On Thu, 26 May 2016 10:06:54 -0700 (PDT), Tim
wrote:


It helps when you know construction people. The first batch I got came
from a "Chinese drywall" house. They broke a piece trying to take the
kitchen apart and decided they could never match it up so they got rid
of all of it. The pieces with cut outs in them can be pretty fragile.
Since I didn't want the cut out anyway, it was fine with me. That was
where my other bar top came from.
......,


The "Chinese drywall". Oh man, a mixture of formaldehyde and chalk

What ever was the outcome of all that anyhow?

There was a little bit of restitution to be had out there if you were
willing to pursue it and could actually find an American company that
would accept responsibility but most of the houses were just dumped in
the housing crash for a fraction of what they were worth. One of my
buddies specialized in fixing them and did quite well but it involved
taking the house down to the FEPAC (predrywall) treating the block
walls and rebuilding it from there.
I think some of the problems were a bit over hyped. The sulfides did
attack copper and brass. Other metals were pretty much unaffected. The
level of damage was also pretty superficial and a lot of stuff was
replaced that didn't need it. The sulfur in our well water is as bad
or worse. You did need to get rid of the drywall. I am not sure how
long it would out gas sulfur compounds but I was in a 5 year old
drywall house that had been opened up for over a month and it still
smelled bad in there.
Once he ripped out every speck of that drywall, sealed the block and
went back fresh, it was fine. Considering you could buy a 2000 sq/ft
house for about $20k and spend another $25-50k depending on how you
rebuilt it, there was plenty of money to be made there. He went back
on the high end of that and got over $250k, even during the recession.
These days, I doubt there is a "drywall house" left and the ones he
rebuilt are going for more like $400k.