Corum Engineering Design & Inspection

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No problems did an excellent job. Would def recommend. Curteous and proffesional.

An excellent, through inspection. He discussed issues as the inspection progressed and was very clear in giving information and details about any issue he saw. He answered all my questions with knowledge and confidence. When giving answers he used both technical and non technical language so I could understand the information.

We contacted Corum Engineering Group through their website requesting an appointment for a home inspection. We received an auto-response email stating and quot;Someone will be in touch with you shortly to schedule your inspection.and quot; That was on August 29th and we have yet to have a follow up email or call. Very disappointing since we may need to have a structural engineer look at the foundation - we were hoping to be able to use the same company for both inspections.

. Ron Corum was very professional, punctual, nice, and knowledgeable. He know what was happening with our house and foundation, why it happened, and how to fix it. I would deffinitely have him look at any foundation/structural issue before having others who perform services to quote solutions and prices to fix it. I had another company look at our situation several months ago (a reputable company) and their solution was not even considered by Corum Engineering. Ron does not do the repairs, and he gets no compensation from the repair companies so he is unbiased in his solution. This is the only way to approach structural and foundation issues in my oppinion.

The company may remember me well. I had a terrible experience with them. To their credit, the company had the attitude of and quot;We'll take care of you!and quot; and stuck with me until things were sorted out. If the company had not done that, I would have given them a lower grade. I suspect the company will try to defend themselves as having gone out of their way to help me, but the facts are not disputable. Fact 1: After living in my home for a couple of months, cracks appeared around the home so I called Corum engineering back for a structural inspection. It was difficult because the office was not returning calls promptly to schedule a visit. Eventually a visit was scheduled. Fact 2: Ron Corum found a and quot;streamand quot; under my house in my crawlspace (I live on a hill, the water apparently comes from the hill when there is rain, this is water that is not above ground -- the grass can be dry outside and there would still be water running in my crawlspace). Tthe signs of a dry stream bed were obvious after the fact, but neither I nor the inspector noticed this before I moved into the home. Nor did I see it after I moved into my home, because there was no water in the and quot;stream bedand quot; until the rainy season. Fact 3: Ron recommended getting rid of the stream among other things. Fact 4: I called several companies listed on the corum engineering webpage as people qualified to solve foundation and water problems. I entered an agreement with a third party whom I found from the corum webpage to fix the issues. The third party company was B-Dry, and supposedly has good warranties etc. Fact 5: B-dry came and did some work. I told Bdry what they did would not solve the problem. Bdry said not to worry since the warranty gauranteed they would come back if necessary. Bdry came back to fix the problem -- but try number 2 still did not work which did not surprise me, because again they were not fixing the real problem. On try number 3, I agreed that B-dry's plan would work, but it involved digging next to the footer. So I told Bdry they could not proceed with the work and contacted Ron Corum to verify that it would be structurally unsafe to dig next to the footer. Fact 6: Initially, Ron would not answer my question directly, because he thought an entirely different solution should be used. Finally, Ron answered my question --that Bdry should not dig below the footer next to the footer -- and I passed that knowledge to Bdry. Bdry still said they wanted to talk to Ron directly. Here is where the problems started. Fact 7: I tried to schedule an appoint for Bdry to meet with Ron directly, I said I'd pay for Ron to drive out to whereever Bdry was working in order to talk to them in person. I had provided figures/diagrams for both parties. I agreed to pay $250 just for Ron to answer this simple question. Fact 8: Instead of things going smoothly, Ron's office botched things up about three times in a row. First, they kept on not calling me back when they said they would (I had experienced this from Corum engineering already). One week went by like this. Then, they said B-dry should come to Ron's office instead of Ron going to meet B-dry. I thought Ron should drive to Bdry since I was paying $250, but okay. Next, Ron's office failed to contact the Bdry representative with the time to meet on Friday morning -- so although the Bdry representative had made himself available, he never went to the meeting because a time was never given to him. Ron's office was supposed to call me to confirm the appointment as well, and did not do that either. Finally on Friday I called to see how the meeting went, and found out that they had never contacted the Bdry representative because they had been dialing the number wrong, and had never called me to tell me they were having trouble contacting Bdry! Fact 9: After another delay, I don't remember if it was 3 business days or 8 business days, with me trying to call the office every two days trying to find out what was taking so long to schedule an appointment... they answered my call on a Wed around 11:00 AM to say and quot;Oh, Ron is meeting Bdry at your place today at 2:00 PM!and quot; I was surprised that I had not been informed in advance since they promised to call me once they made an appointment with bdry, and I was shocked hat they had changed the location to my house without checking with me. I was at work so I called my roommate (tenant) and asked him if he could be there, and he said yes. Fact 10: Ron showed up at least 45 minutes late and walked around with my roommate/tenant without ever having seen the Bdry rep. I had no missed calls or messages on my cell phone, no messages on my home phone, no missed calls or messages on my work phone. I called Bdry the next day to ask how the meeting went, and he said that he waited for 45 minutes, got no phone call from Ron to even say that Ron was running late, then left. Fact 11: Ron later claimed the meeting time was 2:30 and that he was 15 minutes late. First of all, the Bdry rep and I both independently got the time 2:00 from Ron's office. Secondly, my roommate/tenant gave a time past 3:00 for when Ron showed up. Thirdly, Ron's office claimed that Ron tried to call me that he was coming late. I don't believe that: there were no messages on any of my 3 numbers. Fact 12: It took more than 2 more weeks before Ron and Bdry finally spoke on the phone about the problem and the issue was resolved. During this time, since they were having such a hard time and quot;getting a hold of each otherand quot; I told Ron to just give me the words in writing, and Ron said that would cost another $150. That made me really mad, because I had paid $250 for him to answer a 10 minute question to Bdry, and had been waiting over a month for Ron to do it. Fact 13: As I mentioned, Ron did finally speak to Bdry in the end and resolve things so that Bdry did not dig in an unsafe way. Now, there are some facts I am leaving out: Ron did try to provide helpful information along the way repeatedly since he disagreed with the way me and Bdry wanted to fix the home. But that is not what I paid Ron for -- I paid him to talk to Bdry about a single question which I repeatedly asked him to do, and repeatedly tried to get him to talk to Bdry about. Both myself and Bdry appreciated his other input, but it was not what we wanted from him. So in summary: Corum engineering seems to be an honest company of nice people. Ron Corum is a good structural engineer, and treats you very nicely in terms of how he speaks to you -- so that part of his customer service is good. The same goes for the rest of their company. They DID go out of their way to help make sure I was a satisfied customer. But they gave me such an irritating time with such terrible customer service, that even after finally honoring their end of the agreement I have to give them a C. Because all I wanted was a 10 minute discussion between Ron and Bdry, I paid $250 for it, and it took more than a month to get done. During this time, there was moisture in my crawlspace from the stream, the insulation was falling off due to this moisture, moisture loving ants were moving into my house's wood, and I was having trouble sleeping due to how mad and worried I was. Frankly, I would rather have had someone be rude in their tone but keep their word. Corum Engineering can state their case, but they really botched things up with me. I have read other reviews stating that Corum Engineering was bad about calling them back. So I don't know how often it happens, but it's not just me. If you want good quality and nice people, Corum Engineering may be for you. But if you want reliability in how quickly they get back to you and keep their word about that, then be wary. They did take care of me in the end, but I wanted things taken care of promptly and professionally.

