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We bought a new Pulte Home thirteen years ago and this house is falling down around us! We have a two story home and every floor upstairs is creaking when you walk on them. The staircase baseboard and moulding is pulling away from the walls, the banister is lose and leaning, the foundation of the kitchen floor cracked and ruined the twenty five hundred dollar tiled floor we had installed. There are nail heads popping through the walls and the sheet wall is a mess.
We had to have all the wood on our front porch replaced six years ago, due to rot.
WE ARE ANGRY! SHAME ON YOU!
Do we not have any recourse here? Houses are suppose to last longer than thirteen years!
The complaint has been investigated and resolved to the customer’s satisfaction.
My wife and I bought a new home in the Buffalo Ridge addition. At first glance you think it is well built. The front room is facing west. It was very hot in there during the summer time. We found that there was no insulation above the room.
The windows were not sealed where they meet. Had to silicone them. All of our windows were like that. We also tinted the windows and installed solar screens. Helped a lot. There is no fiberglass insulation in the walls. We were running a new coax and when I punched a hole in the sheet rock, there was a lot of air blowing through the hole. I opened up under the hot water heater and nothing but an open space going right into the walls. The only insulation is the 1/2" styrofoam sheet. My next project is to spray foam around all of the exterior walls to prevent wind from coming through. Very poor painting. You can see though it after a couple of years. The tape and bedding is very poor. It just takes a couple of years to show up. The wood fence is a joke. Very uneven. Bought a new home so we didn't have to do much to it. What a joke. Stay away from Pulte Homes.
You should check with the city to find out how they even passed inspections. Insulation is required on all exterior walls in a home. Furthermore, one of the reasons insulation is so important is actually so it can act as fire block. With nothing between the exterior walls, fires could potentially spread from one level to the next extremely quickly. Which is also the reason all penetrations made by MEP (Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing) contractors must be sealed from level to level as well. Something to look into.. Clearly someone wasn't doing their job..
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Since nail pops, caulking shrinkage & painting are a HOME-OWNERS responsibility (and usually the pride of the homeowner), have you tried taking care of your home instead of complaining about what the builder didn't do? Really stinks that THEY get the bad rap when you probably didn't (simply) paint and caulk your front porch annually. Homes shift during weather changes & require regular maintenance (especially during the first 10 years). Things like nail pops & molding pulling from the walls is evidence of the shifting & heating/cooling that occur naturally & (as I said before) require annual maintenance. I am a proud owner of a large builders home and have some of these same issues which, with very little time & money, I fix as part of my spring clean-up. In a few years, I know the home will have settled down and will be a show piece. Its a shame...don't you go to the doctor annually?
The complainant has reason to be ill with Pulte. I live in a Pulte townhome. It was constructed in 2002; coming up on 10 years of age. The "nail popping" thing has been going on since I bought the home 4 years ago.
What I found is that my home was not constructed according to code. Where the local building code addresses how many fasteners, by type and spacing, are required to secure drywall, on both ceilings and walls, Pulte decided to save a couple bucks per home and use only 60 percent of the fasteners required. Pretty unethical, if not fraudulent.
When I hear my house crack, pop, creek, and sometimes tremble with gusts of wind, and see nails popping through the joint compound, mostly on the ceilings attributable to weight and flex, I'm amused by the person above when he suggests drywall repair (and by default painting) is part of spring maintenance.
I know non-Pulte homeowners who do not suffer this "nail popping" malady. If the appropriate amount of fasteners were used, undoubtedly my home's rigidity would have been improved and the weight of ceiling drywall better supported.
Moreover, when the person above mentions "heating and cooling, " I am compelled to mention the cheat there as well. While the EPA required a 10 SEER rating for air conditioner compressors at that time, Pulte thought it was acceptable to use only 60 percent of the duct work required to meet that efficiency standard. The electric company enjoys considerable sales attributable to energy wasted by the thousands of homes of like design and, of no coincidence, also enjoys legislatively based funds to "increase energy efficiency."
I wake up every morning, literally, feeling victimized by the fraud. I guess with civil laws and things of that nature, some people sleep well at night believing broken knee caps are a thing of the past.
GMJM, I know your pain. See if you can find something objective upon which to proceed-- like a violation of building code that benefitted Pulte's financial interest.
NO MATTER WHAT "CUSTOMER SERVICE" MAY SAY, THE STATUTE OF LIMITATION ON FRAUD DOES NOT CORRESPOND TO THE EXPIRATION OF THE HOME'S WARRANTY.
I also have a Pulte home which is shifting greatly in only eight years. I don't have nail pops but huge cracks spanning five feet across my ceiling. I had a foundation person inspect it because Pulte said I had to for them to even consider sending someone out because the foundation structure is warrantied for ten years, he said 13 piers needed to be fixed pulte told me that wasn't good enough I have to get an engineer report ( cost 400 dollars) in order for them to send someone out to see if this really falls under the warranty. I can't believe how rude the guy was on the phone either. Customer Satisfaction and Safety is not a must to these people.