WARD CONSTRUCTION

Rick Arden at Ward Constr. has been prompt, helpful, and thorough in surveying the issues and giving advice. The charges for the survey work have been reasonable. We are deciding on what to do next. This is the tricky part--the solutions will be very expensive.

Their service was overall excellent.

I was extremely frustrated with my engineer and with the town's contract engineering firm. They ran my engineering costs way up ($3000) because I ended up paying for the time for both firms so that the two of them could argue with each other and they needlessly delayed the project. My lesson learned was insist that your engineer/architect/plan drawer etc document everything to the last detail and leave nothing unexplained. None of this, 'well its common engineering practice. I never have to spell that out for any other town....and quot; Just nip it in the bud, by making your architects and engineers go the extra mile up front. It will cost you less in the long run and you'll avoid a lot of frustration and pointless delays.
We were very happy with Ward Construction and with their work ethic and pragmatic approach to problem solving. They cleaned up after themselves and were respectful, courteous and professional--no swearing, loud music, trash, damage to shrubs, etc. I often had to go check to see if they were working or not, they were so quiet (except on a couple of occasions when they had to jackhammer a bit). In spite of all the problems we had getting the plans approved, there were zero problems with the inspector. He was very complimentary of the work and even signed off on part of the job a head of time, saying he could see that all the prep work was correct and he didn't need to see the intermediate phase before the final inspection.
I would recommend Ward and will use them again if I need similar services.

Ward Construction did an outstanding job -- the work was very high quality and the prices were more reasonable than the other bids we received. We've had many rains since then and no more problems with basement flooding. Great work!

In California there is not a lot of rock to build on so what they do is they build it right on the soil and they put it on a concrete pad. Once in a while you find a place where it is actually built on rock but that is pretty rare out here; then you have these seismic shifts. In southern California you see these hill sides with people's houses on top and you think who would do that. The whole state would do that. That is just how they do it. Imagine a thick concrete pad and you living behind a hill. As the water runs down, the hill that goes under the house, and it's natural, not channeled, the house twists and warps as the water comes underneath. We get rain for about 3 months out of the year. When it comes down, it makes the foundation a little wobbly and you get cracks in the walls and the ceilings and broken windows and doors that don't fit tight. Because it sits behind a hill, if they put the French drain in which is a trench with a pipe in it as the water comes down, it gets collected by the pipe and the rain water from the gutters and the roof and it is all flushed out to the street. That keeps your foundation from floating when the water table rises. It is called a French drain and it is because of a guy named French. I did some estimates. We started getting some cracks in the ceiling so I called some places to see if the house was level. They came out. They have some technique where they measure what the shift is in the foundation. It was within code but it wasn't getting better. That's why we had them come out. There were a couple of others. One was star certified, but he wanted an astronomical amount. I think he just didn't want our business so he quoted it really high. One of them said $7000.00. Ward Construction was very good; I definitely got their A game. As far as price, you get what you pay for. What I got from them was they gave me a practical solution. It wasn't like you needed all this overkill stuff. I thought I got a fair price for what they did; they did not do an Apollo Moon Launch like this other guy was proposing. We had one other guy come out and he wanted $35000.00 to put the thing on pylons and sink it into the bedrock. They were very practical on how to approach the solution instead of just saying that you need to get the biggest baddest thing they sell. I think they are good. I got a follow-up letter from them making sure everything was okay. The guy called me and thanked me for our payment. He appreciated us paying him on time. I really think they did a good job. We called them and then they did it. These guys were really good. They really knew what they were doing. When the guys were here, they weren't leaning on their shovels. They weren't well rested when they left here. They were pretty tired. I hope I would never need them for this again. I would use them for something. This is supposed to be like a permanent solution.

They were very polite and they cleaned up every night before they left. Everything was on time and on budget. They were really good. If we had more construction and more money we would hire them. We checked 3 other people and their price was fair.