Feb. 28--New wooden doors installed less than a year ago on Annette Walter's house aren't keeping out the drone of O'Hare flights as intended, and they certainly aren't blocking the harsh winter air from blowing in.
The doors, installed at government expense under a city-administered sound-insulation program, were built by a contractor using faulty materials, officials said.
Complaints from 20 homeowners concerning 30 warped or otherwise defective doors have been received by the Chicago Department of Aviation and the O'Hare Noise Compatibility Commission so far, officials said.
More than 18,000 homes have been sound-insulated near O'Hare International and Midway airports in recent decades, but Walter and the others had the bad luck to receive substandard work just before Chicago's most brutal winter in decades.
Records show that the doors were manufactured by city subcontractor Central Door Distributors of Calumet City, which stopped doing business in December, a city official said.
At the Walter home in the 7600 block of West Victoria Street on the Northwest Side, the gaps between the doors and the door frames are so wide that sunlight along with jet noise and polar vortex winds enter the houses.
"I had the thermostat set at 74 or 76 degrees," said Walter, 90, whose home is directly beneath a flight corridor for O'Hare. "You could imagine how that furnace was kicking over."
Walter became ill recently and moved in with her daughter and son-in-law, but they remain intent on keeping her old house warm enough to protect the pipes from freezing, and that's proving expensive.
Paul Wayland, the son-in-law, held a thermal leak detector near the new side door off the kitchen in Walter's house on Tuesday. The digital screen first flashed 54 degrees, then dropped to 48 degrees as Wayland took a couple of steps closer to the leaky door frame.
"The inspector for the city who came out said the door has warped three-eighths inch and the front door is warped five-16th inch," said Wayland, who said he grew suspicious when the gas bill in Walter's temporarily unoccupied home hit $270 last month, even through he had set the thermostat at 67 degrees.
"We were told by the inspector that the doors cannot be fixed and that we should check back in about a month," Wayland said. "It feels like we are getting the city runaround."
City aviation officials, contacted by the Tribune, said they are "disappointed in the performance of Central Door Distributors" and that the city is working on solutions -- for the homeowners and to recoup the money paid to Central Door.
They said the problems stemmed from faulty materials used in the doors provided by the company and that the quality of the installations done by other contractors was not the issue.
"We have removed the company from the pre-approved supplier list and are evaluating our legal options to recover whatever costs we can, even though this company has stopped doing business," Aviation Department spokeswoman Karen Pride said. The company has not filed for bankruptcy protection, Pride said.
The O'Hare residential sound insulation program provides replacement storm doors, primary doors, windows and in some cases air-conditioning systems free of charge to residents who live within the borders of the current O'Hare noise contour map. The work is paid for using airport funds, and 80 percent of costs are reimbursed by the Federal Aviation Administration.
The sound insulation of more than 18,000 homes near the airports so far has cost $433 million, according to the city Aviation Department. In the O'Hare area, 9,924 homes and 121 schools have received sound insulation, while 1,954 residences are on a waiting list.
Thousands of additional homeowners are experiencing increased jet noise since flight patterns at O'Hare changed in October when a fourth east-west parallel runway opened as part of the airfield expansion program. But many of those homes are not covered by the residential noise insulation program because they sit outside the existing noise contour map.
Records show that Central Door Distributors was brought in as a subcontractor by the four general contractors hired for the jet noise insulation project and, as required, Central Door provided a warranty for its doors, officials said. The general contractors, which provided warranties for the workmanship of the installations, are Asbach & Vanselow Inc. of Wauconda, Blinderman Construction Co. of Chicago, Madison Construction Co. of Orland Park and O.A.K.K. Construction Co. of Summit, according to the city.
Attempts by the Tribune to reach officials at Central Door were unsuccessful.
"We are aware of the homeowners' concerns, and the bottom line is that we will replace the doors at no cost to them," Pride said.
"Unfortunately, because these are custom doors, it could take two to three months to get them manufactured and installed," she said.
Pride said late Thursday afternoon that Asbach & Vanselow has been instructed by the city to replace 17 of the 30 doors. The new doors will be supplied by PEM Millwork of Minnesota Inc., she said, adding that homeowners are being contacted.
She noted that Central Door supplied more than 4,500 of the 4,800 doors installed in homes around O'Hare and Midway under the noise insulation program over the past two years, and that no problems have been reported so far about the majority of the doors.
Tom Dorosz, 30, who lives next door to the Walter home, said he has futilely attempted to block the draft coming through his warped new door using weather stripping. He is frustrated by the shoddy work on the house he bought last year, and angered by the lack of information being provided.
"There is no easy fix," said Dorosz, a truck driver who is employed by the Chicago Department of Aviation at O'Hare. He bought the home because it is close to work, he said.
"You have this expensive door installed and I am going to Home Depot to buy weather strips to fill the gaps," he said. "After a while the door doesn't want to close because of the temperature changes."
As an Aviation Department driver who escorts other vehicles around the O'Hare airfield, Dorosz is accustomed to a lot of jet noise -- while he's working.
"I am used to planes all the time, but it is a dramatic amount of noise here at my house, especially at night," he said.
In addition to the warped entry door, Dorosz said jet noise permeates the vents in the house's glass-block windows, which he was told are not eligible for free replacement under the residential noise abatement program.
"I was not anticipating the draft or so much noise when I bought the property," he said with a sad smile.
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