Home Repair Pros

[Don]

Long story short, this is gonna be a warranty question more than anything. Any advice or experience you can share will be appreciated.

The midwest kinda sucks sometimes, and mother nature does its best to take you out in a number of ways. In the winter it's the cold and the flying ice and stuff. In the spring/summer it tends to be f-all rain storms that last anywhere from 10 minutes to like 8 days. Anyhow, after I bought my place a few years ago, whenever we'd get a decent amount of rain my basement would flood. Not a huge deal, as it's just a giant concrete room with some storage shelving and a washer/dryer. That said, it was still less than ideal and I went about getting some estimates to fix the thing. Of course, I had questions. And I tried to explain to everyone that it wasn't so much a matter of water like coming in from the walls (there was one spot where that was an issue), but rather water coming up from below. It's actually a pretty well-known issue in this particular area of KC. We must've like filled in a river delta or some shit to build here. After going through like 4 estimates, I found a company with a reasonable estimate and good reviews, but before I signed anything I wanted to ask a few questions just to be sure of what I was getting for my $5200. So I sent him this email:

 

Then a couple days later he replied with the following, and we got the work going:

And the whole thing worked pretty well. We didn't have too many crazy storms the rest of that year, and last year was a relatively dry spring/summer here. I had an issue where the battery backup would come on out of nowhere sometimes and would blare like an alarm throughout the house. They came out a few times, and after three tries managed to fix that. No cost to me. Haven't had any issues with that for over a year now. 

But this year we've had a wetter start to spring/summer. And a couple times now I've caught maybe a half inch of standing water running 10'x2' along those floor cracks I mentioned earlier. So I call the guy out figuring this falls under the warranty. I show him the pictures, and explain the same water table rising concept I've explained to him like three times over the years. Him and I agree that the best solution is probably an additional pump closer to that side of the basement. He says he'll get me details shortly. A couple hours later he comes back at me with a $1600 work estimate. Which isn't an unreasonable price for what they'd be doing. But given the emails above, I'm not being an ass by pushing back and explaining this is warranty work, right?

[Jason]

I think I've at 1.5" of rain at my place, total, in the last 18 months. 

[Don]

1 minute ago, Jason said:

I think I've at 1.5" of rain at my place, total, in the last 18 months. 

That's called a pleasant Tuesday in May/June here.

[St1ck]

55 minutes ago, Don said:

Long story short, this is gonna be a warranty question more than anything. Any advice or experience you can share will be appreciated.

The midwest kinda sucks sometimes, and mother nature does its best to take you out in a number of ways. In the winter it's the cold and the flying ice and stuff. In the spring/summer it tends to be f-all rain storms that last anywhere from 10 minutes to like 8 days. Anyhow, after I bought my place a few years ago, whenever we'd get a decent amount of rain my basement would flood. Not a huge deal, as it's just a giant concrete room with some storage shelving and a washer/dryer. That said, it was still less than ideal and I went about getting some estimates to fix the thing. Of course, I had questions. And I tried to explain to everyone that it wasn't so much a matter of water like coming in from the walls (there was one spot where that was an issue), but rather water coming up from below. It's actually a pretty well-known issue in this particular area of KC. We must've like filled in a river delta or some shit to build here. After going through like 4 estimates, I found a company with a reasonable estimate and good reviews, but before I signed anything I wanted to ask a few questions just to be sure of what I was getting for my $5200. So I sent him this email:

 

Then a couple days later he replied with the following, and we got the work going:

And the whole thing worked pretty well. We didn't have too many crazy storms the rest of that year, and last year was a relatively dry spring/summer here. I had an issue where the battery backup would come on out of nowhere sometimes and would blare like an alarm throughout the house. They came out a few times, and after three tries managed to fix that. No cost to me. Haven't had any issues with that for over a year now. 

But this year we've had a wetter start to spring/summer. And a couple times now I've caught maybe a half inch of standing water running 10'x2' along those floor cracks I mentioned earlier. So I call the guy out figuring this falls under the warranty. I show him the pictures, and explain the same water table rising concept I've explained to him like three times over the years. Him and I agree that the best solution is probably an additional pump closer to that side of the basement. He says he'll get me details shortly. A couple hours later he comes back at me with a $1600 work estimate. Which isn't an unreasonable price for what they'd be doing. But given the emails above, I'm not being an ass by pushing back and explaining this is warranty work, right?

Have you tried duct tape? 

[Don]

1 minute ago, St1ck said:

Have you tried duct tape? 

Shit, gotta rethink.

[gotbeer]

Did you try getting a second opinion?  The second might tell you give you some information on if the guy fucked up.  But by the sounds of it, sounds like there is too much water for the pump to get out. How much are the pumps he is putting in?  If the original was $5200, and now he's going at $1600, it could be he is just charging you for the extra pump.  

[Don]

5 minutes ago, gotbeer said:

Did you try getting a second opinion?  The second might tell you give you some information on if the guy fucked up.  But by the sounds of it, sounds like there is too much water for the pump to get out. How much are the pumps he is putting in?  If the original was $5200, and now he's going at $1600, it could be he is just charging you for the extra pump.  

Haven’t got a second opinion, but I’m fairly certain a well-placed second pump will solve the issue. The original $5200 was for a pump with battery back up (so it’ll still work if I lose power, which is definitely a thing here), plus French drains all the way around my basement. So way more work/product than what is needed now. Roughly $1500 for a simple sump pump install is pretty standard.

[AngelsLakersFan]

I wouldn't expect this to be covered under warrantee. Maybe if you bring it up he takes a couple hundred bucks off and you both can feel good about it.

[Don]

8 minutes ago, AngelsLakersFan said:

I wouldn't expect this to be covered under warrantee. Maybe if you bring it up he takes a couple hundred bucks off and you both can feel good about it.

Just seems like a dry basement was explicitly guaranteed.

[AngelsLakersFan]

3 minutes ago, Don said:

Just seems like a dry basement was explicitly guaranteed.

I think it's debatable if this is all you have to go on. His use of the word 'should' would've prompted me to ask about this situation explicitly before moving forward. From what you shared it's unclear what options you were presented with. One pump, two pumps, battery, no battery etc. This reads like you selecting a package that wasn't quite enough for your needs as opposed to the system failing.

[Don]

2 minutes ago, AngelsLakersFan said:

I think it's debatable if this is all you have to go on. His use of the word 'should' would've prompted me to ask about this situation explicitly before moving forward. From what you shared it's unclear what options you were presented with. One pump, two pumps, battery, no battery etc. This reads like you selecting a package that wasn't quite enough for your needs as opposed to the system failing.

In my opinion, I stated my needs and I was promised a solution that would work. The fact that they didn’t provide an adequate solution when I explicitly explained the problem isn’t on me. They never gave me a different option. They just said it would solve my problem.