One day last spring I was called by a homeowner to look at a home that I was told had a home drainage problem. Another day at the business of being a home drainage contractor. Upon arriving at the property and meeting the homeowner, I was confronted with a home that, I later found out, had sold for $1,100,000. and was simply a home drainage nightmare. But this was not to be the greatest challenge of the morning.
The homeowner was quite animated from the start, and was quick to remind me of how hip he was to home drainage, and all the various home drainage solution methods he had already employed to solve the home drainage problem. I assumed, with his opening statement, that there was no drainage problem to be solved anymore. Why did he call me?
I asked him, after listening to his self proclaimed home drainage success story multiple times, why, if he had been so successful at solving the home drainage problem, was he calling me to look at the home at this time? We would look at the crawl space to provide the answer.
My question became even more curious when, upon entering the crawl space, I fell through 4 feet of groundwater standing in the lowest area of his crawl space, thinking it was probably 6″ of groundwater, like the rest of the crawl space. The homeowner thought that was quite funny. So did I actually at that point. Yeh, thanks guy. No heads up on that dive. The non-disclosed stumbling block. What other surprises did this guy have waiting for me?
Even as I emerged from the crawl space, quite wet in waders, the homeowner was still pointing out what he thought now needed to be done to solve the groundwater problem. Just pump it out. He kept on saying it. Just pump it out. That is all he contended was needed, because he had done it before, and it works fine. My mind raced as I wondered how this character could even be so stupid and bold as to straight faced attempt to lay that garbage on someone whom he already had respect for as a home drainage professional. I wondered how thick this guys skin really was by this time.
This homeowner was really getting on my nerves at this point, and I had just met him. It is very rare for someone to get a rise emotionally from me in that short of time.
He started the home drainage discussion by saying he knew hand excavated french drains were the best, but he did not want to pay for them, as his home was sold and in escrow, and he didn’t have the money to do so. Now this guy was looking like a real sob story, as well as a real jerk. I was about to offer to strike up the string section of the orchestra and grad a fiddle to play the lead in his sob story.
There was no realtor signs on the front of the home to tip me off prior to this meeting. Nothing to show me that the home had been sold or was even on the market.
In the spirit of trying to help this sad guy, I was about to pay for it. I saw him as a sad overworked, control type, crying out for help but feeling too vulnerable, not having a conclusion himself, after many attempts to solve the home drainage groundwater problem himself, while getting no ultimate answers to solve the home drainage problems he was facing.
Frustration is normal at this time for a homeowner with that kind of home drainage nightmare. I watched and envisioned that he was, as he stood in front of me at that time, perhaps a reflection of his own world business superiority, where in his business he was the top dog, and seldom was without a helper, method, or suggestion to solve any problem, what ever it was. So it was, against my better judgement, I thought, let’s help this guy, right? I would continue to explain the necessity for installing a groundwater system that removes the groundwater during hard rains on the outside of the home prior to it saturating the soil at the foundation wall creating hydrostatic pressure, and groundwater leaking below grade into his crawl space.
Somehow this guy thought that intimidation alone would get him what he wanted. So he did not let up the intimidation attempt. His attitude got worse from bad. No responsibility, legally or financially, and out of town with the dough, was his obvious plan.
You can’t have both sage home drainage knowledge and a many failed home drainage attempts at the same time, at the same property, and make any self professed success story fly. It amazes me to this day that he could even continue his rant. He was really starting to bug me now.
Past time to shake this guys hand and say thanks but no thanks and good luck.
He still had the same home drainage problem, only worse, even after he had employed numerous home drainage voo doo methods, stolen from other drainage contractors most likely, to solve it. This whole process had blown this guys mind so bad. He was a real mess. My empathy again trapped me into staying further.
His formerly attempted home drainage methods had created a worse groundwater problem than he had before he started messing with it. So I quietly listened, wanting this guy to get it all off his chest first. Which in time he did.
When he finally quit hyperventilating, sweating and talking, I explained that if he was interested in solving his groundwater problems, he would need to have an open mind. He seemed to calm down some. He seemed to sense my frustration and calmed down a bit, feeling my counter attack of knowledge might have some validity, seeing as I dared to confront him with his home drainage failures, even in the face of his attempts to control and intimidate me.
