I received a judgment in Carroll County (New Hampshire) Superior Court for $12,981 plus legal fees. With that and interest, it comes to just shy of $20,000. The judge ruled that it was due to "deceptive business practices" and "violations of the consumer protection act".
He has now taken property he owns and transferred it into someone else's name to hide it from me and get out of paying the judgement. There is one spec-house he built that still is for sale and was owned by him on the tax rolls in the first half of 2007. By the second half, he had allegedly "sold" the property and another parcel to another person - the same person! In this market do you honestly believe the same person bought two properties from him?
And we drove by the spec house. It still has a "FOR SALE" sign on it. However, the phone number that's listed at the house doesn't go to a real estate office. It doesn't go to the "new" property owners on the deed. It goes to... Richard Davidson!! Are you going to tell me he sold this house to someone else who is just trying to resell it using him and not a broker? In this 2007 real estate market?
Do you really want him doing work for you?
I am in contact with New Hampshire DES and am actively pursuing getting his septic installer's license revoked as well as an administrative hearing.
Let me enumerate what he left my property like. Keep in mind, I was new to the whole home-building thing and any time I did try to question what he was doing, I got told "I've been in the business 51 years... I know what I'm doing:
+ With regard to my septic system, the state-approved plans showed perimeter drains around the foundation of my home. These were also called for in my contract. He never bothered to install them! And yet I paid for him to do so. He tried to brush it off in court. Why should this lowly septic installer overrule the septic designer and the state on how the system should be installed?
+ Also in regard to the septic system, after it has passed inspection, it needs to be covered up with septic sand, then loam and grass seed. Richard Davidson covered it with the septic sand and some loam that came from another site he was working at. The loam was from beneath the pines. What he has put there is thin and virtually nothing grows in it due to the pine sap present in the dirt. In addition, since it was approved in October, the septic should have been covered with hay for the winter. I ended up seeding it myself, but it still needs more loam to really be "right". I was given a judgement for the loam.
+ Something that cannot be fixed. I wanted a drive-under with the harsh winters we have here. I now have a garage I cannot use for two reasons. One is that he assured me it wouldn't be an issue to have the driveway where it is that leads to the garage, but of course it ended up being that way and I could not get approval for the driveway. So now that "driveway" is blocked off by rocks. Even if I could access the garage, he made it too small for my minivan to fit in! With his "51 years of experience" he didn't allow enough room for my vehicle, or any common minivan or SUV, to have clearance into the garage.
+ In addition, he asked me at one point if he could move the house about 20 feet closer to the road. I asked what difference it would make and he assured me none. Well, since I am on the downside of the road, I have a steep slope now down into my driveway. Not only is water running toward my house and my foundation, but when it snows it can be virtually impossible to get out of the driveway. In addition, in trying to compensate for this, he put in too much fill right up against the house and water is running down the driveway and over the sill of the house into my basement. It will eventually cause the sill to rot as well.
+ He was supposed to install the garage doors and openers in my home and he never did. I had to contract and pay an outside company to come in and do that, even though I had already paid him.
+ For my house to pass inspection and get a certificate of occupancy, I needed a few things he never did. My garage (which I can't use) had to be lined with 2 layres of fire resistant drywall. I needed rear stairs. None of this was done. It was a fight on the day I moved in to get him to have basement stairs installed just so the moving company wouldn't drive off with my stuff. The judge awarded me the money I paid to finish off the garage and what it would have cost for a set of rear stairs.
+ Since I thought he was going to do the work on my second property, I had given him the money for the permits and driveway bond already in July of 2005. In October of 2005 when he walked off the job, he still had not done any of that. I had to pay a second time for those permits out of my own pocket. The judge awarded me that.
+ To build my house, he built a rock wall and then filled it in with sandy fill. My foundation went on top of that. Well, he only built the wall as high as the bottom of the foundation, and in some places not even that high. This meant that when he was putting fill around the foundation, there was nothing to hold it in place. I have been losing fill from around my foundation since day one. My deck was in danger of collapsing and has already shifted and needs to be fixed. I didn't want to pay for an engineer to come in on this, and the judge did not award me anything because of that. Considering how he is trying to stiff me on my judgement, that was probably a good decision.
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