ALL NEW CONCRETE & RESURFACING

Mr. Jeff Harness' work was awful at every turn and he was extremely hard to contact and work with. At the start, Mr. Harness did not read the drawing correctly. The drawing that he used was a draft copy that specifically stated not to use for actual construction. Therefore Mr. Harness missed the 4 inch stepdown at the base of the French doors. Mr. Harness did not use a plastic moisture barrier over the area to be covered with concrete, which is standard practice, per the building inspector. Mr. Harness failed to set the rebar so that it could be inspected; instead he set the rebar and poured the concrete without an inspection, which prompted the inspector to put a STOP WORK ORDER on my job. At that point, I had to call Universal Engineering Services to come out, dig underneath the concrete footers and verify that there was rebar in the concrete footers, at additional cost to me. I had to get the rebar scan report signed by a Universal engineer to be forwarded to the building department before it could pass inspection. The Universal Engineering technician noticed that the footers underneath the concrete were not "clean", because he was pulling out pieces of pine bark mulch, and the footers were not shaped as they should be, per standard practice. This whole process caused about a 4 week delay. What should have been a 1 week job turned into a 5 week job. Mr. Harness refused to accompany me to the bldg. dept. to try to resolve these issues with the inspector. The next issue was getting Mr. Harness out to install the vertical rebar used to reinforce the block walls of the addition, because he had not installed it prior to the concrete pour, which is preferred practice, and would have prevented a return visit by Mr. Harness. Mr. Harness left a pile of waste concrete in my yard for almost 2 months before he returned to remove it. Mr. Harness never returned to remove the wooden form boards. Mr. Harness did not route a copper line within the new foundation for a spigot on the east wall as I had asked him. I never saw Mr. Harness after the concrete was poured. He would send his "helpers". In my opinion, Mr. Harness poses a safety risk to any structure that he may build because of his lack of concern and lack of adherence to established procedures and practices, building codes, etc. My foundation finally did pass inspection, but I do sometimes think that I'm living on a flawed foundation. I fired Mr. Harness and hired another contractor to finish my addition. I had to take Mr. Harness to small claims court to try to recover money. To this day Mr. Harness owes me a judgment of almost $5,000, and I haven't seen a payment for more than a year.