Where to begin. We had about 1.8 acres of heavily wooded land that needed to be cleared for a new home build. Darin quoted it and seemed reasonable. After a good start and the property being cleared as we had requested I started noticing the problems. First, he managed to bash the bark on most every tree left standing. Many of these are now dead or dying and I'll have to pay to have them removed to the tune of several thousand dollars. Not to mention the loss of the beautiful trees we'd hoped to enjoy for years to come in our new home. Also, during the clearing process we had a spiral staircase delivered and told Darin directly to be careful around it until we could have it moved. He ran over it with his mini-ex. We told him directly what it was but he said he thought it was trash. That's another $3000 down the drain. He finished the initial grade and as we had the house build move forward we started finding buried trash all around the property. Water bottles, food boxes, energy drink cans, all sorts of trash. I didn't see Darin do it but I can't imagine whom else it could have been. At this point, when ever we asked him to come finish or to address the damaged trees or staircase, he would become argumentative to the point of intimidation. I'm actually somewhat nervous leaving this review but I feel it's only right to warn others. On his next trip to install a propane tank, he backed over a hose bib that was in our front yard resulting in hundreds of gallons of water loss before we could turn it off at the meter. He basically just said "oops" and we were left to pay for the water and pay to repair the damage. Lastly, we needed him to come complete the final grade. For over 2 months I called and texted every couple of days requesting him to finish the work for which I had already paid him in full. He would respond with things like, his equipment was too far away, or his truck needed a new transmission. He eventually showed up and did the absolute minimum to qualify as a completed job. I'll offer that his wife is lovely and was always courteous, but Darin is very challenging to work with and I could not recommend DKL Construction on any level. read more
