When building the first thing that comes into the mind of every builder is Material Quality and Material Cost,its quite unfortunate that a building that has just been built is been repaired because of the influx of substandard material.A building is suppose to be long term investment but these days the reverse is the case,individuals/firms use these materials with or without their knowledge and they end end spending more in maintenance.House that wre built about ten years ago cannot be compared with recently built houses this because back then materials used were of high quality,now when you go to buy these materials one is given low qaulity materials(china materials)as they been called.

Because a builder of a house wants quality materials to be used in his project he goes to these elaborate show rooms to buy where he is milked dry in the name of original and still some of the materials are fake.Im not saying they are no standard materials in market any more,but it's just difficult buying one especially when you are a novice.And when you know what you want you could still be tricked by these seller because the standard ones and the substard ones are so alike.Even when the owner of a building goes with his or her plumber/tiler at the end of the day he goes home with these same fake materials because the plumber/tiler would collaborate with the seller to supply the substandard goods to make more profit,i've seen this happen more often than i can count, I feel pity for houses in lagos especially the lekki area,due to the salty water in lagos low qaulity materials cant stand this salty water.

I believe in this country very much as a young man and i believe for this country to change everyone has to contribute in one way or the other,i guess this is the only way i can contribute i just want every Nigerian to be aware and not to throw away their hard earned money

Uwalaka Walter
08060500676

Dear poster, can you please tell me what you consider as substandard building materials, as most buildings in Nigeria involves, cement ,Iron rods  and wood,  and roofing sheets, so please tell me waht you say is substandard, i would like to know thanks.

Hello Erico,I meant Sanitary wares,Plumbing,tiles,doors and what have you.Those are the real money when it comes to building.Its such a shame evrything is going so bad,only God knows how its going to be in ten years if it continue's at this rate.

Walter

08060500676

I understand waht you where saying my friend but I all, I would put some light into it, you know everyone in the globe is reading this,as far as Nigeria is concern, we have few or no fake building materials, what we realy have is uncontroled way we build our houses, Now what I mean by this is, Cheap tiles does not constitute or compromise the overall safty of your hoes, niether do sanitry wares, or plumbing.Now all these things have the best and the crapest in Nigeria, depends on howmuch you wanna spend, same goes here in the UK,now the major problem we have in Nigeria is shady worksmen,
for example if it takes 3 bags of cement and 20 head pans of sand to make 50 bricks, ie (4x6)inch, just estimate though, lets say thats a standard, there would be some stupid bricklayer who wanna use same ammount to make 70 bricks to make more money, so I think its more to do with the atitude of our builders and government in its part creat a quality control initiative or make them into law so we have standards in the building industry.What do you recon my friend?

Hello ericko hw u 2day,Just read ur post.It was quite enlightening but i must say the issue of low quality materials still play a major role,cos if there aint any low quality nobody would be buying them.For instance you are doing your plumbing and your plumbers buy's a sub-standard stop cork for your piping in a place like lekki where the water is salty believe you me you wud ave to change it within a year same thing goes for the faucets.I agree with you that the government has a major role to play in this cos its alarming.I sell building materials i know what i'm talking about,its so bad.

Sometimes you give your workmen money the quality they qouted and they end up buy this low ones cos they are cheaper and the owner wont know,its really terrible.

I'm a sales man i'm not always onl;ine but i engoy this conversation,i wud like you to share more of ur views,and i hope you find my views reasonable.

Thank you

Walter

erico2k2:

I understand waht you where saying my friend but I all, I would put some light into it, you know everyone in the globe is reading this,as far as Nigeria is concern, we have few or no fake building materials, what we realy have is uncontroled way we build our houses, Now what I mean by this is, Cheap tiles does not constitute or compromise the overall safty of your hoes, niether do sanitry wares, or plumbing.Now all these things have the best and the crapest in Nigeria, depends on howmuch you want to spend, same goes here in the UK,now the major problem we have in Nigeria is shady worksmen,
for example if it takes 3 bags of cement and 20 head pans of sand to make 50 bricks, ie (4x6)inch, just estimate though, lets say thats a standard, there would be some stupid bricklayer who want to use same ammount to make 70 bricks to make more money, so I think its more to do with the atitude of our builders and government in its part creat a quality control initiative or make them into law so we have standards in the building industry.What do you recon my friend?

