Please bear with me as this is a long, sordid tale. We signed our contract end of June for an inground vinyl liner pool (14’ x 36’ rectangle w/sun shelf and bubblers). Our dig started Friday, September 15th. They came back that Monday, finished the dig and put up the steel walls and concrete footings. Pause for inspection, which took about a week. After about a month of nothing happening and little to no communication, PB finally calls and says they’re scheduling vermiculite for the next Monday which was a beautiful day. They didn’t show up. No phone call. It rained for the next 3 days. I call HIM on Friday since I hadn’t gotten an update. He tells me vermiculite will be sometime the following week and why should he have to call to update me since it was raining and I could see that. He also tells me he is dropping off 10 yards of gravel which will be sitting in my driveway until concrete pool deck time. At this point, I get frustrated. Now he and I are yelling at each other as it’s now October 19th and they’ve literally been to my house 3 times to do work. He threatens to quit. He finally calms down and tells me he will make some phone calls about getting vermiculite done. He sends a crew out the next day (Saturday). This crew shows up about 9:00, gets done with about half of the vermiculite bottom, then leaves around 2:00. One of the vermiculite crew comes back 4 days later and finishes the rest of the vermiculite, spreads the 10 yards of gravel all over the backyard on top of a ton of dirt that still needed to be removed from dig day. Needless to say, PB was very upset with the vermiculite guy for spreading the gravel (poor communication?). The vermiculite pool bottom also looks really bad; uneven, bumpy and has a weeper(?). PB assures us they can fill in that big hole with some type of cement before liner is installed. He also informs us that it’s in the contract “vermiculite may not be perfect”.
About a week later PB and the owner of a cement company (Vince) stop by. He’s there to do an evaluation as PB will be using him to do the pool deck. He looks at our backyard and just shakes his head and says “how am I supposed to do cement with all of this extra dirt and mixed in gravel. PB assures Vince he will have it cleaned up and removed. Now a few days later, the same vermiculite guy who initially spread all of the gravel in the first place, comes back with machinery, removes all of the excess dirt and gravel. Vince, the cement guy comes a couple days later and spreads his gravel, and lays forms for cement. Cement gets poured on Tuesday. Rains all day Wednesday. PB says cement guys will be out Thursday to saw cut control joints. Thursday afternoon about 4:30 two young guys show up. They proceed to do their chalk(?) lines for their saw cuts. By the time that is finished, it is now completely dark out. I hear the saw fire up. I look outside and one guy is holding a flashlight as the other guy is doing the saw cuts. I could NOT believe what I was seeing. This goes on for about an hour or longer, then they’re finished. My husband and I go out the next day to look at the cuts in daylight and they are, as you can imagine, AWFUL!!! They are squiqqly, they are crooked, they are uneven they are a mess. The long cut along the house is going on an angle and is off by 10”! They missed their lines in some cases by more than 3 inches. The whole thing is a wreck and we both want to cry. I immediately call PB. Cement company owner Vince comes over about an hour later, completely defends his son’s saw cuts, screaming and yelling and cussing back and forth with my husband telling us we’re being overly picky and have OCD. Later, PB comes by and cannot believe what he is seeing. Even he agrees it looks terrible. He calls Vince and explains that he cannot defend this work and something needs to be done. Three days later I get a knock on my door and it’s a guy from a different cement company sent by Vince to check out the cuts and see what can be done to fix them. He tells me that he cannot believe how bad it looks and we are definitely not in the wrong and he is recommending to Vince that the whole thing be torn out and redone. PB doesn’t return my call that day. When he finally calls me the next day, I tell him what this other cement company recommended. He disagrees. He thinks he will be able to find someone to fix it by making the saw cuts wider and filling in with decorative stone or tile. I agree I would rather do this if it would look good than rip out all the cement. I then start thinking of how long this build has taken, we are 10 weeks in with a ton of stuff left to do, the vermiculite looks terrible, the cement now looks like terrible, I’ve paid him about 75% of contract, we may now have to wait til spring to do liner and fix/replace cement. I don’t even know what to do. If I fire PB now what happens? I lose all that money I’ve paid him and try to find someone to pick up the pieces of this mess? Can he sue me? What would you do?
See how off they are from their chalk line?
This is the long cut by the house that goes on an angle:
This is what the pool deck looked like after they first poured it, before the hack job:
And this is the vermiculite:
About a week later PB and the owner of a cement company (Vince) stop by. He’s there to do an evaluation as PB will be using him to do the pool deck. He looks at our backyard and just shakes his head and says “how am I supposed to do cement with all of this extra dirt and mixed in gravel. PB assures Vince he will have it cleaned up and removed. Now a few days later, the same vermiculite guy who initially spread all of the gravel in the first place, comes back with machinery, removes all of the excess dirt and gravel. Vince, the cement guy comes a couple days later and spreads his gravel, and lays forms for cement. Cement gets poured on Tuesday. Rains all day Wednesday. PB says cement guys will be out Thursday to saw cut control joints. Thursday afternoon about 4:30 two young guys show up. They proceed to do their chalk(?) lines for their saw cuts. By the time that is finished, it is now completely dark out. I hear the saw fire up. I look outside and one guy is holding a flashlight as the other guy is doing the saw cuts. I could NOT believe what I was seeing. This goes on for about an hour or longer, then they’re finished. My husband and I go out the next day to look at the cuts in daylight and they are, as you can imagine, AWFUL!!! They are squiqqly, they are crooked, they are uneven they are a mess. The long cut along the house is going on an angle and is off by 10”! They missed their lines in some cases by more than 3 inches. The whole thing is a wreck and we both want to cry. I immediately call PB. Cement company owner Vince comes over about an hour later, completely defends his son’s saw cuts, screaming and yelling and cussing back and forth with my husband telling us we’re being overly picky and have OCD. Later, PB comes by and cannot believe what he is seeing. Even he agrees it looks terrible. He calls Vince and explains that he cannot defend this work and something needs to be done. Three days later I get a knock on my door and it’s a guy from a different cement company sent by Vince to check out the cuts and see what can be done to fix them. He tells me that he cannot believe how bad it looks and we are definitely not in the wrong and he is recommending to Vince that the whole thing be torn out and redone. PB doesn’t return my call that day. When he finally calls me the next day, I tell him what this other cement company recommended. He disagrees. He thinks he will be able to find someone to fix it by making the saw cuts wider and filling in with decorative stone or tile. I agree I would rather do this if it would look good than rip out all the cement. I then start thinking of how long this build has taken, we are 10 weeks in with a ton of stuff left to do, the vermiculite looks terrible, the cement now looks like terrible, I’ve paid him about 75% of contract, we may now have to wait til spring to do liner and fix/replace cement. I don’t even know what to do. If I fire PB now what happens? I lose all that money I’ve paid him and try to find someone to pick up the pieces of this mess? Can he sue me? What would you do?
See how off they are from their chalk line?
This is the long cut by the house that goes on an angle:
This is what the pool deck looked like after they first poured it, before the hack job:
And this is the vermiculite:
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