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Addition

9 years ago

Question for contractors. We added a studio to our home several months ago. Water is coming up through the concrete floor. Not a lot, more like the condensation you would find under a glass. In fact, we only find it under things we lift off the concrete. We believe the issues is because an existing sidewalk connected to the porch that butts up to the new studio is sloped so that water is pooling up against the side of the house. Obviously this is a problem and needs to be fixed. The question is who is responsible? Should the contractor have been aware of the sloped concrete and the likely problem or is it on us? Of course, we expected the addition to be weather proof.

Second question. We also had a new bathroom installed. Soon after the completion we had a problem with plumbing. Turns out that our existing plumbing system and overflow could not handle the extra pressure and waste from the new toilet. It ended up spilling raw sewage under the house. It seems to me that the contractor should have taken the exiting plumbing into consideration when adding a new bathroom and made changes to accommodate the new load. The contractor is maintaining that he is not responsible as the failure was in our exiting system, even though it was not designed to handle a three bathroom setup.

Advice?

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Comments (2)

PRO
Joseph Corlett, LLC
9 years ago
The sidewalk can be slab jacked, which is pumping grout under the slabs until the proper pitch is obtained. It's less expensive than replacement.

Your contractor knows how much weight he can place in the back of his pickup without failure. He had an obligation to know how much he could add to your plumbing system without failure too.
User
9 years ago
Unless you had a plumber send a camera down your main drain, there was no way to know that it was in such poor shape as to not handle the additional flow without breaking. If there had been no past issues with sewage flow, there was no reason to suspect that there would be a future issue. It would not be a normal part of any renovation to scope an assumed intact and functioning pipe. It's not fun, but that issue is yours to own.

As far as the condensation/moisture on the slab, there isn't remotely enough informaton to diagnose the issue, much less assign responsibility. Who did the design work and created the specs for the job? Who decided that the location where you placed the addition would auallly work? Is the space climate controlled? Was a vapor barrier under the slab used? Who assessed the site runoff and water management? Is the contractor a licensed and insured GC or some type of handyman? How did you decide on using him? Was the project properly permitted and inspected?
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