Light in the Darkness?

So if you've been reading regularly you have undoubtedly read the issues we have been having with Jayman.

Here is a bit more information as well as some good news!  Ta da, who knew!

So in regards to the concrete that we have a problem with; I have talked to my engineers at work that deal with concrete and here is what they say:

       
            1. The rebar is doing absolutely no good now as reinforcing.
            2. No bond now between the layers.  It will break up and the design strength will not be there.
            3. Cold joints between layers are never recommended.  Any moisture settling in the cold joint may lead to degredation of the concrete (as water expands and freezes cracking will occur and joint susceptible to shear.
            4. If any engineer signed off on this (which they wouldn't) they could be sued.

So they have contacted ARMCA (the Alberta Ready Mix Concrete Association) which is a good start because my engineers gave me their contact information as well.  Granted if they come and say that "some engineer" said it's fine i'll be finding out whether it is a real life engineer (real and practicing) and talking to him personally to see what he actually said.

in regards to the patio door leaking, the window has been fixed but we are waiting to see if they fix the seal that has to do with the frame of the house itself or I guess the "deck people".  Not too sure exactly who they are though.

So I have made a meeting with Jayman and a few contractors who are suppose to be coming at 8am which is relatively working with my schedule so kudos to Jayman, it only took over a year and a few ragings (not a word but "Hulk impressions" would be too strong).  I am on "vacation" that week so I have it off but I have to leave relatively early so 8am makes me a happy camper.

The new problem we have found is that they only ran 14 gauge wire to the pad and it is suppose to have been run for 20 amps.  But they are going to look at it the same day that they come on the 8th. 

I have been dealing with the manager of the warranty area for Jayman and so far he has been exceptional.  Maybe it's because he always is maybe it's because i've been a little rage monster but either way i'm happy.  Especially because I no longer have to deal with their admin employee or whoever she is but she was horribly useless and I know that sounds bad but you give me a nice way of saying not competent and i'll go with that instead. Not living up to the scope of her job?  That one sounds a bit better.  I better stop writing before I start to ramble some more.

Little Jayman Shop Of Horrors

"Progress"

So dealing with Jayman I think a good way to describe it is like being in a bad relationship.  You have the "honeymoon" phase for the first four months as they court you and things are lovely because they haven't got you money yet.  But after that honeymoon phase it's like being in a abusive relationship.

If you look that is what this blog is like.  The first four months are all good things and excitement and then the abuse starts.  If there is one thing readers go away from this blog knowing it is to not build with Jayman.  Everytime I deal with them it confirms that they have as good customer service as Telus (you know where you wait on the phone for three hours and then they accidentally hang up on you).  I will never recommend this company...not even to a person I didn't like.  If you do still want to build with them I again recommend not upgrading anything because even their base builds they have troubles with.

So here are the updates:

- Don't know if i've commented on this before but one of the bedroom doors doesn't close.  To be more specific it does close but when it's "closed" I don't have to turn the latch, I can just push the door with my finger lightly and it opens.

- One thing I am curious about are the locks on the doors.  Most locks, you can still kind of get in if you really have to by getting a butterknife or something (say your child locks itself in and for some reason can't open the door...my sister has done that before...so it's good to be able to get in that way) but these locks you don't even have to have nails to turn them.  Makes it interesting when needing privacy, you really have to trust the other person to not open the door.  That really isn't a Jayman problem but a door problem but it's interesting to note.

- Hey, you guys remember that concrete?  So the woman that we deal with, I may as well be talking to a door for the responses I get...or lack there of.  No one got back to us on the concrete but All Weather Windows and Jayman came in today (they didn't phone like they were suppose to so I could come from work to see them instead of missing work and sitting around the house...it takes me 25 minutes to get home, luckily Tyler was home for them as he worked from home just in case they didn't call) and looked at the windows (will get to that on the next point).  So what the person from Jayman had to say about the concrete was: "If there are any problems it would normally surface in the first year".  I'm sorry, you f*** up and you want me to wait and see if anything surfaces in the next year?  We wanted to build a garage...if we build a garage (even if we wait until after a year is up) what are they going to do then?  I've talked to many professionals as well as posting on the Mike Holmes forum and everyone says that they need to fix their mistake and do it over again.

http://www.mikeholmesfanforum.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=51758

- Those leaky ol' windows: so I touched base last time with the fact that the patio windows are leaking.  The problem is a combination of the windows themselves AND the guys that did the balcony didn't do a proper seal!!  REALLY?!?!

