2008 The year the Hardscape Contractor added X-Ray Vision to his Tool Bag…..

Wally?....... or Folly?...... You decide the judgment.

Wow what a nice project in the middle of summer when construction projects have slowed down in the Northeast. 600 sqft of segmented retaining wall, 1500 sqft of thin veneer, 1800 sqft of pavers 2500 sqft of SOD, 10K in lighting, complete irrigation system and the weekly residential maintenance contract. Sound good? Well who wouldn’t be hemorrhaging at the possibility? This is a scenario that played out involving a solid contractor and a contractor who appeared to have X-Ray vision. The focus is methodically and numerically placed on the wall portion of the project. The request with no design or finished height was discussed prior to construction. The objective is to gain more level ground off the back of the house that would create a need for a wall for grading and redirection of water. Further discussion places a small wall with some planting on the outer parameter of the property to block the undesired neighbor’s undesired fence. Off the house would be pavers leading to a small walkway leading to stairs in the primary wall that would lead up to a 2^nd level of newly graded yard area. Again no physical plan or drawing for the 2^nd shift bridge construction supervisor and owner of the property. Construction and over excavating began to create the actual erection point of the primary wall.

 Before going further I will explain the rationality behind the over excavating, the customer was difficult in the sense of constantly changing his mind on product, location, and finished height and grade. Also the terraced wall would require an access road to the side perpendicular with the primary wall for ease of construction of the small garden wall on the outer parameter.

The product chosen for the wall ultimately would be an aggressively chiseled faced segmented wall system. When viewing this type of wall system built near vertical the finished side profile gives an illusion of almost leaning forward. The contractor knowing of this factor and the conflicting indecisive customer had elected to create a false batter by constructing his base slightly off level from front to back. Construction is underway and well-orchestrated. The primary wall is almost at 90% completion the only step left is the small tapered section of wall near the temporary access road, roughly 16 sqft as well as a handful of cap.

The attention shifted to the back straight run wall approximately 100’x2’. This is where it all turns. The 2^nd shift high strung homeowner who arrives at home everyday at 6am had taken it upon himself to give the contractor a contractor jump start on the day. The homeowner got into the contractors excavator and started to dig in to the access road for the small tapered extension of the wall. The homeowner managed to take down approximately 100 sqft of wall!!!! Wow is this a dream? (I’m certain this would be a nightmare). The contractor arrives to the job to find his excavator at almost a 45 degree angle, the wall down, and the homeowner pacing like an over caffeinated lost teenager. The got the hung up excavator off the wall, and let the dust settle. He felt bad for the extremely distraught and apologetic homeowner so he agreed to repair the downed wall at no additional cost. Within 3 days the repair, back wall, and patio are complete and attention has now shifted to the front of the home. The over anxious homeowner decides the project is not moving along fast enough ( I can assure it was efficient) and elected to go behind the contractors back who is under a written agreement to do the scope of work I presented in the opening of this article. An irrigation company was hired to come into the un sodded back yard to install the irrigation. The humble contractor who has done all the work up to this point handled it as professionally as one could have by politely offering to remove the irrigation from his agreement. The contractor also advised the homeowner to be certain that the irrigation company is aware to keep away from the wall if they should opt to utilize a Ditch Witch® (to small of a project, not a necessary piece of equipment). You guessed it!!!! The Ditch Witch® operator got up on the SAME section of wall and knocked down roughly the same sqft. Time to play the lottery!  At this point the contractor is getting a little hot under the collar. The owner of the irrigation company accepted 100% fault and agreed to pay the negotiated charge to reconstruct the wall. The entire project wrapped up a week later and the contractor was paid in full. That following spring the contractor gets a call from the now unemployed homeowner whom I’m told was shrewd and implying the entire wall is built incorrectly, it’s moving, and he wants him to fix it. The contractor arranges to meet right away to rectify any potential concern. The contractor met the homeowner and asked what was the problem (remember this is an aggressively chiseled segmented wall system) the homeowner asked if he was blind that the wall moved. The contractor asked what he was looking at and how he was so sure. The homeowner pulled out a TORPEDO level and placed it on the front of the wall and said “Here look the wall has moved 3/16^th and you better fix it”. The contractor not wanting to argue the homeowners’ methods and the near vertical style of the wall politely said this style wall will give the appearance of leaning forward, the wall is within tolerance and we will monitor it for anymore movement. The contractor stated if the wall moves anymore then a plan of action would be discussed.  The two parted their ways and as it turns out the homeowner was not satisfied with the decision and requested another contractor come out to look at his so called failing wall. The 2^nd contractor met with the homeowner who I should stress knows nothing of the wall being compromised twice, or the erratic split personality of the homeowner. Again the homeowner chooses a TORPEDO level and places it on the front of the wall and says “Look my wall has moved” Now this contractor has 25 years of service with the company his farther started  45 years ago. This contractor has his NCMA Wall Cert. and ICPI level 1 &2. He is the ”Contractor who was X-Ray Vision” he says “Well unfortunately you’ve been taking because clearly you the person who built this wall didn’t use any Geo-Grid to hold he wall in place the whole thing needs to be taken down and rebuilt right, for $135,000 I can fix this for you”.

The homeowner called the original contractor and implied that he screwed him over and he wants money back because he failed to install a product called Geo-Grid to help hold the wall up. The homeowner requested to meet and the contractor bring money. The contractor agreed to meet again this time with the Mrs. as well. During the meeting the unemployed homeowner leaned into the contractor and whispered “Do you know how to make me go away? Give me 30K cash”. The contractors reply was “Take me to court.. I am not giving you $30K cash.

This went to the lawyers and a law suit was filed. Most of the writing here is verbatim, there is many things wrong with what was said, what was done, and why it was said. Does anyone want to guess at the outcome?  Or take a shot at sorting this out? What is your perspective?