I had issues with water intrusion from a below grade , two story brick garage in a recently purchased house. I also had drainage issues from a sloped yard. The interior of the finished garage had to be gutted to remove rotted, water damaged material. I got five quotes for the work from contractors and Walsh had the most price competitive, extensive garage rehab plan and the cleanest contract of any of them. They had to rip out all the paneling, studs, insulation, workbench and attached stairs that went to the finished attic. They treated the interior walls with a mold treatment, replaced the studs, cement boards, insulation and had to work around existing wiring. They removed and disposed of all construction debris. They did a beautiful job that passed inspection the first time code enforcement came by. Mary, the admin assistant was easy to work with on scheduling, answering questions and responding to phone calls.
They also installed a French drain, waterproofed the exterior of the garage that was below grade and installed drainage for the gutters. I also had an area dug out for a rain garden to slow runoff and add a nice planting bed. We added an overflow pipe that runs to the street to avoid any flooding issues with my neighbor's yard, which has a steep slope at our shared property line. We had an inch of rain on Saturday in about an hour. The rain garden did not overflow and drained to below the overflow pipe in about 20 minutes. I am very pleased!
They seeded the yard and put out straw and/or erosion mats. They did all of this work when it was above 90 degrees every day. The crew was professional, courteous and worked extremely hard in grueling conditions Even in this heat, the grass is growing and about 2 inches tall in most areas they reseeded.
We also had to enter my neighbor's yard to install the French Drain in an area near the property line. The fence attaches to my side garage wall with an ell. This allows allows them to use 24 feet of my garage wall as their de facto fence. This arrangement fences me out of my own property and keeps me from accessing and maintaining the garage. The neighbor has "graciously" agreed to clean my gutter on that side to keep me out of "his" yard and to give me "permission" to stand on my own property to work on my own garage.I inherited this agreement with the house and was fine with it until things blew up. The lady I bought the house from had this same annoying issue with my neighbors. My neighbors had a copy of the site plan and the contract and agreed verbally and through text to the work being done. We scheduled the work during their vacation ( my neighbor supplied vacation dates in writing through text, so yes they did agree to this) to avoid disruption to their lives as much as possible. When they got home and saw the amount of disruption to their backyard they became very upset, which was understandable, even though they agreed to the work. The disturbed part of their weedy, unkempt back yard was reseeded with straw and erosion mats, which was what was agreed to per the contract, which they saw and agreed to prior to the job. I have text copies of all of this. The night they came back I told them through text I would apply sod to the disturbed area in their yard in order to appease them and keep good relationships with my immediate neighbors. I also called and offered to come over and talk to them to resolve this. They ignored my call and have yet to talk to me by phone or in person about any of this. They would not accept the offer of sod from me and became, vindictive, and abusive to me and the contractor. They sent numerous texts over about a four day period and cursed at the contractor's administrative assistant/scheduler . They threatened lawsuits to me and Walsh over the phone to the admin assistant/scheduler at Walsh. They later said they did not threaten to sue when I called them out for abusive bad, behavior. I offered to redo their yard in reply to their first complaint about it and they refused to let me do it. After several days of unnecessary and asinine text drama from my neighbor, the owner of Walsh Crawl Space went to their front door to try to resolve this. He brokered a deal where they would accept 650 square feet of installed sod in their back yard, a deal I offered them days ago, which they declined. He and I split the cost even though they agreed with the original plan of seeding and erosion control. The sod company had to scrape up beautiful, newly sprouted grass to install the sod. Walsh also supplied them with a hose and timer to keep the sod watered. Without his help, there would have been no resolution with this issue. Neighborly relations have completely broken down. They are losing the use of my garage wall as a fence and will have to install about 90 feet of new fencing. I have nothing but stellar things to say about Walsh Crawl Space and their staff. read more
