NEW BUFFALO IMPACT

I hired this company to do the above mentioned work through the New York Energy Star Program. What a mistake!! To make a long story short, just about everything they did had to be redone. The high efficiency furnace was vented incorrectly and the thermostat was wired incorrectly. The house was supposedly insulated, but when I had them come back after a cold winter, they went through the house with an infrared camera and found that almost every room in the house and the attic floor, had gaps and empty crevices; it took them 3 full days to re-insulate and while doing so, the filled 2 cold air returns and a heat duct with insulation. They also dented the siding around one of the new windows and had to replace it. While they were here fixing the furnace, they tried to convince me to have them install A/C "for cost" to make up for all of their screw ups. I had no plans to pay them to do another thing in my house, but I called around to check on their "at cost" price; they were full of sh-t and just trying to get some money back because they lost so much time having to come back to correct all of the work they did wrong. I ended up choosing Zenner and Ritter to correct the rest of the problems caused by New Buffalo Impact. New Buffalo Impact had to pay for the work that Zenner and Ritter performed and they also paid for an extended furnace warranty. Before I chose New Buffalo Impact, I checked their rating on the BBB website and I called references; I guess this was not enough. The problem was that you have to choose a BPI accredited contractor from a list in order to participate in the Energy Star Program. I had never worked with any of these contractors and no one that we know had ever had insulation done. What a nightmare!!

Very responsive at first and then problems arose and they ran out of expertise and they stopped coming. Had to find an independent agency to stimulate them. Doors have not been resolved.

On the estimate visit, the guy was helpful, looking in other areas of the house, telling me that while my situation was not necessarily ideal, it probably wasn't worth doing any more work than the one room I had originally intended. He said he didn't think the bedroom had been insulated and that the quote would be based on that assumption, but the final price would be less if there was already some insulation in the walls. After some scheduling difficulty, two other guys came, sealed the window trim and drilled for the insulation, but couldn't do any of the actual insulating because (so they said) the machine kept getting clogged. After another week three other guys came and got the job done, using some tools that I hadn't seen the other guy try. Clean-up was spotty and they charged me the full estimated price even though it turned out there was already insulation in the walls, saying price was based on sq. feet of wall not volume of insulation.

It was a learning experience. They did the Energy Star Evaluation and made me more aware of it. I felt New Buffalo Impact was very good.