After all, he called me to solve the drainage problem, only after he had messed it up sweetly, more than once. All stupid stuff that no one with any degree of information on home drainage would fall for. Why this guy thought I would even give a damn about his opinions concerning home drainage at that point was a mystery to me, and still is. He never gave up the contention that he was right.
After I asked the homeowner a series of questions about the symptoms of his groundwater entry he became frustrated with me, because he thought that I was going in a different direction, and suggesting a method of groundwater removal that he had already ruled out. Which he had. He had started out saying he did not want french drains of any type,” wasn’t I listening”? So lets, ad condescending to this guys arsenal of control methods. He was management material alright. The boss of all things and concepts apparently. He just wanted a bid for me to do what he wanted done, period. “Was I just stupid or something”?
He didn’t want to pay for what he described as “some expensive french drain that he didn’t need”.
Yep, you guessed it. I should have dropped this dude right off, just from those condescending remarks alone. Time to shake this guys hand and leave, for sure now, right?
In this case the homeowner just wanted me to use a portable sump pump with a garden hose, go for a swim in his crawl space to pump out all the water, which was 4 feet deep in places, and pretend everything was going to be alright in the future for the new buyers. Even give the home buyers a guarantee. What? Guarantee what, that the groundwater will always enter the crawl space.
Yes, you read it right, 4 feet of groundwater below a million dollar plus home, only 5 years old. It probably had been that way from the first winter rains after it was built.
This nasty homeowner wanted me to agree with him, as I have stated, and write a proposal to sump pump out the groundwater, at a very low price, without any work being done to prevent the groundwater from coming in again from the outside of the home, by installing better foundation grade with compacted dirt and installing hand excavated french drains about 18″ from the foundation wall, at the base of the compacted splash block of clay and dirt that enhances rain runoff to the hand excavated french drain.
Without proposing any hand excavated french drains to keep the groundwater from filling up the crawl space, the effort would be worthless. The groundwater would just fill up the crawl space again, much to the dismay of the new homeowners. I told this homeowner so. It was then I found out that he had already sold the home, had the home in escrow, and that the home inspection had started this all off. It all made sense now. The picture was crystal clear.
He thought he was going to just skip quietly out of town with his money, leaving a pair of sad new homeowners behind to chase his trail, hate and attack the contractor, or both.
This homeowner thought he was going to just not disclose anything, be a tough guy, and that he would still survive law suits and perhaps assassination. Just kidding about the assassination. He would have been just fine sticking the contractor and the new buyers with a worse future nightmare.
The home being described was a beautiful tudor style home with ground sloping to it from heavily wooded hillsides on three of four sides of the property. This was a text book example of what bad topography and bull headed cheap homeowners can contribute to a home drainage problem. This is one of the most common causes of groundwater problems.
He wanted me to give the home a clean bill of health, after I pumped the crawl space out, and convey to the new home buyers that the treatment of just pumping out the crawlspace would solve the groundwater damage and any associated future health problems, or drainage problems, that would sure to get worse with time.
I almost wrote “give the home a clean bull of health”, it would have been more appropriate I think.
I told this homeowner I was not interested in just pumping out his crawlspace, and that I would pass all together, as I stuck out my hand to shake his hand, say thanks for the laughs, and leave. He declined to shake my hand, and started, what he thought was, intimidation, again. The mood changed from bad to worse, but again my exit was circumvented.
He looked at me in rage, and started his rant again. The actual response was attempted intimidation, disgust and anger. He said, pretty much to get ego control back, and to just goof on me, “well you’re just some kind of a forensic drainage contractor, aren’t you? You can just look around and figure things out, huh? Blah Blah Blah. There he sat staring at me, eyes all bugged out, looking like the saddest of all humans; as I said, “well, I guess I am the forensic drainage contractor, now that you mention it”. I have a reputation for getting it done. I said to him, “I told you that without hand excavated french drains you would not solve your groundwater problem, and the homes crawl space would continue to fill with groundwater when it rains hard. You are not interested in doing the right thing, so goodbye.”
