HOURIGAN C P CONTRACTORS INC

Long story - but needs to be told. . . My wife & I purchased a home built by this builder in December 2008. Home had originally been custom-built in 2004. We are the second owners. After having lived in the home for a year - I had noted some old patch-work that had been done previously on the the drywall in the garage. Additionally, we had had begun to notice that some water leaked onto the garage floor - from underneath the baseboards - on a couple of occasions - following extended rainfall. We attempted to contact Mr. Hourigan on a couple of occasions - but did not receive any return calls. 2009 was a particularly wet winter for El Paso - and we had several episodes of rain/sleet/snow. Just before the XMas holidays we had a particularly bad episode - and water had leaked into 3/4 bedrooms - soaking the carpets. We were unable to determine the source of the leaking - and had to have the carpets pulled-up in those rooms - and fans applied. This time we contacted our insurance adjuster - as well as a home inspector - and, Mr. Hourigan. We were told by both the insurance adjuster and home inspector - that the leaks were coming from the roof - including the "crickets" - which we were told were not properly sealed. It should be mentioned that most of our home is covered by a "flat" roof - and that it had just been re-coated by Mr. Hourigan a few weeks before we first moved-in, the prior year. Mr. Hourigan did eventually call us back - and offered to send someone out to "re-coat" the roof. He also agreed to send someone to pull out the carpets that had been damaged - and replace them - which he did follow-through on. However, he was unable to explain to us - why a roof that had been re-coated so recently - would leak. Consequently, we declined his offer to to come out and re-coat it. Our insurance claim adjuster referred us to Mr. Rick Allen, with Texas Rubberized Roof Coating - who we contacted and subsequently came out and gave us an estimate for applying his product. We were aware of the reported problems throughout the city - with "flat" roofs - and had noticed that every time it rained - one or more of our neighbors had a roofer parked in front of their house. TRRC offered a guarantee of no leaks and free service should we develop any leaks after they had applied their product - so we decided to proceed. It should be mention that when Mr. Allen inspected our roof - he also found problems with the original roof work - including the "crickets" - and noted that a small section of pitched roof over our entryway - where we had cermaic tile - had not been properly installed (i.e., no tar applied under the tiles, tiles not nailed-down). We had to also hire another roofer to completely re-lay our ceramic tile! After all of this work was completed - the next time we had an extended rainfall - we again developed leaks into the floors of the interior of our home!! At one point during all of this - I had again contacted Mr. Hourigan, to ask if he would be willing to help us with any of the cost of these repairs. Again, he said the most he was willing to do was send someone out to re-paint the roof (an approx. $300 job). Our insurance company (Allstate) refused to reimburse us for any of these expenses - claiming that the leaks were the result of "defects in construction/workmanship" - rather than from damage, defective materials, weather, etc. We again had to call-out all of our sub-contractors - to "re-assess" our leak problem. Both Mr. Allen and the roofer who had re-laid our tile - agreed that the water appeared to be "seeping-in" between the bottom of the walls and the concrete slab. The solution they recommended involved laying a concrete "abutment" around the entire perimeter of the house, rising about 6 inches above ground level and extending about 9 inches below the ground - which - in effect - "sealed" the seam between the walls and foundation. Alas - after this work was completed - our leaks stopped. I was later informed by a cousin, who's a home builder - that there is supposed to be tar laid between the 2x4's of the frame of the house - and the concrete slab - but, have no way of knowing if this was the defect that led to our problem or not. Without looking at all of the receipts for this work - my recollection is that it cost us between $12,000 - $15,000. - - What a nightmare!! . . . One further note. We recently had some new floor tiles installed in our den - and the individulal who did the work (Larry Neurberger) - did a very fine job. He found that one of our interior walls was not set at a true 90 degree angle - but was, instead, "slanted" - which required him to cut some very thin "slivers" of tile to finish-off the floor in that section. Hope this is helpful.

Everything was good. Very few problems and those were corrected very promptly. He was under budget on final cost. The 6 month time frame was a little over by 3 months. He waits for the good sub contractors to be available on specific areas roofing, painters, insulation ect... so that sometimes took a extra few days but we were willing to wait for the best.