What are the issues you are having? Do you know what the cost will be to have someone else make the repairs? I have never heard of a home builder offering a 10 year warranty. Remember, if you sue him he can counter sue you for the $10k. Without more information it's impossible to say whether you need a lawyer or not. What type of contract did you have. How did he justify going $100k over? What was the $10k for? Did your contract require arbitration?

He claimed the $10,000 was for completing the garage, which was the first thing done, and we paid him in full for the agreed upon amount. We have spoke with a lawyer who says he has no grounds to counter-sue, as he signed off stating he was paid in full. He didn't even try to justify going over - he just said building costs were going up. We were double billed for several things. The sub-contractors damaged my bamboo floor before we ever moved in because the contractor refused to cover it, even after I requested he do so. He would not take any responsibility for repairing the floor.
We are having a lot of small problems that we can have another contractor repair for less than $10,000. But our major concern is that it is January, with sub freezing temps, and we have water coming up through the floors in the basement. When we first contacted him about this, he said it was our problem to deal with as it was caused from landscaping! The house sits on a hill with all slopes away from it.

Unless you know the cause of the water, and it doesn't sound like you do, and you know it is something minor then you are outside the scope of small claims court and need a lawyer. Many standard builder contracts require arbitration, that is why I asked about that. Some states also have laws that support mediation or arbitration for these types of disputes.

How long has the water been coming up through the floor? Do you have a sump or a french drain system? How much water is coming up? When they dug for the foundation did they hit water? Do you have gutters? Does the backfill around the house slope away from the house?

It's sort of odd that the house is on a hill and you have water in the basement. Can you provide a picture? Is it possible there is a broken water pipe under the house? Have you had anyone out to look at it? Do you have more water after it rains or when it gets warm and the snow melts?

our home came with a 2/10 year waranty and one of the reasons we chose our builder. was included in the price and their customer service has been excellent.

Our contract did not require arbitration. We first had water last spring before he even gave us the additional bill. He blamed it then on water coming off the rain chains from the gutters. We then had our landscape contractor grade the slope more away from the house. Then summer came, and it was dry, so no water problems. Last fall we had several heavy rains, and it started again. Not tons of water, just lots of very moist spots all over the basement. It has stayed that way all winter. We have a lot of snow, so I'm concerned that once it starts to melt, we may have a big problem.
When they excavated for the basement, it was all rock. So, our concern is that because the basement sits in the hole of rock, the water has no where to drain. He did put in some type of drain around the bottom of the hole outside of the foundation. It was different than any french drains I've seen in the past. It was just a flexible hose that layed around the foundation. I'm not sure he knew what he was doing.
I will try to post a photo later after I get home from work.

"...because the basement sits in the hole of rock, the water has no where to drain..."

Ah, now it makes sense. We had the same issue, they hit rock and water. We actually had ducks swimming in the foundation hole. What your builder should have done was build a french drain system. Since you are on a hill it is easy to drain the water away (called a daylight drain) rather than relying on a sump pump. There should have been pipes running inside the footer and outside, all around it, the inside ones connect to the outside ones and then it drains away. The builder also should have put heavy plastic sheeting on top of the stone below the basement floor.

He should have put a daylight drain in, but a lot of builders (and homeowners) don't like to put money into things that can't be seen. With some messy excavtion you can probably tap into that piping he put in and create a daylight drain. Did the flexible pipe he put in have holes along to the top but not the bottom? Did he put a sock or filter fabric over it? Is it buried in stone or did he just throw dirt on top?

Forget the rain chains, you need gutters and you need the water carried away from the house.

Did you take pictures during construction? I could help whoever you hire figure out what to do, and it could help you with litigation if you decide to go there.

Assuming this is the issue, there must be a good amount of water. We actually hit water, it was pouring in through cracks in the rocks. Our drain runs all year except in late summer. In the spring there is a lot of water coming out of the drain. But during the winter it is a trickle. If yours is coming up through the floor now I would be worried about spring. It is also possible you don't have plastic under your floor.

Do you have a sump hole you can drop a pump into until this can be resolved? If you don't, a contractor may be able to create one for you, but it involves putting a hole in your floor (this will also tell you if you have plastic or now). It will, of course, work better if the contractor used stone beneath your floor and didn't just use dirt there.

In case you are wondering where I am getting all this, we went through a lot of drainage issues when we were building. Plus, DH is a contractor with a degree in CE with drainage being his specialty, so I've picked up a lot from him. He believes every house with a slope should have a daylight drain and every house with any chance of water should have a sump hole as a backup. For example, a critter builds a home in your pipe, you use the sump to pump the water out until you can remedy it. And the sump hole can be used to monitor the water level below the floor.

cymraes,
I checked with DH last night after he got home. He said the black flex pipe has little slits along the top. Let's hope your contractor knoew which way to install it. DH also said it should have a sock or silter fabric over it, and it should have stone over that.

