Foundation Replacement Saga

A lot of people come to this site having heard about our horrific foundation replacement experience and wanting the dirt (heh). It's been my opinion that just letting people filter through the archives for themselves was valuable enough, but lately I've had many requests for a distilled version of the story. This is it: basically a guided tour through the posts from the time period in question.

In the Beginning

We knew when we bought the house that it needed a new foundation. The old one was brick, from 1876, and was plagued with rot and had up to 45 degrees of rotation.

We planned to do the foundation within a year of buying the house, but our insurance company threw us a curve ball by threatening our homeowner's insurance if we didn't paint the house immediately. The house hadn't been painted since 1958, and had lead paint, and the whole job cost tens of thousands of dollars, making us put the foundation work off. We were also dithering over whether we wanted a basement for tool storage and so forth. It was June, 2004 before we even began work on preparing for the foundation replacement. In early July, we refinanced the house to get money to do the job, hired an engineer, and interviewed contractors.

Willson/Bailey

The general contractor we hired was Willson/Bailey, of Richmond, California. Willson/Bailey is operated by Scott Bailey, and he represented himself to us as an expert in foundations. "Foundations are my bread and butter," were his words. After signing a contract with us in early December, he said he would begin work as soon as the rain stopped (at that time we had six inches of standing water in the basement and the delay seemed prudent), but shortly thereafter he decided to start work in late December/early January, citing a lack of other work. Here are the posts about his work on the project for the next few months:

All Hell Breaks Loose

On March 11, Noel and I were driving home from a visit to the beach when Scott called us and said the engineer had been out to the site for an inspection and that we would need to add grade beams to support the side walls of the basement (because he had been mistaken that the slab was non-structural), and also he was concerned about the soil condition. Scott assured us that we didn't need a soils engineer and that he thought the engineer was over-reacting. When we got off the phone with him, we had a minor disagreement about the situation and decided to call our engineer, whom we both trust as an honest and conservative person. The engineer was very firm with us: he urged us to hire a geotechnical engineer to check the soil under the house, because he said that the gravel Scott had put down was extremely soft and he was not sure of its bearing capacity (ie, its ability to hold the house up).

On March 24, Scott and I met with Alan Kropp and Associates, geotechnical engineers (and highly recommended). The next day, Kropp came out again to meet with our structural engineer. Our structural engineer (when you start having to modify the engineer's title, a project is in trouble) spent some time doing new drawings to account for the conditions under the house, and we spent a lot of time waiting.

We ended up having to put in a mat slab foundation with an ability to support a six-foot cantilever. In laymen's terms, this means that the basement floor had to be strong enough to hold the house up even if a hole twelve feet wide opened up under the center of the house. That is a non-trivial foundation.

Lawyers

Scott suggested we speak to a lawyer, saying he had done so. We consulted with a couple of lawyers about the situation. I will leave out what was said. You can guess what sorts of words were used.

In late April, we had a meeting with Scott (discussed somewhat here) where he refused to continue with the job unless we paid him what amounted to more than twice as much as was in the original contract (he also accused us of setting him up to be sued). We recorded most of that meeting on audio tape (with his knowledge) until he refused to talk any more on the record, when we turned the tape recorder off. I don't think much of people who are unwilling to speak on the record about whether they will complete a contract they signed.

Finally, Scott agreed to finish the sump drain to the street and wait until the ground had dried before proceeding; there was the narrow chance that it would dry up enough to make a standard foundation acceptable. The next day he did the drain work, which was the last work he did on the site.

In May, Scott removed all his major tools and equipment from the site. He took down the tarps over the front of our house, and his sign. Rain continued to fall on the bare sand around the house. This is what the site looked like: a mess.

On May 27, our lawyer received a note from Willson/Bailey's lawyer asking for $126,000 to complete only a small portion of the job, and asking us to take the site down. In order to try to foster an open dialogue in order to save our house, we temporarily took the site down for two months. As far as we can tell, we have said nothing on this site that falls under the legal definition of defamation, but Willson/Bailey has declined to tell us what they find so objectionable. At any rate, it was a small step to make in order to get him to the negotiating table. Keeping the site down indefinitely was never an option.

I was rapidly losing patience with the fuckwad. I spent a lot of time stewing in rage. In the meantime, our neighbor's lawn began to collapse into the pit under our house. We had our geotechnical engineers monitor the neighbor's house, but the situation was now critical.

In addition to the bullying us about the web site, it was pretty clear that Willson/Bailey was not going to finish the job. A meeting with Willson/Bailey, all our lawyers, and our newly hired construction manager included such highlights as my having to tell Scott's lawyer to stop yelling at me. As soon as it was clear that they were not going to abide by the fixed price contract we had signed, we fired Willson/Bailey, then reviewed every entry and just put the site back up. I consider this information to be a public service.

Moving On

When we fired Willson/Bailey, Noel and I made a walk-through of the materials left on site. We were not sure what belonged to Willson/Bailey, so we asked them to identify the equipment they believed to be theirs and give us a list so we could return it to them. They refused to do so. In the mean time, our CM suggested we put up a fence.

We hired Counterforce to finish the job. I should note here that Counterforce really saved our butts in a bad situation. Not many contractors would want to walk into a job as political as this one, and certainly not at a competitive price. Plus, they had an opening in their schedule that fit perfectly with our needs. You should hire them to do your foundation work. If your house is not in the Bay Area, you should move here so you can hire them.

On August 1, Noel and I spent the evening packing up all of Willson/Bailey's things that we could find that were not involved in maintaining the sump system or shoring. That felt so good.

On August 3, Scott decided to show up at the house to gather his things, claiming he had a right to wander over our property at will, claiming things he was unable to inventory for us. We had placed his things at the end of the driveway, and we barred his way and told him he was not welcome on our property. He trespassed, so we called the police. Somehow, the cop talked me out of pressing charges.

While this was going on, we were trying to get the permits, which were in Scott's name, transferred to us. He refused to do so without a completely unreasonable settlement agreement. Fortunately, he reckoned without the wonderful, helpful people at the City of Alameda, who made everything good for us and even managed to save us a few hundred dollars in special hauling fees. You can only hope to have such a great team of people in your city.

Counterforce

August 3 was also the day Counterforce showed up for work. They hit the ground running and the job was a whirlwind from there.

Drama Queen

In early October, Willson/Bailey sent another letter protesting the web site to our lawyer, suggesting that Scott was prepared to file suit against us for defamation. Our first-amendment specialist lawyer (another bad sign about a project) replied by basically calling his bluff. We have not heard from him on the subject since then, so I'm guessing the whole thing about how he was ready to file the case immediately was just more bullying.