Leaking roofs of prefabricated metal buildings in Nueces County, Tex., resulted in repairs at the new facilities during the past few months.

The fairgrounds, where the steel buildings' leaks occurred, opened in January and remain under warranty, so there is no additional cost to the county.

"You can't build 180,000 square feet of roofing space and not have leaks," said project engineer John Michael of Naismith Engineering.

"You expect to have leaks and then you tackle them as you get them. This has been a great year to test the roof. As far as I am concerned, it's a non-issue. We have found them all and gotten them all taken care of."

The worst leaks happened where water came in along the front wall where the red roof tiles meet the gutter system. The water leaking down the wall puddled inside the building but did not cause lasting damage.

Teal Construction, a subcontractor in charge of the metal buildings, had installed the missing roof screw and flashing - a waterproofing material used along the roof line.

"With that many square feet, with that many materials in it, you just have flashing and waterproofing and all kinds of things you need to do to finish it," owner John Murray said. "You adjust and tweak things to get these things to do what they're supposed to do."

Prefabricated metal buildings such as the ones at the fairgrounds are assembled on site. Leaks are not the norm for a new building, several local metal building contractors and roofing consultants said.

Others, though, say that sometimes, if not frequently, new metal buildings will have a small problem when it first gets built.

Some local contractors cited a cotton storage facility near Gregory as a structure with a comparable prefabricated metal building frame and roof to the fairgrounds facilities - pointing out that it does not leak as these do.

It was completed three years ago and comprises 575,000 square feet of metal buildings, said general manager Bob Weatherford.

"We were still building it when we put cotton in it and we did not have time to check if it would leak but it did not," Weatherford said.

"Cotton would have been like a wick and sucked (water) up. For these purposes it was very important that it didn't leak."