Corum Engineering was great in some ways:1) they scheduled us in within a 2 day notice -- there had been some delays in when the home would be ready, and Corum scheduled us in quickly. Overall, Corum engineering (Wes) did a good job with the inspection. There were a few things I found later that Wes didn't catch, but I think generally speaking what he found was about what a normal home inspector would find. One thing which would have been helpful is if I had a better idea how much the repairs would cost for the things he found -- they turned out to be more expensive than I expected (little things like adding vents for bathroom plumbing). But I can't fault him for not realizing that I would underestimate those costs. If I knew what the fixes would cost, I would have negotiated a bit more strongly on my purchase price. 2) I thought the price was too high. But, the roof was not finished on time, and I don't remember if Corum charged me any extra for the followup inspection or not after the roof was finished. So I'm giving Corum Engineering the benefit of the my lack of memory and giving them an A on price. The company did also answer a couple of questions for free after the fact. 3) The only real problem I had was that they took one or two days longer to write the report than they said they would. I even called them up to check on things, and they said and quot;you'll probably get it this afternoonand quot; but then I did not get the report for another 48 hours or so. Which caused problems for me when I was planning my closing date and moving date. Overall though, the experience was good, and if you're not in a rush to close, I do recommend them for home inspections. In my case, the delay cost me money, but at least they agreed to schedule me in at the last minute, they didn't even have to do that.

Ron arrived timely at my home. He got on my roof and was pointing out all the bad roofing I had received from the previous contractor. He explained things to me well since I have no knowledge of roofing. He gave me a possible lawyer to use since I am new to all of this. I learned alot about different types of roofing on different roof pitches. I have a feeling this will end up in court since the roofing company is very unresponsive to my concerns and I will hire Ron to be my expert testimony in court.

