Builder denied the new home warranty for the leak on garage

Our new home built with Rawson Homes in 2019 was leaked in the garage during the heavy thunder storm.


The colour bond on the roof does not have a seal, which leaves a hole on the roof and allows water to go through, is a design problem as the garage should be completely sealed. The garage cannot withstand a heavy thunder storm.

Rawson Homes denied the responsibility of garage leak so the damages are not under new home warranty. They advised me to lodge a claim to my home insurance company.

Does it mean I will need to lodge a claim of leak damage to my home insurance company after every single heavy thunder storm in the future? What do you think?

I wouldn't accept their answer,no roof is made to let water in so easily,I would email as high up as possible,then threaten to take it to regulartry bodies.

westbourne Don’t accept that fob off by Rawson Homes but give them a reasonable opportunity to do the right thing. Ask the Rawson Homes General Manager or a director by phone, email and registered mail (all methods) to respond in writing confirming how and when they will have the roof and all associated water damage rectified. Give them 3 days to respond in writing. If they plan to continue denying responsibility check your contract and ask them to point out what elements of your contract and building law support their denial. Keep everything in writing, factual, courteous with no emotion. Builders like it when customers go to insurance, or the regulatory bodies.They will be happy to fob you off to the insurance company, state fair trading or a lawyer etc which frustrates and costs you, buys them time, minimises damaging negative social media posts, and saves their own operations costs and human resource. Builders like Rawson Homes see the state fair trading departments as providing them with a cost effective, outsourced ‘buffer’ service. Eventually, if they are legally forced by fair trading or the courts, they will fix things, but they will have a go to avoid this and frustrate you first. However, I expect they won’t want these facts distributed on social media and will reconsider their initial response carefully. Social media perceptions of Rawson Homes problems and ethics can significantly affect their reputation and future sales pipeline.

Thank you very much for your suggestion.

Thank you very much for your suggestion. Please see the video how the leak was.


https://www.productreview.com.au/reviews/cdc20cd0-10e7-4f6b-8f38-e7e1de0d66ba

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pgZVASpIdo

westbourne I had a look at the link to productreview you provided. Wow! None of the Rawson Homes 5 star reviews look genuine to me. Very embarrassing and damaging for their reputation.

How can it leak so bad? I assume u don't have picture of outside of the leaking roof?
Interestingly with colorbond roof u would think chances of leaking will be the least compare to tile roof.

But lately reading on H1. Those who complain leak roofs are colorbond.

Cowboy installers or just plain ignorance of best installation practices is the reason some roofs are leaking.

Your comment made me go and check and I agree, I can't believe any real customer would write such gushing reviews.

Whoever they are using for social media seems pretty immature.

Does anyone get sent weekly photos?

Wow that video.... Wow...

How they can think something like that isn't covered I have no idea.

Please keep us updated with the outcome.

Good luck.

The construction manager of Rawson Home responded my leak report.

"Rawson take your feedback very seriously, the storm that went through Sydney on Sunday 9th of February was a major storm event of unprecedented fury not seen in Sydney since the early 1990s ,as you may have seen on the news , we sent Steve Laing out to carry out an inspection on your home to identify if the damage to your home was related to storm, or as a result of a construction issue, Steve is a builder with over 40 years experience in the building industry, and he has identified that all flashings and associated works were installed as per Australian standards, and that in his professional opinion the damage was caused by extreme wind driven rain from the major weather event on the day, I also inspected the roof and all associated flashings and agree with Mr Laings comments, as you could appreciate no builder could design homes against such extreme weather conditions,
As such we advise you to contact your insurance provider for further advice. "

Do you agree with the construction manager?

Rawson Homes should have sealed the color bond roof similar to

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-RUDwUqI_s

I would not just contact your insurance company, lodge a complaint with the relevant watchdog, it won’t help today but it will be a record if needed in the future. You will still need to go though your insurance as it everyone will take the points provided by your builder as fact.

They inspected the property and they believe the work is satisfactory.

The storm was a major event with wind driven rain and not likely to occur again for a number of years.

