We hired AMCO to pour a backyard patio…read more
Day 1 was the excavation and included a "tear out and haul off" that we paid extra for to avoid renting a truck ourselves or paying another company to dispose of the yard waste resulting from the excavation, including our old patio of pavers/stones and rocks that AMCO was tearing out. At the end of Day 1, there was quite a bit "torn out" that wasn't "hauled off". We did not raise this concern then because we assumed either (a) it would be thrown into the slab bedding like much of the old patio and pavers were, or (b) they would "haul off" the rest of what they "tore out" after the slab was poured on Day 2. However, both of our assumptions were incorrect so we paid 1-800-GOT-JUNK to remove the yard waste AMCO left. *** pics 1-7 ***
Day 2 required we pay for a line pump to pour our concrete slab due to the limited access to our backyard-no problem. The concrete truck was to park on the side of the road in front of our house and the line would run down along the side of our house, through our fence, and pump into the backyard. However, once our backyard slab was fully poured and it was time for the line that pumped the wet concrete to be removed, they used an entirely different area of our front yard, unrelated to where the line pump was ran to our backyard, to dump multiple buckets full of excess/left-over concrete as if that were precisely where it were supposed to be properly disposed. I watched multiple individuals dump buckets of what I initially thought was water after getting notifications from my Ring doorbell. We did not expect, nor was it mentioned, implied, or other, that our front lawn would be damaged in any manner, let alone be treated like a dump for wet concrete to be disposed or dumped to dry so it'd be easier to excavate at end of day. To this, AMCO said that such was to be expected with this type of work. They smashed and grabbed the biggest pieces once the concrete dried on the way out, but we spent a lot of time, effort, and money breaking up + digging out the concrete they dumped and left, and repairing the yard itself. *** pics 8-15 ***
The next issue arose at the end of Day 2 but wasn't fully realized until days later, because despite being assured it was fine to walk on immediately, we waited a few days to be safe. Once finished, the last to leave took his boots off to step barefoot across the newly poured slab to exit our backyard because it's the only way in/out. A few hours later, we were inspecting our new patio from the bottom steps of our deck (since we didn't want to step on the seemingly still wet patio yet) when we noticed the footprint on our new patio step where the guy exited barefoot, and had a laugh. We stopped laughing about the footprint a week or so later when after a good rain, we realized the step's integrity was compromised due to the edge of it being stepped on before it was dry enough to support that weight. We care more about structural soundness than aesthetics so we were able to use EUCO Qwikstitch to fill the cracks before they spread more. *** pics 16-21 ***
I wasn't going to leave a review, in fact, I honestly really wanted to avoid it (water under the bridge) but this last straw broke the camel's back. Our patio was poured on April 18. Not even 2 months later, on June 8, my wife was looking down at our patio from an upstairs window when she noticed a crack running down the very center of our new patio, from one end almost 30 feet to the entire other end. Again, thank God for EUCO Qwikstitch and not caring nearly as much about the aesthetics as the actual integrity and usability of the patio. Regardless, our 7 week old patio should not have required hundreds of dollars of Qwikstitch to prevent more and more cracks from spreading and further compromising our new patio. *** pics 22-30 ***
As a result of having this patio done, we've had to spend a lot of time and money and energy far and above the price we paid AMCO- for digging up the rest of the concrete and repairing our front yard; paying another company to actually haul off what we already paid AMCO to haul off; the dent left on the edge of our newly poured step from stepping on it before it was dry and the cracks that resulted; hopefully this 28ft crack that developed through the entire center of our patio will be the last issue.
These, especially the latter, are some of the main reasons why we feel the work we paid AMCO for "Could Have Been Better".
