in it because if was relatively new.
When the refrigerator began having problems, she called a repairman and he said that all of the Freon was gone and didn’t understand why such a new appliance would have that problem.
“He said there had to be a leak in the line somewhere and the best thing to do was to buy another refrigerator.
“So that is what our landlord did and then about two months later, the air conditioner backed up again. This time I really started to get worried,” Bermudez said.
What followed became a nightmare for Bermudez and the family’s landlord.
Not long, she began noticing that all the toilet paper metal holders were turning black. Her mother’s antique silverware was turning black, not from tarnishing, but black. She checked her jewelry and most of the metal has turned black. The faucets in the sinks and the tubs were turning black.
She thought it just may be corrosion from use, but that wasn’t what was happening.
She said that when the landlord sent a repair man out to the house the second time to check on the air conditioner, which had backed up, the repairman said there should be no reason whey he would have to come out again so soon.
“I told him my air conditioner was constantly running and only shutting off for about five minutes and not coming right back on again.”
Bermudez said the repair man opened the panel to see the coils and closed it up and she knew something was wrong. She said he told her he had to talk to her landlord, that the coils were corroded and should not have been.
Her landlord asked if she would take pictures for him and get her husband to look behind the electric outlets.
When Manny Bermudez unscrewed the plastic plates, he discovered the copper ground wires at each outlet was black.
That was when the family started to put the pieces together.
“Something was definitely happening to our house,” she said.
In addition to problems with the air conditioner and the new refrigerator, their big-screen TV stopped working and even the sway bar on her son’s guitar was corroded.
The son, 16-year-old Victor, loves music and has several poster and photos tacked up in his bedroom. He discovered that all the silver colored tacks have turned as black as soot, and you can’t rub it off.
Then the family began noticing the poignant odor of something when they would be gone all day and return home and enter the house.
Their pet dog developed rashes and some of her prized jewelry that was silver just turned black. She had bought a dragon fly pin to give to a friend and when she went to take it out of a box, the metal on it had turned completely black.
One day while cleaning, she moved a small chest from a wall, and two pennies were found underneath and the sides facing up had turned completely black, too, while the side facing down was still copper colored.
Then Jennifer said that she and the family began feeling physical problems.
“I was diagnosed nine years ago with Fibromyalgaia, a condition that causes pain in the muscles throughout your body. I noticed that it had gotten worse during the last year,” she said.
The couple quit smoking more than a year ago but they both agreed they still had symptoms of not always being able to get their breath.
“It was almost as if there was no oxygen in the house,” Jennifer Bermudez said.
She said her tongue and throat are now always sore and her children, who hardly ever missed school from being sick were ill more often and she worried about her grandson who comes to the house a couple times a week.
After taking the dog to the vet and being treated for a rash, she said it went away, then suddenly it came back.
“The vet admitted she didn’t know what was causing the problem,” Bermudez said.
She said the landlord called Adams Homes, the builders, after the second air conditioner incident and after seeing all the pictures that she had emailed him.
Bermudez said Adams Home suspected it was sulphur in the water but there was no trace of sulfur in the water when tested.
“Then they sent someone out to cut into the drywall to look for printing of numbers, but all the pieces had the same thing, serial numbers and the recycled paper notice.
Bermudez said he builders told her landlord they had called the company where they ordered the drywall from and they said it wasn’t from the defective drywall batch, but she was not convinced.
Bermudez said she saw the company on Lee Blvd. that does drywall testing. Her landlord set up an appointment for them to come to the house and inspect it.
“They came to the determination that it was defective drywall,” Bermudez said.
The landlord’s attorney sent the findings to Adams Homes.
They sent out another team of people again and the landlord came down and was in the house with them as they had an inspector look at each piece that had been cut and they even cut a couple more holes in it.
“Every single piece he looked at, he would say ‘that’s USG,’ meaning it was good, but I could not understand this. I knew something was going on here in this house,” Bermudez said.
Finally Tim Brown, the landlord, had people come to the house to take two samples of drywall for tests at a lab and after a few days news came back that it was indeed defective, Brown said.
He said he contacted Adams Homes but they did not call him back.
“Our landlord said that he wanted to have Adams Homes store our belongings and put them up in another house while this one gets rebuilt so we can move back in.
“But he hasn’t heard anything,” he told The Citizen Friday.
“I am turning it over to my attorney to handle. I have to work to make a living and I don’t feel as if I am getting anywhere.
Brown said that SSG drywall is made in the U.S., not China. He belive there may be a few other homes in Cape Coral that used the same drywall.
And he estimated the cost of rebuilding the interior of the house, including rewiring, to be more than $40,000.
“And my insurance doesn’t want to pay for it unless they find out it is Chinese drywall,” Brown said.
He also said he would probably ask his partner in Lee County to get a crew and rebuild the interior of the house. That would mean ripping off all the drywall back to the studs and also rewiring the house. And he says the people living in his house need to be placed in another house until the job is completed.
“But right now I don’t have the answers. Nobody wants to face the facts that the drywall is defective. It’s a total nightmare.
“I feel as if my hands are tied, but something has got to be done. That’s why I have gotten an attorney to see if this can be resolved.
In the meantime, the Bermudez family says they continue to worry about the corrosion on the wires and the possibility of a fire starting.
“I hate this limbo that we’re in. Financially, we really cant afford to put money down on another house and start all over,” Bermudez said.
She fears that the furniture in the house may also be infected with the gases that must be coming from the drywall.
When Mark Gay, the general manager of Adams Homes in Cape Coral was asked for a comment, this was his response.
“We have inspected Mr. Brown’s home two times and have not been able to find Chinese drywall. Also, we did not receive any Chinese drywall from our supplier prior to May 2006 and Mr. Brown’s home was drywalled in 2005.
“We buy our drywall exclusively from this supplier. I did receive Mr. Brown’s tests back and have forwarded them to our attorneys. I hope to hear something from them soon. We are not running from our responsibility on this matter and as of today, we have remediated nine homes throughout Lehigh and Cape Coral. I hope to have this issue resolved with Mr. Brown soon.”