Slashdot Mirror
Home Improvement Chains Accused of False Advertising Over Lumber Dimensions (consumerist.com)
per unit analyzer writes: According to Consumerist, an attorney has filed a class-action lawsuit charging Home Depot (PDF) and Menards (PDF) with deceptive advertising practices by selling "lumber products that were falsely advertised and labeled as having product dimensions that were not the actual dimensions of the products sold." Now granted, this may be news to the novice DIYer, but overall most folks who are purchasing lumber at home improvement stores know that the so-called trade sizes don't match the actual dimensions of the lumber. Do retailers need to educate naive consumers about every aspect of the items they sell? (Especially industry quirks such as this...) Furthermore, as the article notes, it's hard to see how the plaintiffs have been damaged when these building materials are compatible with the construction of the purchaser's existing buildings. i.e., An "actual" 2x4 would not fit in a wall previously built with standard 2x4s -- selling the something as advertised would actually cause the purchaser more trouble in many cases.
If you buy a 20GB hard drive, you might only get one with 19GB of free space.
I thought it was normal for a 2x4 to actually measure 1.5x3.5 because of the planing that happens or somesuch.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The size "2x4" is an industry standard since forever. I hope the assholes filing suit will be forced to pay the court costs when the suit is dismissed with prejudice.
I definitely overpaid for these two-penny nails!
If you post it, they will read.
I went into the plumbing section and asked for a snake. They gave me some kind of spring on a reel.
I was really hoping for a Ball Python.
Every few years some ambulance chaser tries this bullshit in the US. All over the world timber is sold using the undressed dimensions, it's been that way since the dead sea caught the sniffles. IMO the court should declare the suit frivolous and force him to refund the money (with interest) to the people who have joined his class action con job.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The dimensions of the timber are based on the rough sawn dimensions. Most timber you buy from the store has been subsequently "dressed" or planed to a smooth and more importantly uniform finish.
This is well known to anyone buying timber and has been like this for over a century.
"Do you think we could wipe out world hunger forever if scientists figured out how to make AOL's Free CD's edible?"-
if they went into the plumbing aisle, to discover that a piece of 1/2" pipe doesn't have ANY dimension that actually measures half an inch....
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
1) The lawyer is a shmuck. They are sizes, not measurements. If I were the judge, I would give him 50 cents in damages and deny his appeals.
2) Companies should simply leave off the word inch.
This is a a 1x4, not a 1 inch x 4 inch. This is a 4x4, not a 4 inch by 4 inch.
Never use the word inch anywhere on the packaging, leave the unit as implied, not specified. If you feel the need to specify the unit somewhere, call it a "lumber standard inch" or maybe an LSI in your paperwork.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
lying about the size of their wood ;)
The lawsuit is likely focused on deceptive labeling of the third dimension of lumber, which DOES matter and isn't an "industry quirk". I myself have recently bought allegedly 8-feet-long lumber that proved to be about 1/4 of an inch shorter than that. This is being done in spite of at least some of Home Depot's management knowing about it, and that's fraudulent. They can try and blame it on the lumber producers and claim that they're being defrauded, too, but the likelihood of no one in Home Depot's giant operation noticing that their bedsheets have been shorted and sounding an alarm is quite small. It's either outright conspiracy or synergistic collusion.
They are in fact advertised as 2 inches by 4 inches. Here's some shitty 2x4 from home depot: http://www.homedepot.com/p/2-i...
Notice it is called "2 in. by 4 in.", though also note it is clearly marked as "Actual dimension: 1.5 in. x 3.5 in. x 10 ft.".
I'm really not sure how they managed to miss it.The actual dimensions are clearly marked both on the website and in store.
I was at a store in the Lowes chain recently and noticed that at each lumber rack were the actual dimensions of the wood. Nowhere was the traditional '2X4' label used. Just to be sure I measured some samples and though my measurements were slightly different, the label was mostly correct.
As someone mentioned, long ago a 2X4 was a 2X4. If you see one from an old structure, you will note that its surface is very rough and dangerous to delicate hands. Our modern lumber is smooth and attractive to see and feel. Exactly the result you would have if you smoothed the old lumber. The smoothness is a result of planing and carefully hand sanding each piece for customer satisfaction. Of course the dimensions are slightly reduced, but which would you rather have?
