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Jack111
Registered Users
Posts:2
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| 05/14/2008 12:39 PM |
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I had the footings, drainage system & all exterior walls built on a complex, two level, 6,000 S.F. house by an experienced licensee of a national ICF manufacturer. The licensee installed some of the footings out of level and some of the walls out of square & plumb. The built specifications were as little as 1/5th of 1% off, so every 40' run was about 1" off (in height & squareness). The contractor refused to rectify anything or honor their warranty on the install. The manufacturer came out & did not visually see anything out of level (no levels, lasers, or squares were used for the inspection). This caused a large amount of extra work that was required, the floors needed to be leveled because the bearing point for the floor joists were higher on one side of the house than on the other, some of the trusses needed to be reinforced to match the load bearing points that were off due to the inaccurate placement of the ICF, the interior of the ICF walls needed to be shimmed to make the rooms square as well as the exterior walls, etc. This added a good deal of expense & aggravation in the building. While these flaws were obvious once the floor & roof trusses were being installed there were not obvious prior to this. Pictures clearly identify places where the installer spliced the ICF wall in an attempt to adjust for the differing height of the footing, and pictures show the walls that were shimmed & where trusses were reinforced. My questions is what would be proper documentation of this situation to proceed with a lawsuit against the licensee/manufacturer to recoup some of the added expenses?
I found ICF to be a good choice for below-grade installation but quite troublesome above grade in that it can cause costly & time-consuming issues that could have been easily rectified in SIP/wood. |
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drogers
Registered Users
Posts:68
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| 05/14/2008 2:55 PM |
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| Lawyer time. |
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ReadyToRetire
Registered Users
Posts:180
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| 05/14/2008 4:43 PM |
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Jack111,
A suit against the builder is not a DIY project in a formal court. As drogers suggested, get a lawyer; get one experienced with construction law. If you do not have an attorney, contact your county bar association. Many run a referal service system where you can get an initial consultation *very* cheaply.
What specifications did your contract with the installer require for square, plumb, and level?
Did the installed work fail to meet those standards?
How do you know that?
How can you prove that?
If the contract did not specify standards, how are you going to establish what is commercially acceptable in that trade in your locale?
How can you prove that it was not the other contractors that screwed up? (You didn't notice it until they started work.)
Are any of the other contractors willing to testify for you?
(If not, would they testify for the installer?)
Photograph the views that support your conclusions -- a good digital camera might be helpful.
Has the work that you're challenging been covered or obscurred by other work?
If so, how are you going to document it?
What exactly do you want to accomplish in a suit?
Are you seeking compensation for increased out of pocket costs in the other construction, or are you seeking revenge/vindication?
If you want to recover costs, how much are you looking at recovering?
On of the questions that you need the lawyer to answer VERY early is how much it will cost you to bring and prosecute your suit; what is the lawyer's hourly rate, what retainer is required, etc.? (Lawyers tend to charge more than you or I would on an hourly basis.) Unless you lost a LOT, it's unlikely to be economically worthwhile.
Do you really want to invest both the money and the *mental pain* that a suit will take; are you willing to continue doing so for as long as the suit will take? (Don't underestimate either -- remember the old saw: "I was ruined by two law suits, one I lost, the other I won.")
If you really want to sue, consider calling your county courthouse to speak to the clerk of the court. Ask if they have a small claims court and, if so, what its limits and procedures are. Do they have a booklet that describes it? One of the saving graces of that process is that it's likely to be fairly QUICK; even if you don't win you won't be ground by the mill quite so long.
Was the installer a corporation?
If so, ask the clerk if a corporate officer may represent the corporation or whether it must hire an attorney. If they must hire an attorney, a suit will cost them money also -- ask if they are willing to settle. If they are not willing to pay to settle, would they be willing to compensate you in kind -- maybe do some other work on the project?
I've gone to small-claims court three times to enforce contracts, I can tell you that NONE of them were worthwhile, and I won all three. (Yeah, I'm a slooow learner.) It's a bitter pill, but swallowing it might well be your best bet.
Good luck,
Larry
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cmkavala
Registered Users
Posts:724
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| 05/14/2008 9:28 PM |
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Jack111;
in as much as 1" in 40ft. sounds and looks bad your ICF contractor is probably just within in the industry standards. In General 1/4" in every 10ft. is acceptable.
Section 4 is the longest part of ACI 117, covering tolerances for cast-in-place concrete for buildings, including walls, floors, and slabs. The maximum deviation is defined for the plumbness of walls, columns, and openings. Maximum deviation is defined for horizontal and vertical faces. The tolerance, for example, on the distance between different structural elements, for example, a wall and a column, is ±¼ inch.
Also in Section 4, the allowable deviation from the specified cross-sectional dimension is defined for concrete elements, including suspended slabs and slabs-on-ground.
Your framing contractor should have checked before covering up the prior work and making it next to impossible to correct.
You should be just as angry at the framing carpenter.
Once you have proceeded and covered up the work a court may rule against you
Hind sight is 20-20
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Chris Kavala
chris@southernsips.com
1-877-321-SIPS |
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eric monkman
Registered Users
Posts:195
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| 05/15/2008 9:31 PM |
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Jack : The certification process for installers is lacking.......... yes.
ICF's Achilles heel. :-) |
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richntiff
Registered Users
Posts:24
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| 05/15/2008 11:23 PM |
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| 1/4" per 10' ? Good Lord - if a contractor can't achieve that, you'd hope they'd go out of business. |
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eric monkman
Registered Users
Posts:195
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| 05/16/2008 7:18 AM |
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Rich,some of the forms will deviate or deflect as much, without the installer being the cause.
selecting an appropriate block and not the cheapest block, is a good jumping of point :-) U get what U pay for, lol.
Where and how it is placed, before loading with concrete, may be somewhat different than the result. |
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