Mh Construction & Concrete

Had 10 concrete piers poured for a small project. I stressed the importance prior to the work starting that they all must be level. I thought they knew how to do this, but they did not. Two piers are over an inch too low and two others are not even plumb (tilted). They didn't backfill the holes around the sono tubes, so a couple of the concrete piers tipped. Just bad craftsmanship and horrible execution. I regret this.

Had MH Construction and Concrete demolish an old basement walkout and add some concrete steps down to where the old doorway was. During this time we agreed that all work would funnel off our driveway and not go through our yard. Job starts, and they dump a bunch of materials on our driveway, even though we discussed that's where we wanted to funnel all equipment through and insist they need to use the lawn to move their equipment. Surely they’ll fill in the lawn damage with dirt when they’re done right? Nope. Demo goes seemingly quick, although they left a bunch of concrete chunks everywhere that I still need to clean up despite it being part of the job to haul away the old concrete.

As they poured the new retaining wall some of the forms blew out and I’m sure that happens, but it caused our wall to be not straight and have a wavy free-form shape/finish. At this point we let them know we weren’t happy with how this was looking. I was told by Mike that they weren’t happy either but to “trust the process” and it would be remedied. Some quick googling leads me to understand that spotty areas can be patched up and then polished to fix all this up and look like a normal form wall. Gave them the benefit of the doubt a decided to “trust the process”. Mike even mentioned that they could skim coat it or something when they finish up. Cool, this is all going to be fine right? Well this never happened. We got an invoice one day with a bunch of issues and we had a bit of back and forth to get some of it fixed.

Part of this project was also to install a drain to manage water, of their design. They did install a drain, but didn’t install a drain cover, insisting that was always my responsibility. I thought this was weird too; they’re supposed to own the project end to end and left us with an open pipe? Whatever, we go seek out a drain cover. I’m assured by Mike that this drain should hold up to a couple of “monsoons”. In the smallest rain storms this drain backs up and floods the basement. Why does this happen? Perhaps because the stairs are 1.5 feet wider than we agreed to, perhaps the drain is undersized. I try to leverage the 1 year workmanship warranty to fix the drainage issue. After all, they designed it, installed it, and back filled that part of the yard. I’m told it’s my problem and my yard has drainage issues even though they back filled it. Nothing has changed about my yard since they worked this job so it’s a bit frustrating they wouldn’t spend the time to remedy this.

At the end of the project there was still yard damage, they spread gravel all over our grass even though they left it on our driveway for a month (so it would be easier to clean up and not be on the grass) and a large hill of dirt, issues with the wall and steps they poured. They refused to fix a lot of this but fixed the quick things. They fixed one of the steps that wasn’t flat, but the “fix” has since started to crack. They removed the sharp rebar and cleaned up some of the artifacts of the forms breaking, but not all of them. They didn’t level the top of the wall, instead told me to deal with it and shim whatever I build.

Overall, we were left with poor finish, wavy wall, inconsistent steps and a drain we have to redo. When you pay a pro you expect a quality finish like they advertise on their website/social media. You also expect them to clean up after themselves. I’ve attached some photos of what we were left with to clean up ourselves. If you hire this company, make sure you’re very clear in how you want them to clean up, finish, and what is and isn’t covered in their warranty.