The Shoddy Workmanship Thread..

I have found a lot of people in the trades lacking.

I have always done all my own work.
And I mean everything.

Can’t stand dealing with idiots.
I can see you only being happy with your work. I dont mean that as an insult just that you seem like a guy who likes it his own way.
 
We're building a new home here in Huntersville and we went by yesterday to see how it was coming along since we are closing next month. Upon entering the home we found that most of the paper had been torn off of the hardwood and the plastic was pulled back from the carpeting in the master and removed entirely in the guest room. It appeared that the painters with red mud on their shoes had walked on every floor in the house and where the paper was removed, including carpeted areas that were not covered, right down to inside the master bedroom closet. We're not just talking about a few spots of red mud here and there, we mean everywhere, on all of the exposed hardwood and carpet. We had reservations when we picked the carpet as it is very light but felt good when we found it covered very nicely during the building process. When we talked to the super on the job he said there was an "unfortunate incident". Apparently the cleaning people took the coverings off and then found out the painters were not finished. Then the idiot painters came in with red mud all over their shoes and stayed all day walking all over everything while doing the final paint touch up. Now we have to sit back and hope the builder can get the red lumps of mud out that are ground into the carpet and restore it to it's original condition.
If this was me, the contractor would be buying some new carpet and hardwood flooring. He can collect from the painting subs.

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I'll explain this from my POV. There are lots of cheapskate Harvey Homeowners who wouldn't hesitate to order a filet at the steakhouse but will try to beat up the contractor on the estimate and the final bill. It really boils down to this- Fast, Cheap, Quality- Choose 2. I once lost a bid to an illegal on painting a house. Owner came back to me later and asked if I'd come over and fix the problems. Then he asked what it'd cost. Figure I him- the original bid +50%. He of course was upset, I just pointed out he should have hired me from the start and not some cheap illegal with no overhead nor experience.

Often the contractor is running several jobs and his project mgr is swamped keeping up with subs. Cost is often high on the agenda (Reread the Choose 2 comment). That being the case, the subs, in order to save money, hire substandard help. It's a vicious cycle and you get what you pay for in most circumstances. In the case of the painters tracking mud all through a house, you probably have a semi-english speaking crew to whom tracking mud isn't an issue in their native land, all they care about is getting the paint up so they can get paid.

Now add into this vicious cycle, labor that doesn't speak english, has no problem committing crime by being in the US, has no clue what they're doing but they'll insist they are the best and cheapest (yeah, about that....) and you see why these issues exist.
 
The other thing that burns my grits is the Harvey Homeowner who prices materials out at a big box, never thinking to compare quality, then thinking I'm going to put in quality materials at the cheap price that he would pay at the big box. If I buy it for your job, you WILL be paying for it along WITH my time and effort to go GET IT! Otherwise, go hire Pedro.
 
The other thing that burns my grits is the Harvey Homeowner who prices materials out at a big box, never thinking to compare quality, then thinking I'm going to put in quality materials at the cheap price that he would pay at the big box. If I buy it for your job, you WILL be paying for it along WITH my time and effort to go GET IT! Otherwise, go hire Pedro.
Oh yeah. Love those retard consumers that think looking on the internet for prices makes them right. They think knowledge and craftsmanship is free. Never consider all the cost to be a business. Have no concept of variable and fixed cost. Do it your damn self if you think you know so much. Why call a pro if it’s so simple?
 
That's what I would do, but I didn't want to get into the "you told me to fix it this way, and....". We did discuss Helicoils though.

We also discussed a new motor.

Don't know what material the lost threads was made of, but these Timesert kits are much better than helicoil fixes, especially for anything that needs to come apart on a regular basis. I used one to fix a steel drain plug in a stripped aluminum crankcase and very pleased with it. Stronger and much geekier than helicoils.

http://www.timesert.com/html/inchsert.html
 
Oh yeah. Love those retard consumers that think looking on the internet for prices makes them right. They think knowledge and craftsmanship is free. Never consider all the cost to be a business. Have no concept of variable and fixed cost. Do it your damn self if you think you know so much. Why call a pro if it’s so simple?

When I had a heat pump installed to replace a oil furnace I ran all of the electric to the outside unit and the air handler in the crawl space. All the installers had to do was take the pigtail and finish the connections.

After it was all said and done, I realized I lost money on doing that part myself. With me buying disconnects and wire and such at retail vs the contractor buying at wholesale and paying for and hour or two of labor that was already figured into the job. I didn't save a dime doing it myself.

All I got was the satisfaction of knowing I could do it and it passed inspection with problems.

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We were up north during construction, the siding crew that did our new home in 1991 did not cut the siding to fit around 24 windows,
they cut and nailed pieces around the windows.
At the walk before closing I pointed that out to the supervisor (who was leaving to work for a competitor), he told me he will have them caulk.
Told him if we got in his truck to look at the siding job on his house it would not need a 'caulk' job. Told him to leave, sent 24 photos FedEx to
Crossland President, 15 min. after delivery his executive secretary called to schedule time for a siding crew to remove and replace the siding.

The master garden tub started leaking from the drain flange, did not know until we had kids and wife used the tub to wash them up,
the new flange would not fit, thought it odd that the threads were only 1/2" depth, found the rest of the old flange inside the drain, turns out somebody used a hacksaw on the flange and left 1/8" metal so they could tighten the flange in place. Fixed it myself but had ceiling damage on the first floor.
Looks like siding and plumber were not getting paid on time.
 
