What's new

Difficult Lesson....... (1 Viewer)

Kerry Hackney

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
Oct 18, 2000
Messages
206
I, like many of you in this section, have finished a basement for use as my home theater / entertainment area. Recently, we have a contractor doing a little job on the back of our house that involves adding a trussed roof over part of our deck. Because of this he removed a section of the gutter during the construction and has not scheduled the subs in a way that he could get it back up within even a few days of having the roof up. Also, he made no temporary provisions for handling any water. Now, as luck would have it we have had what is referred to as a 100-year rain during the past week. At one point we had over 4" in one 24 hour period. I now have all of the carpet in the office next to the HT up on stools and buckets and whatever I could find. I have removed the pad from under the carpet and hauled it to the dump. I hope now that we may at least save the carpet itself. If the stench will go away. If it continues to smell, we will be replacing all of it, about 1000 square feet. :angry:
To make it more complicated this moron contractor owns another business where, as luck would have it, my wife works. We are therefore reluctant to push him for any costs of damages. Home owners insurance does not cover this, and we don't have flood insurance because we don't live in a low area. In the 9 years we have lived in the house we have not ever had even a damp spot. And oddly enough, the water came in along the wall where the gutter is missing.... hmmmmmm.
My advice is, never ever take a chance that could result in water coming into your basement. Make double sure you maintain all of the drainage from your foundation and keep your gutters cleaned out religiously. This little lesson will cost me about $2000 and a hell of alot of anger...
 

Matt Stryker

Screenwriter
Joined
Oct 12, 2000
Messages
1,308
Location
Land of the rolling tide
Real Name
Matt
To make it more complicated this moron contractor owns another business where, as luck would have it, my wife works. We are therefore reluctant to push him for any costs of damages.
That shouldn't stop you from asking him to cover the damages; he took the job as a contractor and not as anything else. If he fires your wife for it, then sue him twice, but $2000 is a good deal of money. If he was negligent, why shouldn't he pay?
 

Wayne A. Pflughaupt

Moderator
Premium
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Aug 5, 1999
Messages
6,818
Location
Corpus Christi, TX
Real Name
Wayne
Have you paid him yet?

Maybe this guy’s own insurance would cover the damages. If it comes down to it, he might not mind it if you sue – might even encourage it -- if that’s what it takes to get the insurance company to pay up. I don’t see why he would object to any measures it would take to get his insurer to cover it.

This would probably fall under the jurisdiction of small claims court, so it doesn’t have to be a big deal.

Or course, if he’s a jerk to work for anyway, your wife might welcome the opportunity to look elsewhere.

Regards,

Wayne A. Pflughaupt
 

Kerry Hackney

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
Oct 18, 2000
Messages
206
We haven't paid him a dime yet because he isn't finished with his project. We are waiting to see "if" we lose the carpet itself and to see what he does with some extra things we asked for. He still has the chance to do the right thing. If he doesn't, we will have to look at how much it cost us and whether we need to pursue another option.

Last night the smell was much, much better. It isn't 100% but it is better. As the concrete floor is drying out it seems to be going away. Hopefully, all we will lose is the pad. We have the carpet rolled back over the furniture in the front part of the space now and it is completely dry. I can't smell any odor at all when I put my nose to the carpet. If we are lucky and save the carpet our cost in dollars will probably be only about $400. The problem with the carpet is that it is one continous 50' long run from the area where the TV is all the way to the outside wall in the office. There are no seams.

It is frustrating as hell that this should not have happened in the first place....
 

RAF

Senior HTF Member
Deceased Member
Joined
Jul 3, 1997
Messages
7,061
Kerry,

I fully understand what you are going through. If you go to my HT website and then work your way backwards to all the pictures on the general addition construction (not just the HT pictures) you will see what we were up against when the hole for the foundation of the addition was first built. We hit an underground spring. Note the "swimming hole" pictures!

But because of this, we took a lot of extra precautions (sump pumps, curtain drains, extra water proofing etc. etc. to divert the water table and prevent any water damage.) It was a good thing we did this because Tropical Storm Floyd (our local version of the 100 year rain) hit us during the latter phases of construction and, thank goodness, we had adequate water diversion systems in place. As it is we took even more steps after the storm (the addition was fine, but the original part of the house took a bit of water - since corrected by further drainage as seen in the pictures).

Floyd was an acide test that our contractor knew what he was doing. I shudder to think what would have happened to my HT if he hadn't been so astute.

Take care.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Forum statistics

Threads
356,810
Messages
5,123,599
Members
144,184
Latest member
H-508
Recent bookmarks
1
Top