O'DWYER & ASSOC

First, let me say that if I had written this review when we moved in, it would have been 5 star. There is much to love about our O?Dwyer house, including the floor plan, great neighborhood, and nice finishing touches. However over the past 4 months, I have spent over $11k fixing what I consider to be builder mess ups. Thus the low score. Here are the issues I have had 1) HVAC. The heat always worked fairly well. The Air conditioner not so much. The first summer we lived in the house, I was scare of the power bills, and kept the air set at 79. We sweated it out but didn?t notice any issues. Last summer was cooler than usual, so the air was able to keep up with a setting of 77. This summer, it was hot, my wife was pregnant, so a high setting wasn?t going to cut it. We set the temperature around 76 most the time, but the air conditioner could not keep up at all when it got of 90 degrees. I had Carter & Sons come look at it, and they determined that the builder had installed the wrong piston in the coil. The R-22 piston was installed and the R10A piston was still taped to the outside unit! Over $500 later, that problem was solved. The air worked a little better, but still could not keep up. It was still running 12 hours a day, and my power bill was still way over $300, in an allegedly energy star house. Given this incident, I was not about to call the original installer (Reliance) for service calls. I got to doing some investigation in the neighborhood. Turns out despite not having the smallest house in the neighborhood (and no shade) I had the smallest unit in the neighborhood. My unit was a 3.5 ton. All the houses built about the same time in the neighborhood, including 2 that are identical to my house, and 2 that are smaller, all had at least 4 ton units. The builder told my that the HVAC contractor mysteriously upgraded everybody else?s but mine on their own. For some reason, I have a hard time believing that. In addition, I had 3 HVAC companies tell me my unit was undersized. I ended up spending 10k on a new HVAC system. Granted I could have gotten a builder grade system for a few thousand less, but still it was a purchase I wouldn?t have made right now if the original system was sized properly. 2) Exterior paint and trim. They apparently put the exterior paint on my house super thin. There is about 6 gallons of leftovers sitting in my basement. Because they put it on so thin, my house has faded an entire shade up the color chart and is looking blotchy in only 3 years. Any semi-decent paint job should last at least twice that. I am now looking at having to spend about $5k to paint my house in the coming months. Additionally, some of the window trim has already started to rot, and I just paid $360 for those repairs. Several of my neighbors have had similar issues. 3) Radon Vent. This year, After some high results from my neighbors, I decided to test the radon levels in my basement. Mine tested high (14). At construction, O?dwyer installed a radon vent that you could add a mitigation fan to if you had a high reading. I had the fan installed, but the radon readings were still through the roof. Turns out O?Dwyer miss installed the vent. The vent is supposed to end in the aggregate, so it can remove air from underneath the slab. They ran the vent all the way down to the top soil, so it couldn?t get any suction, and wasn?t doing any good. $355 to fix that. I have reached out the O?dwyer several times about the HVAC issues, but we have come to no resolution. If you buy an O?dwyer house, get a home inspection, and save a good rainy day fund. You are probably going to need it.