Immediately remove any affected areas that are wet and let dry out before recovering, this of course after it has been roofed. The measuring of the moisture areas is a great idea right up to the time they attempt to re-insulate and wallboard.Dont let even small areas that have been wet go as the moisture can be trapped in the cavaties larger than what you are seeing from the room. Make sure everything is dried even if it means removing large amounts of insulation and wallboard.If you are using standard fiberglass insulation, wet/moisture causes it to lose a great deal of it's r-value as the moisture causes it to compact and lose it's "fluff" which is important to retain in that type of insulation.

sorry to hear about the mess.

This sounds wrong. The drywall is supposed to go on the ceiling first - so that the drywall on the walls can help support it at the edges. If you put the drywall on the walls first - then the ceiling - you may not have enough of the framing in the corners to screw into. Maybe one of our drywall experts can jump in - do they need to now add soem extra support in the corners to hold the ceiling drywall edges?

What have they done to protect the outside of the house? Is it wrapped or have the siding on?

The GC took a huge risk not having the house weather tight. You will have to take out any drywall that absorbed water - that is ruined. Drywall wicks up water like dry paper towels - and once it get's wet it will swell and you cannot fix that. The cellulose in the wall cavities might be OK - but that depends on what you have on the exterior sides and where the water came in. I would make them remove whole sheets and redo - not just cut outs of small pieces that are patched. Otherwise you may not be happy with the finish after it is painted and those patches may be hard to cover up.

When you take the drywall off that got soaked you shoould be able to see if the cellulose in the cavities was soaked too. If so - have them replace that cellulose.

I would not allow the new insulation and drywall to go in until the house was first weather tight. That means you need the roof shingles and flashing on and the exterior sides have to be at least wrapped - but really should have siding on it.

Once the house is weather tight - I would recommend waiting for one hard rain so you get a good soak test to make sure that you have no leaks. I don't know where you live - but if you get rain routinely - it might be worth the wait for the leak test.

The reason I mention this is that I watched our house as it went though the process of getting the tar paper - and then a few weeks later - the shingles. The tar paper did a pretty good job of keeping the water out. Not 100% dry - but very few areas where water got in, even after very hard down pours. It concerns me that you had that much water in the house. I am not saying that the GC should have drywalled it - but the tar paper should keep the house reasonably dry.

My builder was going to start insulating before we had wrapping and siding - even though we did have a shingled roof. I told him that I saw water coming in through the vertical stud joints - between pairs of studs that had air gaps and that I was concerned about the drywall getting wet. Next thing I new - we had our stone and siding going up - and that did delay getting drywall. During that delay - I went to the house after down pours - and I did find some some leaks. These leaks occured in the penetrations out through the roof - for fireplace flue's and vents. I know your GC says the roofer is great - so was mine. But we still had leaks that had to be addressed.

Hopefully your GC will make it right.

Best of luck

Thanks for the advice. The outside of the house and roof were wrapped with black paper, and the ceiling drywall was installed also (they were just waiting to blow in insulation from the attic). You're right that the areas for fireplace flue's and vents are even leakier than the rest of it. I hadn't thought about telling them to wait until the shingle siding is up before insulating it again, but that is good advice. They sure as heck aren't going to put up new drywall and insulation until the roof is completed. I don't know WTH the GC was thinking because he'd had this happen on his own house only a month or so ago! It's just awful. A few of the window/door sills got soaked and they are not sealed/treated yet. Does anyone know what our risk is for warping?

I would not have let any dry wall or insulation go in until the house was weather tight. That said your CGs carelessness, stupidity, and rushing the job to install before weather tight is his own fault. The only way your house will be right is to remove all the insulation and dry wall back to bare studs and start over. This time doing things in the correct order. Don"t forget to pitch all the windows that go wet in the dumpster with the drywall.

"...he'd had this happen on his own house only a month or so ago..."

Dumb as a stump.

If I were you I'd hire a licensed/certified home inspector once the insulation and drywall are removed. Have them look the plumbing and electrical over. Anyone that dumb has probably made other mistakes as well.

I can't believe they installed drywall in a house without a proper roof, flashing, etc. Is your GC on something or just doesn't know what he's doing?

We are trying to avoid this very situation. Our roof was 95% finished. What still had to be done was the area where the roof on the main level met the second level. The roofer and we agreed to hold off on these few areas because the stucco guys generally mess up those shingles which then have to be replaced by the roofer. So rather than go thru an additional expense we held off.

One area of the roof which is over DD's bedroom is a valley and then meets the 2nd floor. DH was concerned about this area. Well, it turns out it did nothing but leak and very bad. When we had alot of rain, we got alot of water in her room.

