Chinese Poison Drywall Creates Sulfuric Acid Inside Homes
You know what would make for some good drywall? The waste materials from scrubbers on coal-fired power plants. That's apparently what some Chinese manufacturers thought during the housing boom. When they leak and combine with the moisture on AC coils, the result is sulfuric acid, according to complaints by some Floridian homeowners. The acid dissolves the coils on the AC units and in some cases the units fail. Imagine what it does to your lungs.
Drywall complaints go up [news-press] (Thanks to Richard!) (Photo: The County Clerk)
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Can we please work on rebuilding the manufacturing sector here in the States?
Really....with all the recalls and warning issued because of Chinese products, why do we still use them for manufacturing. I wonder if it would not be prudent to fine U.S. companies who make substandard and hazardous materials such as this, or who skip safety checks at the very least.
I am not much for government oversite for private companies but this is getting ridiculous.
@Oranges w/ Cheese: My Dad's GF's house is made entirely of cinder blocks. Except for the headache we went through installing an AC through it, it's a damn fine house.
I wanted to facepalm reading this but my glasses get in the way.
People will continue to purchase cheap chinese junk because its cheap. When most people shop, they assume that all products are equal and scan for cheapest price.
@Shark1998: I suspect that the sheer volume of Chinese imports means that the percentage of problem imports is actually smaller than, say, the percentage of recalled US beef.
@Necroposting_SteveDave: The house I grew up with was complete block construction too.
Cinderblock is a great building material if properly used, and a great insulator. Awesome for hurricanes.
Problem with the houses I'm talking about is they didn't use "real" cinderblocks, they used half blocks, which are only about 4" thick instead of the full 8". Which means they're cheaper, but less durable and less insulating.
In Florida, that's just asking for it.
This is a good sign, China is finally running low on lead!
When you can import heavy toilets from China and still make more profit over making and shipping them locally, you know you have a problem.
My current house (75 years old in a nice neighborhood) is cinder block with cork insulation. Tight as a drum, so I recommend it, however I also recommend UFFI insulation...
"I am not much for government oversite for private companies but this is getting ridiculous."
History has repeatedly shown that business cannot be trusted to regulate itself, any more than a city can regulate its citizenry without police. A disinterested party in necessary in all regulation - and there are no such persons in business. Those running a business want as much profit as possible - as a matter of fact, in the US, it is law that a business must generate as much profit for the shareholders as possible.
No system can survive long without a governing force in place to prevent it from running out of control.
@Urgleglurk: Yes, there needs to be oversight, but why does it have to come from the government? How watches them and keeps them from going out of control while they watch the businesses. What keeps that system surviving? It seems consumer organizations are better geared to watch over corporations and report problems and then let the consumer make an informed choice. They are less susceptible to corruption and more efficient in their results. UL listing is completely voluntary, but it is well regulated and at least here, hard to find consumer electrical devices not UL listed.
I would bet a lot of money that the material also has insanely high heavy metal levels, in particular mercury. Why? Because that's one of the things that scrubbers are supposed to remove from coal exhaust.
I'm impressed that they didn't just make the insulation out of melamine.
@Urgleglurk: A disinterested party in necessary in all regulation - and there are no such persons in business.
The "disinterested party" in business is the free market.
any more than a city can regulate its citizenry without police
I think you're holding your copy of the Constitution upside down. Turn it over and read it again.
Yay, we've had a drought of chinese poison train entries.
@Oranges w/ Cheese: I'm talking the full two huge hole Cinder Bloxs. I used those for building the ring around my fire pit as I drove some rebar into the ground, then added stone dust to the holes, so they aren't going anywhere.
Of course, when I build my new house, it's going to be a nice two story steel house. Something freeing about not having to have load bearing walls.
@kc2idf: Glad that's working so well.
We know it works because you see a story like this every once in a while, not 100 a day. No system is perfect.
At this rate, won't the Chinese kill themselves off pretty quickly using all these products themselves?
Another reason to think about buying used. Used=previously beta tested on someone else.
What are they complaining about? This is the bleeding edge of electric conservation. Those sulfuric acid walls can be converted into batteries for energy storage.
The Chinamen are not the issue!
Perhaps in 15 - 20 years the home-building market will rebound, if only to replace ones that have been built in the last 10 years that will have disintegrated into mush by then.
This is interesting considering I live 5 miles from a coal plant and a gypsum plant was just built next door to it. And it's main purpose is to make drywall from the waste from the scrubbers. That is what they do. And that is right here in the US of A.
Kinda glad I bought my 1920s house in Tampa now. With all it's quirks and some of the old termite damage I've had to replace my studs are petrified cypress and my house will probably stand another 80+ years with no effort at all.
it can, when it is a company in THIS country. you know why? we have rabid lawyers...like it or not, that keeps companies on their toes for the most part.
chinese companies? sue a chinese company...good luck, it'll probably disappear and reappear under a different name protected by corrupt government officials.
@Necroposting_SteveDave: There was a guy here in Central Florida who had the most AWESOME idea. He was building houses out of blocks of aerated concrete - hurricane proof, tornado proof (if you had the right roof on top), fire proof. And totally insulated and energy efficient, too.
His supplier bailed on him though and he was a horrid businessman to begin with (he spent all his profits ASAP, instead of reinvesting in the business) so it ultimately failed. But I wanted one of his houses so bad.
