Lately our office has been getting this question from contractors. Just today we had a contractor ask where he can buy joint sealant bond breaker tape. (That’s like a contractor asking where he can buy nails.)
Unless the product is really specialized or exotic, I don’t think that it is the architect’s job to locate distributors for the contractor. I don’t want to get in to the position of shopping for the contractor.
Your thoughts please.
I agree.
With all of the access on web sites, etc. it should be easy to locate the larger number of products, unless as you say, David, it is something extraordinary.
Don’t mean to be harsh, but does sound like the contractor is a tad lazy and wants others to do his work [and yes, without pay!]
Unless the product is really specialized or exotic pretty well defines when youd list sources. I list address, phone number, website and email and even a distributor by name, when the product fits into the above category and when I know all the information. I suspect that is a fairly common approach for the specialty products.
For the nails common products, doesnt it scare you when they dont even know what the product is, much less where to buy it? Just because the subcontractor has a pickup truck and a caulking gun doesnt make him a qualified installer. Maybe in Part 1, we need to include a pop quiz requiring the proposed qualified installer to identify commonly used materials.
My joint sealant spec section calls for bond breaker tape as recommended by sealant manufacturer.
we’ve had a couple of contractors who seem equally lazy and after I found sources for them the first time, I recommended that they get a good search engine and find their own sources – otherwise we were going to discuss us billing them for research time. we haven’t had that same problem since.
I do get concerned when our seemingly “really good” contractor can’t find fairly common materials, or when I have to explain what something is to them…