Edited by Ted
Cushman
CONTENTS:
Nail Gun Accidents Teach Sobering
Lessons
Bucking Trend, California Picks NFPA Building
Code
Minnesota Building Official Makes Waves With
Stucco Warning
Business Tune-Up: Your Job
Description
In Mega-Home Tally, California Stands (Far)
Out
Offcuts
Nail Gun Accidents Teach
Sobering Lessons
A series of accidents involving air-powered nail guns last
summer brought home the fact that the productive and powerful
tools are also highly dangerous and need to be handled with
respect. In the most tragic case, a framing nail punctured the
heart of carpenter Camillo Juandelos on a home construction
site in Ocean View, Md., in July, ending the man's life at the
age of 25. Police said Camillo's brother Jesus was holding the
gun that fired the deadly nail.
According to reports in the Delaware News-Journal, the
accident took place as the two men were framing new homes in a
development in Ocean View. Jesus had been bending over a stud
wall using the air nailer, and then straightened up and turned
to call his brother. But Camillo was not on the other side of
the room as Jesus thought; he was already standing right behind
his brother. Camillo made contact with the nose of the nail
gun, triggering the bump-nail mechanism and taking the nail in
his chest.
"It was just a strange thing that happened," Ocean View Police
Chief Kenneth McLaughlin told the News-Journal, "a very,
very unfortunate accident." The young carpenter died at the
Peninsula Regional Medical Center in Salisbury, Md., after
being evacuated by helicopter.
A nail-gun accident in Mississippi had a happier outcome,
reports the Biloxi Sun-Herald. Stone County, Miss.,
contractor Duncan Hatten was crouching down to nail a 2x4 block
onto a column when he lost his balance and fell against the
nail gun, which fired two quick nails into his heart. "I just
figured I was gonna die," Hatten told local TV station WLOX. "I
told my coworker to tell my family that I loved them." But the
two framing spikes had narrowly missed major blood vessels, and
surgeons were able to remove the nails from Hatten's heart in a
two-hour operation.
And in Connecticut in August, a nail-gun incident highlighted
the importance of training and supervision, as horseplay
between two carpenters almost turned deadly. The New Haven
Register reported that carpenter Eric Haslob was in the
hospital recovering from surgery to repair his heart after
fellow carpenter Joseph Dupont fired a finish nail into
Haslob's heart by accident as the two were fooling around on
the job. A supervisor told the paper he had warned the two
friends against horseplay just the day before.
Haslob has no hard feelings, he told the Register: "I
don't think he meant to do it." But Dupont was fired after the
incident, and police have reportedly charged him with reckless
endangerment.
Nail guns are a major element of risk for
residential carpenters, according to a recent
article in the medical journal Injury
Prevention. In a three-year study of union
carpenters in the St. Louis, Mo., area, journeyman
carpenters interviewed members who had reported a
nail gun injury to identify factors contributing to
the risk. In this survey, nail guns accounted for
almost 14% of all injuries to carpenters. Most
injuries were to hands, fingers, or wrists, but
some involved the knee, face, or eye. Many were
related to the contact-trip trigger, although most
occurred during framing work, where the bounce-fire
feature is not a big advantage, rather than while
the workers were fastening sheathing. "Over 65% of
the injuries associated with contact trip guns
could likely be prevented by sequential triggers,"
said the authors.
Inexperience showed up as an important factor, the
report notes: "Injuries were more common among
apprentices, with 35% occurring in the first year
of apprenticeship, 21% in the second year, 13% in
the third year, and an additional 4% in the fourth
year." Apprentices had three times the rate of nail
gun injuries per hours worked as journeymen. The
authors recommend formal training for carpenters
required to use nail guns.
The full report, "Nail Gun Injuries in Residential
Carpentry: Lessons From Active Injury Surveillance"
is available online at
http://ip.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/9/1/20.
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Bucking Trend, California
Picks NFPA Building Code
Amid the political chaos of California Governor Gray Davis's
battle to fend off a recall campaign, the state's Building
Standards Commission voted 10 to 2 in July to adopt the
National Fire Protection Association's
NFPA 5000 code
statewide for commercial buildings. At the same time, the
governor-appointed board, which is dominated by union
interests, voted to adopt the
International Residential Code
[IRC] for One- and Two-Family Dwellings. The two votes set
up what could become the most confusing and contradictory code
landscape in the nation for contractors who build multifamily
as well as single-family residences.
Municipal building officials in California had overwhelmingly
preferred the International Building Code (IBC) to the
NFPA document. Building officials control the development of
the International Codes, and in California they are already
familiar with one of the IBC's precursors, ICBO's
Uniform Building Code.
IBC
backers complained that the fix was in for NFPA long before the
vote occurred. A few went as far as to file
conflict-of-interest complaints in mid-July against Building
Standards Commission members Barry Broad (a Sacramento attorney
and Teamsters union lobbyist) and Sidney Cavanaugh (a plumbers'
union representative to NFPA).
