Artesian Landscape & Irrigation

It was the most frustrating and draining experience with the contractor that we have ever had.The landscaping job that he was hired to do consisted of removing old edging and rock and replacing it with new edging/ black poly, rocks as well as planting bushes and flowers all around the house including an island on one side of the garage. He convinced us to use expensive river rocks and key stone for edging and was very smooth in advertising quality work that he does. Well, many parts of his work were poorly done and had to be redone again and again.The river rocks were placed with a large quantities of sand on top of the black poly which defeats the purpose of having the poly between rocks and the ground. As a result we saw the weeds growth at bunch of spots almost immediately. We address that with Dave but he kept saying that the sand will be taken out but time after time his crew would only work on tiny area (that we would point out to them) ignoring that the sand and soil were all around underneath the rocks. Dave was not receptive to our comments and kept saying that we are overly critical. We eventually came to the point where we asked multiple landscaping contractors to come over and evaluate the work. All of them were saying that this is sloppy job and it needs to be re-done. One thing that 2 contractors asked us if we did the job ourselves, that should say a lot about Dave's professionalism.   Eventually after endless conversations Dave agreed to redo the work by removing most of the rocks, replacing black poly and putting rocks back. He promised it would be done in 1 or 2 shots with a large crew but instead it was over a week with couple of guys showing up for an hour or two at most.The key stone job for edging was done extremely poorly, there was no design done prior to laying the stones and as a result there is no flow and bunch of gaps between the stones. We tried to argue that there should be no large gaps between the stones and with a huge resistance Dave modified a few spots but overall it's still pretty dull looking.
The project that was supposed to be done in about 1 week took 2 months. In the process our driveway was damaged by the rocks that were just dumped there for weeks/the dirt and sand that was taken out from the rock were dumped in the woods (still our property) on the side of our house. Then we were without and basis accused of not having sufficient funds to pay him and dragging this project on purpose. Where in turn he was dragging this job by his inability to manage and do quality work.Dave has hard time keeping appointments and never showed up on-time. It was always something, either driving his kids to the games, meetings with other clients, some family things.. He has no respect for his clients requests to be on-time. He receives text messages only when it is convenient for him.He provides very little direction to his crews and is very rarely appears on the job sites.My opinion is that Dave tries to grab as many jobs as possible and creates an impression for his customers that work is being done by re-directing his crew from site to site for a couple of hours per day.  Overall we are very-very disappointed with the lack of quality work, being lied to at all times and lack of respect for ones property and time.

It?s sad when a large project goes very well, except for one specific contractor that causes more issues and frustration than all the others put together. Dave McElroy was the cause of this frustration for a large landscaping project at my house. His irrigation work used quality components but was poorly designed and installed. Many parts had to be redone, and redone again, and re-adjusted after being redone, and redone yet another time. Parts of buried plastic water pipe were left unburied for several feet.  Sprinkler heads are still pouring 90% of the water they spray into the woods rather than on the grass, and Dave's opinion is that sprinklers are supposed to work that way. Parts of the lawn are drying out while others are too wet to walk on, because he failed to take into account the slope of the lawn, so the high ground isn't getting enough water while the low ground is a man-made marsh. Dave's response? "It's been raining. It will dry out on its own." It has not dried out on it's own, and it won't until the sprinkler system gets fixed.
Dave has extreme difficulty keeping appointments, and a complete inability to be on time for an appointment. Some of his excuses for being late or not showing up at all for appointments included:?My clothes washer broke??I was stuck at another client?s house??My wife hit a deer with her car. I texted you? <no text was received>?I?m on my way to my other job at the airport and I forgot about our meeting??My daughter has a party and I forgot when I made our appointment??We had a storm last night?
Around half these excuses were used for meetings that he just never showed up for (or was hours late for and never called in advance), but the other half he did give advance notice. However, when your contractor sends you a text message (regarding a third rescheduling for a meeting) that begins with, ?You are going to want to verbally abuse me after this??, you know that you have chosen a bad contractor. Actually, it was when my wife told me that Dave made disparaging comments about me to her that I was beyond positive that I had chosen a bad contractor. In the end, we had to make the decision to cut our losses and have a more reliable contractor solve the remaining problems with the system rather than have my and my wife?s time continue to be wasted by someone that misses or is late for appointment after appointment after appointment, and argues with us over things like spray heads that put only 10% of their water on the lawn.