My friend,
The house is built because of you, if what you have in that house can jeopardise your safety then the house is not safe, and if it is not safe then it will be pulled down or it will end up consuming the life of the owner.
Everything about building is very important, look at this case-- I believed you must have heard that fake sanitary wares had got broken and killed the owner of a house before, you must have heard of wc's that had broken and inflicted serious injury on somebody. What of ordinary floor tiles that are slippery and caused death of lots of families breadwinner.
Another case is using a substandard/fake wire/cable to light your house. This will not only pull down the house it will kill everything in that house.
I am simply saying lives are in danger because of fake materials.
Thumbs up for the Poster but you were too fast to make us know you are posting the topic so that you can make money  Next time let's gist about it for a while before you bring out that aspect  Is a good marketing strategy but be patient.

fake and sub-standard stuff full Naija like no mans business.
A relative of mine who was just regular sized sat on a toilet seat and was jejely doing his number 2 when the seat shattered and gave him a big gash in the buttocks.
He had to be rushed to the hospital.
If it had moved any closer,my  cousin would have had his balls on the toilet floor.

Last poster you go kill me with tory, my coligues where looking at me in my office as if i have gone mad after I read your post
, you are quite right,there are fakes everywhere in Nigeria, but we all are forgetting something,its not fake, its just sub-standard as the poster rightly said.Even here in the Uk, there are substandard goods as well,its everywhere in the world, recently Ebay was fined billions for allowing people sell substandard goods and furged goods on its site.
I have a four flats of 4 bedroom in my towm, during the building process, I personally bought all the wares and made sure I got what I want, Now if guys in Nigeria that have big heads, they can do that.
The solution to this is quite clear, the seller in the shop would clearly tell you which is substandard and which is topgrade,so if nigerians stop having this atitude that they are to big to go to the shop, they could simply pay for the labour of building thier house and go with the contractor or builder to the hardware shop and get quotes and by his own wares as he wants it thereby he could have whatever standad mentained as he wants.These are what goes on here in the Uk, but the difffrence here is, when you do anysort of work for someone, building, mechanic or what have you, you give a gaurantee so if you use fake parts, you are stuck and you will have to redo it again without pay.

Erico2k2, What are you talking about, the workers /supplies and building material sellers makes life difficult when you are building in nigeria. If you don't know about building material and so on, forget it. Even when I had my samples that I showed the sellers, they still try to bring me something different. Or when you have just paid so much for better quality roofing sheet, and they supply you only 20 of the quality you paid for and 480 of different quality undernith

Hello Nairalanders,sori i've not kept up with the pace.Anyway the truth is that there are still very good quality in the market,but the truth is that the rate of influx of thes sub-standard material are alarming.There are are lot of problem contributing to this issues,especially on the part of the government.Most importer would rahter go to some of thos asian countries and request for thos low quality because when they think of the duty they would pay bring it into the country after the production.They opt for cheaper quality which is cheaper cost of production so they afford to make quick cheap sales,cos when you make the very satndard ones including the duties the cost price of the good become something else.Just check out a scenario where you can sell like 4 containers of sub-standard before you finish one of the standard one,so most of them are forced to go for this sub-standard ones.

But like queensha wrote,ther is nothing as important as someones life,so ther shouldn't be any excuse for sub-standard materials especially W/Cs.Its so terrible what a broken w/c could do to someone

your views are needed

It is disheartening to see level of sub-standard materials being sold in Nigeria to home builders. In the last few months, I have seen where home owners/ builders who we've been following the progress of their homes using not so quality materials for the finishing of their homes. It is not their fault, it is because of what market has to offer in Nigeria. Don't get me wrong, these home owners and builders are building great homes which I really like but they haven't got some of the best available materials for the finishing of their homes. I go to homedepot and lowes all the time and from what I see there, Nigerian government should do something about sub-standard building materials being imported into Nigeria everyday.

Very good points, there are some strong points made here of which I agree with. Nice thread.