Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire 3 month nightmare help comments or prayers please

I know there are some jacks of all trades here and some jack offs so please all chime in as I describe this nightmare.

I built a new house from Jan 2021 to Aug 2021 moved in Aug 7 2021. It is almost 3100 sq foot (cost $540,000) all one level on a four foot fully encapsulated crawl space in the middle of 100 acres 2 mins from the city limits (no inspections no code enforced). The house was designed by house plan drafting architect and had a fully set of floor plans from foundation to roof prints. It was designed to have the crawl space encapsulated meaning no air vents, it is sealed and a swimming pool like liner is installed up the walls and a humidifier keeps the crawlspace a conditioned humidity of about 45 to 55% year round.

In July before we moved in the crawl space pool like liner was installed as well as the humidifier unit. Typically they also install a sump pump system under the liner however when they arrived to do the installation the crawl space was bone dry. The installation of the sump pump would require the trenching of 3100 foot of pipe below the footer inside the crawl space and chiseling thru rock as well. The big company who was doing the job $23K who has crews in 5 states said that I did not need the sump pump system and that it would keep the bill from being $8k more as I lived completely on a hill and drained from all sides. They said they would come back in 6 months and peel back the liner and check for moisture and if there was any revisit installing the pump. I had an outlet put in for the sump pump and pipe sleeve put in for the pump however the job foreman didnt want to install it because he and his crew didnt want to trench for 3 days on their hands and knees for 3 days. I took his advice and thought he would recheck it in 6 months. Once they seal the liner you are not in any way allowed to open or view the crawl space below it or you void the 25 year transferable warranty and the 25 year free service inspection. My General Contractor thought it was insane to pays $23k for anything in a crawl space and surely didnt think I needed a sump pump in the first place.

In August we moved in. By the middle of Feb we noticed the sub floors were cracking a little when we walked in spots. They told me they might crack when the dehumidifier had dried things out below and call and the crawlspace people would come out and check the dehumidifier and check wood levels for moisture and adjust things as you are not allowed to adjust the settings on the dehumidifier. I had forgotten that no one had actually been out in 6 months. It was now just 7 months. The service guy showed invited me to the crawl space and tested everything. The moisture in the wood was perfect and the humidity was 47%. He asked to see the inside of the house where the floors where squeaking. He asked if doors we sticking I said yes and we checked some. Then he called his HQ and arranged for a free inspection of my homes foundation and wooden frame as he said my humidity was fine.

A week later things started getting worse in the house floor louder doors sticking and the guy shows up to do the free inspection. He goes in the crawl space with laser levels and says you need to come down here. He shows me that some of my 24 piers have settled and that it is because my general contractor/concrete crew poured some off center and had the spans to wide at 10 foot instead of 8. They ask to see my blue prints. It says 45 piers and I have 24 they say there is your problem they deviated from the plan and now the weight is not spanned correctly, ground not compacted properly before being poured on. He says a few of them have settled almost an inch. He says that I need foundation repair. It can be fixed for $12K. I thank him and start calling the concrete guys and my general contractor. The concrete guys wont answer and my general guy says he doesnt have time to mess with it that it is normal settling and he will check on it.

I call two other foundation companies who laser measure they all say the same thing my piers are "settling due to poor construction". My builder wont show. No one can figure out how my house has all these issues its 7 months old. In the middle of March, now my doors wont close at all, my house sounds like its 100 years old in the sub floor, my sheet rock is cracked all over, screws popped, my kids bath tub is slanted with water in it. I keep calling the foundation company back who did the encapsulation and they keep saying we need to fix it now. However all three foundation companies want to fix it totally different. I am confused. I contact my insurance and nothing will cover it. I have my wife who is a lawyer start to go after the contractor and the concrete guys. We send legal notices, have to allow ten days for them to view it before we fix it, 5 days to respond and 10 days to pay repairs before we fix it legally or we forfeit our right to hold them liable in court so we send out legal notices. My contractor also says he has no insurance and that he let it lap during the pandemic even though he told us and the bank he did carry insurance. He has zero dollars for any repairs. He says none of this is his fault an he isnt paying anything. He says the piers are correct for the material he used and if they are sinking its not his damn fault.

In April my granite counter tops break away from the wall, damage goes way up inside most of my wood trim joints have separated at every joint. The company who I hired to fix it the same company who put the liner in has a plan 18 permanent jacks under the beams, a 25 foot section of steel beam that has to be added with 5 jacks under it now the cost is $28K. I have to put down a $6k deposit to order the steel and jacks to get a $2k discount for pre-order.

