New Old Homes

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Absolute Disaster! First a word about the general demeanor of the contractor. He initially comes off as folksy and portrays himself as very knowledgeable to the point of arrogance on almost every remodeling subject that could be imagined. He also engages in "bait and switch" salesmanship. He will promise all kinds of details and suggestions to make the job better but as the job progresses he begins to "forget" these items or scale them back dramatically. For example he suggested our radiant heat have three heat zones. By the end of the first phase of the project he was telling us we only needed one large zone because it was all "in thermal contact" BS BS etc.." In reality he was scaling back the project to save costs for himself. Another huge problem with this contractor is that he is absolutely terrible at communicating the status of the project. He would virtually disappear for months at a time saying he was "waiting for parts" or a myriad of other excuses. He would also become quite surly if you dared question the work status. It was also apparent that he liked to drink on the job site since we found many Molson Canadian bottles left throughout the debris that he never cleaned up. My strong belief is that he badly misjudged the estimate and time required for this job. He was then left trying to cut corners to cover his costs. I have no respect for a contractor who has supposedly been in the business for 30 or more years but cannot get a basic estimate correct. I also believe his hubris and arrogance led him to take on a heating system he was not at all qualified to handle. When the job estimate was signed off he told us we could expect both the heating and addition phases to be complete in the Fall " before the heating season begins". Much of the serious heavy lifting in the heat installation was done by myself or my brother-in law who did the excavation for the geothermal piping. This included removal of all the crawl space insulation and installation of the new insulation on the radiant tubing once it was installed. This work was some of the most difficult, dirty, and physically demanding work I have ever done. I rushed to complete the insulation removal and subsequent re-installation so I would not slow the progress of the work. Meanwhile Mr. Wolf would disappear for two to three weeks at time while he worked on other jobs which always seemed to have higher priority than ours. The geothermal-radiant plumbing was installed by late summer but he could not get the system running and tested until December. He blamed most of the delay on his supplier in East Aurora ( Irr) who he claimed ordered the wrong heat pump. He milked this excuse for literally months and during the entire time never called to report the status or make any attempt to begin the second floor addition. In retrospect it is obvious he never intended to even begin the addition until the spring of 2011. During this stalling action we noticed that the basment floor had completely flooded during a heavy rain. When the basement was being installed we asked Mr. Wolf if it would not be a good idea to install drain tile along the basement perimeter. He looked at the soil and in his smug arrogance assured us we wouldn't need it . The basement never stopped flooding until I had it repaired by a neighbor contractor who installed drain tile at a cost of over $4000 in the spring When he finally got the heat pump in place his lack of expertise began to show glaringly. He took nearly a month to get the system to run properly without shutting down due to various fault conditions. His final solution was to add a "kludge" fix involving an external clamp on thermostat to prevent fault shut-downs. I found out from the heat pump manufacturer that such a work-around should never be required in a system that is installed properly. As we found out later our system was nowhere close to "installed properly" We finally had a working heat system on December 20th. Mr Wolf did a final walk thru and made a punch list of items to be completed on the first phase of the project. These items included leaky valves and connecting the household hot water heat to the geothermal heat pump. This hot water boost system was included in the written quote but never completed. He estimated it would cost about $1000 and he said he would do it when he began phase 2. He then proceeded to convince us that it would be better to start the addition phase in the spring of 2011. Being that it was December we agreed. We never saw Mr Wolf again until I called in the March to ask why he never came to complete his punch-list items. When Mr. Wolf came to look at the punch-list items I informed him that we did not want the addition installed. We were worried at the time about the cost. That and the awful ordeal of working with him on phase one made us conclude that we did not want to deal with him again for another project that would probably last all summer and be just as shoddy as the first phase. I also asked him what he intended to do about the leaking basement he installed for us. He hemmed and hawed and told us he would be back in a week or so to complete the punch-list items. This was the last we ever saw of him. HE HAD WALKED AWAY FROM AN INCOMPLETE JOB EVEN THOUGH HE WAS PAID IN FULL FOR HIS WORK. I called many times leaving a series of messages and unanswered calls. By mid summer I knew I had been screwed and I began to complete the punch-list items myself. I spent over $1500 to complete the job including things like plumbing in water to an outside barn which had been disrupted and replacing a defective valve in the radiant system. The hot water "boost" system was never completed. I also began to question the operation of the heating system since there were about 20 days during the winter when the system just plain couldn't keep up. The house was chilly and drafty. I decided in June that I would sue Mr. Wolf in Small Claims Court for $2500 to cover the puch-list items as well as the leaky basement and uninstalled hot water boost system. In court Mr. Wolf seemed to be very adept at bald faced lying. He denied knowing about the leaking valves and barn water hook-up. He said he was not responsible for the leaky basement. Apparently I should have stipulated "DRY basement" in the estimate. I never got to explain about the hot-water boost plumbing because the small claims judge was so controlling and in such a huge hurry to get through his caseload. The amazing result of the suit was a judgement for me in the amount of $442. The judge ruled that I could not recover the cost of the basement leak repair because I only got ONE estimate from a contractor instead of two ( apparently I could have been in cahoots with the contractor and a second estimate would have proved it was legit) The judge never even spoke to the hot water boost system and ignored the costs for the other punch-list items. As you might have guessed Mr. Wolf never paid the judgement against him. This past Fall I brought in a reputable contractor experienced in geothermal-radiant systems. He found many many problems with the system. The biggest issues were the fact that the piping laid to extract heat from the earth may have been too short by about 100 feet. The kludge thermostat to make the heat pump run was also unnecessary and the plumbing of the system was a disaster. The layout was completely wrong and was causing the system to "short-cycle" which necessitated the thermostat hack. He also installed the radiant floor tubing in such a way as to make zoning almost impossible. It is obvious he never intended to zone the house right from the moment he was doing the installation even though he lied to us and said we would have three zones during most of the project. The cost to make the heat system run properly was estimated at $2900.00. I am in the process of getting the repairs done at this writing. The total cost of setting the job right will be about $8400. I looked into the possibility of a civil suit against Mr. Wolf. During my research I found that he had a long list of claims, and liens against him for various court judgements against him in multiple states. Unfortunately the cost of suing him would more than likely be more than I could expect to recover and he does not seem to care about judgements anyhow. I apologize for this very long-winded story but it is probably the only recourse I will ever have in my dealings with this extremely disreputable contractor. I would warn anyone in the strongest possible terms that they should never even consider doing business with this man.