Central Vermont Construction Inc

The company's website says it's BBB accredited and claims it has an A+ rating. The company has an F rating and is not accredited. [*** Link removed ***] Get a contract from this company as the owners make things up after they mess things up and add to their estimate in the middle of a project and it's hit or miss whether the company sends workers who know what they're doing. I hired this contractor for a paving job August 2022. He did a good job, although it ended up $4000 more than the $8000 quote. So I asked him to do another job. He forgot about me and in October 2022 I called to remind him and he promised he'd get a crew there before winter kicked in. The owner sent an employee to do the job. The employee didn't have enough workers, so he brought another worker from the company who was inexperienced and a friend who had never done paving before. The supervisor said he usually wasn't allowed to use the paving machinery. He said the owners operated the big machines, but they had gone to Florida for the winter. (The owner told me at the prior job that he and his wife operated the machinery as they didn't trust the employees to do so.) The supervisor let one of the workers operate the machine to train him and he dumped too much pavement, some on the town sidewalk and to correct it, the workers pushed the pavement toward the center of the driveway and created a hump where the driveway used to be flat. The owner had told me that they would remove gravel before paving, so that the pavement was even with the remaining gravel driveway. The owner said his workers would spread the removed gravel on the remaining gravel section of the drive and regrade it as part of the job The workers merely laid the pavement down on the existing gravel drive without removing any. There is now a hump in the middle of the pavement and a 3 to 4 inch drop to the gravel driveway and the pavement is 3 or 4 inches higher than the lawn and gravel driveway. Potholes have developed where the cars drop down from pavement to gravel. The hump makes the vehicles drop harder. It's bad enough that it could damage struts on a vehicle. Guess I have a free speed hump. :) I called and texted the owner, Mike Hamel, in November 2022 and he said the drop to the gravel driveway is normal. I know it is not as I've had a driveway that was part pavement and gravel before. Also plenty of VT roads go from pavement to gravel and there isn't a 3 or 4 inch different in height and a drop. Owner didn't respond from November 2022 to March 2023. The owner responded to me on March 08, 2023 and said that he had not been checking messages, because he was taking care of some serious issues and says when the snow thawed he intended to come and look at the issue. May. Texted the owner and owner said he was still in Florida and that I was "on his list" when he returned. June 28th. Texted the owner as I hadn't heard from him. Owner wrote that he had looked at it and that it was a little high at the sidewalk but was fine. He said that the only solution was to pave the rest of the drive. Which is not what he told me when I hired him. He is going to do nothing other than let me pay him to correct his mess. I've downloaded photos of his other work from his Facebook page and drives he's done are not raised like mine, the majority being slightly lower than the adjacent lawns or transition to gravel or the street. June 30. Had another driveway guy and a general contractor look at the paving job and both say done wrong and way too high. Unfortunately, no contract but I do have people to testify not done to industry standards, if I should choose to file a small claim or file with the State's Attorney for Consumer Affairs. But the least I can do is to let people know what can happen if they hire this contractor. You may get great work or you may be seriously disappointed. And the owner will justify anything so he does not have to bear the expense to fix something.

They were excellent to deal with and I now have a beautiful driveway that once was gravel. I will hire them again!

Great job, good crew. It was a tricky driveway paving job, and they paid close attention to my instructions. We're delighted with the outcome.

This is not a reputable business! The shoddy work, overcharging on invoices and lack of integrity are completely unprofessional and unacceptable. After paying @ $140k for roofing and structural repairs, the roof is leaking in multiple places and Mike Scamel does not return texts or calls. I would never recommend or do business with them ever again and neither should you!!!