I asked my brother in Brasil about lumber sizing "do they use metric?". He replied with some confusion; he said that it depends on where you buy your lumber. Different outlets will have different sizes and those could change depending on their current sources. He built his own house out in the distant suburbs of Sao Paulo using such materials. There seems to be no standard there.
...omphaloskepsis often...
This guy is wasting his time possibly in the hopes that they will pay him to go away.
As others have pointed out, they sell the industry standard. No one who buys a 2x4 expects it to be 2x4 because that would not be the accepted industry standard.
Now, I don't know this, but I feel almost certain that such standards are in fact codified. There is almost certainly some ISO standard, or something else like that.
The lawyer is a sleaze bag who probably isn't smart enough to be a patent troll.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Size =/= inches. Do you think your size 12 shoes are exactly 12 inches long? The actual shoe size varies from manufacturer to manufacturer, but what you really care about is if they fit your feet and guess what - they probably do.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Anybody who has built a cabinet from big-box plywood knows that you cannot go by what is on the label, even if it's specified in 32nds of an inch. They lie. You have to measure the plywood thickness yourself or else your shelves are going to rattle around in your dados.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
This is ridiculous if, for example, the "2x4" being sold measures 1.5" x 3.5".
Although if the product being sold as a "2x4" only measures 1.3"x3.3", the complaint is valid (I think Lowes was doing something like this a few years ago and settled the case and began to put "true" dimensions on the signage -- which is very confusing but, fortunately, I rarely have to resort to buying lumber at Lowes).
I once lived in an old house and the 2x4s were much closer to measuring 2"x4" (I think they were about 1.75"x3.75"). That was a pain because modern 2x4s on retro work didn't match so extra hoops had to be jumped through to make everything work.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
...they're measuring their wood in dick inches.
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
You heard it here first.
I'm guessing this is being pushed by some guy who got beat up in shop class a lot because he couldn't even make the ash tray.
#DeleteChrome
You can't hit them over the head with a 2x4 because there ain't none.
Table-ized A.I.
do you realize that even in the 1910's a 1" board was actually 13/16" ?
I did some work on a place I had that was built sometime in the 60s, and in redoing bits of floor I found that the plywood that was used previously was a true 1/2" but when I went to HD to buy half-inch ply, it wound up being more like 27/64ths or something like that.
Enough of a difference to be annoying.
Do you think your size 12 shoes are exactly 12 inches long? The actual shoe size varies from manufacturer to manufacturer, but what you really care about is if they fit your feet and guess what - they probably do.
I wear a size 10, you insensitive clod.
Yeah, do we now have to say "Hit him upside the head with a clue-by-three-point-five"?
look,
if you called home depot and asked for TWO INCHES BY FOUR INCHES planks and they sold you 1.5 inches by whatever.. yes there is a problem.
I mean, they could try to rectify it some way rather easily.
I mean, right now, you call them and ask them to deliver 2 inches and they deliver 1.5 with 2 inch labels? look, if an industry has a quirk of selling something 25% smaller than they label it as they might want to rectify that quirk.. sooner or later they will do that anyways.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Forever is more than 1 generation or 2 generations. 2x4 actually was legit long ago (with a margin of error) remodel an old house and find out when all your new wood doesn't match up.
Cheap greedy bastards gradually screwed people out of wood over time and because the USA has little regulation and nobody bothered to sue back then over it... false specification naming became the NORM so now that it's been around like 50 years people expect the lies. How we fix these things when they've been left alone is a problem...
I think they should just state their sizes in metric with a reasonable margin of error where they get punished if companies go outside that. If you don't they will ride the bottom margin gradually leading to a repeat of the problem. They can label it "2x4" as a primitive name just like the imperial system of inches but the ACTUAL size would be in civilized metric.
Home Depot sells them as 'appearance boards'
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
There are lots of things in the world with stupid names that are not accurate tot heir actual traits for various reasons. However when it specifies a given item then it makes sens to KEEP USING IT rather than to try and change things and screw people up.
An area you see this all the time in is ammunition. Many, many bullets have names that don't match their actual size. For example .380 auto isn't .380 caliber. The bullet is .355, the case is .373. So no matter which measurement you are using, it is wrong. However the round is called .380 auto, so we keep calling it that because people know what it is.
I checked Home Depot and their website lists the 2x4 ones as being for 2x4. You didn't read all the labels and didn't realize that the one marked 2"x4" dimensional is different than the one marked 2x4. Beginner's mistake, but you don't make that one if you either find out which one you need, or at least read all the labels of all the options.