As I am waiting out the legal time period to fix it. I decide to hire a structural engineer to look at why my house is sinking and how to repair it as well as to have an independent person look at it for the law suits. The engineer says he can come out, start in the attic and go down to the dirt in the crawl space and factor everything and tell me why it occurred, how to fix it, how to make sure it doesnt occur again and it will take 4 to 5 weeks for a full report. I explain I dont have that kind of time. I have massive damage in less than 3 months. He says tell me about it. I tell him. He says after 5 mins, son you have a serious water problem under your house nothing sinks an inch without water. I say its dry as hell under there. Its sealed, I have no leaks, no high water bills, the grade is sloped perfect, there is no water. He says your not listening. Did you open the liner or listen to the jack salesman. I say that I cant open the liner. He said do two things right now. Hang up call them and make them come now and open the liner. They have been to your house 5 times since Feb and have not opened the liner make them come now and send me every construction pic you have of the foundation before they back filled it then send me pictures of your house and land. Then give me and hour and call me back.

I do what he says. They seem like they dont want to open the liner they say they will come in three days. The guy calls me 15 mins after getting the pictures and says I found your problem son. I said what is it. He says who is the [bleep] who plumbed your gutter drains to the same drain exit pipe as your foundation drains? He then shows me a picture that he had blown up. I tell him my contractor did personally as he bragged on running the gutter water away from the house in an underground system. The engineer said he took all that roof water and put it in the crawl space. With his design in heavy rains its spraying under your house, if the pipes were crushed during back fill its spraying full time, and he used the wrong pipe that pipe is not rated to be used for water under ground under pressure. He basically said this is a foundation sprinkler system its against code go outside and cut all the gutters off your house until I can come on May 9th. He says the water it forced under your house from the force of the rain and the gutters then slowly drains out later taking dirt from under the piers, its the spring rains sinking it. He also says you were set up by the foundation/encapsulation people they knew there was water under there in Feb. The first thing they should of done was open the liner. You need to ask them why they didnt. I tell him about the span of the piers, them not pouring all the piers, the things the foundation people pointed me to originally. He reviews pier data says they seem fine for beam material used and concrete guys get a free pass due to water. Those jack salesman are good son. Why dont you ask them who makes the jacks they sell and I am sure they make them in house as they sell thousands yearly. He said its a scam. I am sorry but I will help you fix your house and make sure structurally its sound.

I remove the gutter pipes. I start raising hell with the foundation people and they come and open it the next day. The whole foundation is fully flooded under the liner in the gravel. I am pissed, I mean, I wasnt allowed to look under the damn liner in my own house. Then we have a war that last days. If they would have put the pump in then it would have caught the water or fired off so much then I would have known about this issue. They say there paper work says that I refused the pump out right. In the end, I end up buy the sump pump package now with two pumps and have to pay to have the liner removed and reinstalled $18K. There is no one else in my area who can install these pumps and get the water out in the next 30 days which the engineer says is critical. I also have a non refundable deposit with these jerks to jack the house. My wife has found a lawyer who will take them on later on a contingency basis. These [bleep] gave me some discounts but I still had to do business with them. I feel like I was setup.

I inform my contractor about his great pipe design and what the engineer said and that he basically pumped water under the crawl space. I also talk to my current insurance company. They wont help me. I explain again to my general contractor that I owe $50,263 in the next 90 days to fix my home and that I also still have to make about $6,000 in repairs after that. I explain to him that I am going to have to follow thru with the lawsuit as I had to go last week and use my 100 acres that was paid for and get a loan for $40k to pay to fix everything because no one had insurance and none of my insurance would cover it. At this point, he blames it on a guy that I hired to install the septic system. Additionally I was there when he told that guy to bury his drain system and convert it into one six inch pipe instead of two 4 inch pipes, which was not what I hired him to do. So the septic guy converts the pipes and buries the six inch drain pipe in the same ditch as the septic pipe then day lights it out into the woods. (I can tell that the General Contractor is thinking that he is going to put the blame on the septic and guy and try and get out of it because I did hire the guy) All because the guy he hired sent a part time guy who admitted he had never put a septic system in when he showed up to dig mine and I stopped him.

