Toll Brothers Dissections

Toll brother and many other housing developers claim to offer quality materials with superior design for their houses. Among these claims are preservation of natural landscape (which is justified by installment of golf courses) and the preservation of as much open space as possible. This is a counterstatement of what they do. They come in and develop as much land as possible for their own profit. Their biggest selling option is the design it yourself options which takes a base house design and allows the user to make small changes such as separated toilet space and high hats for lighting. Unfortunately their designs don’t bring the quality that the buyer believes he or she is getting. Toll Brothers construction methods and materials are below standard and many times fail to meet standards set by the state code. The larges reason for this is because they want to optimize their profit. By doing so they tend to hire low end contractors which work for low wages and demand that they finish in a minimum amount of time. There construction methods are also below standard. They look at the minimum requirement for the code and build houses to barely pass them. For example, many toll brothers houses do not have an exterior vapor barrier and apply vinyl siding directly on top of Celotex (used for sheathing on the majority of the home) or Oriented strand board (used for sheathing on very few toll brothers homes). This allows moisture enter the house and eventually rotting out the framing. It also allows winter winds to penetrate the building and will create an increased heat loss during the winter. As for the rest of the house, OSB is most commonly used for the floor sheathing and roof sheathing. This can cause health problems in poorly ventilated houses due to the amount of formaldehyde found in OSB. Within the walls, toll brothers will use the minimum amount of insulation as possible to save on money. This can cause heat loss problems in the winter. The windows in Toll brothers tend to be Anderson windows which is a very good brand of windows. This is a visual and mental (people know the name Anderson) selling point of the house. These might be well designed and built windows, but they serve no purpose. The windows in toll Brothers houses have no conception to the placement for heating and cooling. They are mainly randomly placed throughout the house to look visually appealing. This can cause major heat loss in the winter due to northern exposure and unwanted heat gain in the summer months. This causes heaters and air-conditioners to work a lot harder and consume more energy to heat the house to a comfortable temperature. On top of everything else, these housing development have no concern for the natural environment or environmental pollution.

Survey

Recently a survey was done in Massachusetts on several Toll Brothers houses during construction by the Glob Spotlight Team at the Hopkinton Highlands development. The houses which were surveyed all failed the standards of the construction building codes provided by the state. They found out that walls were not properly secured to foundation and there were inadequate supports for load bearing beams (these were changed to wood from steel requirement to save money for toll brothers). Among these problems were how the brick was poorly built to the extent that it was already causing interior water problems. Even though Toll Brothers claim to provide “Exceptional energy efficiency”, the buildings surveyed did not meet the minimum state standards. The houses used inferior materials and sloppy construction methods. Also due to cheap exterior finishes such as Dryvit Stucco and vinyl siding (without vapor barriers), many already built houses in the development were already showing signs of rotting in the framing. This Substandard home development is a growing national problem in the United States. Therefore many developers, including Toll Brothers, will not sell a house without the client signing a waiver for their right to bring lawsuits. This way they can use cheap labor, inferior materials and low quality design to create “Productive Homes” and not quality homes.