He confessed, in anger, that he was not trying to solve the home drainage problem at all, or do the right thing. Didn’t I get it? Back to the stupid comment again. What a mess this guy was, but not so much unlike some others like him out there in home selling land America.
Although he knew that he could be prosecuted for non-disclosure, he obviously thought it was well within his rights to not disclose anything at all, close on the home without putting any more money into it, and dealing with what ever would come of it never, or later at worst. I couldn’t tell you exactly what this twisted dude really was thinking.
He just kept coming back to; what was wrong with me making some money and just walking away after pumping out his crawlspace and writing a letter to the new buyers. I reminded him that I was the one that could never walk away. I would be stuck with the failure in the eyes of the new home buyers when the crawl space filled up again. Legal problems. Bad institutional advertising to say the least, even if I never got a phone call from the pissed off buyers.
I told this nasty homeowner, no thanks, and that I would not be his fall guy. He was told that I would not inherit a pissed off homeowner who later would ask me what I had done to solve the home drainage problem. I knew the crawl space would fill up again without the proper installation of hand excavated french drains.
I slowed everything down as best I could at this point, and explained that if he paid me to just sump pump out his crawl space without installing hand excavated french drains to stop the groundwater entry again during the next hard rains, that the crawl space would just fill with groundwater again every time it rained hard. This problem would get worse, not stay the same or get magically better with time.
I explained that the situation was not something he was likely to legally avoid as well, and asked if the groundwater history of his home was disclosed on his state home disclosure, as required by Oregon State Law Statutes. No answer to that one. Just a dirty look.
If he had gotten his way, he would have left the new homeowners of a million dollar home with a bad drainage problem and every reason to sue the contractor who said he was going to solve the home drainage problem, as well as the homeowner who hired him to get those terrible results.
I further told him, as he stood there red faced and muttering, that I was not about to be his roadkill, as someones scapegoat, while he skipped off into the sunset with the closing check, leaving me to hold the bag with a pissed off home buyer.
That one may have been a little too harsh for him, as his mood went from angry to not very nice at all. Exit stage left. So bye bye, no thanks chump. No hand shake attempt this time though.
I said to him, “you can be mad, but if I was a doctor, I would say you seem to have the corpse laid out right here, dead as a door nail at your own hands, as in the ruined crawl space and a stopped real estate transaction, why did you call me now? At the same time you are trying to get me to buy into your contention that we just have not used enough cpr to revive this dead corpse.”
This guy had lost me completely, and I could see his home transaction going up in smoke as we spoke, as most reputable home drainage contractors would have treated him in the same manner as I was forced to.
Only the flim flam man contractor scab would take that one on. They look for those all the time. And then, only because they will not be around when the phone call about the groundwater again in the crawl space comes in.
I left him muttering something. I determined at that point it was more important for him to be right, than to raise the dead. A bad analogy I know.
Yes, I guess it is like being the forensic drainage contractor. The one fact that this homeowner could not disagree with was that he called me after the home drainage problem was treated, more than once, by himself, without french drains.
He was destined for future problems with groundwater without hand excavated french drains to keep the groundwater from entering his crawlspace. He wanted to sell the home at the price of $1,100,000. and give the home drainage problem to someone else who could bitch to the drainage contractor, ie. “the forensic drainage contractor” about how the home drainage contractor had done work to solve the home drainage problem, ie. probably a sump pump installation, and that the home drainage problem had not been solved, and was in fact worse. I did not want to be his fall guy, so I passed.
Expect the same behavior from me if you ever call me out to the same scenario.
He probably knew he would find someone willing to play the part of the fall guy and take his money to just pump out the crawl space, as the phone book is full of sump pump installers ready to rip you off rather than refer you to someone who can install hand excavated french drains that will actually solve the groundwater problem.
Sump pump installers out number home drainage contractors installing hand excavated french drains by huge numbers. Sump pump installations are used many times as a ploy to convince the home buyers that a home drainage solution has been installed, giving the home sellers time to boogy out of town with the check before the fireworks start next winter.
Protect your money and health by not buying a home drainage problem that can not be solved.
Read this website for information to help you dodge the flim flam man seller, who wants to unload his home drainage problems on you.