Floor Support Pillars Built Too High in New Home

[KimberlyP]

I was wondering what the group thought about this: Our contractor built the floor pillars in the crawlspace too high. In some places, as much as 2" too high. What are your thoughts about cutting off the top 16 inches of each of the block and concrete pillars to replace them with jacks to lower floors to level? This is in a new house where the contractor told us he didn't know how to fix the floors, and in SC, contractors only carry a $15k bond with no insurance. This means, he can walk away for the $250k it will take to fix all the problems he built into the house and finish it while we're still living in it.


The floor support pillars are so high, they and the supporting cross beams create a profound peak in the floors through the main part of the house, sloping towards the outer walls. They also have created noticeable bumps where the columns are located everywhere else. There are also troughs in the floor where the walls appear to be sinking into the floor sheathing and possibly bearing the weight of the roof trusses. In many areas, there is no hard supporting structure under floor sheathing the walls rest on, which is aggravating the troughs. They're a trip hazard for a normal person, but I have MS and worried about falling in the hallways by tripping on the bumps and slopes in the floors. Instead of fixing the problem while the house was under construction, the contractor offered to install hand railings so I could traverse what was supposed to be a flat and level floor system. That's like putting a band-aid on someone's finger to stop a headache.

We had this new home built 4 years ago with major problems built in at every structural and cosmetic point in the house. Started in April 2018, we didn't get the CoO until May of 2020, long after the building permit expired, and the house is still not complete, as well as the 127 listed items to be fixed. All floors, walls, concrete, ceilings and roof are out of square, straightness, level, and plumb between 1/8" to 1/4" per foot, and in some places more than 1" per foot. Apparently, contractors, framers, and sub-contractors in South Carolina have never seen a level, square or straight edge before, because none of the structure meets building standards, and much of it doesn't legally pass building code.

 

[e hilton]

$250,000 to fix the problems? Sounds like somebody didn’t do much of a pre-closing inspection.

Call a lawyer with construction experience.

 

[north star]

@ ~ @

KimberlyP, ...Welcome to The Building Code Forum !

I agree with ** e hilton ** !.......Find a good attorney with
construction experience.

Also, ...would you please come back to this Forum and
let us know how things turn out ?

@ ~ @

 

[KimberlyP]

Construction attorney said nothing could be done, because the contractor doesn't have any assets, and ran under an LLC. The contractor didn't care how long this dragged out since he was already over a year late. He only had the minimum $15k bond required for any residential construction in SC and not insured, regardless of property value. We were hemorrhaging nearly $2k per month in rentals and storage fees because the house wasn't finished, and we'd already sold our previous home on the other side of the country, left our jobs, and moved, based on his promised completion date on December 21, 2018. In the end, the rental and storage fees exceeded $30k, not to mention the humidity and water damage to our tools, RC planes, and belongings.
The building permit had already been expired 6 months before we could get him to get off his butt to get us in, as we were being evicted from our third housing reserved rentals, which the reservations were based on his ever-changing completion dates.
Originally promised 12/2018, we moved in 5/2020. He does something I still can't believe is legal or binding. He forces his clients (victims) to sign a notarized agreement with an attorney, granting him 50% ownership of the property and home until completion. This means, we couldn't fire him, no matter how bad it was, and any other contractor that might pick it up wouldn't touch it without bulldozing the whole thing and starting over. We don't have another $800k sitting in our back pockets to build it a second time, so we're the ones left to deal with it.

 

[steveray]

He forces his clients (victims) to sign a notarized agreement with an attorney, granting him 50% ownership of the property and home until completion.

No one forces anyone.....You should have run for the hills then....But sure, you could do the reverse of a log home, install jacks and slowly lower to fix ugliness...

 

[bill1952]

Would it be simpler to raise the perimeter?

I would certainly notify every entity like Better Business Bureau, chamber of commerce, etc. of this person's malfeasance, and generally harass him.

 

[ICE]

Lodge a complaint with the contractor license board.

Suing a deadbeat will not help you other than the satisfaction of having a court of law slap him. You mentioned 127 items that need to be fixed and girder supports as much as 2” too high…..I get the feeling that any fixing is beyond his capability. I also detect an extremely detail oriented (picky) customer. 127 is more steps than it takes to build the house.

The “jacks” idea is big no. You should hire someone to hire a contractor.

 

[KimberlyP]

Would it be simpler to raise the perimeter?

I would certainly notify every entity like Better Business Bureau, chamber of commerce, etc. of this person's malfeasance, and generally harass him.