We've been losing water pressure, but so gradually that we failed to notice until we began getting air in the pipes and mud in the water. We didn't know whether it was a problem with the reservoir or the submersible pump. We called four area well pump people for estimates and Mr. Corum was one of two who returned our call the same day. He inspired confidence because he was articulate and professional (although it was apparent he was home with his young children whose voices were in the background). He said he would come the next morning, and arrived on time. He was good natured about our dogs, one of which tends to behave badly with strangers; and quickly ruled out a problem with the reservoir. He diagnosed the pump problem, gave an estimate, and left. My husband called me at work to discuss the estimate, mentioned how impressed he was by Mr. Corum's appearance, courtesy, good humor, knowledge, and professionalism; we agreed that Mr. Corum should get our business. My husband called him back, and he was able to return the same afternoon. He and his crew pulled out 280 feet of pipe, replaced the pump/motor, and replaced the pipe in about three hours. They were careful with our landscaping (although the well head is located in the middle of a garden); were diplomatic about where they placed the truck and crane; and were immaculate in their clean up. The motor cost $1,083, pipe wrap and a heat shrink kit cost $13 and $12 respectively, and labor was $350. We were pleased with the dispatch and the quality of the work. We would certainly call on this gentleman again, and recommend him without reservation.

We would not recommend Corum Engineering Design and Inspection. We called for an appointment to inspect our foundation and the general structure of our home. We found this business on Angie’s List. We scheduled an appointment for May 9, 2012 at 9:30 am. On the day of the appointment, 9:30 came and went, then 9:35… 9:45… At 9:50 I called the business and explained we had an appointment for 9:30 but that no one had arrived. The lady who answered noted the inspector must be running late. I noted running late is 5-10 minutes and generally one would expect a call or an update. She said she didn’t know he was THAT far behind and she couldn't do anything about it because she is not riding around in the car with him. Strange response. I said thank you and hung up. We expected maybe a follow up call. Fifteen more minutes went by. Nothing. At 10:06 we received a knock at the door. My husband answered and the man introduced himself as Ron Corum and seemed eager to get started with no mention of being late. We noted our appointment was at 9:30 and that it was now 10:10. He said he was sorry but that his previous client had more issues than he expected. We asked him to leave. This clearly displays a lack of professionalism and an ultimate disregard for customers, and should be a warning to anyone considering doing business with this company. * Mr. Corum's response must be addressed as letting it stand is a disservice to other consumers. The times, responses, and details he presents don’t match reality and simply don’t jive. Our appointment was for 9:30am, not 9:00am. We called Mr. Corum’s office ONCE to set the appointment and ONCE to let them know our appointment was 20 minutes past due (see phone log included). We never rescheduled. This was our original appointment time. Why would we need to call at 9:49 if he had already arrived at 9:45? They never called or made any attempt to call us as we were waiting on the porch, phones in hand, thinking he was lost and may need additional directions. Once he arrived and we waited another 5-6 minutes for him to get out of the vehicle, we went inside. He knocked on the door with his equipment in hand, a clipboard (10 minutes more, really? hadn't you already wasted 45 minutes of our time?). We provided an honest, factual account of our experience. A female made the call he sites as an angry and quot;heand quot; and we noted the conversation VERBATIM. Likely defense we were rude, angry and difficult to deal with. Mr. Corum must have us confused with another appointment. Otherwise, he has chosen to save face by not being entirely honest. 04/30 11:32 AM 865-686-1663 KNOXVILLE,TN AU 5:00 05/09 09:49 AM 865-686-1663 KNOXVILLE,TN AU 1:00

Inspector Wes McConkey showed uo a little ahead of schedule and had already started his inspection of the exterior when we arrived. He was professional and thorough, answering all my questions.Structural engineer Ron Corum was equally professional, thorough and helpful. The inspection was performed on a Friday and we had our *very* thorough report by noon on Monday. We will be renovating the house using an HUD 203k loan and plan to have Corum do the inspections. Can't recommend them highly enough.

Overall it went well. The original problem of minor settling wasn't as serious as I assumed, and he found several other issues that needed to be addressed soon. He has 27 years of engineering experience and I will call Ron Corum for any future issues of this type.

They arrived on time and did the inspection immediately.

TMI

Fantastic - I thought I was going to have to do expensive foundation repair but this inspection showed that it might be unnecessary work at this time. I saw some settling in my house and was concerned that I might need piers costing thousands of dollars. Their inspection services cost more than the standard inspections because of their engineering expertise. I would highly recommend calling them and paying the fee for an evaluation before spending large amounts for repairs that may not be needed. If you need it, they will recommend what needs to be done.