SEASIDE CONSTRUCTORS

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• Anonymous

  June 3, 2015

  Scott cuts corners wherever possible and doesn't communicate well with homeowners:

  1. He bid a good price for a block wall between us and our neighbor (approx. 60 feet long, six feet tall): he failed to install any horizontal rebar nor had any breaks in the wall to allow for movement. Within a couple months, the wall had several cracks. When I pointed this out to him upon a return job, he said, "I guess I should have put in horizontal rebar." (duh) This wall also turned a corner where it had space for a gate and then a few feet of block wall that met with the corner of our home. We've since learned that walls/fences are not supposed to be attached to a house, but of course, ours is because Scott doesn't always follow basic construction rules. His price to us was good (although we never learned what he charged our neighbor, his buddy, for his share of the cost), but it's now four years later and the wall looks terrible, which was supposed to be a "permanent fix." The space for our gate constantly changes, making our gate either completely inoperable (won't budge open) or so loose, the gate swings freely. We've had numerous contractors look at this problem and no one can understand why a block wall like this would move so much, except that footers are probably too small or basically non-existent.

  2. Scott also poured concrete sidewalks on this side of our home which included drainage for our rain gutters, which did not require a permit so we trusted his knowledge and experience: he did lay down rebar prior to pouring concrete, however, there were no spacer blocks used to lift the rebar, so the concrete simply got poured on top of this structure; the drainage pipes he chose were the white 3" ones and he said no glue was needed for the connections; four years later, we've now discovered tree roots have filled these drains, and it now looks as though all the work he did needs to be torn out and redone (our gutters completely overflowed during the last big rain which is what triggered our discovery). The final portion of this work involved a hot tub area, which is also cracking up considerably. This area was not level ground and again, contractors who have looked at it believe the footers are inadequate.

  3. During the summer he was building the wall and doing the drainage/sidewalk work, business was slow so he offered us reasonable pricing for two retaining walls (permits required). For this work, we were satisfied for the most part, although, this involved drainage as well and we have photos of some of his choices, i.e., using perforated pipes when he ran out of solid pipes, (saying it didn't matter) - but now that we've experienced roots getting into the drainage on one side of the house, we now see that it's only a matter of time before roots make their way into these other drainage pipes. Seriously, wouldn't an "experienced contractor" know this would happen down the line? The final wall he did for us was left without getting the final permit signature because he didn't want to deal with compacting the fill dirt, claiming that wasn't part of the scope of his work. (I dealt with the final sign-off.) His constant complaint to us for every job he did was how much it was costing and his anger was always close at hand.

  4. Scott had no worker's compensation insurance when he worked for us (I was only able to obtain his liability coverage) and his self-proclaimed "minority owned business" means he put his wife's name on the incorporation paperwork, however, he complained to us repeatedly how he did all the work (paperwork included) with no help and that his wife worked a different job entirely. As a co-business owner with my husband where I handle considerable work, we aren't eligible to claim our small business is minority owned because our business (we are incorporated) is considered 50-50/husband-wife in California, so cannot make this claim no matter how much I do.

  Bottom line: ONLY hire Scott if (1) you can find some satisfied customers or at the very least, intend to make him pull a permit for his work. That's the only way we got reasonably good workmanship out of him - when someone knowledgeable was checking on him (although, unfortunately, the inspector did not need to sign off on his drainage work); (2) with ANY discussions you have with him, follow-up with your understanding of what transpired in writing/email. The number of times we had conversations, where he later claimed he "never said that" became a running joke in our home.

  Final thought... isn't it odd that there are NO reviews for this guy? No bad ones, and definitely no "good" ones. My guess is that people are so glad he's gone, they just want to close that chapter of their lives and try to move on. That's how we felt at least (and ditto for our neighbor across the street who hired him to remodel their kitchen without a permit). They are dealing with their own can of worms for his corner-cutting workmanship.

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