I want to share our experience with AFS Foundation & Waterproofing Specialists because foundation…read morework is a significant investment, and I wish we had known more about what the customer experience would look like before making our decision.
We hired AFS to perform substantial foundation work on our home, including the installation of 10 SettleStop Helical Piers, crawlspace encapsulation, and related work. Our contract totaled more than $24,000.
Naturally, the foundation work required excavation around our home. We understood that this would disturb our yard. We also understood that our contract makes us responsible for landscaping, reseeding, resodding, and potentially adding topsoil following normal settlement.
That is not what we are upset about.
We already have a landscaping company scheduled to address the yard, so restoring the landscaping was never our expectation of AFS.
What we did expect was for the excavation areas to be properly backfilled and compacted. In fact, our contract specifically states that when trenching or excavation is required, AFS will "backfill and compact soil to the best of its ability."
The work was completed on July 28. Following rainfall, multiple areas around our foundation experienced significant settlement and collapse. We were left with several depressions approximately 8-10 inches deep, including areas immediately adjacent to the foundation.
Some areas had visibly collapsed enough to leave voids in the soil, exposing portions of the pier/bracket assemblies. One area had a drain downspout that was never reconnected properly and instead had just been buried by dirt. We documented these conditions with photographs.
Again, we were not asking AFS to landscape our property. We were asking them to address what appeared to be significant settlement in the areas where they had excavated and to ensure those areas were properly backfilled and compacted.
Unfortunately, this is where our experience with AFS became particularly frustrating.
We contacted AFS on August 1--only a few days after the work was completed--to report the condition of the yard and request that someone return to inspect it.
By August 5, we had received no response, so we contacted our salesperson directly.
Eventually, we were told that a crew would return on Monday, August 10.
They never showed up.
We received no call or explanation that the appointment had been cancelled.
We contacted our salesperson again and were then told the crew would come on Thursday, August 13. That day, we were contacted and told there was an issue with another project and they could not make it.
At that point, we were understandably frustrated, but we were still willing to be reasonable and accommodating. We agreed to Saturday morning, August 15.
Again, no one showed up, and no one called.
We sent messages to everyone involved Saturday evening, expecting that someone would follow up with us Monday morning.
No one contacted us.
On Monday, August 17, we finally called AFS's main number and left a message requesting to speak with the general manager. We subsequently received a call from the project superintendent, who came to the house that same day and filled in the holes.
We appreciate that he ultimately came out.
However, at this point, we are left wondering whether the areas were actually compacted properly. The work consisted primarily of dumping dirt into the depressions and manually stomping it down. Time will tell whether the areas remain stable.
As for the actual foundation repair itself, I am not an engineer, and I am not going to make claims about the structural integrity of the pier system that I cannot substantiate.
We chose AFS because we believed we were hiring professionals to do an important and expensive job on our home. At this point, our biggest disappointment isn't that the ground settled after the work--it is the lack of communication, follow-through, and attention to the condition in which the property was left. For those reasons, we wouldn't recommend AFS to anyone.