Look the metric prefixes up: Giga, tera, etc are base 10. Giga means 10^9, not 2^30. They always have, they predated widespread base 2 usage. The standard SI prefixes are for base 10 as that's one of the big ideas behind the SI system is using base 10 for all units.
Now there are base-2 prefixes that have been introduced, those are Gibi, tebi and so on. If you want to talk base 2 orders of magnitude, you use those.
However using regular base-10 SI prefixes makes sense since basically everythign else in our computers uses that. When a processor says 3GHz it means 3 billion cycles per second, not 3,221,225,472. When a network is "gigabit" it means 10^9 bits per second, not 2^30. When we say DVDs are sampled at 48kHz we mean 48,000Hz not 49,152Hz. It makes sense to display our storage likewise. About the only area where the base-2 prefixes make sense is RAM, since it is actually sold along base-2 boundaries.
That's a lot of M&M's; you're gonna get chubby.
Table-ized A.I.
The problem is that, while a 2"x6" board at Lowe's measures about 5.5", and can be used as a replacement for any of my rotted deck planks, the boards at Home Depot are sufficiently less than 5.5" that they look terrible if used as a replacement. I found this out the hard way by buying several cedar 2"x6" boards at HD and using them to replace a few deck planks that were more worn or rotted than the rest of the deck. Being frugal, I wasn't going to throw them away and buy replacements elsewhere, but the result looked terrible for several years. Zoom forward a few years, and I have just completed almost 3 weeks of part-time work replacing most of the decking - about 125 boards - and it looks like the original deck again.
Before I began my renovation, I made the rounds of our local Lowe's, Home Depot, and Menard's, and measured the width of their available cedar lumber. Lowe's was fine, Home Depot was still too narrow to be used, and I couldn't find any at Menard's...maybe if I had found somebody on the floor to ask, they could have pointed me to lumber stored outside, but there was none to be seen inside on the lumber racks, so I don't know if Menard's lumber is undersize, or not.
Dimensioned lumber has gotten increasingly smaller over the years, and it has nothing to do with drywall or any other practical explanation. It has more to do with it being cheaper to mill it undersize than use precision milling equipment, and/or being able to get more boards out of a log if the boards are milled even further under their nominal size.
I once owned a gingerbread Victorian home and, during roofing and other renovations, I found that the lumber used was extremely close to the stated dimensions - my roof purlins were an _actual_ 2"x6", not 1.75"x5.5" or any other lesser dimensions. I couldn't even buy custom-milled pieces for replacements of special trim, because nobody makes milling cutters of those sizes any more.
The trial lawyers gives millions to the politicians and bureaucrats they own to make sure America never goes loser pays. And this is bipartisan somewhat but mostly dem, but reps take the money also, so it will never be changed. ;)
That is why legal fees in America are out of control. Even if you win your out all your legal fees. So the corrupt lawyers always win and will always continue to sue over stupid stuff.
Of all the things that I wish our forefathers put in the Constitution was loser pays. Along with a balanced budget except if we have a declared war
TBH it is the main driver of our out of control medical and business costs.
"but overall most folks who are purchasing lumber at home improvement stores know that the so-called trade sizes don't match the actual dimensions of the lumber." I'm a self admitted DIYer, but I've purchased lumber from Home Depot and I've been with a pro to purchase lumber before. Both times the exact dimensions were ordered and received. If the pro I was with suddenly received less than what he requested, he probably would have filed a suit himself.
As mentioned, many other industries have such quirks. For example bicycle rim diameters:
27.5" rim 28" = 29" 27"
Also, a 26 x 1.75" tyre is NOT the same as 26 x 1 3/4".
I wear a size 10, you insensitive clog.
Fixed that for you. I'll show myself out...
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
Despite knowing full well the legacy of reasoning behind why 2x4's are not 2"x4", this has bothered me for a very long time. If you plan to build something that requires precise dimensions this makes it a lot harder to find 2" beams that are actually 2" in thickness.
I do not know when this happened, but it used to be that a 2x4 is indeed 2" by 4" when bought. Now it is the measure of the rough cut that loses dimensions after planing and finishing. It really sucks when working on a old house where the old boards are the actual dimensions and none of the joist hangers fit. I can see a point in the lawsuit, but it is coming mighty late. I bet the "new" dimensions of lumber are in place for decades.
