Building materials made in factories can contain latent defects. These are hidden time bombs that can explode, causing mayhem in your life. It’s not easy to spot them, but there are some things you can do to prevent physical and financial harm. I’ve dodged the bullet several times in my career and lifetime.

Several decades ago, I built a stunning Queen Anne Victorian replica home for my family. I purchased top-quality windows made by a major brand.

About 10 years after they were installed, I was reading the latest issue of the Journal of Light Construction. I subscribed to several building magazines to help stay abreast of the latest products and building techniques.

There was a tiny announcement about the major window brand filing a huge lawsuit against a national paint company. The lawsuit alleged that the paint company supplied the window manufacturer with a defective clear wood preservative. The window company used this preservative to prevent wood rot in the window frames and the sashes.

My windows contained this invisible defective preservative. The window company sent out one of their engineers to confirm this. Wood rot was discovered in all of my windows. The window company supplied new windows and a cash settlement to install them. To say the least, I was lucky.

Not too long ago I met a friend at a restaurant here in New Hampshire. A concrete block wall separated the parking lot from an outdoor patio. The top courses of the concrete block had disintegrated and were nothing more than sand and small stones. There was not enough cement in the block to resist the freeze/thaw cycles each winter.

The lack of cement in the block could have happened because of a malfunction in the batching machinery that measures out the quantities of sand, small stone and cement. It’s also possible that there could have been enough cement but the dry mixing process didn’t distribute it evenly. Finally, too much water might have been added to the mix. The failure could have been caused by one, or several, of these possibilities.

My recent encounter with defective materials happened on my outdoor deck. Several years ago I installed a composite decking and railing system by one of the top deck manufacturers. The round aluminum balusters in the railing were held in by plastic extrusions that fit into the top and bottom fiberglass railing members.

When I installed them, they fit perfectly with no gaps where the extrusions touched the vertical railing posts.

Two years later I was out on the deck one day and noticed a quarter-inch gap between the end of one of the extrusions and a post. I then took the time to look at all of them. Much to my surprise, there were huge gaps everywhere.

I reached out to the manufacturer. They admitted they had a manufacturing defect that caused the extrusions to stretch as they inch their way out of the molding die. After a few years, the plastic shrinks back to what it should be.

The manufacturer sent me all new extrusions to replace the defective ones.

What can you do to prevent situations like I’ve experienced? When it comes to buying wood windows, it’s not easy. It’s an enormous amount of work, but you can remove the plastic jamb liners and paint all exposed surfaces of the entire window frame. You can caulk any hidden joints where water might soak into the end grain of the wood.

Instead of using concrete block made in a factory, consider using natural stone made by Mother Nature. She’s been doing it so long that she’s perfected making building materials that can last millions of years.

As for plastic deck railing components, I’m not sure there’s an easy answer. I would defer to railings you might find in older homes, such as wrought iron. Invest in time-tested materials where you know the cost to replace something is difficult and time- consuming.