Basement Waterproofing: My Experience with Vulcan

This is a follow-up to a forum inquiry I posted several months ago.  I own a PS brownstone with a finished basement.  We have had intermittant problems with water seeping into our basement and I had decided to definitively handle the problem.  I hired a civil engineer, specializing in water issues (the best $500 you can spend…get an independent and qualified assessment of where the water is coming from) who determined that the water was primarily coming from a rising water table beneath the slab of the house.  He determined that little water was seeping in from the outside of the house and my primary effort should be to capture water rising from the water table. I had two Brooklyn/Queens-based contractors provide an estimate on French drains and a sump pump system and also got an estimate from Vulcan, that multi-state franchise operation.  Vulcan came in $1600 cheaper than the private guys and all three provide a written guarantee.  Ultimately, after reading a few responses to my inquiries here and meeting with all three contractors, I opted to go with Vulcan. Vulcan did exactly what they said they would do: they jackhammered around the periphery of my basement (after I had flooring tile and linoleum taken up, my washer and dryer unhooked and moved and all my furniture covered with drop cloths), installed a perforated drain pipe connected to a sump pump and then backfilled the pit with gravel and cement.  They left the place as promised: full of dust, but with the pit level with the floor.  However, there was just one problem, one I consider significant and one that might justify others to consider paying the extra money to deal with a private contractor:  they decided to put the sump pump in a different location than we had agreed…they put it under my washing machine.  They claim to have done this because the location where we had agreed to put the sump pump had not been adequately cleared (a single wood shelf was not removed to provide enough clearance).  The job foreman did not call me to discuss this.  Nor did he speak with my wife, who was in the house at the time the work was being done.  He simply encountered an obstacle which, in my opinion, could have easily been overcome and made a unilateral decision to relocate the sump pump.  Now, with the washing machine re-installed, I have no access to the sump pump without removing the machine (120 pounds, plus hot-and-cold water lines attached).  If the pump fails, gets clogged or otherwise malfunctions, I’m in deep, in more than one way.  There’s nowhere else in the basement for the washer. Calls to the salesman with whom I agreed to the terms of the job and to corporate offices were met with only blame directed against me.  Sure, the shelf should have been removed, but a job foreman who truly believes in customer service would have taken three minutes to call me or my wife and get the authorization to smash the guts out of the lousy shelf in order to put the sump pump where it belonged.  Caveat emptor.

anon552

in Cellar 13 years and 2 months ago

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restorationcontractor | 13 years and 2 months ago

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Ah the joys of using a low bid contractor;  “Vulcan came in $1600 cheaper than the private guys” “They left the place as promised: full of dust” “single wood shelf was not removed” etc.  My advice, take the $1600 you “saved” using these guys and have a professional who cares (and may charge more) come in and redo the work so that you are happy with the location of the sump pump and move on. I don’t mean to be harsh, just count yourself lucky it could have been a lot worse. I just saw a job where the low bid contractor was thrown off, the level of stupidity regarding the work he had done was surprising even to me. There are going to wind up being some costly fixes involved.

BSDOD | 13 years and 2 months ago

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Would you mind sharing your engineer, I want to finally tackle my basement this summer

snowman2 | 13 years and 2 months ago

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A sump pump requires regular maintenance.  Locating it under a washer is totally unacceptable.  If they will not come back to move it, file DCA complaint as recommended above.  Be persistent with the DCA – they respond to the squeeky wheel.

greenmountain | 13 years and 2 months ago

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I checked.  Vulcan is a licensed NYC HIC with Consumer Affairs.  Did that have any bearing on why you hired them?  Did you file a complaint on line?  As a licensed HIC myself, I already paid your legal expense.  If you won’t file a complaint, could you please explain why not? Only about 500 complaints were made last year and there are about 1,400 licensed contractors.  I don’t know how many complaints were against licensed vs unlicensed contractors.  A big specialized firm like Vulcan might have lower rates on Workers comp insurance.  So the higher fees of the other bids might not correlate to better quality or customer service. I am interested in improving relations between contractors and clients.  A lot of us are.