No. The footprint is about 6000 square feet, including the attached 3-car garage, shop, and aircraft hangar. 3 laps around the house is over 1/4 mile. Also, the structure was built so uneven, it would probably collapse if anyone tried to move the 10-foot high 2x4 exterior walls, which were supposed to be 2x6. My husband is worried about hurting anyone's feelings, which is a point of tension for us. This one-guy operation with his often illegal help doesn't register on the BBB, and the Chamber of Commerce didn't care when I contacted them. Even when I told them he lied about the construction on the house, and many items were not inspected, which don't pass an inspection. All they cared about is that it brought in another pair of tax payers. My husband is also worried that if we take any action, this contractor won't fix anything. Time is running out, and he still hasn't fixed anything, so I don't know what would change. We still have many roof leaks, which are damaging the sheet rock and structure throughout and around the house, and blackening the eaves on the outside where the sheet rock is damaged inside.

 

[KimberlyP]

Lodge a complaint with the contractor license board.

Suing a deadbeat will not help you other than the satisfaction of having a court of law slap him. You mentioned 127 items that need to be fixed and girder supports as much as 2” too high…..I get the feeling that any fixing is beyond his capability. I also detect an extremely detail oriented (picky) customer. 127 is more steps than it takes to build the house.

The “jacks” idea is big no. You should hire someone to hire a contractor.

Not picky, just want it done right. They deviated wildly from the plans. When I saw a 45-degree far out of place, I told the contractor that was more like 60-degrees. He told me, "I don't know degrees. Just tell me what it is in inches." How we got this far, I don't know. It's the problem with building a house far across the country. I would never do it again without practically camping on site to watch everything. I didn't think anyone could be in business that would do this. I accidentally stumbled across a retired broker here, who knew him well, and told me to never believe anything that comes out of that guy's mounth. Where was she when we were looking for a contractor!
Okay; How about one of my hallway ceilings that's 1-1/4" per foot out of square. It's a polygon, and is no where near rectangular. The crown molding in my theater was installed 12 inches too low. They came back to raise it, and left the sheet rock torn up with the old calking as well as it not being parallel to the ceiling, because the room varies in height so much from one side to the other. I took a fraction of the photos in our previous house to show all the features and record locations of access points, not problems. I haven't taken any photos to show off this house, but hundreds of photos showing the problems. My main hallway looks like the letter "V" because the walls fall away from each other so dramatically, and the rest of the walls are so crooked, it visually looks like an amusement park fun-house. Opposing sides of door jambs don't even look like they are part of the same wall. One side protrudes into the room and twisted one direction, and the other points or slopes the opposite direction. Doors couldn't be installed into the jambs, because the frames were not leveled and squared, and double-doors that had to be cut on the top and bottom into a parallelagram so they would close. Our front door was replaced twice, because the contractor kept ordering the wrong door, which ranged from $1400 to $2,000 each, and could not be opened after the last time, because they drove grabber screws into the bottom of the hinge-side of the door jamb, separating the jamb about 5/16" away from the threshold. When I removed the casing to fix it, the door jamb wasn't attached to the structure of the house at all, other than the few finish nails on the casing. Our back door to our deck is the only 8-foot door in the house. Why? No one knows. It also is partially jammed, so it takes many forceful yanks on the handle to open, and still has no casing around the interior. No door in the house will hold position when let go, because they are not plumb. Some swing with enough force to for the latch to catch. One door has the striker plate 2 inches higher than the latch, so the latch just hits the wood and won't stay closed. Our master shower couldn't be finished because the glass couldn't be installed, and still is not complete 3-1/2 years later. I've been electrically shocked 4 different times in the house by faulty wiring with neutral wires connected to 120V, plus touching the hose connection on the back of the washer with my hand resting on the chassis, which measures 40VAC between that nut, and the grounded chassis. 10-12 wire nuts connecting 10 gauge wire to 6 gauge leads on the cook top, which fell off by touch when I went to install a 90-degree fitting. Plumbing finished 3 times, because the first 2 times they tried to drain sinks and toilets up hill. Four brick layers, because the first laid the brick with the moisture barrier flowing water into the structure rather than out. They came back to pull the brick down, but never returned to finish. The third one didn't show up at all, and the fourth was laying bricks where the rowlock slope varied by 23 degress in the span of 2 feet, and varied around the house. He also plastered the mortar on like a peanut butter sandwich all over the face of the brick, which were never acid washed. The bricks vary by up to 1-inch vertically out of plum in a 2-foot span. 110-foot x 40-foot driveway and pad were spalling and large pieces popped out before we moved in, and also drains water into the garage, shop and hangar. Roof with mismatched shingles, and roller-coaster look since the trusses were never aligned on peak with some as much as 2 inches out of alignment, leaving gaps so large, I can fit my hand between the truss and the roof sheathing. Scabbed in portions of the roof have 2x4's laying on the side, with the opposing slope with 2x6 in proper vertical orientation, so the roof sags. We have about 45 feet above our hangar door where they removed the sheetrock to bind the header together since they didn't do before, and never replaced the sheet rock. Painted my expensive bathroom once silent fans, which are now noisy and don't move much air now. Long sections of cabinet kickboard with no finish. Cabinets that had glue run down the fronts before staining, so there are streaks where the stain wouldn't penetrate. The wall trim over the arches, and cabinet drawers and doors were so crooked, they looked like a 6-year old had installed them. Windows distorted so far out of square, they wouldn't close and couldn't be latched. Arched windows with the casing interiors so irregular and wavy, no one can make plantation shutters fit. Crown molding pulling away from ceilings and walls. A 35-square inch opening in the HVAC fresh air return, which was pulling in outside air and clogging our filter with blown-in fiberglass. Walls that wave in and out between every other stud as much as a half inch. My first trip to the attic nearly resulted in my falling through the ceiling, 14-feet down to the garage floor, because the small piece of fine OSB installed as a step folded as I started to bear my weight on it. I caught the HVAC installers installing the large cartridge air filter on the exit-side of the air handler. I asked them about it, and the two looked at each other and said, "Yeah. I think it's supposed to go on the other end."

