Owners reif.conc foundation began flaking prior to the framing stage. Engineer in charge discovered that wrong mix had been placed (perhaps a valve got stuck and not dbl.checked as it went into the trucks)
Solution: break it up, haul it off, begin anew
Owner asks concrete plant ONLY for free concrete to replace, nothing for demo, steel, redo, etc.
Conc.plant says kiss-off
Lawyers, court time
Conc.plant has to pay off
(Builder innocent story)

Owner designs 2-story house, whose Plan changes many times in order to accomodate a much coveted Laundry Chute, 2nd floor to Laundry cabinet below.
Architect later asks how they are loving that L.Chute.
Owner reports that the plumber ran a line through it ... now it's blocked and they decided not to fix nor use it.
(Builder innocent story ... Owner-built)


Builder promises 6-month build of 1-story, less than 1600sf house also begins own personal house build.
Discovers his investors' visit ETA moved up to see his home finished, so raids the 1600 of prime labor & CDX roof decking, leaving remainder out in the rain. Builder moves in at the 9-month mark, the 1600 at the 12-month mark.


Owner asks his know-it-all friend if their home builder X was a good choice and good fit for their new build nearby. Builder X does not have a good rep. for solid foundations but does for great finishes. Builder follows all specs from Foundation Engineer this time but swimming pool leaks into the foundation zone, which cracks. Lawyers. "Million dollars" later for mental anguish, et al. against builder.


TAMU Dean's MIL spec.house built so low, it floods through the front door at times. Wife continues to hound builder for a remedy, even if it's only temporary grading. Builder finally blows her off with "we know what we are doing".


Very good builder & architect decide an above grade house does not require ground-contact treated floor joists and advise the Owners of the SOP/traditional need to install/remove crawl space vents seasonally. Owner ignores these tasks for enough years for the joists to begin failing. Lawyers. Builder/Architect pays. Later Owner sues road dept. when head in car jarred upon hitting a bump, a public instituion for tripping on their new sidewalk.
New build begins to exhibit superficial cracks in garage, engineer inspects, noting that when invasive waters are corrected, it takes 18 months to dry out, then self repair when built on piers. 18 months later, engineer recalled and about to give up .. until noted that Owner's yardman clipped a sprinkler head, so renamed old faithful geyser = the cause of all the problems.
(Builders not a fault stories IMHO.)


Row of spec.houses needing to be completed in a hurry are being shingled in a light rain. Potential client of that builder for a new house asks "would a good builder do such as this?". Friends in-the-know tell her to go read the warranty on the shingles packages. (No warranty for such application conditions - rain - expressly printed.)


TMI and forgive typos
Please post no names ... if you know any of these stories ...

Coordinating a building for a university. It had a large cafeteria space and very large kitchen. Kitchen should have 20' of clearance above ceiling space to accommodate mechanical room above and all the hoods and piping. Architect put a mezzanine above half of it and left 4' of above ceiling. Took 3 weeks of back and forth for them to realize the mistake.

School athletics building with a very special, very heavy roof. Building is essentially a long rectangle built on a slope, so one has a ton of ceiling space and the other hardly any. Of course the main mechanical room and largest ducts are on the short end, and the high end has very little MEP. At 50% DD drawings, there is a 48" concrete beam shown that essentially cuts the building in half across the width. Every major duct in the building (including a 24"x36" supply and return) and some large (like 24"x24") transfers for filters are shown going through it. It's so deep it's 4" below the specced ceiling height. Bring it up to the architect in review, and it's dismissed. Beam doesn't go away in subsequent drawings, and the architect dismisses it at every review saying the structural engineer will "fix" it. At 120% CD's, beam is still there. Call a meeting with architect and consultants to go over it and other issues architect has been putting off and ignoring. Architect starts to dismiss the beam again, but structural engineer cuts him off and says it's not a mistake or typo. It's at big as specced, and he won't allow anything over like 6" through it. Mechanical engineer about ****s himself because he sees the predicament. The builder (me), ultimately comes up with a workable solution.

