See the electrical conduits poking up out of the ground? What happens weeks from now when they’re not exactly right? Copyright 2024 Tim Carter

How to Avoid Arguments With Contractors

How many times have you hired contractors in your life? My guess is quite a few. If you had to rate each experience much like you might a meal how many 5-star ratings would you have doled out? While I’m not a betting man, I’d say fewer than five percent.

I’d wager most of your ratings would be in the 2 to 3-star range. Remember the arguments you’ve had in the past? Do you recall your disappointment when the contractor didn’t show up for days at a time? How about the time when the materials delivered turned out to be wrong and another two-week delay stacked up on top of a job already a month overdue?

Allow me to share a few true stories and let me know if it reminds you of one of your experiences. Over the past six weeks I’ve witnessed a slow-moving train wreck. A person I know decided to put a patio in their backyard. Early on, I knew problems would crop up as the job concluded. I had a tough time being a bystander.

Outdoor Electrical Conduit Under Patios

One of the first things that happened on the job was the installation of underground electrical conduit. This was put in to provide power to a future hot tub and a fancy outdoor kitchen. As you might suspect, I’ve had to do this on my jobs for decades. You get one chance to get it right and installing a future conduit under a finished patio is nearly impossible unless one of your ancestors happened to be a POW in Poland that dug the real Great Escape tunnel out of Stalag Luft III.

Perhaps I’m a strange builder. I’m always thinking of the future. I always installed conduits that were one size larger than required. I always installed a pull string with the cable that’s in the conduit. Who knows, maybe an additional cable needs to be pulled in the future? The pull string makes this possible. The electrician on this job I was watching did neither.

A few days after the hot tub was installed, the electrician showed up. He direct-wired the hot tub. The homeowner discovered this at the end of the day and was none too happy. He had wanted it wired a different way. The outdoor kitchen is not yet installed, so I don’t know what will happen with that.

Let’s move on. Five years ago I was installing all of the plumbing, radiant heat, and electric in my daughter’s new home. She and her husband were constantly frustrated with the progress being made by the young brash builder.

 Builder Ignores Detailed Plans

The plans for the house were as detailed as any I had ever seen. I had worked with my daughter for months helping her with the drawings. I knew it was important to include very precise enlarged detail drawings showing how something should be installed. Most of these were ignored by the builder and his employees. It turns out they “did things a different way”.

I’ll never forget the day they came to rip off all of the house wrap and spent hours hammering in thousands of non-approved staples into the wall sheathing rather than remove them. It turns out they had installed the wrong house wrap. When they installed the correct product, they failed to follow the instructions and some of it peeled off requiring a third installation.

Homeowners Must Do Frequent Quality Control

Each week I receive countless emails from homeowners like you describing nightmare encounters with contractors of all types. When I do autopsies on the issues, the cause for the misery is almost always the same. The homeowner placed far too much trust in the contractor hoping all would go well. Quality control on the part of the homeowner doesn’t happen as frequently as it should.

It’s not always easy to get what you want. You have to take ownership in almost all situations. This means you need to have meetings with the contractor, or his subs, at the beginning of important phases of work. You can’t assume the workers know exactly what you want done. It’s foolhardy to think verbal conversations held at your dining room table will transform into your dreams months later. You can’t assume the workers have read and understand the plans.

Just because you told the contractor what you wanted a month ago in a meeting, or even if it’s on the plan, you can’t assume it’s going to get done. You must have numerous conversations and you must check the work in progress during these critical times.

I know, this seems to be far too much work. Or perhaps you don’t know what needs to be done. I’m sorry to say if you want happiness at the end of your job, you need to get plugged into the process. It’s never been easier than now to get a full understanding of how products should be installed. Many manufacturers have clear and helpful videos on their websites showing what needs to be done.

On big jobs you need to do your own quality checks. You need to make sure measurements are correct. You need to get proof the correct products have been ordered. You need to check products when they arrive on the job site.

I can hear you now. “Tim, this is too much work! I’m hiring the contractor so I don’t have to do all this!” Well, decades ago there were far more great contractors than there are now. It’s sad but true. Roll up your sleeves and be prepared to help run your job.

