Do not use! Do not use! Do note use!
The owner (John T) will sub-contract out to less experienced crews and the result is shoddy work at your expense. Yes, this Company performed work for me on my house to extend my patio using concrete and decorative stone edging, add a walkway on the side of the house, and improve the drainage situation where the property slopes towards the house. The work was performed during July 2015. To summarize:
1. EDL used improper downspout extenders into the concrete instead of using the standard schedule 40 PVC (yes, he actually had the flimsy plastic downspout extenders you can by at Lowe's connected to 3 downspouts and run into the concrete.) These extenders are cheap and will fail in one year's time.
2. EDL did not grade drainage correctly underneath the concrete work and used cheap corrugated piping; this resulted in water back-ups and drainage issues. The flimsy corrugated piping will also fail in less than 2 years time because of natural soil pressure and root intrusion. ONE pop-up vent was installed in the yard for 2 down-spouts, and 2 area drains collecting a very large amount of water. You would think that the hydraulic pressure on that one pop-up vent would quite literally blow the lid off the pop-up... yet I seldom saw any water leave the pop-up vent even in the event of the major rains we've had in the second half of 2015. This is because the system used poor materials, and did not have the right grade on the drainage. These guys used stuff they found laying around in my yard (used to extend my down-spouts), and I didn't find out until I had to dig it up.
3. EDL did not grade the concrete correctly which resulted in an inch + of water build up against the foundation of the house. This is something every concrete contractor should know to do, and it was a pain to fix.
4. EDL did not level the concrete in the middle of the structure leaving low-spots that allow water to pool (and not run-off, as it should) on the concrete for long periods of time, which leads to damage, intrusion of the elements, and cracking.
5. In no less than one month, the concrete had already started to crack in multiple locations. These cracks run the entire length of the work, crisscrossing the entire patio. The decorative stone edging began to pull away from the patio and the mortar used to secure it in place began to fail almost immediately. In the same time frame, grass and vegetation already had begun to grow through cracks in the concrete.
6. One downspout (separate from that described in point 2 above) was taken through the concrete (using cheap extenders) and exited just a few feet away from the edge of the concrete patio. Please visualize what I am about to describe, and yes, it looks as stupid as it sounds. On the vertical edge of the patio, corrugated piping extended out horizontally. That piping bent down in a 90 degree angle moving towards the ground surface, no less than a foot from the edge of the patio. The piping then went under the dirt, bent 180 degrees under the surface over a length of perhaps 2 feet, and THEN TERMINATED IN A POP-UP VENT at ground level. The question you should be asking is - why not just have the thing terminate in an open ended tube out of the side of the vertical concrete edging? Who knows.
7. The workers dumped excess concrete in my yard in a bamboo patch where I can only assume they thought I wouldn't notice. They also left some of their trash there as well.
8. I asked the owner, John, to leave an opening in the concrete side-walk where my grounding rod was buried for electrical service. This opening would serve to allow me, or an electrician, the ability to access the ground rod and change it or the grounding wire should the need ever arise. The result was a 3" wide PVC pipe stood end to end on the ground, and was filled in with concrete. This failed to serve any function and is an eye-sore.
9. I was concerned with water build up, should a heavy rain hit, on the side of the house with the walk-way, because the slope of the land there sloped towards the house. I made this concern known to the owner, John T. John reassured me he would install a side drain extending the entire length of the walkway in-between the house and the walkway, and connect to the existing drains. Because the concrete walkway was uneven, the long side drain was cut, which left 4 drain openings in-between my house foundation and the walkway, which leads to more drainage problems.
I was forced to hire a very experienced and trusted drainage team to fix all of these issues, which they did. The key with this team was that I had time to do the research on them before hiring them, and I was present when the work was done. I did not research Elite Design Landscape to the same measure, and I paid dearly for it. Please, please, learn from my mistakes, and DO NOT HIRE THIS COMPANY. The work will look good enough, just long enough for him to get paid. read more
