Houston Pool Builder on the run . . .

[Crackerjack4u]

ummgood, That's very smart on your part, and yes, a statement in writing ensuring payment was received would be an excellent practice for anyone to get into the habit of doing when a middleman is involved.

I suspect that the way you pay them is how the woman in the news story did too. Or at least that's how I interpreted this statement: "She said they paid Bellar Pools nearly $40,000 for the work that was done" But even though she paid for that work, with the contractor still failing to pay the subcontractor then she is stuck being responsible for paying the sub. Even though she paid in that way, instead of the entire job all at once etc., had she requested a statement of payment from the subcontractor, it in her case, wouldn't have made any difference because she didn't pay out any more money after that payment, and as soon as her money hit the contractor's hand he, along with her 40K, were both long gone already.

 

[DaninFLA]

you are not going to be able to pay the sub directly and cut out the contractor. that's never going to fly. if you want to go this route, then you should do an Owner Build and hire all the subs directly. The contractor is responsible to hire the subs, work out scope, inspect work and make payments (after their work complete, by the way). the contractor is adding on overhead/profit to their costs to him as well. best way to protect yourself from getting a lien on your property is to 1) only pay contractor after each stage of work is completed, and 2) require the contractor provide you with lien releases from all the subs for that portion of work. the lien release is a simple 1 page form and standard in the construction world, basically a form that says they have been paid for their work and/or release their ability to file a lien on your property.

 

[robertmee]

In our case on a very recent pool build we selected a builder that uses NO subs. They have a dedicated crew that does everything from dig, concrete and install. So I only had one company and one set of workers to deal with from A to Z. We got to know the crew well, would bring them breakfast, and it was one of the smoothest installs with a contractor and we've done tons of other upgrades. Even now where we are having some liner issues and landscaping issues I'm only having to deal with one company and they've stood behind their product 110%.