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This is a small house being built just miles from where I live. Many things can go wrong in a hurry if you don’t know what you’re doing. Copyright 2024 Tim Carter

DIY Home Building - Be Prepared for Delays and Heartache

As I look back on the decades of giving advice to homeowners like you, one thing stands out in my mind. I’ve always tried my best to tell you the truth about how hard or easy some tasks might be. That’s the opposite tact of most of the home improvement entertainment shows I see on TV. Most share half-truths. I’m sure you’re aware that a half-truth is a whole lie.

Over the past year, I’ve been hired as a consultant to guide several people in the construction of new homes. Using technology, I can do this quite effectively, as video calls put me at a job site thousands of miles away. Should you be thinking of tackling a new home build by yourself, I thought you might benefit from a few short stories about these other homeowners I’ve worked with.

I Can Be Your Virtual General Contractor

Fifteen months ago, a woman hired me to be her virtual general contractor. (GC) She told me she was going to be the on-site GC but figured she needed someone with actual experience to provide backup assistance. Six months ago, I discovered there was a second GC on the job that she hadn’t told me about. As you might imagine, things got awkward in a flash.

The woman made critical mistakes early in the process, long before she hired me. She and her husband had bought an existing home and decided to tear it down and build a new house on the existing foundation. They hired an architect. Using the homeowners’ dreams and ideas, this architect toiled on a plan that had several major flaws. The biggest one was the roof design.

The roof was to be a huge slanted surface that mimicked the house’s steep driveway. The massive beams, thick sheathing that doubled as a finished interior ceiling, and the thick closed-cell foam required to insulate the roof cost collectively over $100,000.00. That price doesn’t include the huge crane required to position the beams or any later to build the roof.

A crack in the existing foundation was not spotted until days before the framing was to begin. The floor trusses ordered for the job were placed too close to one another. The list of mistakes that caused major issues grew by the day. A first-floor bathroom had to be redesigned on the fly because the layout put a toilet directly on top of one of the floor trusses.

All of this could have been avoided if the woman had hired me before she even thought of talking to an architect. Fortunately, the woman’s husband was a very successful businessman. It was made clear to me that they had an unlimited budget to fix mistakes as they popped up. My guess is that you don’t have an unlimited budget.

Idaho Homeowner Surprised by Out-of-Square Foundation

Next up is a man building a house in the great state of Idaho. He’s on a tight budget and decided to do all of the plumbing on the job. He discovered I’ve been a master plumber since 1981 and felt I could help long distance. I drew his riser diagram so he could get a permit. We then started to do regular video calls so I could tell him exactly how to install the pipes under his concrete slab.

This homeowner was using a general contractor, but we discovered the foundation was poured out of square by two inches just last week. While you may think this is no big deal, it can lead to serious issues. In this man’s case, quite a few of the pipes poking up through the concrete slab are no longer in the center of the exterior and interior walls where they should be.

How could this have been prevented? If you decide to roll up your sleeves and get involved in a home-building project, you need to be very careful about placing trust in people you’ve never worked with before. This man and his wife could have determined that the foundation was out of square when the footing was poured. It would have taken them about thirty minutes to establish the square corners of the foundation on top of the hard concrete footing.

This man could have calculated the diagonal measurements that ensure the foundation is square using a simple calculator or a free one online. He could have purchased a 100-foot tape measure and marked the precise corners of the foundation on the footings in minutes.

Then, once the foundation forms were set, he could have checked them again before the concrete was poured. Had he hired me months before he did, I would have given him a checklist of things to do at these early stages of construction.

One of the things on the checklist is making sure the top of the foundation is correct. Most builders place foundations too deep into the ground. When this happens, it’s very hard for the grade to slope away from the house in all directions.

The building code is quite clear, and the ground must slope away from the foundation a minimum of 6 inches in the first ten horizontal feet away from the house. What’s more, you should have a minimum of six inches of foundation exposed all the way around the house.

Is it starting to make sense? Think of all the things you don’t know what to do or look for before you get into a very deep financial mess.

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