Both points will remain factorial unless a more common rain event causes leaks.

Until then for some reason both you and your insurance company are out of pocket and inconvenienced.

For some context
A work colleague just finished a house with over ground flooding due to what I consider a poor design of the driveway they all the water was intentionally diverted towards a drain beside the house rather than away from the house. The first rain event they were told the same thing “ big storm, lots of water”. Funny enough the second rain event a week later “ big storm lots of water”.

That is a load of garbage.

So he is effectively saying that every house in your area would have suffered similar water damage!

He also has a short memory.

https://www.smh.com.au/environment/sydn ... lpzkd.html

Weather patterns have changed in recent years and will continue to do so, this is no secret. Builders must meet their social responsibility and expected professional standards by designing houses that are climate suitable. The fact is, the roof needs repairs/modifications so that the roof is able to withstand bad weather that will happen again and again and who knows when that will be but he has wiped his hands of responsibility which now makes you wait who knows how long for those necessary repairs/modifications.

Yep, there is no timetable. It can happen at any time.

westbourne I agree with saveh2O Rawson Homes ' response is cynical and un-professional, its another fob off attempt. Others should take warning this is how poorly Rawson behaves with defects. Ask Rawson to respond in writing, detailing the relevant Australian standard section (with the pictures), and clearly explain and illustrate with the photos they took when they inspected your place that the works actually meet this standard. If they were genuine and professional they would have taken some photos and will have a copy of the standard handy. This is a minimum acceptable response and should take such an experienced building professional only about 15 minutes to compose. This response will also assist you with an insurance claim, if you do as they recommend. If they won't spend the 15 minutes to detail this for you then its clearly BS.

Here is how Rawson portray themselves:
>>
Since 1978, we have helped people make their dream homes a reality, taking pride in our beautiful designs and quality of build. From humble beginnings in Country NSW, we offer unparalleled customer service, building not only homes, but also relationships. That's why we are one of NSW's largest and most trusted homebuilders today.

Our story began when we first built our own Rawson family home way back in Country NSW. Since then, we've approached every build with the same level of care. All across Sydney, Illawarra, Southern Highlands, Central Coast, Newcastle, Hunter, Canberra and the Central West, you will find stunning homes built by Rawson Homes.

Our success can be attributed to personalised service and an understanding of how people want to live. We are also incredibly proud to hold the Homeowners Warranty lowest risk builder rating, with the financial backing of Daiwa House, Japan's largest residential builder, and a $49 billion AA-rated balance sheet.

When you build with Rawson Homes, you enjoy complete peace of mind that you're in safe hands
>>

.. until you're not.


They also need to be careful about cherry picking headlines, as its also reported as:
"A Weatherzone spokesperson told Yahoo News Australia many places in Sydney through to the Central Coast and further north had generally seen the biggest rainfall in more than three and a half years."
So maybe the weather in your suburb isn't so unusual, and you don't need to go back to 1998 like the BOM reported, and certainly not the early 90s like their email.

They've been building homes since 1978.. enough time to be through a few unprecedented weather cycles.

Perhaps they can look at the damage and improve their design above the standard required. Who knows, maybe its $100 in sealant and a roof plumbers time to prevent this sort of leak.

The damage is not only to the one home but also their reputation.

Fingers crossed lets hope they can design and build homes that can survive the weather of the 2020s and beyond or we are building a lemon.

luxbuild Rawson Homes and their owner Daiwa House now have the opportunity to publicly do the right thing at westbourne 's place and rectify their defective leaking garage roof and the resulting internal damage. If they value their reputation and future sales pipeline they will.

Rawson Homes has not taken the opportunity to turn a disadvantage into an advantage and benefit from lessons learnt. Instead, their customer continues to be disadvantaged and Rawson has learnt nothing.

Compliance does not always guarantee best practice nor should it be used to excuse failure.

Rawson, we have a problem.

A laughable answer full of washing their hands ,they say ,Rawson homes are really good if you never get bad weather,if you do,don't call us ,call your insurance.