School district was convinced by architect that they could save money by having architect's fire protection consultant coordinate and detail sprinkler system instead of the subcontractor. Subcontractor, of course, bids fab and install of design. Any changes are change orders. At some point, the architect's consultant has 3 sets of drawings at the same time, one in to us for coordinating with the other trades, one in to the fire marshall, and another to the subcontractor/fabricator. After a meeting with the owner, architect, sub, and consultant, it turns out their fab drawings are ****ed and a bunch of pipe already in production is wrong. Sub wants $70k in changes, and A/E doesn't have a leg to stand on. A/E wants to do cost sharing because it is somehow everyone's problem.

bdgol07 said:

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I get that there are a TON of bad contractors, I was wondering if anyone could beat this absolute gem I heard last night.

My wife was talking to one of our daughter's friend's mom and they are building a house and the mason was finishing up their fireplace and somehow thought that it would be a GREAT idea to pressure wash the brick, INSIDE the house, when the walls are fully drywalled/taped/floated. They had to take out drywall as if it was a flood and redo the bottom 4-ish feet since there was ~4in of water in their house. I asked what drugs the cops found when they arrested him because there is no way that anyone would think that was a good idea while sober.

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I'm actually more curious as to why they wanted to pressure wash the brick?

Was this to get all of the excess mud / mortar off the brick? If so, that's even crazier. We had a fireplace done and they came back with a type of vinegar wash to get it all clean manually with a rag and bucket.

ABATTBQ11 said:

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... 120% CD's...

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lol Is that like 100% CD with 23 ASI's?

Aggietaco said:

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ABATTBQ11 said:

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... 120% CD's...

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lol Is that like 100% CD with 23 ASI's?

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Yes, but the architect came up with the idea to do 110% and 120% CD's to limit the number of ASI's because of all the changes they knew were going to be made after the deadline for 100% CD's. The owner thought it was a great idea and went with it.

I can also contribute some Architect Horror stories here

but why not we start a new thread for them? Might be just as fun.

I'm going to start suggesting this on every project.

ABATTBQ11 said:

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Aggietaco said:

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ABATTBQ11 said:

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... 120% CD's...

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lol Is that like 100% CD with 23 ASI's?

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Yes, but the architect came up with the idea to do 110% and 120% CD's to limit the number of ASI's because of all the changes they knew were going to be made after the deadline for 100% CD's. The owner thought it was a great idea and went with it.

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Whatever it takes to avoid acknowledging that they missed the CD deadline by a mile... or two...

Just remembered one our church had. We were looking to expand our parking lot, and a paving contractor found out through the grapevine. They said they could to it fairly cheap because they had a lot of leftover materials from a recent job, and I think it was around $25k-$30k dollars. For our church that's a significant amount, but we really needed a larger area. They had worked for the city and their references checked out, so they were hired.

Well, they come out and get it paved and get paid. Within 2 months weeds are sprouting up through and within a couple more there's weeds and grass everywhere and it's like there's just s bunch of gravel in a field. It took several more months and some nastygrams from the church district's attorney, but they did eventually issue a refund.

Aggietaco said:

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I'm going to start suggesting this on every project.

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Gotta say, it's kind of convenient to just have an entirely new set issued instead of trying to keep up with what changes happened when and where between 100% CD's and ASI 37.

ABATTBQ11 said:

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Aggietaco said:

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I'm going to start suggesting this on every project.

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Gotta say, it's kind of convenient to just have an entirely new set issued instead of trying to keep up with what changes happened when and where between 100% CD's and ASI 37.

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What??? You don't trust them to put a revision cloud around their changes?????

docb said:

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Was doing an inside remodel to our Steamboat Springs home and the contractor get the demo part mostly done and then he decides to shoot and kill himself. That was a lot of fun to get that mess rectified.

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In your home? That's awful!