Alaska Home Inspectors Forum

[Troy Bloxom]

Has anyone seen the Chinese drywall installed up here that has been an issue in the lower 48????

[Patrick Hartshorn]

Howdy Troy, I see the forum is a little slow this time of year, should pick up as business probably slows for everyone for the next few months.

As for the drywall, I sat in on a seminar put on by "fine homebuilding and this old house" dudes at the builders show in Vegas last year. They said that the stuff never made it to most of the western states and none made it to Canada or Alaska?

Of course the conversation came up on how anyone would know and there was a defineite agreement that it could have slipped thru, maybe with one of the larger contractors that may have ordered there own supplies from a lower 48 company that could have had a large bundled order shipped in from the east and directly up to our state? Who knows!

The other question was "how do you tell if it is the bad drywall?" The answer was to remove it and read the literature on the back, appearently there is foreign writing on it that is obviouse. Of course it is highly unlikely we would start tearing walls down just to see, so the guy said that if you see corrosive activity on materials, especially copper, and it has no explination, it is quite likely the bad dry wall present! He suspected it would not be in houses up here due to the method it may have made it up as I mentioned earlier, the chances are it would be in a large building built by a large contractor that would have done thier own ordering!

Pat.