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Originally Posted by The_Jazz
If anyone following this thread and its companion has been wondering why the state that a building is in would make a difference in construction and why some states are more litigious for general contractors, this is an excellent example. Rodney, you shouldn't have had to track down the subcontractors or really do anything other than let the GC/developer know when you be available for the sub to stop by to look at the problem and possibly fix it. As for your useless door, it obviously isn't going to harm the home or its value, but any GC who was paying attention at all would have either made the sub fix the problem or have them fill in the hole. It sounds like you ended up dealing with someone who is new to the process and doesn't take it seriously.
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Yep, that's it exactly. I did consult a lawyer, and he said it'd be more trouble than it was worth to try to force them to do anything legally. He wrote them a letter to throw a scare into them, and that's about when we started getting even minimal response from them. California _is_ a litigious state, but how much are you willing to spend simply to make somebody act professionally? The actual fixes we wanted were not hard to do nor especialy expensive; we just wanted them seen to.
I'll tell you how bad independent homebuilders are out in my area:
One of the few goofs that our GCs caught by themselves was that when the central heating unit was installed, there wasn't room to build a structure above it to hold the filter -- there's a name for it, which I've forgotten. Ooops.
Well eventually, we ended up with a nonstandard solution -- the filter's on the uptake vent on the second floor that the heater draws its air from. When the home inspector we paid for came through, he approved the fix -- and told us that indeed, in many new homes built by local contractors, central heating systems were being installed without housings for a filter. "They run five years, then burn out," he told us.
Geez.