At issue is that it used to mean what they claim it should mean....but that changed decades ago.
No, you're just wrong.
A) Kerf, not curf.
B) The timber is rough cut to 2" x 4" and then planed and sanded smooth.
C) It's 1/2", not 3/4" that's removed.
Stop being so amazingly fucking ignorant.
"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."
These would be the same idiots that go into those same stores looking for a 'hot water heater'.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
Back in the 1800s, when you bought a "2x4" from the lumber mill it was green and "rough". That means it had too much moisture content to be used right away, it almost certainly twisted significantly along its length, and was pretty far from rectangular in its cross section. But that cross section was at least two inches by four inches.
So lumber wasn't sold ready to use. What you did was you stacked it in your barn for a few months to dry out, then if you needed an accurate shape you'd run the board through a jointer-planer to produce smooth, precise, parallel surfaces. Both these operations reduce the dimensions of the finished lumber.
By the early 20th century lumber mills started doing all this work for you so you could buy a 2x4 board and use it the same day. Far from cheating the customer as you claim, they're actually adding value by curing it and milling it down to a standard shape. Since 1924 the standard has been that 2 inches rough-hewn is always planed down to 1.5 inches; 4 to 3.5; 8 to 7.25, 10 to 9.25 and 12 to 11.25. But if you went to the lumber mill with a tape measure, you'd see that the 1.5 x 3.5 finished boards indeed start their life as 2 x 4 inch rough boards.
If you think about it, a lumber mill that cheated its customers on dimension would go out of business fast. You'd lay out your project, figure out how many boards you'd need, and not only would you come up short, nothing would fit as expected. The whole point of milling the softwood lumber to a standardized dimension is that you could plan out your material requirements exactly and then buy exactly what you need, when you need it.
Given that the dimensions of finished softwood lumber have been set by national standards for the last 90 years, I'm guessing the lawyer who brought the suit is either an idiot or is looking for a quick nuisance payoff.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
If you really need full sized lumber, you're probably going to have to go directly to a sawmill. My family was in the wood products business when I was growing up. We had a sawmill, but it was mostly to supply our own needs for other products. We were willing to sell rough cut, full sized lumber to people however.
It's going to have to be small business though. A big sawmill operation, like the types who would be supplying Home Depot aren't going to pull half a dozen pieces out of their operation for you, but there are still small operations around serving niche markets.
As far back as I can remember, the advertised dimensions have meant the cut size. You lose 1/4" on each side by planing. I'm not sure when they started planing everything headed to the retail market. Probably in the late '60's or sometime in the '70s. I've seen houses built in the 1960s which had rough wall studs, but in 30+ years, except for our own small business, I don't think I've ever seen rough lumber for retail sale.
Clue by Four; I mean a Clue by Three point seven five.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
These dimensions have been industry standards for 60 years or more
So how long do you have to cheat someone before it's ok to continue doing so? Clearly 60 years seems to be enough but, given Volkwagen's case, a few years is not.
... and guess that you're too dumb and lazy to even troll convincingly.
Or Size 10 for that matter.
My outer engineer is just forced to deal with.
So my solution is just make all my own lumber with a portable mill. Fuck you lumber industry all my 2x4's are actually 2x4's
Damn it forgot I hate English units too. Have to put all my lumber into metric. All my lumber is 5.08cm x 10.16cm................sigh.............fuck me.
Seriously though it is annoying but then all the engineering tables that have been in use for the last 100 years will have to be completely redone and all engineers that have been at it for more than a few years retrained. The only way to unfucker this situation is to burn down civilization and start over from scratch or wait another 200 years for the system to slowly and painfully change.
Because back in the 1910s it was still common practice to buy and use rough lumber. If a 2x4 were reasonably straight you wouldn't bother milling it down to size, you'd just cut it to length. But if you were to look at the subfloor (that was before plywood) you'd find that the width and thickness of the boards is about a half inch less than nominal.
There isn't strictly speaking any reason you have to used finished lumber for everything, but because of economies of scale there is no longer any economic advantage to using rough lumber. The carpenter who built your garage probably picked over the 2x4s at the lumber yard. Milling all the boards down from their nominal dimensions makes that job easier, and reduces the reject rate so everyone wins.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
You saw that scene in Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces did you?
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
so many people willing to let BS slide, just cause "its always been that way".
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Not news. Happened to Lowe's 3yrs ago.
