Is the gray dirt like clay or from an old leach field? What's a dumpster and tipping fee in your area? A few hundred?

Good thing it wasn't NJ. They'd call in the DEP and declare it a SuperFund site, sue the original developer for recovery costs, kick you out of the house and condemn it, and wait till the courts sort it all out.

Scott

PS Just kidding about NJ

the dirt is from when the land was cleared 20 years ago when the house was built. the PB is charging us for an extra day of excavation and the dumpsters even though the excavator was two hours late yesterday and only worked 5 hours and was late again today and then walked off the job. his assistant is now doing the work. my contract called for 8 hours of excavation and my pb has now told me extra time is 250 per hour. i am going to tell him that i will pay for the hours worked today over three as they only worked 5 yesterday. any thoughts on these costs?

Trash pits are very common in The Atlanta area especially if the house was built prior to 1996 when they started to crack down on the builders and developers. Haveing been and excavoator for 10 years I have handled probably close to 100 trashpits and poor soil conditions. The Gray dirt (organic material) and stumps are not as expensive as building debris. I am not sure if Dixie Speedway still takes stumps but a few years ago it was about $350 per load to dump plus truck and tractor time. There is also Woodtech up your way but I can not recall thier prices. Be sure that the company building your pool has a soils engineer test the recompaction of the soil they are using to replace the trash. The trash deffinately has to come out but it is all for not if they do not recompact the soil to 95%. Out of curiosity, who did you use to build your pool?

we are using Curt Cooper of Avalon Pools, do you know him?
Please share your thoughts.

I wont comment on the trash, but stand your ground on the hours. Make sure they provide you a copy of the dump bills to pay, and if they ask for a small amount for administration I would accept it.

re:NJ

Or you could just pay off a few public officials.
Fuggedaboutit!

I do not understand why you are being charged extra. The PB should already have that figured in the overall cost. When we had our pool built the PB responsibility was to provide trash dumpsters and had to remove the hill of dirt from the hole. We did not have to pay anything extra.

I agree strongly with sceadu - make sure the soils engineer is involved. Our PB initially dug the pool, placed the plumbing and rebar and called for inspection without the engineer. It cost us an extra $20K for him to remove all the work and overexcavate, then compact. It seems he had put the pool on a mixture of loose fill, native soil and solid rock.

I also agree with watching the hours and pay for what they actually work. Check the contract, you may be liable for travel time also.

good luck!

"I do not understand why you are being charged extra. The PB should already have that figured in the overall cost"

This is typically how the lower bidders operate. When they run into any little bit of adversity, its change order, change order, change order to death until you are 20% over the price of the highest bidder who would have taken care of everything they ran across.

So we should assume there will be a trash pit on every dig and tack on $10,000 to the contract for every pool?

Sounds good. Lets get digging!

when was the last time you paid $10,000 onto an excavation to get rid of trash.

I should also add, what a good builder would do in a case like this, is to charge the extra costs they incur onto the price, but not put a huge profit margin on a change order like this.

"I do not understand why you are being charged extra. The PB should already have that figured in the overall cost"

WOW!!!! If I was good enough to predict problems before they occured I would be rich beyond my wildest imagination!!

There is absolutely no way of telling what is beneath the earth prior to digging a pool in most situations. I have been involved in $10,000 trash pits where I had to bench my tractor down to reach bottom and hauled off 20 loads of trash only to turn around and bring in 30 loads of compactable fill just to get back to day 1. How can you hold the contractor responsible for that?

In the past when we have hit trash rock or water, we have the client pay the excavator direct and only what it costs to rectify the situation. $250/hr sounds steep for the Atlanta area. It was only $160/hr 4 years ago when I retired my tractor so I would make sure that your PB isn't trying to make anything extra for your unfortunate situation.

Agreed. I dont think a contractor should profit off this situation, But to pad a contract to cover unforseeable events is unfair. If THAT is what makes a contractor a high bidder, I'll take the low bidder. Excavation should always be a phase payment with the customer being able to cancel upon making this payment.
Lets say you are digging the pool with a trackhoe and all the material was to be stockpiled to be used later for grading. When you hit the first stump, you still have no way of knowing how much more is down there. At this point the customer should be informed of the situation and make the decision whether to continue or not.

Is $10,000 far- fetched? You now may have to bring in another piece of equipment, such as a skid loader (with operator). Trucking and diposal fees. Material to replace material removed. More trucking. Compaction equipment and operator for that( my contracts dont say anything about putting dirt IN a hole). That compaction should be tested. You may have to reform the pool or add forms to walls that cave in or just shoot more concrete. $10,000 aint @#$%. Even if the homeowner pays for all this, the builder will still have indirect costs/loss because of the delay of the project. Maybe he will even lose another contract because he cant start it in time.
Trust me, nobody wants this stuff to happen.

A lesser pool builder (and they are definately out there) might bury that stuff in your yard, maybe even under the pool.Fire that guy.

If the homebuilder is still in business, they should pay the bill. Have your attorney talk to them.

the trash took 5 hours to clean up, it really was not as bad as it could have been.
I was charged the following: 6 hours of extra excavation @ $250 per hour
6 hours of bobcat @ $85 per hour. three loads of hauling dumpster @650 per load ( I negotiated this to 2 loads as my contract called 4 dump truck loads of hauling and I felt I was owed some credit for this) travel time of $300. The total came to 4260 which i paid $3610 after the extra load of hauling was removed.
I am a bit weary at this point and hope there will be no other unforseen charges. does anyone have comments on this? thanks so much. by the way no special equipment was brought in and the PB did not have another job to get to.

"I am a bit weary at this point and hope there will be no other unforseen charges. does anyone have comments on this? thanks so much. by the way no special equipment was brought in and the PB did not have another job to get to."

If you stick to the plan ( not making changes) everything else is on the builder to execute. Most of the time unforeseen, is just the stuff that is buried in the ground. At this point everything else should be downhill.