Kirkwood Masonry INC

We contracted with Kirkwood Masonry to build a 6 foot wide, 5 foot deep pool with a center column to support a fountain. The landscape architect and I met with the owner of the company, Dan Head, to go over details and provided him with a sketch of the landscape architects vision for the water feature. They started the excavation sometime around the beginning of June 2010 and based on my final payment to them I would say the work was completed around the end of June 2010. The problem we had during the construction is they hit our drainage tiles in the back yard while excavating and I had to point out to them the damage instead of the other way around. They did do a repair on it but said they felt it was like that before excavation which I had to disagree with because it was clear where they had hit the tiles i.e. the area where the hole was dug The area prox and distal to hole was just fine. That was the glitch during construction; however, after construction it was pointed out by the metal worker who was doing some custom iron work for the fountain that the center column had not been centered and was skewed by several inches. I called Kirkwood Masonry and they came out and admitted they had just "eyeballed" where to put the center column and had not actually measured. To rectify this they moved the capstone on the center column, not the whole column. The pool was then filled with water and the fountain was started. We noticed the water level was dropping quite a bit over a 24 hour period - about a foot. Initially (not ever having owned a water feature before) we thought it was spillage over the side from the fountain and evaporation. We then called a water feature maintenance company who came out to take a look - we were thinking we were going to add fish and lilly pads to the pond and wanted to get their opinion on that and the water loss. They drained the pool to investigate and found serious water leaks all the way around the base of the fountain. The minute you vacuumed water out more water would come in thru the base of the fountain. So, as was pointed out to us, when the pool is full, water pressure on inside is greater than outside and pool leaks out until there is only about 6 inches of water left in pool then it starts to leak in. Either way we had a BIG TIME LEAK. I then called company back and told them construction was defective and they needed to get back out and get this rectified. Their solution was to paint inside walls with rubberized paint and dump rubberized paint in the bottom of the pool. This did not work either. Water still leaked in when we drained it and leaked out about a foot a day when it was full. By this time it was late fall and we were running out of time because it was getting cold and the pool had to be winterized and the fountain had to be taken down. I called the company, told them the rubberized paint had not worked and they needed to come up with a solution even if it meant tearing down pool and starting over. I did not hear from company over the winter so this spring I called a pool/pond construction expert to come out and take a look and let us know what really needed to be done to fix the pool. The pond construction expert spent a great deal of time looking at the construction and said as well as put IN WRITING the pool would always leak because of the way it was built and that they could try to plaster the inside to see if that worked but he suspected the whole thing would need to be torn down and rebuilt for a myriad of reasons all of which he put in writing. I should also mention here that two cap stones came loose as well during this time and a chunk of mortar fell out of the front of the limestone facade and I called the owner of Kirkwood Masonry to let him know about this and he said that he would have someone out the following week to fix this. No one showed so my husband called. Again we were promised this would get fixed and again no one showed. It's been probably 5 months since then and my capstones are still loose and I still have a chunk of mortar missing in the limestone facade. Back to the leak - once we had something in writing from the pool expert, we called the owner of Kirkwood Masonry, Dan Head, again and told him we were going to file legal action if he did not get this leak and the other problems rectified. He sent an employee out to take yet another look and he said that before we did anything else, they would like the opportunity to put a special "liner" in the pool and plaster it to see if that would stop the leak. We said "fine" and were told they would be out in September to plaster/line pool. When no one showed in September my husband called their office repeatedly over this past week and left messages with Kirkwood Masonry's secretary. He finally got ahold of Dan Head, the owner of the company, today who told my husband he had too many other projects he was involved in and that the company had no plans to come out and fix the leaking pool. My husband asked him if he realized we were going to take legal action and he said "Go ahead". So, in summation, Kirdwood Masonry's work was inferior and unacceptable. Kirkwood Masonry does not stand behind their work even when it is clearly faulty and in my opinion, the owner lacks integrity. I WOULD NEVER USE KIRKWOOD MASONRY FOR ANY PROJECT.