Friday, June 30, 2006

300 Pics of Paso Straw Bale House

After much procrastination, I have uploaded 300+ pictures, arranged chronologically, of the construction of the Paso Strawbale House. Here you can see up close and personal many of the issues I have previously written about. I hope this is a helpful guide to all of you current and future strawbale, and conventional home owners.

NOTE!!! This is a picture heavy page and could take time to load

Click HERE to view!

Sunday, June 11, 2006

This is how contractors do?!?!

I do not mean to beat a dead horse, but there seems to be something really wrong with how contractors/service providers treat prospective customers in San Luis Obispo County.

For example, the sub who installed my plumbing (Harvey Plumbing), they did not show up on time, did not do inventory prior to starting the job and I just realized, they did not install my sink correctly. Only one side was bolted into the wall so now the sink leans. WTF?!

R&R Heating took 6 months to install the filters for the heating unit, and 4 months to figure out why the unit would not run for more than 7 minutes before turning off. They would also make appointments and not keep them, say they fixed it when it was not fixed and pretty much ensured that the master bedroom went the entire year without a functioning heating unit. Thanks Kenny.

To be clear, these contractors were chosen by Semmes and Company and in the end the subs did do about 85-90% of what they should have.

A few more tidbits of how contractors do in SLO County:

  • The excavator DKS Construction who took weeks to fax a bid that did not contain all aspects of the job. I guess he missed all of the grading around the 1 acre building site I need to have done as well.
  • The landscaping company that promised to email a bid on 6/5/06. Still have not heard from them.
  • The water treatment companies that never called back.
  • Mayan Hardwood that never called back with a quote for columns I planned for the porch. When I showed up in person the person who helped me actually said, "I called you" after 10 minutes of discussion, she realized she did not even have the pricing information she was to call me about.
Would I have had better luck on my own, I doubt it, but it seems as if this behavior is more the rule rather than the exception when it comes to the construction related trades here in San Luis Obispo County.

I just needed to get this off my chest.