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• By Brian B.

  May 6, 2015

  Unfortunately, we’ve had a devastating experience with Brad McCarrell and McCarrell Landscape Construction. We spent just under 30K on several Versa-Lok retaining walls, a large paver stone patio, sidewalks, steps, stoops at two other entries, a stone driveway and miscellaneous landscaping, including decorative stone and mulch installation. Now, only about 3-1/2 years later, the vast majority of project must be redone.

  Walls are moving in multiple places creating large gaps in the face of the walls, they are sinking, twisting and leaning in multiple places to a point that is obvious by casual observation, wall caps are separating, the patio has sunk several inches in multiple places creating large ponds of water when it rains, that water is seeping into the patio and destroying the supporting retaining walls, sidewalks and steps are sinking and tilting, and some of the Versa-Lok wall stones are popping straight out of the wall because Versa-Lok retention pins were not installed, at least in certain areas.

  We contacted Brad McCarrell numerous times about the problems when they started to develop, but we received no response from him. I eventually contacted Versa-Lok and a local representative reviewed our project and confirmed that we have major problems that must be fixed or they will continue to get worse. Our project was then reviewed by two independent Forensic Engineers who both confirmed our problems are the result of defective workmanship. McCarrell did not follow some of the most basic installation guidelines specified by Versa-Lok regarding drainage, backfill & compaction, wall assembly and overall layout & design.

  We eventually had to file a claim against McCarrell’s liability insurance because Brad refused to take any responsibility and would not contact us, but I was told by his insurance company adjuster that McCarrell Landscape Construction did not have insurance coverage for defective workmanship and, at least in our case, Brad McCarrell does not warrant his work.

  We had been planning our landscape project for years and had finally reached the financial position to proceed. I met Brad several years ago when we were both working on a few of the same job sites. He was invited to bid our project and came in at a reasonable price, and since I had gotten to know him a little, we trusted him.

  Unfortunately, I was seriously injured just before our project started and was unable to observe the work being done. This proved to be a huge problem. Not only was much of the work sub-standard and performed incorrectly, he destroyed our water harvesting system, which is the sole source of water to our home. We have no public water or well, we have only a cistern. He took it upon himself to reconfigure the downspouts and most of the underground piping to our cistern, and he used thin-wall, non-weight bearing plastic pipe extending out under our driveway, which eventually collapsed as his backfill settled and we drove over it pulling our cars in and out of our garage.

  It cost us nearly 3K to fix this problem. We had to replace gutters, downspouts, and we had to replace all the underground piping out to the cistern with schedule 40 pipe. During this work we discovered McCarrell not only used the wrong type of pipe under our driveway, he used several different types of black and white pipe attached together in a hodge-podge fashion with different kinds of fasteners, some of which were not designed for underground use. Worst of all, one downspout is no longer connected to the system so we’ve lost about 15% of our water harvesting ability. This cannot be restored until the defective work is completely disassembled to allow for additional underground piping to be installed.

  We have obtained several estimates for redoing the defective work, which means tearing down walls, tearing up the patio, sidewalk & steps, and rebuilding from scratch. No one quoting will build on a defective foundation, so it’s a total redo. Most of the estimates for fixing the defective work exceed the cost of the original project, and that does not even include over 1K of plants, shrubs and trees installed after the project was originally completed that will have to be replaced when the redo is complete.

  Unfortunately, until all the problems are fixed, the value of our home has fallen. Not only is this a financial disaster, but I actually liked Brad and considered him a friend. My wife & I even socialized with him a couple of times, and I have spent a little time at his house and met his wife and family (dogs). We trusted him and had faith that he would do right by us. In reality, he seriously set us back as we dig into our nest egg to fix this disastrous situation. It appears this project will eventually cost us more than twice what we should have paid.

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