After searching every builder in Cincinnati we finally decided on Ryan Homes. They seemed to have the most flexible financing then anyone else. We closed on our home in Aug of 03. I lived about 25 miles away from the construction site at the time. I made the trip every single day after work and on the weekends to inspect. I did not miss one single day during the entire build process. Basically that got me no where.
First couple of weeks everything was going pretty smooth. Then I stopped over to find my new furnace and all my windows in the basement sitting in 3' of rain water. So I called and they said it wouldn't hurt the windows or furnace. That once they were installed if I noticed any steam in the glass they would come repair them at no cost.?
Before I go any further let me cover one topic. Caulk. Ryan homes seems to love this product. They use it to fix everything from wood work to cracks in the walls. You name it they fix it with caulk.
Moving forward..
During the construction phase I made it very clear to the forman I was inspecting the site daily. I let him know of small things that could have been repaired quickly without causing extensive repair after the house was finished. Some stuff got fixed some didn't.
I made a list and left it on the island (once we had one) of all the things that needed to be corrected. They basically ignored the list during the entire build.
Move in day comes. We brought our moving truck to closing. As we were moving in an inspector stops by to tell us the house had not been inspected yet and that we were going to be fined 500.00 for moving in early. Luckily my mother in law had talked to him before and got him to inspect and as long as he didn't find anything he would let us move forward. So he walks over and puts a bit of pressure on the wood contraption Ryan puts over the rear doors instead of building a deck. It fell right off the house. He said it had to be fixed immediately. My luck would have it, it was Ryan's company picnic day and nobody was on call to come fix it. So I had to unpack all my tools and get it fixed up.
Come to find out Ryan had built our house too far over and would not pass building code without an exception from the county. Little did I know this was going on. They let me move in with a temporary occupancy permit!!! I found out later on accident by one of the workers.
So here I am a year later still messing with these guys over the simplest stuff! My front sidewalk is a hazard and I have actually had a pizza women and a young kid trip and fall on it because it has sunk so bad. The response I got was "it fell thru the crack on our to-do list".
The best part is when I turn on my hot water my house like the Titanic sinking. Every peice of PVC pipe in my house cracks and pops and would scare small children. Its actually quite embarrasing when company comes over.
I also have a half bath that is unusable during winter months because it backs up to the un-heated garage and stays about 20 degrees colder then the rest of the house. So you go into a freezing cold bathroom to get freezing cold water. Did I mention it takes about 2 minutes to get hot water in the house? I have one bathroom that actually works correctly but it shakes the walls when you use the shower. I hear there is a valve bad or something.
So the latest greatest thing is that all the windows in my house need replaced. My wife kept complaining about red stuff on the window sill. I had a look and sure enough every single window has this red stuff on them. I called Ryan. They came out looked at it wiped em off and left. An "insider" told me that Ryan had a couple bad batches of Windows. Once I had this info I called and sure enough they are replacing every window in my house! All 30.. How about that. No sense sending out a nice card saying hey we had some bad windows if you notice blah blah call us.
I have taken 6 unpaid days off work to deal with these guys, because of course they don't work weekends. I have written letters and always stay'd very calm. Now its time to take legal action I guess.
Luckily for me I had taken over 1700 pictures of everything that was wrong and right during the construction phase.
Jeremy
Liberty Twp, Ohio
U.S.A.
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