"A Marin County California judge ordered Mooresville, North Carolina-based Lowe’s to pay a $1.6 million settlement over a lawsuit alleging the inaccurate description of structural dimensional building products."
http://www.hbsdealer.com/artic...
Lumber dimensions
Lumber's nominal dimensions are larger than the actual standard dimensions of finished lumber. Historically, the nominal dimensions were the size of the green (not dried), rough (unfinished) boards that eventually became smaller finished lumber through drying and planing (to smooth the wood). Today, the standards specify the final finished dimensions and the mill cuts the logs to whatever size it needs to achieve those final dimensions. Typically, that rough cut is smaller than the nominal dimensions because modern technology makes it possible and it uses the logs more efficiently. For example, a "2×4" board historically started out as a green, rough board actually 2 by 4 inches (51 mm × 102 mm). After drying and planing, it would be smaller, by a nonstandard amount. Today, a "2×4" board starts out as something smaller than 2 inches by 4 inches and not specified by standards, and after drying and planing is reliably 1 12 by 3 12 inches (38 mm × 89 mm).
Imagine a class action lawsuit against Segate and other manufacturers for not providing the stated amount of space on a hard drive.
The What The Fuck look you'd have on your face is the exact same look that anyone who ever purchased lumber in their lifetime would have at his lawsuit.
It should be thrown out and the lawyer disbarred for being a complete fucking idiot.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Don't even get them started on nominal pipe sizes!!!
I had a few small building projects and assumed - based on the name - that a 2x4 was indeed 2"x4". My little project came up a bit short when the supporting boards weren't as expected, and that's when I learned the difference between rough and finished wood. That said, I know the difference *NOW*, but it is still somewhat along the lines of mebibytes VS megabytes etc (or X-inch "class" TV's) where it could be confusing to a non-professional or first-timer.
So there is the question of whether the difference is still necessary, but to be honest I *also* wouldn't be surprised to see that some stores might cut lumber down a few fractions of an inch more these days in order to get more boards out of a log. I haven't seen anything that says an exact number that it a board should be under 2x4" so what's to keep them from having shaved a bit more here and there to cut costs?
If you want to get technical... any modern equipment used to mill and dress 2x4s is metric, and the finished size is actually 38mm x 89mm, which is 1.49606" x 3.50394". So yeah... let this be the catalyst to have the USA get with the times and convert everything to metric.
----------------------------
Esobofh - Currently drinking fresh mango juice.
"Do retailers need to educate naive consumers about every aspect of the items they sell?"
Yes. If you're open to the public rather than catering exclusively to those in the trade, you need to explain the standards of that trade. If the customer is unaware of "industry quirks," they don't know there's even anything they need to fact-check.
Its not April 1st.
My feet are 12" long, so my shoes have to be some longer.
(Also, my outstretched fingertips are a fathom apart. Behold the image of Charlemagne!)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
They're on all the labels in my local lowes and home depot.
I have not seen 2x4s used in framing in forever. I do a fair amount of pickup work between tech gigs, mostly residential remodel construction. All the framing I've seen and worked on in the last 20 years is done with 2x6.
How the fuck is this "cheating" anyone?
Units have legal definitions to prevent vendors from redefining their own units as they please. This was what happened back in medieval times and is why we have standard units now. It might be easy to remember that the cross-sections - but not lengths (how inconsistent is that!) - use non-standard definitions in construction but suppose petrol stations started doing that for litres? or electrical utilities redefined the kWh? or estate agents redefined the square metre etc. We would rapidly get back to where we were in medieval times with nobody really knowing how much of anything they were buying because everyone has their own definition of each unit.
Just because only the construction industry do this and it is easy to remember is not a valid excuse. What they are doing is illegal under the trading standards of many countries and it's about time someone called them on it.
Such a reaction just shows ignorance of an accepted standard
The problem with this is how do you define an accepted standard? If you found that a petrol station only gave you 0.9 litres of petrol everytime you bought what the pump said was a litre you would feel cheated even if the station told you that this was their accepted standard, indeed even if every petrol station started doing this suddenly you would still feel cheated because it is not the standard unit that you accept.
This is why, since medieval times, we have had laws that define the accepted standards for units. You are not free to redefine the length of a metre as you see fit you are required to follow the standard set out in the law. The reasons for these laws are extremely sensible and there is absolutely no valid reason for the construction industry not to follow them.