Years ago, I was part of a forensic investigation team of engineers and specialists, called in to assess a failing stone façade on a university building that was only a few years old.
Everyone assumed the problem couldn’t be the wall ties.
“They’re stainless steel,” one of the engineers said.
Maybe.
But I asked a different question: What about the anchors holding those ties?
Using a specialized metal detector, I located a tie and carefully removed one of the stones. That’s when the real issue revealed itself, corrosion on the enameled screw head.
A few years old… and already failing.
We dug deeper. The root cause wasn’t the tie itself, it was the installation. A worn drill bit had been used to drill the holes, reducing the hole diameter and increasing torque during fixing. That excessive torque stripped the protective enamel coating off the screw head during installation.
And just like that, a system designed to last decades was compromised from day one.
A high-spec solution… undone by the weakest link.
