HAWK CONSTRUCTION & DEV

I just joined angies list and felt the need to write this event though its from a year ago. I had a covered porch in front of the house at the top of concrete steps. There was also a railroad tie wall on the "inside" of the steps. The steps were bordered on the "outside" by a concrete block wall that supported one edge of the concrete slab at the top. They replaced the railroad tie wall steps slab and roof supports and the step into the house. I had asked if the concrete wall needed to be replaced too and was told the didn't need to touch it. I asked if one of the roof supports coule be moved a little to make it even with the others and was told that they could just extend the slab a little to do that. They said the supports would be finished so that the old supports would look nice.Due to weather they started later then planned. A bobcat was delivered on my lawn and sat there for days (over a week i think) with no other work and no communication from the company. Once work did start they quickly dug out and then finished things in fits and starts, some of which was weather and some i did not feel that it was. In the end they did NOT move the post as I wished (but the concrete was poured before i was aware the framing wouldn't allow the post to be moved. The concrete wall they werent going to replace or touch was damaged and about a block and a half were totally gone at the bottom. They did a half assed repair of this with poured concrete that was pourly framed so it looks like someone just smeared it on there and it was with a different qualiy of concrete so it LOOKS vastly different from the steps that it is next to. The step/threshold into the house was done also after the fact with different concrete. In addition while this step was not done there was a BIG hole into my basement in NOVEMBER. I had to stuff it with towels etc to hopefully prevent winter guests. When they finally DID pour this step they did so RIGHT OVER MY TOWELS with no other support for the concrete under this rather large hole. The original stoop also extended about about 2 inches further on either side of that they finished so now the door framing is "floating" a few inches off the ground. Now, about the wall slab and steps themselves. The wall is very nice but the cap stones are poorly cut and not glued or secured. The slab had a hairline crack develop that extended about 5 feet in the first 6 months but now at 18 months has not changed (though I seal it) The supports are ok except they dont look well finished and the step into the house looks awful but is stable. At my request they did pour a little temporary concrete between bottom step and edge of driveway so it wsnt dirt (until i finished drive and landcaping later) It doesnt look great but i knew that when i asked for it... The concrete wall is the biggest issue--in addition to the poor "fix up" at the bottom, several of the blocks are offset further that they were even after the time of the job, I suspect the steps expanded as they cured. It has remained relatively stable though after the initial movement. I should make them fix it but obviously finsihing work is not their strong point. After the job I had to call them after a few weeks to move that heavy equipment which I guess they forgot about. Overall, if all you want is a concrete slab go for it. If there is any fine finishing you need, I would not count on this crew.

Went well start to finish. One minor issue was that the garage door was splashed with some concrete mix. They did clean it but it needs to be painted to look right. They promised to do this but never did.

