JCDIY
June 29th, 2006, 04:52 PM
Needs some advice -- I've not ever overseen the work of an excavation contarctor and don't know if I'm being too picky.
I'm just about finished with an addition/rennovation to my home. MY GC oversaw the initial , good quality excavation work (basment, backfilling, etc). The GC wanted to close out the job before the roughgrading ($1200 job) and driveway ($4500 job) were complete and I OK'd him to not not a draw and I said I would supervise and pay the excavator for the remaining work.
The excavator is done but I'm not satisfied:
-the rough grading is REALLY rough: deep ruts in some places, wide gaps between end of his fill and foundation; vbery uneven in some places
-he dug out a long / deep walk-out from the basement: during the 1st rain water pooled in a 20' long area;the vertivcal clay walls that i will be building a ratining wall in front of are not even close to being plum or straight
-i carefully designed a long, winding, circular drive with a couple of parkingv areas tucked in here and there. I showed him a scale drawing and he said i would need to stake it out. I spent quite a few hours exactly replicating my drawing onto the ground using flags and marking paint and I left him a copy of the drawing. After day one--I pointed out several areas where he missed the mark by a foot or more. I staked out the obvuius areas and left him annother scale drawing. He reluctantly fixed some of the areas. Now that he has spread the gravel, it has becomer apparent there are at least a dozen areas where he ignored my markings.
To fix all his driveway mistakes would be really time consuming now because all the dirt has been removed and he has 8" of gravel down.
Do these sound like big enough problems to stay on his *ss about or is excavation work a rough trade where close enough is good enough.
I'm just about finished with an addition/rennovation to my home. MY GC oversaw the initial , good quality excavation work (basment, backfilling, etc). The GC wanted to close out the job before the roughgrading ($1200 job) and driveway ($4500 job) were complete and I OK'd him to not not a draw and I said I would supervise and pay the excavator for the remaining work.
The excavator is done but I'm not satisfied:
-the rough grading is REALLY rough: deep ruts in some places, wide gaps between end of his fill and foundation; vbery uneven in some places
-he dug out a long / deep walk-out from the basement: during the 1st rain water pooled in a 20' long area;the vertivcal clay walls that i will be building a ratining wall in front of are not even close to being plum or straight
-i carefully designed a long, winding, circular drive with a couple of parkingv areas tucked in here and there. I showed him a scale drawing and he said i would need to stake it out. I spent quite a few hours exactly replicating my drawing onto the ground using flags and marking paint and I left him a copy of the drawing. After day one--I pointed out several areas where he missed the mark by a foot or more. I staked out the obvuius areas and left him annother scale drawing. He reluctantly fixed some of the areas. Now that he has spread the gravel, it has becomer apparent there are at least a dozen areas where he ignored my markings.
To fix all his driveway mistakes would be really time consuming now because all the dirt has been removed and he has 8" of gravel down.
Do these sound like big enough problems to stay on his *ss about or is excavation work a rough trade where close enough is good enough.
