Wimberley Wind and Solar

We met with Brandon, who represented himself, not his father, as the owner of the company. I think he is very knowledgeable about alternative energy, but not necessarily a hands on kind of guy. It was part of our agreement that he would hire a crew. Instead, he brought a second guy, John, onto the project. John became the spokesman of the group and also appeared to do most of the actual labor. This was supposed to be a $36,000 project. At the end of April, we gave Brandon a check for $10k upfront to purchase supplies, including a $5000+/- liner for the concrete tank. The problems began with writing the first check. Brandon called us stating the bank was not willing to accept a $10,000 personal check. He and John wanted two separate checks totaling $10k. I tried to stop payment on the check but found out that the check had already cleared my own bank. What actually happened is that John's bank (as it turns out that although the check was made out to WWS, John deposited the check to his personal account) put a hold on the check. Brandon and John were instructed to work with our contractor as we were going to be out of town for several weeks. When we got back to town they were LIVING on our property in a run down trailer which they proceeded to gut. They rented a back hoe and began digging out the 30k gallon tank. The plan was to line it with cement, put in a liner, and then top it with a cement cover. John dug out the tank, but in the process, caused about $700 worth of damage to the metal frame of the house when he hit it with the back hoe bucket. Also, the soil he removed was randomly distributed, a lot of which was dumped in front of the door to my storage building. He buried a lot of my garden objects in the process and also moved my two antique claw foot tubs so far from the site I'll need a tractor to move them back. I only hope at least one of them is still usable. Due to some weather and other delays, including the back hoe breaking down more than once and John and Brandon making trips back to the Austin area, John had to rent the back hoe for an extra week. To help him out, we hired him to dig out a stock tank. The stock tank was dug out successfully, however, we did not realize that while John did that all work on our rain catchment tank would stop. In fact, except for one day, I never observed both Brandon and John working at the same time. On June 1, the cement floor of the tank was poured. I paid the concrete company myself. The story on the liner kept changing. It was never ordered. This is the only day I ever saw both John and Brandon working at the same time. They asked for another $11,000 (this time they wanted two separate personal checks for the total). When I asked what had happened to the first $10k John told us it had gone toward supplies and renting the back hoe. I wrote the checks, which I immediately regretted. But, the work was getting done and except for the delays, it had been done right. However, after that, everything went to h*** in a hand basket. There was more bad weather. John and Brandon disappeared from the site. They returned only for John to return to Austin leaving Brandon without transportation, water, or a means to charge his cell phone. Brandon was attempting to put in the rebar and cement forms so the walls could be poured. He was doing a bad job. We asked for an accounting of how the money had been spent and informed Brandon we were hiring a crew. It was during this time that I found marijuana on site. It had to be theirs because no one else was working. No one else COULD work. All during this time they had argued with our contractor and basically failed to cooperate with him. When pressed for an accounting, they remained vague. There was about $12k they could and would not explain. Granted, if they had both actually worked everyday, forty hours each, for six weeks, and we had been paying them by the hour and not the job, they probably would have earned that much. However, that $12k represented 1/3 of the total budget and half of the money spent to date and all the rest of the concrete work remained to be done, not to mention the purchase of the pump, filter, etc. Things came to an impasse. Brandon and John demanded more money. They also told us they were going to California to work with Brandon's father. We told them to remove their trailer or we would have it hauled off and send them the bill. They came and got the trailer but left their trash. Since then, the one wall that Brandon had begun to put the frames up for, collapsed. With our contractor's help, we have hired another crew and the work is being done correctly. However, it will still be the first of September before we have a tank we can put water in.