The political clout of plumber and firefighter unions is a
factor in code politics nationwide, but nowhere more than in
California. Plumber and firefighter unions figure prominently
in Governor Davis's fortunes. Both groups backed him with big
campaign gifts in 2002, and they are among his chief supporters
in fighting the recall. The two unions are heavily represented
on the Building Standards Commission, and they also have a
strong voice in the NFPA code. Firefighters, for example, have
been able to push through a sub-code to the document that
requires fire trucks to have four people on a crew instead of
three. Plumbers for years have been able to limit the
acceptance of PEX tubing, which threatens union jobs by
reducing the labor time and skill level needed to plumb
buildings.
Flawed language. The chief criticisms of NFPA
5000 focus less on what it will and won't allow than on how
it is written. Engineer Julius Ballanco lambasted an early
draft of the document in PM Engineer magazine in 2001,
writing, "If the committees were attempting to draft a document
that nobody would ever want to use, they have accomplished
their mission." Pointing out numerous contradictions and
inconsistencies in the document, he concluded, "I can't imagine
any jurisdiction being stupid enough to adopt what is in the
NFPA building code draft."
Ballanco now says many of the glaring problems have been
corrected. But he says, "A lot of NFPA 5000 is still
written more like a code commentary than like an actual
enforceable code. It's going to have to be interpreted, and it
is going to be very hard to enforce. There's going to be a
heavy learning curve."
California Building Industry Association (CBIA) executive Bob
Rivinius declines to discuss union politics, but he says, "We
just don't see the point in having two codes instead of one."
And like municipal officials, he objects to the way NFPA
references dozens of other standards and codes. "To use it, you
have to buy a lot of other books," says Rivinius. "The
International Building Code references other standards
in a few places, too, but you can usually put up your building
based on just what's in the pages of the IBC."
As things now stand, NFPA 5000 will become code in
California in 2005. But Rivinius is not sure the Building
Standards Commission decision will stand that long. "When
there's politics involved," he says, "a lot can change in a
short time."
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Minnesota Building
Official Makes Waves With Stucco Warning
He's taking heat from homeowners concerned about their
property values, but Ron Glubka, top building official in the
Minnesota community of Woodbury, isn't backing down from his
warning to homeowners: If your house has a stucco exterior,
watch out for hidden water damage.
Glubka says his inspectors have issued permits for repair of
stucco-related water damage on hundreds of the town's 10,000 or
so homes. Tracing the problem to inadequate building paper and
improper flashings behind the hard cement coating, Glubka's
department has introduced new required details for
water-management systems under stucco installations in the
town.
Some aggrieved homeowners complained to papers that Glubka was
unfairly singling out stucco and lowering the market value of
all stucco homes, even sound ones. But Glubka says town
inspectors have started inspecting sheathing and framing under
every type of cladding every time an existing wall is opened up
for remodeling — and the damage he's concerned about is
showing up only under stucco.
"The funny thing is, one of the people who was hollering the
loudest about it went ahead and had his home inspected when he
put it on the market, just because he had to," says Glubka.
"And sure enough, under the windows, he needed repairs."
This 1950s-era traditional three-coat
stucco home in Minneapolis needs just surface repairs to a wall
under a roof with no kickout flashing. Stucco professionals in
Minnesota are struggling to understand why newer stucco
applications are experiencing problems with water
intrusion.
Minnesota Lath and Plaster Bureau director Steve Pedracine
counters, "It's the windows that really should be getting more
attention, not the stucco. We see leaks at window corners under
every kind of cladding." Pedracine says Woodbury homes with
vinyl or metal siding do get water damage under windows but
don't show up in Glubka's numbers because homeowners make
repairs without pulling permits.
Workmanship issues.
Woodbury's experience jibes with reports from other regions.
Salt Lake contractor Dennis McCoy (see
"A Close Look at
Stucco," 9/03) consistently finds damaged framing and
sheathing under stucco walls in both Utah and Texas, generally
traceable to defects in flashing and building paper details. "I
saw the same telltale signs of problems when I drove around
subdivisions in Colorado on a visit," says McCoy. Dark stains
under windows and at roof-to-wall intersections are a dead
giveaway that papers and flashings are done wrong, he
says.
Bad workmanship is also blamed for stucco failures in Alberta,
Canada, in a new report produced by the Ottawa engineering firm
Morrison-Herschfield. The Alberta failures were noted in
traditional three-coat stucco as well as in thin applications
of newer proprietary two-coat or one-coat systems.
Likewise, British Columbia, whose wet, cool coastal climate
bears little resemblance to that of Utah, Texas, or Alberta,
faced a rash of rotten stucco-clad condos beginning in the
1990s. The failures included EIFS, one-coat, and traditional
three-coat systems. The province now licenses stucco
remediation contractors and mandates "rainscreen" systems for
all repair work, with water-draining air spaces behind the
cementitious cladding and careful flashings at all joints and
penetrations.
In Woodbury, Minn., Ron Glubka is concerned whether the town's
new flashing requirements are enough to take care of the
problem. "What worries me is that we have found cases where the
rot is happening away from windows and corners, in the middle
of a flat blank wall," he says. "In those cases, we're not sure
how the water is getting in."