First, let me begin by acknowledging that the project was made more difficult by weather. Hawk started the project on 9/20/11 and I think we had ten straight days of rain starting that week. When we talked to Hawk prior to work beginning, I had asked Pete if he would make the call to have the utility lines marked. He said he didn't think he needed to since the gas lines were 6 or 8 feet deep, but in the end said he would. Tracy from Hawk called on September 19th and said they would start the next day. When they showed up to begin work, the utility lines were not marked. The first thing they started at was removing the retaining wall and digging down along the foundation in front of the house to install the french drain. The electric and gas meters and phone interface are in front of the house. About two hours in they hit the electric and telephone lines. They knocked out power to us and three neighbors because they tripped the breakers in the box at the street. The internals of the electric meter box were twisted and the whole box had to be replaced. The tone of the project was set. We had power restored by the end of the day, but it was a series of frantic calls to find an electrician who could come out on short notice and install a new meter box. That cost us $472.36. They got the front area dug out, but not backfilled and for about a week to ten days we had an enormous pile of dirt in the front yard. The project proceeded in fits and starts as the weather allowed, but finally, they were able to break up the old concrete and start forming for the new pour. At this point however, the dry well in the back yard had not been dug and they could no longer get the equipment down the driveway to dig, nor a truck down to remove the dirt. They ended up taking a mini-excavator through our neighbor's yard and piling the dirt in our yard. Part of the project was to route the downspouts around the house. The first time they put the piping together, the downspouts were crooked and the drain pipe put together in an odd way. We asked them to re-do it and they did. We had also asked them to replace the stoop (part of the original work order) which was chipping. When they removed that and the pad that led to it we discovered a concrete block 'room' under the pad that had no fill. I guess the original builder poured on top of a piece of plywood which had since rotted away. More on this later. Finally after a few weeks we had a new driveway and part of a sidewalk. Part of the walk was poured, but the rest left open since they had not yet backfilled or graded in front of the house. They had back filled some, but every time they did it it kept sinking and pulling the electric cable crooked - looked like it would eventually pull out of the meter box again. The phone line looked like it was attached by one or two wires (luckily we have phone through the cable company which enters the house away from the construction zone). They had to remove part of the newly poured sidewalk since a close look revealed that it was sloping up and was actually at a higher elevation than the bottom of the siding on the house. This was a project, in part, to correct drainage issues. Having watched them work with what by this time was huge chunks of clay and mud - several of which were left lying against the house for weeks - we suggested that they remove the big clumps that they couldn't work with and bring in some topsoil at our expense. Hawk drew up an addendum for this expense (even though it probably saved them more in time and labor) for $925 to remove 4" of dirt and spread 8 yards of topsoil. Additional topsoil would have cost $150/yard even though I was able to get a price from a local landscape supply for around $35/yard. We agreed to this price since we were running out of good weather and wanted the project done. At this point however, Hawk was coming back less regularly to work, so we created a list of items to be completed before we would consider the project done. It included things like cleaning concrete oversplashes, properly backfilling so the utility lines were secure and aligned , cleaning up the excess gravel, concrete debris, etc. that was left along the driveway and sidewalk, replacing or deductions for damage to downspouts and trim on the house. We also let them know we expected them to pay the $400+ it cost us for the new meter box and related work. At this point Pete said "well when we had the foundation exposed we had to do an extra coating and there was extra cost to filling in the 'wine cellar" '. Nothing was ever said to us that extra material or waterproofing was needed or installed on the foundation. This after we just signed an addendum for $925 for topsoil that probably cost $300. And filling in the "wine cellar" - the area under the stoop -- allowed them to use the concrete chunks from the old sidewalk and part of the pile of dirt from in front of the house instead of hauling it away. Again, my husband and I discussed the timing - whether we had enough good weather left at the end of October to argue about this - and decided we didn't so we ate the extra cost. Toward the end of the project they actually had someone out who knew what they were doing and who communicated with us. He was laid off from his regular job, but knew how to run the equipment and did a good job. I was out when he was running the mini-excavator to try to find the utility lines to get them straightened out. We found that while the phone cable looked like it was intact, it had actually been cut about 6 to 8 feet from the house but buried to make it look OK. A big part of the issues with this project was the apparent lack of communication with the crew. The workers only seemed to get enough information to do a day or half-day of work. Even the foreman didn't seem to know the full scope of the project at the beginning. They should have started at the back of the property and moved in logical succession, but that is not what happened. Oh, and that pile of dirt in the back yard. We wanted it removed since the original contract said haul away all job debris. Pete wanted to spread it under our maple tree. We said no since that could kill the tree and since the ground was wet, we wanted it removed via wheelbarrow so we didn't destroy more lawn. Pete took the bobcat in the back yard and spread it around anyway; so now the area we have to repair and re-seed is twice as large as it was before. Another example of poor work and communication. The old stoop had quarter-round where the concrete met the door surround. We told them to remove the old quarter-round and we would replace it. They didn't and tried to push concrete underneath, which resulted in part of this trim being half-covered by concrete. It looked terrible and we knew they wouldn't have gotten concrete all the way under. So water would have gotten behind and created more issues. They removed the old quarter-round, had to fill the gaps with patch. This particular area still looks bad, there was no time to paint or clean-up before bad weather set in. We had decided upon Hawk because our neighbor used them for driveway work. Our neighbor is very thorough in his research. We had gotten a couple other estimates, but the difficulty with this project was finding someone who could do it all, not just the concrete or drainage. We think the quality of Hawk's concrete work is good, and if it had been a simple remove and replace job, there may not have been issues. Pete assured us he could do this project. But in hind-sight, the coordination required for this project appears to have been outside of Hawk's expertise. Overall, it was an ordeal. It was seven weeks of disruption. We expected to be inconvenienced by this job, but feel our neighbors and the entire street were inconvenienced as well. Hawk routinely left their equipment in the street overnight (the bobcat wouldn't start for about 10 days, so it wasn't going anywhere). There are no streetlights in our neighborhood and it is a miracle no one hit a piece of equipment at night. Not to mention that we have an ordinance against parking on the street overnight; which Hawk was well aware of. As it stands now, the regraded area in front of the house has sunk somewhat and the electric line is no longer running straight into the box. I guess we will see what happens over winter as it freezes and thaws. When we were considering Hawk, I had checked Angie's List and Hawk was listed, but had no reviews. Don't make the same mistake we did. Read and use the reviews.