When you have systemic failures in your property during the first few years after initial construction, odds are you have some sort of defect. SageWater makes remediation of these issues as simple as possible, with a variety of services to support your community throughout the process.
If you are pursuing legal action and need an expert witness, SageWater has decades of experience supporting legal teams through this process.
Whether you’ve built a case against your developer or are seeking the best possible settlement, SageWater provides services to substantiate the proper remediation scope, timing, and repair costs for your alleged defect.
Ready to get the fix done? Our teams of professional engineer and construction specialists are standing by to provide a turnkey repair solution to your defective installation.
Material defects occur when a building is designed and constructed properly, but one of the materials provided by a manufacturer is defective or comes from a defective batch of their product.
When this happens, the manufacturer is typically on the hook for the costs to fix the problem.
Piping example:
Chinese-made cast iron is a common example, where the material was not manufactured appropriately and so it fails much sooner than it should.
Design defects occur when materials are specified for the wrong conditions, causing functional failure. In these cases, the contractor and manufacturer performed correctly, but the engineer or architect specified the product in a way it was not intended to be used.
As a result, the designer is typically found at fault for selecting an inappropriate solution.
Piping example:
Recirculating hot water lines often fail prematurely when water exits the boiler too hot or the pump too fast.
Construction defects occur when material was manufactured correctly, and the solution was designed correctly, but the contractor didn’t install the product according to manufacturer specifications. This is often why there are incompatible materials construction defect claims. A contractor will choose to swap a specified product for another, which they think is comparable but it is not.
Piping example:
Contractors have sometimes applied firestopping caulk that is not compatible with the plastic pipe they’ve installed, which causes the pipe to degrade and fail.
