OWENS CORNING

After a bad experience with Owens Corning (OC) Pink Panther fiberglass insulation in my home's finished basement, I swore never to use their products again. A year later our real estate company built a 24,000 sq ft. manufacturing plant. Without our knowledge, a subcontractor installed OC fiberglass in the office walls for sound damping. Humidity inside the building was high, but not unusually high because new concrete floors release water vapor as they cure. This caused the formaldehyde binder in OC's fiberglass to emit a strong fish/urine odor (trimethylamine gas). It made eyes and throats burn. Even though OSHA said it was not intense enough to be toxic, the tenant's employees refused to move in and breathe it. We complained to Owens Corning, and they said the odor should not last more than a few weeks, but it was still strong after 2 months. Since the fish/urine odor in my home's basement had lasted over a year, I had no confidence in their estimate. We tried many things to remove the odor, including super high ventilation, dehumidifier/air conditioners, hot air treatment, and an Ozone odor-removing machine. Nothing worked. Paul Davis Restoration Company said the only way to completely eliminate the odor is to remove all the OC fiberglass. Our tenant was eager to move in, so I ordered the contractor to tear down the dry walls, remove all 10,000 cubic feet of the OC's fiberglass, and replace it with a non-odor emitting product. The cost was $46,000, including two months of lost rent. This does not include wasted management time, which would bring the total loss to over $80,000. OC inspected the building and confirmed the odor, but insisted it is "typical" of their product in a humid environment. They offered to pay a mere $3,700 to remove it. As soon as the OC fiberglass was removed, the odor immediately ceased. We replaced it with Johns Manville low VOC fiberglass. The building smells fine now. Our attorney said we would have to sue our contractor, who would sue his subcontractor, who would sue the distributor, who would sue Owens Corning. Even if we won, attorney's fees would gobble up our rewards, and we would lose more management time, so we ruled out legal action. We think Owens Corning should put a warning on their fiberglass insulation, saying that high humidity can cause their product to emit a fishy odor for over a year. They are well aware of this problem, so we believe their failure to provide such a warning makes them grossly negligent. We would never buy anything from this company again.

Immediately after the fiberglass insulation was installed in May 2009, we noticed a very strong dead fish/urine odor. My son is a chemist, so he knew the odor is trimethylamine gas. We called Owens Corning, and they admitted that trimethylamine gas is emitted by the binder in their fiberglass mats. They said the ?fishy odor? would go away in a few weeks if we ventilated the area. We ventilated continuously with a large fan in the egress widow, but the odor got worse. We called them several times, and they kept saying it would go away if we ventilated and gave it a few more weeks. They never offered to replace the product. We installed a dehumidifier and a $700 floor ventilator that pulled dry air from upstairs. This reduced the odor slightly, but the apartment was still too foul smelling to move into. An attorney said it would cost more to sue them then to wait for it to abate, so we kept hoping the odor would go away tomorrow -- it finally did -- more than a year later, 60 weeks to be exact, during which time the smell made the basement apartment unlivable. We recently contacted Owens Corning again and told them how long it took for the odor to disappear, and they let slip that high humidity ?typically? makes the odor worse. Now we know that ventilating the cold basement during humid summer days increased the humidity and the odor. We think Owens Corning should have told us that when we called last year. They also should put a warning on their fiberglass insulation, saying that high humidity can cause their product to emit a fishy odor for over a year. If we would have known that, we never would have bought their product for fear that a water leak, sump overflow, or flood damage could release the odor and render the whole home unlivable. Instead, we would have specified a different type of sound damping. We will not use Owens Corning?s products again.