A friend of mine has steel walls layered inside 4" thick foam, so their walls are about 12" thick. I've also seen a house in california constructed with hay bales. Both super energy efficient.
@mariospants: A large part of the issue is that the local stuff is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY overpriced. So for instance you can get a really nice looking hardwood bookcase built for around $1,000 or you can go buy an imitation one for about $200. The difference is amazing but the fact is the custom one really only costs about $300. The builder is forced to charge much more because they have to build them one at a time and they sell very low volumes.
So even if you DON'T want cheap Chinese crap you have to pay a hell of a lot more, which few can afford to do.
This is a misleading headline, for a change.
The sulfate that results from the scrubbing process at coal-fired power plants is known as synthetic gypsum, and is used widely by many drywall manufacturers, both domestic and international. The process is considered to be environmentally friendly because a waste product is turned into a raw material for something useful and it prevents mining additional natural gypsum. In greener states like California, most of the drywall produced is from synthetic gypsum.
Now, if the Chinese manufacturers used it incorrectly, they may be to blame, but there is nothing inherently wrong with synthetic gypsum.
How can one tell if your drywall might be of this variety? The drywall in our house is total crap, it dents or breaks with minimal force so we know it is low grade. How are you to tell if it is tainted? Bumping it with something can create a big dent or a hole. Our house was built during the bubble, just not in Florida.
Hate to break it, but US power plants do this too, 90% some percent of gypsum (main component of drywall) is made from scrubbers just like that, but from the US!
I've said it before and I'll say it again:
There is no method known to man that can safeguard us from unsafe products from China. Any system you can devise, the clever Chinese can learn to game and exploit.
Chinese manufacturers leak? Methinks there might be a grammatical mistake in that description.
Another thing to add to my list of worries for any future home construction material. I thought I'd be safe if I just avoided radioactive sand & sandstone -
[www.latimes.com]
@Oranges w/ Cheese: I WISH I could buy a nice $400,000 home. That's still on the low end of the scale where I live.
@mariospants: I don't think I'll ever buy new construction unless I'm there to watch them put it up. My current house was built in '64 by an architect as his own personal residence. He lived there for 10 years, then moved on. Heating and cooling costs are half of what they were in the townhouse we lived in before that for 2x the space. It's still not very big, but no expense was spared on the construction. I will be very sad when I finally have to sell it and buy bigger.
@dialing_wand: First lead, and now Sulfuric Acid. We're getting really close to being able to repurpose this stuff into car batteries :)
@bohemian: I don't think strength of the material is the issue here. I'm sure your builder saved costs by using thinner wallboard. Most of the cheapskates around here will use 3/8 inch thick wallboard. The real bad ones will try to get away with 1/4 inch, which I can blow a hole in if I sneeze too hard. You should be able to tell the thickness of your wallboard by taking the cover off of a lightswitch or power outlet, then measuring the thickness of the board around the box.
When I redid my main basement room, I used 1/2 inch, mildew resistant stuff. Cost was probably twice what it would have been if I'd used 3/8, but it was worth it.
@Oranges w/ Cheese: When we built our barn, we had to install Hurricane Clips to hold the joists to the frame.
@sprocket79: Jeebus H. Christ. I hope you make a crap load of money! I can't even forsee making enough to finance something like that.
@heltoupee: That's not always a guarantee. My parent's circa-80's house was the "spec" house for the 2nd half of the subdivision - which meant it was the contractor's house and the model open for everyone and had to be finished first.
We've discovered they re-used the sliding glass doors from a previous building, the insulation is lacking in the roof across almost half the house, the plugs sink into the wall when you plug something in - the fuse box is ancient (as in not even being able to handle a reasonable load without exploding regularly).
This is really disturbing and sickening. One, we westerners need to get off of our addiction to cheap junk. We need to relearn how to be thrifty, buying things that are high quality when we can afford them, and just save prudently instead of instantly gratifying ourselves with stuff that looks expensive but can actually kill us.
Wow... Dry walls made in China? That's a bit of extreme, isn't it. When I had my house built in Canada, the dry walls are from a local company.
@Shark1998: Well, they're still people. And Chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature, dude. It's Asian.
@FatLynn: Thanks for saying that and saving me the post. Turning coal plant emissions into gypsum is a solid and proven practice - and simple chemistry! Obviously the Chinese are doing it wrong. Shocker!
I'm about to buy a Florida home built in 2005. (Figures.) Anybody know how to test for this before the closing?
@Jon Klein: Exactly! as an engineer who used to do a lot of work with the concrete industry this is normal, the problem is the chinesse company used the wrong process for the grade of bottom ash to produce the dry wall. Basically they shorted the water requirement to gain early strength but left unreacted sulfur in suspension. basicly a process control problem.....
See, this is why I pity the poor people who bought into the $400,000 homes. Not only were they grossly overpriced, they were grossly overpriced pieces of crap.
Having seen how all these "townhomes" around me were constructed (out of fiberboard on the top floors and half blocks - not even whole cinderblocking - on the bottom, with minimal insulation and single pane windows - IN FLORIDA!) I'd never have handed over the $200k+ they were asking.
Now they're down in the $120's and even that is risking it, since your power bill will be horrendous due to lack of insulation in the summer.