Tony the owner came to write up my estimate. He seemed very professional and I had a lot of confidence in him. I initially hired his company to install seamless gutters and gutter helmet. I was not home during installation and came home to find a down spout blocking a walkway to my side door. I called and Tony personally came to fix it. While he was there, we noticed some leaks in the gutters and he realized that the gutters had been installed incorrectly. He came later that week with the original installer to show him the proper procedure. All went well and my gutters work great.
Fast forward a month later, I hired them to do drain tile. I originally requested Hard PVC on couple of runs that would run under concrete in a future project. I specified that there would be four inches concrete and four inches of base for this sidewalk. He gave me the ""i've been doing this twenty years speech, i've never used it....it's not necessary...we really don't use it"". He assured me that the soft corrugated pipe would be just fine. I am embarrassed to say that I paid them over a $1000 for this job alone. Again, I was not able to be home to oversee the installation. Evidently Tony does not oversee either, he sends a college kid. The kid merely buried all this pile just deep enough to throw loose sod on top of the pipe. It's two inches below the grass and your feet feel the softness of the pipe when you walk over it. Not only is it impossible to do the concrete job like that, all my other runs will be totally exposed to a aerator. I called him and told him that this needs to be redone, he refused and said that everything was installed to specification. I reminded him that he promised me that everything would be 5 - 6 inches below grade. he said, ""oh...I meant from the bottom of the pipe"".
so I spent 30 minutes in Menards to figure out how to re do it with corrogated and PVC where necassary. I find it pretty pathetic that in twenty years he has not figured out how to use simple products like PVC when I can figure it out in a half hour. I am not an ""expert"" in drain tile, but it seems like conventional wisdom that you need a little more than loose sod to protect your pipe. So i dug the trenches deeper, doesn't take a rocket scientist. At this point I have redone half the job, I should redo the rest of them in the yard, but i refuse because I think they should do it.
I sent Tony an email tutorial in how to do drain tile so he can fix the rest of my runs. I've not had a response back.
Do not do business with this company. Tony may have started with good intentions but this business has outgrown him with employees that do not know what they are doing.
Martin Maloley
Muskegon, MI
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