As soon as I told him you had flex pipe he said your contractor took the easy way out and that there is "no excuse" for a wet basement when you are on a slope and can drain the water away. He explained that the issue with flex pipe is that they often don't install it level, they just let the pipe follow the contours of the ground. So if there is an area it dips down the water will pool there.

He did say you can dig down to the pipe and attach a drain to carry the water away. It will be messy, but assuming this is your issue you don't really have any other choice.

Also, when I said you need gutters, I meant you need real downspouts, not rain chains. You need the water carried AWAY from the house, not dropped right next to it. It will involve a lot of digging but we have underground pipes that carry gutter water far away. You can probably get away with just 4 feet or so.

Any pictures from during construction?

I had to go out of town, so haven't had time to look for construction photos - but I don't think I have any of the basement hole, unfortunately. I think he just threw the black flexi pipe around the concrete. I'm pretty sure there wasn't anything over it. My husband said there was about a foot of sand added before they poured the concrete.
Also, our house has a wrap around porch, so all the water that does come off the gutters is at least 8 feet from the foundation. But, we can remedy the rain chains easy enough if that is a contributing factor.
I will try to post photos tomorrow. Thanks for the advice!

Yes, the rains chains may be a factor because they dump the water right up against the house, defeating the purpose of gutters (well, I guess plantings are still protected). Is it possible the soil UNDER the porch is not sloped away, so the water dumped by the rain chains flows against the house?

"My husband said there was about a foot of sand added before they poured the concrete."

Do you mean under the basement floor? They are not supposed to use sand, they should use stone. When they backfilled your foundation they just dump dirt in, no sand or stone over the black pipe?

If you want to add a daylight drain you really should avoid digging under the porch (that greatly complicates it). Our house has a wrap around porch, but it doesn't extend to the back and that is where our drain is. Do you have anywhere on the house without a porch where you could tap into the drain and drain the water away (down slope)?

my brother had the same situation with the finances on his home. They closed on his house and 6 months later the contractor submitted a bill that was not taken care of prior to closing. Long and short....they went to court and my brother was court ordered to pay the contractor. Your lawyer might want to do a little more research on case law.

This may well be a design issue as well as a construction issue. Who was responsible for the design of the house including the foundation drainage system, the foundation waterproofing, the final grading and the gutters?

If you gave that responsibility to the builder the issues can become pretty complicated and difficult to sort out. There is certainly more than one way to design the systems in question and your contractor probably doesn't hold a professional design degree and it will be difficult to hold him to such a standard.

In order to enforce a construction contract it is important that it contain design documents that adequately describe not only the scope of the work but the materials and their installation. It may be pointless to accuse a contractor of not meeting industry standards in an industry that has so few standards. Perhaps you can get him on building code compliance. Its worth a try.

IMO it'll take a skilled lawyer to sort this all out, and that's a job in itself to find one. Good lawyers know these cases often are money pits, no matter what merit the case has, and they often decline to take them.

RE: the warranty, if you mean he offered a separate policy from another company don't get too excited about them riding to the rescue. Warranty co's are set up as Risk Retention Groups which escape at least some state insurance regulation. Their policies exclude coverage of quite a bit. Disputing a denied claim with a warranty company usually means you'd be forced into their arbitration process which can highly favor the warranty co. Many who've been thru the process feel the whole set up is protection for the builder, not the homeowner. I have battled a warranty co and feel the same.

Re: arbitration. If it's in your builder contract you can't sue him. But, in many cases, if the builder were to sue you, he may have waived his right to later demand arbitration, a process that can favor him (builders) in much the same way it favors the warranty co. IMO the main reason arbitration is suspect is that the arbitration co's do repeat business with the industry. I've even seen marketing material from arbitration firms, literally courting builders and warranty co's etc to use them for their favorable decisions. IMO it's a rip off. I feel that not having to arbitrate was a huge reason I managed to come out alright in my construction defect case.

A lot of builders are hurting financially right now. Yours might just think he can intimidate you into paying him something more. If it were me I'd get a competent inspection/testing to find out why your house leaks. Get a good lawyer to go over your contracts, too. To not do this means you could miss important deadlines to have any recourse, and it's NOT normal for a new house to leak.

bellamy - did your brother's contractor sign a form stating he did now owe anything else? Our title company required the contractor to sign a release stating he was paid in full and had no recourse to come back at a later date requesting additional funds.
The warranty was offered by the contractor himself - that he specifically would do any warranty work for ten years. we have tons of small issues in addition to the water issue. Warped doors, windows don't close properly, trex decking cracking, electrical issues, etc. etc.

