Manufacturers Have Adjusted To SB-800

In the couple of years since SB-800 passed, manufacturers have adjusted to the new rules and have written new stipulations into their warranties and maintenance instructions.

This is especially true in the waterproof deck industry.

About The Author

Bill Leys of Central Coast Waterproofing shares his experience with dealing with defective product and installation of waterproofing membranes on condominium developments.

warranties are usually limited to materials

As a consultant and contractor, I need to keep up on the ever changing instructions for maintenance and warranty requirements, so I am not surprised by these changes. Heck, manufacturer's need to protect themselves too.

Warranties are now being written that restrict the limit for damages to the cost of the materials.

Simply put, if a manufacturer's product is defective, and as a result of that it fails and causes damage to your property, whatever it is - mold damage, substrate damage, termites or dry-rot or personal property damage -  the most you can expect from the manufacturer will be a check for the cost of the materials sold on the job.

A $100,000.00 deck coating job usually has about 25% of that in material costs, limiting the manufacturer to only $25,000.00 in warranty costs in this instance.

Mold remediation alone in a single unit can cost $15,000.00. Repairs to framing and substrate are costly.

only 25% of the total job cost

That $25,000.00 is a drop in the bucket. Investigations into alleged defects will cost many times that amount.

An expensive repair probably started as a nail backing out of the plywood, allowing water to penetrate in.

I was amazed though when I was doing some research on the web and found one manufacturer's maintenance and warranty requirements that read "MANDATORY MAINTENANCE CARE PROCEDURES", which explicitly outlined the owner's responsibilities for this particular product.

More in Part 3...