Safety defects in construction

Safety defects, or safety-related construction defects, matter a great deal in a sale transaction. A safety defect is not just an inconvenience: it is a real danger, which is why a home inspection should always cover it. These defects are unfortunately common, so anyone buying a property should look into them carefully.

What counts as a safety defect

A home inspection often turns up safety defects that fail to meet code, sometimes as a single fault and sometimes as a tangled set of problems. They can even make an apartment unfit to live in, which is one more reason to check for them. Safety-related defects include water leaks from a wall or the roof, and even water trapped beneath floor tiles, which is why a home inspection should include leak detection.

Balcony railings need checking against the safety standard, since most safety defects come down to a standard not being met: tiles that were not glued properly to a wall can fall and hurt an adult or a child, and unskilled electrical or plumbing work can lead to poor, even dangerous results.

Unfortunately, safety defects have grown more common over the years, perhaps because the trade is expanding and drawing in less experienced contractors.

Whose responsibility: the contractor's

Fixing these faults is the contractor's responsibility. That is why it pays to get a detailed home inspection report as early as possible, ideally within the first year of the warranty period (shnat bedek), listing every fault and the repair it needs. Contractors must deal with severe faults right away; less critical ones can wait up to a year from the day you receive the keys.

Why safety defects go unnoticed

A person's home is meant to be a refuge, a safe, protective place for them and their family. Construction defects that undermine that safety fall under one heading: safety defects. Oddly, these are often the most dangerous construction defects, yet the ones residents notice least, because they are usually not visually obvious until something draws attention to them.

That is exactly why they deserve serious attention: the law sets specific standards for every part of a house that could threaten its occupants' well-being or lives.

A modern, elegant sun balcony with glass doors that glide quietly on their tracks can still have an aluminum threshold higher than the standard allows. Residents are unlikely to notice the height until someone trips on it, and the outcome can be severe.

Because they do not know the law meant to protect them, residents sometimes pay out of pocket for changes the contractor should have made during construction. Young parents, for instance, rightly worried about wide gaps in a balcony railing, may replace it with a safer one without realizing the law already caps how wide that gap is allowed to be. Examples of safety defects:

• Low railings with wide gaps between the balusters

• Narrow escape routes (entrance door, corridor, and so on)

• A non-standard safe room (mamad)

• Exterior cladding coming loose

• Dampness and mold

• A non-standard step between the balcony and the living room

• Balcony railings that are too low or have wide gaps between the rails

• Failures in systems meant to stop smoke and fire from spreading in a fire

• Height differences between floor tiles

• Non-standard stairs

  

We are a home inspection company with years of experience in this field, and we are glad to advise you at any stage. We issue a report that holds up in court, which you can use to secure what you are entitled to. Too often, buyers face a contractor who refuses to fix faults or keeps stalling, and end up covering the responsibility and the cost themselves.

Contact us to guide you through the process, save you cost and trouble down the line, and help you move into your new home safely and with peace of mind.