Defect Index of Timberwork in House, Korea

Abstract

Wood is a material that is familiar to humans and environment-friendly, and it is used widely as a building material. However, as the dispute over housing defects have increased in Korea, various defects have occurred in timberwork and have become disputes. Notwithstanding, efforts to analyze defects in timberwork systematically to reasonably solve the problem are lacking. In this study, defects in timberwork from housing complexes in Korea were standardized, and critical defects were selected to suggest a method as a management standard. The standard for defects includes time, types of facility work, location and subject, and defect phenomenon. The defect time is categorized into before handover and after handover, whereas facility work is divided into woodwork, door and window work, finishing work, and miscellaneous work. Location and subject are categorized into 13 areas, such as ceiling, floor, and door, and phenomena concerned are of 14 types, including faults and no installation. Therefore, the standardized defect items according to such criteria are classified into a total of 63 types. Ten defect items, whose numbers of defect occurrences per defect and defect repair cost ratio above the average, were selected, including discoloration and breakage of the wooden floor. The repair cost ratio of these defect items accounted for 85.62% of the total repair costs. On the contrary, the repair cost for the defects from the timber work outlined in the Construction Appraisal Practice, a representative defect standard in Korea, was 54.54% of the total. Meanwhile, according to the Defect Judgment Standard, the defect repair cost attributed 45.54% of the total. Therefore, since the 10 defect items proposed in this study can explain the defects in the timberwork compared with other standards, it would be reasonable to designate these 10 defect items as essential defects.