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Business Tune-Up: Your
Job Description
In college, I took a studio art class as an elective. The
instructor started us out drawing simple objects: a box, an
apple, and so forth. Gradually, she made the scenes more
complex: multiple boxes, clothing draped on a chair, people. As
the scenes got more complicated, my "control freak" personality
began to manifest itself, and I became frustrated and almost
paralyzed by my inability to fit every item in.
By the end of the class, however, when we were sent to draw
entire cluttered rooms (pottery storage rooms and a
greenhouse), I had learned, painfully, that to produce a clear
result I had to decide what to leave out. When I tried
to draw everything with equal detail and value, the result was
unfocused and incomprehensible. Miraculously, when I picked a
focus object and let the rest fade into the background, the
scene made sense.
The position of many small business owners parallels my art
class experience. At first the task is simple: Do the work (and
try to find time to ask for payment). As the business grows,
the associated tasks become more numerous and more complex. It
eventually becomes necessary to choose what to leave out of
your own job description, in order to achieve focus and produce
a clear image for yourself and others.
Unless you're a one-person operation, you can't (and
shouldn't) do everything. First admit that, and then identify
what your role should be. This involves some self-analysis and
requires honesty. Once you have established your role, you have
"selected" the focus of your work. Anything that enhances that
role should be emphasized, and anything that detracts from it
should be downplayed or eliminated from your job description.
Find somebody else to do those tasks — because if you
persist in trying to control everything, the result will be
unfocused and chaotic. If you don't know what your job
is, how can the rest of your team know what theirs is?
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In Mega-Home Tally, California
Stands (Far) Out
There's more than one reason they call it the Golden State.
According to an analysis of census figures by the National
Association of Home Builders (NAHB), California had 41% of the
nation's million-dollar homes in 2000. It's a small market,
noted NAHB CEO Jerry Howard: Only about 314,000 homes were
valued at a million dollars or more in 2000, which amounts to
barely .06% of all homes. California's mega-home count was
128,000.
But the percentages are striking, especially because no other
state came close. New York in second place had just 22,300
million-dollar residences, for 7.1% of the total. Florida was
third with about 18,000 (5.8%), Connecticut fourth with 13,900
(4.4%), and Illinois fifth with 12,400 (3.9%). Combined, those
five states accounted for around 26% of the nation's housing
stock, but had 62% of its million-dollar homes, said
Howard.
If you're trying to avoid million-dollar houses, you might go
to North Dakota, which had just 51 of them in 2000, or even
South Dakota, which had 129. But Howard pointed out that dollar
valuation by itself has limited meaning when comparing homes in
different states. California home costs are heavily affected by
land scarcity and heavy regulation, so that a million-dollar
California home might cost considerably less to build somewhere
else.
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Offcuts
Mega-builder Lennar Corporation is moving into the urban
condo market with high-rise projects and conversions of
industrial or commercial space in several big cities, reports
Investor's Business Daily. The company's main niche is
suburban single-family developments, but it bought a salami
factory and some other urban properties in San Francisco at an
attractive price when the market went south several years ago,
and is converting the buildings to trendy loft
apartments.
Contractors have to tear out abandoned cables as part
of any change to a commercial building's wiring, under the
revised 2002 National Electrical Code, and the Dallas
Business Journal says the new rule is causing headaches for
building owners and remodelers. Many older buildings are choked
with tangled old cabling left by previous tenants. Cables not
properly terminated or tagged need to come out, but
electricians fear that tearing out unmarked cables could
interrupt someone's power or a vital communications link.
Tinder-dry forest conditions in Canada's British Columbia
forced a halt to most logging operations in August, causing
mills to shut down and lay off workers. The severe shortage of
sawlogs put upward pressure on lumber prices, but chief B.C.
forester Larry Pedersen told the Vancouver Sun that
depleted inventories and idled operations were just a temporary
setback. Only a small fraction of the province's standing
timber has actually burned, said Pedersen.
Colorado Treasurer Michael Coffman is "shocked" to find
that executives at a state-established workers' comp insurance
company paid themselves bonuses of up to $419,000, reports the
Durango Herald. Pinnacol, a company set up to cover
employers left high and dry by the state's failing insurance
pool, gets tax breaks and has special lenient reserve
requirements. State legislator Mark Larson argues that the
execs deserve their bonuses after making the company profitable
and boosting its assets by $71 million in 2002. But Coffman
retorts that the growth in assets mostly came from the
company's investments, which he manages.
A federal judge has released records from the antitrust
suit against Weyerhaeuser, reports the Associated Press.
Judge Owen Panner of the district court in Portland, Ore.,
brushed off Weyerhaeuser arguments that releasing the company's
internal memos would give competitors an advantage. The
documents, which helped convince a Portland jury to find
Weyerhaeuser guilty of antitrust offenses and assess a $78
million penalty, reportedly show Weyerhaeuser managers making
plans to tie up timber supplies with contracts and predicting
how long it would take for competing millls to fail.
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