These are only a tiny fraction of the problems. The reason you might think the list is so high, is that everything is wrong with the build and the contractor wants to know every place there is a problem with a contractor's item. He wants to put a thousand bandaids on top without fixing the underlying problems. If the floors are bulging, popping, sloped and squeaking in the kitchen, master bedroom, guest room, offices, closets and bathrooms, it multiplies some problems. The contractor wanted to know every place there was a problem, not that the entire roof, floor, framing, cabinets, electrical, plumbing and concrete all have serious problems. He wants to know where each item has a problem.

 

[e hilton]

. He forces his clients (victims) to sign a notarized agreement with an attorney, granting him 50% ownership of the property and home until completion.

Completion or closing? Actually, when you close on the sale and move in, you are implying substantial completion, it’s punch list after that. Point being, he didn’t need to have you sign the paper, he owns the whole thing until you close.

This is a building code forum, we can help you determine if something meets code. Sloppy building practices are usually not code items.

 

[north star]

@ ~ @

KimberlyP, ...thanks for your further input !

1st, ...if it were me, I would take some time and write
down exactly, everything that you have encountered
from day one, ...with everyone involved......A "Time Line"
of events........2nd, you & your husband should "decide
together" how you want to proceed with this [ i.e. - slowly
start fixing the things that are wrong, or what would be
the consequences of walking away from it - - foreclosure,
other, etc. ]........3rd, I would contact the South Carolina
Attorney General to see what, if any, your options are
[ i.e. - can you sue the contractor as a civil matter ] ?
Whenever you discuss this matter [ IN PERSON ] with the
Attorney General's Office, I would present them with the
typed, double spaced document of your problem.........They
will need to keep the copy for review and to be able to
advise you on..........4th, ...be sure to ask the Attorney
General representative what, if any, your legal rights are
regarding you & your husband going to a T.V. station or
stations, [ and other media ] to have them [ possibly ] do
a story or stories on this contractor.

@ ~ @

 

[KimberlyP]

Completion or closing? Actually, when you close on the sale and move in, you are implying substantial completion, it’s punch list after that. Point being, he didn’t need to have you sign the paper, he owns the whole thing until you close.

This is a building code forum, we can help you determine if something meets code. Sloppy building practices are usually not code items.

The contractor bled us financially dry with all the housing and storage rental fees, so we were forced to close in May 2020. It's a massive punch list, but this guy is anything but dependable and honest. He has promised to get our roof leaks fixed for over a year, but has failed to do so. As far as meeting code, I think electrical problems (10 gauge wire on a 50 amp circuit), wires separating and arcing, reverse hot/neutral, walls buckling, inadiquate attic ventillation, water running into the structure, no water shutoff at the entry of the structure, insulation and thermal barrier would be part of that. There is no thermal barrier. After numerous measurements and calculations, the effective R-rating ranges between R2 and R6 in the walls. The 5-ton A/C system can't keep up with it.

