I am not surprised Jim Walter is out of business. Probably ran out as fast as they could!
Jim Walter Homes began building our home in October moved in in January.
The build started with construction of the block foundation. We immediately put a tape measure to it, and they were two feet short on width. That was the beginning of a nightmare of dealing with the building supervisor (BS), Jon. The builder asked if we were going to be watching them every second, and our reply was "You bet!"
We had made a few changes in our building plan before construction began. We had to remind them each time as they would go ahead and build as the normal "model" and then have to tear out what they had done and rebuild.
They had already installed the batt insulation and all the HVAC system without having closed in the house completely (dried in). Of course, it rained straight into that side of the house that was open, onto the insulation, running down the walls. They ran heater fans to try and dry everything out while in the meantime, began putting up sheetrock! Don't even want to know what is growing behind those walls today!
We chose the Hardi-Plank siding, which is great, if it had not laid on the ground for so long and warped. The sides of our house, a two story, are wavy, wavy.in April I asked the building supervisior to come out and check that. Jon had retired from JWH but brought along the new BS, Gary. He explained to us and to Gary the waviness was caused from outer doors we had had installed upstairs after they signed the house over to us, and the rain had run down the doors onto the siding and caused it to buckle and suggested we put storm doors on those outside doors to keep any further rain out. I asked him to step outside and pointed out to him the storm doors that had been installed along with the outside doors the very same day. Hmmm?
Our windows leak air terribly. Yes, we face the north and yes we live on a hill, but no window should leak so much air! We called the Warranty office and had the Smart Aleck there tell me I had signed off on everything so there was nothing they could do. I called the Better Business Bureau the same day and The Smart Aleck warranty person showed up to try to resolve the window issue along with the wavy siding. Apparently JWH Corporate was down on Mr. SA and he wanted them off his back. Thank you BBB.
We wanted better windows. The JWH suggestion, was to tear out the sheetrock around the windows on the inside of the house, reinsulate and replace the sheetrock. The sheetrockers that came in to do this work commented on how little sprayfoam insulating material had been used, but as they tired or tearing out and replacing sheetrock on 13 windows, the quality work on each window went down, down, down. We ended up ordering the JWH SA, BS, repairmen and painters off our property, and not in a nice way.
To date, we still have not finished repainting all of the windows. The ones that have been done look horrible because of the sorry job that was done. I just cover them up with curtains and try not to think about it. One of these days, we will replace with E windows for better energy conservation. For now, we cover the windows on the inside with plastic. When the wind is blowing out of the north, the plastic fills to bursting with air. When the wind is out of the south, the plastic sucks up to the window. Good job JWH!
I could go on and on about leaky plumbing and GFIs that go off constantly because of the bad electric job, but you get the picture. Thank goodness they have quit building homes!
Hard Lesson Learned.
0 comments