Oh, can I say again the Weiss Johnson is wonderful?  They came by on Sunday and were very competent and quick and they installed everything that was suppose to be in our one upgrade and they even fixed the flap flap flap on the side of our house!!!  Remember I asked Jayman before I chose the upgrade to make sure that sound wasn't there and when it was they told me to buy a ladder, do it myself, and put some sort of two sided tape on it?  I will definitely be looking into getting an air conditioner from Weiss Johnson in the future due to their customer service and competence of the technician.

Oh and I found Jayman missed a paint spot on our roof when they walked through the house before we moved in.  That one i'll give them because it's in such a weird spot we didn't notice it until two weeks ago.  Hopefully it will be fixed though.

Here is a link to another womans blog I found about Jayman.  Much older (2004).

More Problems With Jayman Innovations

Progress:

I was expecting this blog to be done by now because this blog was set up for friends and family to see the progress of the house.  Now it seems it is turning into a blog to warn people NOT to build with Jayman Innovations, or anything Jayman really.  I am very sad to say that I don't have any good new for this update as that is the theme lately I guess.  Here's the update:

- Remember that clean air option that I talked about last time and how they didn't really believe me that they didn't install it.  Well they made an appointment to come fix it (or so I thought).  What ended up happening is they got the guy to come in to check if we had the two stage furnace.  Well, gee wiz people, that is the only item from our upgrade that we actually had!!  Good thing I kept the paper that lists what came with the upgrade because we didn't have a single item on it other than the furnace and that was a $5,000 upgrade.  Very con-artist like of them.  The Weiss Johnson guy was exceptional.  He not only has made it so that all my parts will be in he has scheduled a time for Sunday that he will come in (odd how Weiss Johnson can work around my work schedule and Jayman can't (even though it's their f**k ups i'm missing work for) and I didn't even spend the price of a house with Weiss Johnson for them to do that.  I have nothing but good things to say about Weiss Johnson (see, i'm not always negative lol).

- The plumber came in yesterday as well to fix the master bathtub and it went smoothly but now our toilets make this weird sound when we flush it and I'm hoping that maybe he just didn't turn the water on fully but we'll see.

- While I was home yesterday, it was raining, and I found that the third floor balcony door/window leaks.  I've contacted Jayman and they think it's the windows.  The leak is in the doorway/slider area but it also seems to be leaking right where the carpet meets the wood under the window (not coming down from the window but underneath the wood).  The other weird thing is it's not just wet right under the window but over the couple hours of it leaking there were wet spots a few inches from the window and not touching each other.  So Jayman has to set up a meeting with me and the All Weather Windows (which I doubt very much it was their installation that screwed it up but we'll see) and I bet you money they are going to say they can't do it unless it's during my working hours.

This door has not been opened.  The sliding door is on the right hand side and it slides to where that water is.

Right in front of my fingers is all extremely wet carpet.  3 inches from that is the wet spots.

- One more big kicker of a problem.  So they pour our concrete pad for us and then we build our own garage later.  So when they came by to pour it they only poured part of it and then left.  This would probably have been fine if they had come back right away and not waited three plus hours and it had dried enough that my friend could STAND on it without making prints!!  Anyone knows even a smidgen about concrete knows this is EXCEPTIONALLY bad!!  To anyone that doesn't the simplified version of this is that you basically now have two layers of concrete...two seperate layers...and those two separate layers are going to move, expand, etc at different rates which is bad when there is going to be a building on top.  I am hoping that they will change this because if they don't fix it and we build a garage on it and if they moved in the worst way and caused structural damage to the garage what am I suppose to do years down the road sue them because they didn't fix it in the first place?  Not a fan of that option at all.

Dry Concrete...lovely.

-  Oh, here's a weird one.  So we have a square island that we don't have a sink in.  The lights that are above the island and they are small hanging lights that are three across in a horizontal line.  They are not centre to the island but they are installed like there should be a sink (if there were a sink there the lights would be right above them and it would make sense).  The bigger problem which is more of a safety problem is that the big hanging light that would be over your dining room table is over so far to the island that you can't centre it over your table EVEN if you had the smallest table you could buy.  There is no way even with a tiny table that you could seat guests on this side of the table unless you move the table off centre.  You have to move it off centre enough that even average height people will still smash their heads on it if their not careful.

Oh!!  The Weiss Johnson guy is also going to fix the slam slam slam that I talked about yesterday where Jayman told me to get a ladder and do it myself even though I specifically asked about it before I got the upgrade.