 

[KimberlyP]

@ ~ @

KimberlyP, ...thanks for your further input !

1st, ...if it were me, I would take some time and write
down exactly, everything that you have encountered
from day one, ...with everyone involved......A "Time Line"
of events........2nd, you & your husband should "decide
together" how you want to proceed with this [ i.e. - slowly
start fixing the things that are wrong, or what would be
the consequences of walking away from it - - foreclosure,
other, etc. ]........3rd, I would contact the South Carolina
Attorney General to see what, if any, your options are
[ i.e. - can you sue the contractor as a civil matter ] ?
Whenever you discuss this matter [ IN PERSON ] with the
Attorney General's Office, I would present them with the
typed, double spaced document of your problem.........They
will need to keep the copy for review and to be able to
advise you on..........4th, ...be sure to ask the Attorney
General representative what, if any, your legal rights are
regarding you & your husband going to a T.V. station or
stations, [ and other media ] to have them [ possibly ] do
a story or stories on this contractor.

@ ~ @

I never thought about going to the attorney general. That's a good idea. I don't think his LLC can protect him when he mingles his personal business and puts his personal, not the business' on client properties, and has the same repeated behavior over a long period of time. The also LLR shows his contractor license for remodeling, not a general contractor. Thank you.

 

[north star]

# = #

I have had an occasion to seek assistance from
my state's Attorney General's Office once before.
I also provided them with a neatly typed, "Time Line"
of events...........They contacted the company in
question, and I got re-imbursed financially and a
new replacement product.

Please come back on this Forum and let us know
how things turn out.

Thanks !

# = #

 

[north star]

@ ~ @ ~ @

KimberlyP, ...you might also want to discuss your problem
with the South Carolina Secretary of State's Office, and filing
a formal complaint against the Contractor's record......See
what they recommend and can do for you, ...the tax payer !

@ ~ @ ~ @

 

[e hilton]

You know what ... old lawyer cliche … sue everybody! Nothing says you can’t sue the company, the owner and his wife individually, and all of the major subcontractors.

 

[tbz]

I know some states don't require builders be licensed and I am not promoting that here, but I have always been a fan of requiring all new homes having to be provided with a New Home Warranty, before a C/O can be issued. Even though the builder might not be on the level, at a minimum the state can make sure the homeowner is somewhat protected from an ordeal like being spelled out.

As to the issues of non-compliance (2x4 vs 2x6) and undersized wiring, does your location in SC have a minimum building code, and if so, I guess my question is for what you noted so far, how did it get passed and approved for a C/O.

 

[ICE]

The Winchester House makes money by charging admission.

Kimberly,
So far you have referenced the AHJ to say that a permit was issued and a CofO granted….and that’s it. What role did the inspector have in this? Am I to believe that a 6000 square foot dwelling was completed with little to no inspections? (cue an incredulous gasp)

Going forward you would do well to calculate your actions with the understanding that the contractor is likely immune to the sting no matter where it comes from.

There is a possible solution that I can draw from experience. While I was still in college a lady came seeking help with a similar situation. The school asked me to look into it. The AHJ’s involvement was more complex but suffice it to say, inspection was severely ineffectual and that was the crux of the matter. It took some doing but in the end the city purchased the property with a $50K bonus and rewarded me handsomely. I tell you this, not to boast, but to provide insight. Focus energy where it will have an impact.

If you have home owner’s insurance, and you want to retain it, you should be careful to avoid publicity.

 

[Sifu]

Two links:
The first is about options you have in SC. You may have run out of time, or are getting close.

The second is how to sue an LLC and possible options. May be that your attorney already thought of this, but in my experience with attorneys, like every other profession, some are better than others.

New-Home Construction Defects in South Carolina: Buyer's Rights Against the Builder

Finding design flaws or defects in your newly built South Carolina home? Here are your potential legal remedies against the developer.

www.nolo.com

Can I Sue the Owner of an LLC?

FindLaw describes the limited situations in which you can sue the owner of an LLC.

www.findlaw.com

I have been sued, it was frivolous and even the mediator admitted it was legalized extortion. They had no case, would have lost in court but still got a tiny bit of money so I could avoid much higher court costs, that is just the way it works. If your situation is as bad as you say I have a hard time understanding how you have no options. Maybe look at another attorney. Like builders, some are better than others.

Like tbz, I am curious how it got this far in a state with adopted state codes, state certified inspectors and required state contractor licensing. Also curious why you would enter into a contract as bad is yours sounds, with an uninsured contractor.