I have contacted Central VT Construction on 7/19 and received an estimate of between $3000 and $3500 after the owner, Mike, took the measurement based on Google map. I offered him to come and take a look at the driveway in person, however, he declined and said he doesn't need to. I told him about how our driveway settled quite a bit so there's about a 3-4 inch gap between the driveway and garage on the LHS and about 2inch gap on the RHS. So he was already aware at the time that there will need to be additional build up of the driveway in order to make the driveway to garage surface to be level. The contractor then showed up unexpectedly without any announcement on 8/22, one month after the initial phone call and estimate. Without my (owner's) permission he started digging out my cement driveway, calls me at work, and told me that he's never seen a driveway thicker than mine and that it could be up to $4500. If I knew the work was going to cost me $4500 from the beginning, I would not have selected Central VT Construction to do my driveway. So I hurried home from work to make sure the workers have restroom access, etc. They already hauled away the cement between the sidewalk and Pheasant Way (main road) and was working on the main driveway from the sidewalk side. As they were digging and lifting the broken up cement, the thickness of the driveway I observed was about 4 inches, an industry standard (minimum) for a cement driveway. Perhaps other builders cut corners and don't lay cement driveway with the required thickness, I don't know. Or they never dug up cement driveway before, but only worked on cement sidewalks. I just don't know. They kept insisting how thick the drive way is and that they now need to get a jackhammer in order to break up the cement. If they knew they were gonna work on breaking up the cement driveway, they sound like they were just unprepared. They really didn't use the jackhammer much and broke apart rest of the driveway with a front loader. After the cements were hauled away, they laid down gravel and dirt, packed it down with a roller and left for the day. This was Monday. They came back on Wednesday and started laying down the asphalt. On Monday, I spoke with Mike about what I can do to patch up the cracks in the sidewalk. He said he doesn't advise using cement patches sold at Home Depot; that they would break up again. I asked him what else can be done and he said that he can lay asphalt right on top of the current sidewalk. I asked him that if he could throw that service in for free. Begrudgingly he said yes. I let them to do their job and worked from home; only checking once in a while to see how they're progressing. I bought them 2 large pizzas for lunch from a local restaurant to show my appreciation. The work was done and I checked to see what it looked like. One thing I noticed immediately was that the LHS of the driveway did not cover the same area as the old driveway. The owner told me that his new asphalt driveway was 1 foot wider than the old cement driveway, but that was not true at all. His own worker pointed out by digging under the gravel to show that the new driveway was about 5 to 6 inches short of the edge covered by the old driveway (separation line between mulch and no mulch area). That required additional patch job to extend LHS edge further in. I would not have pointed out if this caused no issue, however, my driveway curves slightly and I would be running my tire into the garden area all the time. The patch work was completed and the workers were packing up to leave to their next job. Two days have passed since he gave me a rough number of $4500, so I asked him if he was going to bill me right then and there. He said he's going to send me the bill for the driveway and the work on the sidewalk. I reminded him about our conversation on Monday about sidewalk job was to be thrown in for free and he just snorted and said "I don't think so". When I finally received the invoice from Central VT Construction via email on 8/30, I was quite upset to see $4700 bill. I reminded the owner that he said to expect upto $3500 initially and then said it might be up to $4500. He changes tune again and said that I agreed to estimate of $5000 on Monday, 8/22. He never said anything like that to me. I was already furious he said it might cost me $1000 to $1500 more than initial estimate. I would never agree to $2000 more than initial estimate even if they already hauled away a part of my driveway without my permission.

the job went very well I would tell anyone who will listen to use them they are very good people to do job right the first time

After the work was completed, I noticed that there were several thinly-applied areas and that there were marks and streaks in evidence. The company's representative stated that the applied sealer had soaked into the driveway surface due to the surface porosity. The representative noted that if the streaking did not fade over the winter, an additional coat would be applied.
The streaks did NOT fade and, furthermore, the snow plowing over the winter caused more scrapes to appear in the finished surface. It was almost as if the sealer was "peeling" off. I advised the company of these issues in August of 2011. The company identified all as normal wear, would not accept any responsibility for either the streaks or scrapes, and never returned to apply the second coat.