So I get a camera the next day. They run the camera and about 60 foot up the 6 inch pipe they hit a wall of water. The 6 inch pipe is full totally full of water for 42 feet. They say there was not a lot of back fill under the pipe and its holding water like a bent straw. The guy who is running the camera is a master plumber. He says this wall of water would cause my [bleep] designed gutter/foundation system to fail before we even moved in and to spray water under the house every single time it rains. He says the design my builder made he should be shot for making caused this problem, but the massive wall of water caused the instant failure of the system. The 40 foot section of pipe needs to be replaced to let the remaining pipe fiasco drain water away from the foundation. The guy running the camera feels so bad for me he wont take my money. He gives me his card and tell me to have anyone call him he will save the footage on his computer.

I contacted the guy who put in the septic line and he has insurance. However his insurance agent said he only had insurance for "digging" not plumbing. They tried to tell me he didnt do plumbing and I told them he does do it he is just not good at it apparently because he told us that he was certified to do septic and after my septic failed inspection he acknowledged he let is license go a few years ago and I had to pay someone else $2000 to fix the lagoon. I have been told that dirt digging line only the agent used is BS because any one that digs has general liability insurance if they hit anything, damage anything, cover a pipe wrong, cause water damage, which should cover my damage. Also this guy digs alot for the city and county as he has a large machine and someone told me he probably has an umbrella policy which will cover my damages as well. I sure could use a break. I have not heard from his claims adjuster yet.

SO after all this bull [bleep] I still may have to pay to dig up and replace 40 foot of pipe as well. Sadly with the additional damage and pipes if I have to pay for it all it will be $75k. I feel bad for the septic guy. He buried a pipe and he didnt know it would cause a total house foundation failure due to some know it all contractor building bull crap drain systems. I checked again none of my current insurance policies will cover it and none of the policies that I had while building will cover it. I am not allowed to touch this pipe until his adjusted comes to look at it.

In the end, I paid all my bills and none of this is my fault. I will have to try and get money back from someone. My contractor says he is broke but he has a lake house, bass boat, couple of trucks and works at a dog food plants as well for $35 an hour in addition to building 4 hours right now. I am having to mortgage land to pay for all of this and make 5 years of payments. Any advice is welcomed.






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JHFC. some people depend on this site for too much.

Stupid hurts...

Lol

I been coming here for a lot of years. I expect a lot of dick head comments out of the 100 of those I might get a pm or two. Or some people might make a good comment. This place is full of builders, contractors. excavators, people who work in insurance, people who been in lawsuits over home builds, the list goes on and on. I roll with the punches. Never be afraid to seek advice or put yourself out there because of a couple of dip [bleep] who sniffed too much gold paint in that run down trailer on their mom's mom's 4 acres while conquering their keyboard.

Sounds like you need a lawyer more interested in going after people. If the clowns who let their licenses and insurance slip (and committed fraud and blatant code violations) are set up to shield their personal assets from a business-related suit, I'd be surprised...

Looks to me like you have some lawsuits to file.

Sorry for your troubles.

Trailer.

Wait a few years then shoot his ass.

I guess that I am just hoping to catch a break from the insurance. If I have to sue anyone like the septic guy and my contractor that is a personal investment of another 10 to 15K my wife is not that kind of lawyer and 2 to 3 years to get anything back if you do.

I found a lawyer for the foundation company that would go contingency but that is also 2 to 3 year deal.

lol

Dude I’m savin’ that…!


Good luck with your troubles. Sorry about em’. I really do hope you come out of all of it the best you possibly can.

What a horrible situation. Maybe Cash will chime in. He is as knowledgeable about materials and construction as anyone I know.

You need to contact whatever licensing board issues those clowns licenses and SEE FOR YOURSELF if they're licensed or not. Chances are that fucquer is lying to you about letting his license lapse to protect his license. If he's licensed he has a bond and you can file a claim against it. The state licensing board is a strong advocate for consumers and will drag that/all those contractors through the mud before they're done with them. Might also contact the state labor board and see if he's paying payroll and taxes on the up and up or if he's got under the table employees. If he's skipping his obligations, they'd have a run at him too.

It's not ok what's happening to you and you need to get the state involved.

I went through a similar situation years ago. File a complaint with the state contractors licensing board. It gets attention. Here a good construction attorney and engineer. Be vocal every chance you can where you have a large audience. Hit them in their pocket book and they’ll submit.

Light a match

Good write up. That sucks.

No dick comment but they screwed you.

Hope you get some of it back as well as some peace of mind.

I guess that I am just hoping to catch a break from the insurance. If I have to sue anyone like the septic guy and my contractor that is a personal investment of another 10 to 15K my wife is not that kind of lawyer and 2 to 3 years to get anything back if you do.

I found a lawyer for the foundation company that would go contingency but that is also 2 to 3 year deal.

Did you vet your contractors. Cant believe this Is a first time mistake