Sue, as far as we know, he poured the concrete on top of sand. We were not here, but I remember them putting the forms up on top of the sand. As for what covered the black pipe, I don't know. I was assuming just backfill, but I'm not sure. We made the mistake of assuming we hired a professional and he knew what he was doing. We do have a deck out back, where we could add the drain. And it all slopes downhill from the backyard.
As for who was responsible for the design - well we had an architect design the home. But the contractor made the decisions regarding the basement; he never really consulted us about any drainage issues. He bid the home with gutters (which he only put on about half the home).He was also responsible for the backfill. His contract clearly states he is responsible for the backfill, not any landscaping. All we heard was that because there was so much rock, there would be additonal charges -which we paid directly to the excavator. No one ever indicated there would be a drainage problem. The reason we hired a general contractor was for his experience and knowledge. Not knowing he lacked both.

A basement drainage system is one of the most important elements of a house design. It should have been drawn and specified by your architect and he should have insisted on doing that even if he did not have subsurface information yet. He should also have been asked to review any changes and to look at the excavation to determine any unusual conditions like organic material or poor drainage. It's the cheapest insurance you can buy. I will not work on a project where I do not perform site observation simply because I cannot afford the increased liability. There are always mistakes in the field just as there are always mistakes in the drawings. An architect's job on the site is to catch and correct them.

I would have allowed the system to drain by gravity to the downhill slope as well as installing a sump pump. There is no such thing as "overkill" regarding water intrusion protection. This is not only good practice, it protects the owner, designer, and builder from liability later.

An owner should never allow a builder to design any system without a written description or drawing reviewed by another knowledgeable person if not a design professional. A builder is not an owner's agent or design consultant and has a clear conflict of interest. And there are just too many things that can go wrong with a house design to assume a builder will do everything right. A warranty from an individual rather than a manufacturer is only as good as the good will of the person and his/her financial ability to honor it. I have always believed the primary purpose of a contractor's warranty is to help him get paid at the end of the work and that it is rarely a protection against design errors.

Please forgive me for a war story. I was interviewed by two lawyers about a project where a downhill neighbor was suing claiming my client did not properly drain his foundation and had created a water problem on their site. They asked a lot of odd questions but when I suggested we look at the drainage system in the weekly construction photographs they ended the interview and we never heard from them again.

One of the cross sections of our plans has a detail that shows the drainage detail. The designer never saw our lot, so it was a standard thing they added in. It shows 4" PVC, stone, filter fabric, all over undisturbed bearing soil. Do your plans show any drainage detail at all?

Whether you can go after and get anything out of the builder is one thing, and you need to speak to a construction attorney about that. But you need to get the water issue fixed regardless. You need to protect your asset. Get rid of those rain chains and put in downspouts, I'd do that now. Add gutters where you don't have them, again with downspouts. Check under the porches to see if there is a slope away from the house (it just needs to be enough to stop the water that comes of the porch from flowing back to the house). And as soon as someone can dig there you need to try to get a daylight drain it.

I don't think you answered if you have a sump. Is there a hole in your basement floor? It might have a cap. If not, a contractor can dig one (it will be about as wide a a 5 gallon bucket). That will also tell you if you have plastic under the floor and whether there is stone under there. A sump pump might help as well. If you don't have plastic it can't be added now, too late. But there may be something that can be painted on the basement floor, I'm not sure.

The first thing I would do is have an engineer come out and give you an assessment, in case you end up in litigation and need a professionl witness.

One of the problems with taking a contractor to court is that if the issue in question is not clearly drawn in the contract documents it is very difficult to hold a contractor to a design standard (other than code minimums) unless he has a professional design degree.

An architect or engineer is usually held to the standard of what a reasonable and prudent architect or engineer would have done in the same circumstances and that allows professional witnesses to effectively testify as to what they would have done and why.

Contractors are not usually held to this standard so expert witnesses may not be as effective. Giving a contractor responsibility for designing any aspect of a house instead of providing design documents or independent quality control is a huge risk in my opinion. But, of course, that construction delivery method saves a bit of money which can offset potential losses. If you think architects are too expensive to be used during construction, going to court is going to be very painful.

Get your architect to recommend a solution (probably a sump pump), get a price from another contractor for that work, and then negotiate with the original builder. If he will split the cost I would take it.

We do not have a sump pump, or a hole for one. I've lived in a home before with water problems, and we did add a sump pump (2) for that home. That was a spec home we purchased and we did end up going to court with that contractor (and won).
I think both the architect and the contractor for our current home, felt that because the home is built on top of a hill, there would not be a water issue.
We are going to replace the rain chains, and are having another contractor out to look at this issue (and the many other problems), and give us some recommendations.
Thanks for everyone's input.