Never Have I Seen This...very Confused

pkp

A new house with over 300 screw pops, built near another new house a near identical floor plan with 0 screw pops. These houses had:

same soil conditions
came concrete guy
same engineering
same truss company


different framer
different weather conditions before dry in
different sheet rocker

Has anyone seen this before and if so did you get to the bottom of it?

Cole

300 Screw Pops!!!!!!

Did you inspect the sheet rockers work?

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pkp

yeah he was my regular guy. I quit using him after that job. His quality is actually superior to anything I have seen but it is nigh impossible to get him out there when he says he will be out there so I had to quit using him. I called him and asked if he had ever seen anything like that and he said he thought there must be something else going on.

I tend to agree.

aWorkaHolic

You have to love the 'Track Home Blues".

I've run into it many years back when I was a Super for a devlopement Co. in California. After back and fourth finger pointing, it was finalized by blaming the shipment of "Wet Drywall". Ended up tearing it all down and re-sheeting the house. luckily it was still un-occupied.

Cole

The only other thing it could be would be lumber shrinkage because of the different weather conditions.

Have you checked the wood with a moisture meter?

Oh and one more thing, is the drywall nailed tight to the framing?

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pkp

never checked it with a moisture meter. The sheetrock was nailed on the 4 corners, and then screwed, 6" in the perimeter and 12" in the field, (which was glaringly obvious just by looking at the screw pops) as per code. Yeah it was tight to the framing. I don't even think you can dimple sheetrock for filling with a screw without it being tight.

pkp

did you buy that answer? if not, what was your hunch?

Tom R

The framing shrinks from being installed to green (wet), and yet the screws stay put, - - it helps somewhat to use shorter screws, - - use 1 1/4" screws instead of 1 5/8" (for 1/2" rock) . . .

pkp

more is going on. i.e. visible shear in some joint tape.
I called a soils engineer and he said there was a very remote chance that there could be some peat under the mineral soil or some other anomaly. He was pretty much baffled as well. I really only came here in the hopes that one other person said "yeah, I've build hundreds of houses and that happened to me once too..."

Cole

Not likely to happen.

Let us know what happens.

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aWorkaHolic

Nope, I did not buy that answer, My boss at the time made that call. He didn't want to blame the Drywall Contractor because it happened to be a relative. Really to this day it's still baffles me. All test were done on the lumber, moister content passed. The distributer made the wrong comment to my boss, so he used that against them.

Kingfisher

Never heard of wet dry wall, had a batch of drywall once that was date stamped less then 36 hours old from the factory went up without any problems. No problems with the corners, wall to ceiling? no slab cracks, even small?

Scott Young

i have seen it only one time and the reason given was lumber wasn't dry enough when it was rocked. i was glad i didn't have to set all the pops. i was just the trim guy on that job.

Tmrrptr

Really need a bit more info but the only time I've seen sheer tearing and nail pops all at once was earthquake.

So that would lead me to believe something is moving in your underpinnings.

Either drying out and moving or framed quick and fast, and too loose and settling. If it's bad dirtwork you'd have concrete cracking in the stemwalls first, and noticeable, befoer the walls showed a prob.

...Was it hem fir?
r

pkp

]


Doug fir, The only shear was in attic trusses but nail pops on both floors, The dirt work was done the same way on both houses, organic soil pushed off down to mineral soil, pit run hauled in, about 100 yards per lot, compacted in lifts with a roller about a foot and a half of fill total. One house is fine. I have not seen any irregularities in either foundation.

Grumpyplumber

Poltergeist

neolitic

Don't know if it'll help, but have seen similar deal when the house stood in the weather for a week long rain before it was roofed. Another time framers "forgot" to shim floor beams over crawl piers. That one you could stick your fingers into some of the cracks in the ceiling angle under the trusses, and plenty of pops on the interior walls.

pkp

It was very wet. I had to go up on the roof and nail a piece of plywood on top of the chimney the day they rocked because the floor was wet under it. It was roofed the prior week. I really hope that is the problem because that would mean the wood is probably stable now and repairs will not pop loose.

A W Smith

Are the pops near where the trusses meet the walls? Are you familiar with truss rise? when the members of a truss have unequal moisture content because of weather or other issues and drywall is applied. the members change dimensions and literally lift the bottom chord off the non bearing partitions. causing nail or screw pops. You can avoid this by using drywall clips on the tops of partitions to prevent truss rise from pulling the drywall up and causing screw pops and corner joint tears. some drywall contractors use the technique of not using screws on the ceilings at the wall junction. Unless there are serious structural issues your repairs should not be a recurring problem and you will not have to baby sit the project in the future. once the building envelope is complete and the heat or air conditions is on you shouldn't have lumber movement. You might want to ask your drywall contractors to start using glue in addition to screws.

pkp

That actually makes a lot of sense. 80% of the pops were in the attic trusses. The ones that were not in the attic were on walls that would have moved if a truss pulled on it. (i.e. ones with hurricane clips) And to top it all off, the place with the most obvious deflection was a girder truss in the stairwell that was rocked from the vaulted ceiling down to the 9' ceiling height. It makes a lot of sense that if that truss bowed up, it would take the flat ceiling up with it and leave the rock nailed to the side of the truss where it always was, popping loose the entire corner metal. If trusses were moving that would have been the place for it to show up most. I don't suppose you have a source for me do you? like some documentation that I cold show to the homeowner?