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We were up north during construction, the siding crew that did our new home in 1991 did not cut the siding to fit around 24 windows,
they cut and nailed pieces around the windows.
At the walk before closing I pointed that out to the supervisor (who was leaving to work for a competitor), he told me he will have them caulk.
Told him if we got in his truck to look at the siding job on his house it would not need a 'caulk' job. Told him to leave, sent 24 photos FedEx to
Crossland President, 15 min. after delivery his executive secretary called to schedule time for a siding crew to remove and replace the siding.

The master garden tub started leaking from the drain flange, did not know until we had kids and wife used the tub to wash them up,
the new flange would not fit, thought it odd that the threads were only 1/2" depth, found the rest of the old flange inside the drain, turns out somebody used a hacksaw on the flange and left 1/8" metal so they could tighten the flange in place. Fixed it myself but had ceiling damage on the first floor.
Looks like siding and plumber were not getting paid on time.
I worked on a job two months ago that they never put j channel around half the windows. Never boxed in the outside lamp fixtures but it didnt matter because the Mexican Sheetrock crew dry walled all outside light switch boxes in the wall.
 
Got one more, they never used any stone base when the driveways were poured and no contraction joints.
When the appliance truck backed into my driveway the two car slab cracked.
 
If this was me, the contractor would be buying some new carpet and hardwood flooring. He can collect from the painting subs.

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We just spoke to the super on the phone a short while ago since we were supposed to meet with him today. They are putting in all new carpeting and charging it back to the painter. The super promised when they install the new carpeting he will be there to make sure they don't do it again.
 
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We just spoke to the super on the phone a short while ago since we were supposed to meet with him today. They are putting in all new carpeting and charging it back to the painter. The super promised when they install the new carpeting he will be there to make sure they don't do it again.

It just makes sense that that flooring is the last thing done. When we lived in Houston ripped out some black/white "Italian Marble" tile in the DR. Turns out the squares were stamped "Made in China", but that's another thread on 'Lying Real Estate Brokers'.

Anyway the flooring contractor did a great job until the 'clean up'. One of his guys had a stone from the road stuck in his boot and scraped the wood from the front door, one corner to the other. They made it right.
 
I manage a research and development lab.

I hired a shop to align a 30HP electric motor gen set to smaller motor this week. We're going to instrument the heck out of this thing and look at details of V and I as we do things to the motor. Its a fairly standard configuration.

One of the tasks was to supply a new motor, mill flats into the housing and attach three accelerometers to the cast iron end of the motor (one in each axis) via tapped and threaded holes that would allow a stud to attach the instruments to . These sensors are about as big around as your thumb and cost about $100 each.

The shop delivered the motor stand and we proceeded to begin to wire up the equipment (power, data gathering equipment, etc). One of the folks started to attach the leads to the accelerometer, which promptly fell off. Upon closer inspection, the shop had buggered up the newly threaded holes in the motor housing and stripped them out.

They "fixed" this by re-attaching the instrument with JB weld, I guess thinking we'd not notice.

This sensor was about 1" above a 2.5" solid steel armature. When (not if) this sensor fell off, it would have wrapped the sensor cabling around the rotating armature and yanked about $10,000 of precision instrumentation off the wall mounted grid above the motor stand.

They came out yesterday to try again.
I'd bet they screw it up again. Wanna bet?
 
The water heater relief valve thread reminded me of something I once saw in a preschool classroom (apparently installed with no code inspection or approval). A bathroom had been installed in one corner of the room. Some genius had mounted the water heater on a shelf above the (tiny little child size) toilet, so that the relief valve drain line would have discharged scalding water directly down onto anyone who happened to be sitting there.
 
Not something I had to fix myself, but I had to hire someone.
(Also, I can't look at the pictures in this thread for long. They're giving me nightmares!)

I live in a little mill town house that was built in the early 1940's. Sometime in the 1960's, the house had an addition put on, and the wiring was updated. I'm pretty sure most of the work was done by the homeowner, and not by a professional, as I've had to have several things fixed in the time I've lived here.

Two years ago, during a thunderstorm, the electrical panel box on my house shorts out, and I loose power. Panel box wasn't up to code to begin with, and the whole thing must be replaced, along with the main line going from the box to the inside fuse panel.

All said and done, it cost me about $4000 to have that box replaced by a qualified professional, and he did the bulk of the work in one day. I didn't complain when I got the bill, but it certainly put a hurting on my wallet for some time afterwards. I'm not wealthy, so a bill like that sets me back for a long time.

The lesson I took from this was not to be like the original homeowner and toss stuff together using the cheapest stuff I could find. When having repairs done that I can't handle myself, hire a pro and try to accept it won't be cheap.

It also made me think I may have went into the wrong line of work. :D

There's other things I need to fix still. I have a plumbing issue. The original owners of my home put in their own drain line from the kitchen and washing machine, and the pipe is too small, and un-vented, so it frequently backs up. One of these days I'm going to have to hire a plumber to fix it. If any of you guys are good at plumbing work, and live in the area, I may have a job for you.
 
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Not so much a construction issue, but an upkeep one. My apartment in Wake Forest was an old cinder block place with the visible damp course that was plenty high enough on 3 sides of the building....except where leaf buildup turned into soil over the 40 years or so minimum since it was built. There was five feet of dirt down that whole side of the building that wasn't there before, so every time it got saturated it would flood my place through the walls.

After I left the landlord had them dig a drainage channel and the muppet he kept using for work like this dug it so the water flow was right at the damp course and it flooded just as fast. And when he went deeper he undermined the foundation at one corner and bodger fixed that.
 
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Last week me and @Tinman looked at adding a sub panel to clean up the most god awlful main panel install wire to breaker runs. We studied it for 15 minutes and said to hell with this. I would had to remove 40 circuits to even clean up the runs. It’s not dangerous or out of code. Just a damn ugly mess. The rest of the house was done correct.
 
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