Marie Claire — Oct 18, 2021
I would not recommend Barbin Builders. They built my daughter's raised house 5 years ago, and her subfloors are rotting and needin…
I would not recommend Barbin Builders. They built my daughter's raised house 5 years ago, and her subfloors are rotting and needing to be replaced. When you go under the house and look up, you can see the black, rotted, damaged wood, but you can't see the damage from inside. If you keep a rug or furniture over the part of the floor caving in, like they did, then you wouldn't even know what was going on for a while, like they didn't. According to experts, the damage has been going on for years. Unfortunately, because they didn't notice the rotting floor within the one year warranty, Barbin won't help them. Shouldn't the subfloor last at least 5 years?! We suspect the damage is coming from the fireplace, so it's possible that Barbin messed up the flashing.
After paying $2,000 to have the subfloor in one room fixed, months later they are having the same issue in another room and other areas in the house. Turns out, since Louisiana is so humid, the humidity under the house in the crawl space is causing moisture to the subfloor and thus making it rot. They are now having to replace the rest of our subfloors, in a 5 year old house. A simple online research revealed that when building a raised house in a humid environment, certain measures should be taken. First, a plastic shield or vapor cover should have been installed on the ground under the house, to prevent that moisture from rising to the subfloors, better insulation should have been placed under the laminate to stop the AC temperatures from reaching the warm temperatures underneath the house. They are paying thousands of dollars for a problem that was preventable. A builder in the area should know how to build houses according to the climate the in which the house is being built.
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I would not recommend Barbin Builders. They built my daughter's raised house 5 years ago, and her subfloors are rotting and needing to be replaced. When you go under the house and look up, you can see the black, rotted, damaged wood, but you can't see the damage from inside. If you keep a rug or fur…
I would not recommend Barbin Builders. They built my daughter's raised house 5 years ago, and her subfloors are rotting and needing to be replaced. When you go under the house and look up, you can see the black, rotted, damaged wood, but you can't see the damage from inside. If you keep a rug or furniture over the part of the floor caving in, like they did, then you wouldn't even know what was going on for a while, like they didn't. According to experts, the damage has been going on for years. Unfortunately, because they didn't notice the rotting floor within the one year warranty, Barbin won't help them. Shouldn't the subfloor last at least 5 years?! We suspect the damage is coming from the fireplace, so it's possible that Barbin messed up the flashing.
After paying $2,000 to have the subfloor in one room fixed, months later they are having the same issue in another room and other areas in the house. Turns out, since Louisiana is so humid, the humidity under the house in the crawl space is causing moisture to the subfloor and thus making it rot. They are now having to replace the rest of our subfloors, in a 5 year old house. A simple online research revealed that when building a raised house in a humid environment, certain measures should be taken. First, a plastic shield or vapor cover should have been installed on the ground under the house, to prevent that moisture from rising to the subfloors, better insulation should have been placed under the laminate to stop the AC temperatures from reaching the warm temperatures underneath the house. They are paying thousands of dollars for a problem that was preventable. A builder in the area should know how to build houses according to the climate the in which the house is being built.
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