The stucco guy finished those areas the beginning of the week and the roofer finished the rest two days ago and he guarantees his work and said that area should no longer leak but will do any repairs if necessary. So now we are waiting for the rain to come. A few good rains to we can confirm the leak has been repaired.

Once we know this, we will move on to insullation and drywall but not a minute before.

Interesting jgirl. In our county,the insulation and drywall has to be hung before the scratch/brown coats are applied.The lathing/flashing has to be on before insulation and drywall. The theory being that the drywallers will knock the coats off the exterior walls. A properly lathed/flashed house wont leak w/o the scratch/brown/color coats and is considered dried in. The stucco is not what keeps your house dry, but rather the lath and flashing behind it.

Had a meeting with the project manager this morning and he said that he wasn't worried about the insulation molding because it has borax (or something that sounded like borax) in it to prevent mildew and that it is blown in damp to start with and expands with the moisture. He said that they would remove the drywall and insulation in spots that were obviously saturated and was freakin' casual about the whole thing. Actually both GC and project manager are so casual about everything...it's my biggest complaint. I feel like I'm talking to a politican about their plan for Iraq, darn near every time I ask anything specific. At this point I'm not sure whether I need to freak out on them and demand that every piece of drywall and insulation is removed down to the studs, or if it's best to see what they do and then bring in the outside inspector to measure moisture levels, etc. I'm concerned about timing too, because they're saying that they will keep on schedule and start taping the drywall next week?!

Sierraeast - just goes to show that things are done differently in different parts of the country. Our lath inspection was a few weeks ago. Flashing was done some time ago too. Yes, I know stucco doesn't dry-in a house. What I was saying is that we didn't want the stucco guys to get stucco on shingles that were close to roof/wall line. Then roofer would have had to come back out to replace those shingles. Apparently this happens all the time (subs just not being totally carefull) so that's why we waited for those areas to be done after stucco. Anyway, it's all done now and awaiting the rain coming this way.

What's scratch/brown coats?

Call your city or county inspectors and let them know what your builder has done and ask if this is ok with them. They can put a stop to this kind of thing and make him fix it.

Hi jgirl,Your doing it the smart way not roofing until after stucco.Out here,in order to insulate and dry wall, it has to be roofed and lathed, but cant be stucco'd until after drywall. I dont subscribe to the theory that hanging drywall will knock stucco off the walls, but that's what the county wants in the order they want it, so we gotta do it their way or the highway. We will face the chance that the stucco crew will slop on our shingles.They seem pretty professional in the way they lathed the house cleaning up after themselves and we asked them to be careful with the roof. They said that's a standard practice on all their projects to keep the shingled areas covered and they come highly refered to us, so i hope it works out. The route you are taking is the best route,imo.

Scratch/brown coating is the first two coats of cementious based coats that are applied before the acrylic color coat. The scratch coat is applied rough, then the brown which is smooth and corners formed,(bullnose in our case),and somewhat smooth.Those two coats are allowed to sit for 30 days to allow for cracking, then the color coat.We are going for an old world texture.Best of luck on the rest of your build.

The wet insulation HAS to come out. The borax only makes it mold resistant. The borax also leaches out when it gets wet and can be corrosive to pipes and wires. The insulation loses some of its insulation properties once it gets wet, even after it dries (you lose R value). Some say it loses a LOT of its insulating values.

The builder was an idiot and now expects you to accept a less than what you paid for.

Might want to check with your city electrical inspector. Around these parts you can not so much as think about running wire until the house is dried in. It is one of those silly code things you know some thing about copper wire being corrosive when it gets wet.Oh ya and there is some thing about wet wires short out. Then there is that pesky short that starts a fire.

>>>Posted by dlynn (My Page) on Fri, Aug 24, 07 at 18:57

Call your city or county inspectors and let them know what your builder has done and ask if this is ok with them. They can put a stop to this kind of thing and make him fix it. ITA with Lynn. I would check into it further before I would let them procede. Its your house the contractor doesnt have to live in it.
So sad I hope it works out for you. please Keep us informed.

I agree w/sue. Your builder is giving you baloney excuses. He says "he's not worried," and I've no doubt he isn't worried, but you should be. They are insulated from liability by lax law enforcement, lax code enforcement, arbitration clauses, and builder-friendly laws that exist due to building industry lobbying, as well as the cost of legal fees. Most areas builders associations have paid attorneys to devise contracts and tactics that benefit builders.

Even if the insulation would not mold--and I doubt it's really mold proof--it probably isn't going to actually insulate very well now. These materials only work if kept dry. Once they're wet a lot of materials have to be replaced. Putting mold retardants on things isn't addressing the problem which is that the house leaks. Build the house so it won't leak and you don't need to use the latest faddish mold retardant, that could very well come with a whole new set of problems, e.g. as sue mentioned, corrosion.