J.G. Austin Services

Working with Chris Austin and J.G. Austin Services was one of the worst experiences of our lives. Be careful if you hire them, it will be a constant (I will finish that when I do this) attitude. It will never be finished and done correctly. When the land was cleared for the barn, house, and paddocks they left a pile of roots that is about 30 feet high by 30 feet wide. (We had asked them to just cut the trees at the ground level and not to dig up the roots.) We were left with trenches, huge holes, and massive ruts in our property. The foundation was dug, 40 feet to the right and 40 feet forward of where it was on the plot plan and sat on top of the perc test. This was discovered by the engineer after the foundation was already poured. It required a new perc test, and the septic system to be redesigned and moved from the front of the property to the side of the property. Austin put huge boulders as a retaining wall without using any barrier, so we are dealing with fixing these issues, as well as bringing in (at this point) 150 yards of fill to relevel the ground. We have had to put in drainage around the paddocks. When we went out to grass this spring on the top of the septic, the actual tank was showing, I have pictures of it all. Austin only put about 2" of topsoil on top of the tank. Grass needs at least 4 to 6 to grow. As a result of his moving the house, we had to shrink the size of the front paddock, relocate the garage under the house from the front of the house to the back, and put in a $6500 driveway. On top of it all, Austin wanted extra money (above what we owed him, neglected to even include a $4000 payment we had made in his final bill. To date, it has cost us about $20,000 above what we had expected to pay, just to clean up the mess he left and we are still not done. He was also late finishing by nearly 2 months and we had to stay in a motel room.