Thomas General Contracting

In February 2013 we engaged with Thomas General Contracting to build and extend a deck in our back yard. They completed the work in March 2013. Recently we became aware of several structural, cosmetic, and safety issues with the deck. We approached the City of Chattanooga to request an inspection of the work that was performed. At this point we became aware that Thomas General Contracting did not pull the REQUIRED building performs or get the REQUIRED building inspection during the construction period. I went ahead and pulled the permit and had the City building inspector come out to view the work performed on March 4, 2014. The building inspector failed the deck for structural and safety issues and advised that we no longer use it. The violations included incorrect attachments and anchorage to the house, insufficient footings, floor joists spanned 40% over their recommended span, failure to use correct hardware and hangers, pickets spaced too far apart, support posts not attached correctly to the deck among many other issues. The building inspector stopped at that point and wrote on the inspection card "Many Problems". In addition, on March 26th the building inspector came back to our house and met with myself and Greg Thomas from Thomas General Contracting to explain the lengthily list of issues he observed during his initial visit. The building inspector advised again that the deck is unsafe and the violations are too many to 'fix' and if the deck was not build to code, and purposely avoiding inspections and the required permitting by the city. There is a level of negligence or dishonest dialing that occurred and I was unfortunately victim of. I have copies of all of the receipts and canceled checks for this build. At this point, and at the direction of the building inspector and an independent contractor, we do not feel comfortable having Thomas General Contracting attempt to fix the issues that were identified by the Building Inspector. We are of the opinion and guidance that due to the significance of the issues outlined above our confidence that they will get it right the second time around is non existent. Thus far we have contacted Thomas General Contracting and requested a refund of what we had paid and the expense to have the deck demolished (it is so far from code the building inspector advised to start over with the build). As of today we have not hear back from the company or its owners. At his own discretion the building inspector has already filed a complaint with the city which is being actively investigated and I have followed up with a formal complain to the State of Tennessee Contractors board. In addition, we have engaged an attorney who will be filing a civil suit against the company for gross negligence, incompetence, fraud in a business dealing and misconduct in the practice of contracting.

He did everything wrong. We had to get another contractor to come and clean up his mess. All of the framing were placed wrong. It took him a week and a half to put on a metal roof of which he did that wrong as well. We have a small house and it was just taking him too long to get this work done and also he never did complete the roof. He just left and at that point we told him not to come back.