Yes new york

Typically in a snowy clime you have a several-inch step down from the house to the patio to avoid snow/slush/water from being up against an exterior door. Also don’t normally see the patio butting right up against siding (usually a few inches below it).

You have three threads going about this issue and the outdoor counter abutting your house. Consider having another mason or GC look at your overall install for a 2nd opinion.

You are now going to have water in your house every time it snows. And maybe with heavy rains too. Level walkouts only work in covered areas, or no snow climates. This whole entire jackleg installation is not done with any water infiltration prevention in mind.

If the patio is pitched away from the house, water will drain away from the house. WRT snow, most people shovel out doorways so they can get into and out of the house without making a huge mess. Sometimes homeowners need to do a little bit of work when there are adverse weather conditions, and shoveling out a doorway is not that big of a deal.

IMO not ideal install for your climate at all. IMO water intrusion issues are best dealt with before adding any exterior decking or pation just sloping the patio will not do the trick. I agree only would work where that space is covered with no water intrusion.

You need to determine if the patio is truly pitched away from the house enough for water runoff. Your overall design will require snow removal removing it rapidly (before it melts). Ideally there would be a step down but at this point there is not much that can be done if the patio has the required pitch for drainage. I however would not be happy that the GC did not look into and develop a plan long before this.

It is definitely pitched away from the house.

Most codes require a distance of approximately 6" from grade to the bottom edge of the siding. Your building inspector may have an issue here with it being a impervious patio surface.

It would have been better to drop the patio to achieve the requires patio slope, but a more intensive labor solution.

Is the bottom edge of the cut Hardy Plank siding finished to encase the Hardy Plank material from moisture?

I still have a large payment remaining. i have no idea what to do at this point. the contractor was supposed ro be reputable. i never gave any of this a thought that he may not have been doing work properly until now

Mark, it was only cut at the bottom. no encasing…what will this mean in the future

Raw Hardy Plank material will absorb moisture. If the plank was cut, where it was cut will be raw, unless the contractor painstakingly finished the raw edge in some manner. The bottom plank will have a higher tendancy to absorb moister and deteriorate over time and need replacing.

" The bottom plank will have a higher tendancy to absorb moister and deteriorate over time and need replacing. "

With no Warranty from Hardie. Same as your other post where the bluestone top and the built-in below make contact with the siding.

None of this was designed well. Or implemented well. Is this contractor actually licensed?

I think so? is there a way to check? the company has won best of houz best of our county several years in a row. this is why i really never thought twice about this

"won best of houz best of our county several years in a row"

I think there is a term for that. I can't remember exactly. Something about blowing smoke up . . . somewhere.

Hopefully you are not in upstate NY with high snowfall accumulations ...

Can you add photos of the back of your house showing the entire back of the house/patio including the roof and the property adjacent to the patio?

Does your roof over the patio pitch towards your patio?

Will the property that abuts the patio area be properly graded away from the house/patio?

The patio area should have been excavated and not raised. Certainly would have required fairly extensive dirtwork and drains, retaining walls, etc. from what I can see of the house elevation relative to the surrounding geography. As it is now, the door sill is buried. And, if the house is on a raised foundation vs a slab, the rim joist is below grade. (Which was also the condition with the original patio.) .Not desirable.

What can i have be done now? get a second opinion in officially? not pay remainder? here are more pictures. i can take more when i am home. the other big issue is the grade is all into the house completely wrong i am gwtting water up against the back if the house.

" the other big issue is the grade is all into the house completely wrong i am gwtting water up against the back if the house. "

Makes me even more concerned with everything else you have going on. Seems nothing on the exterior is correct. You may want to see about getting an inspection done by someone privately, with a home inspector for new construction or an architect as you need advice at this point that is site specific and will require more thorough inspection than is possible thru the internet. But I would not give this guy another dime. He is lower the grade at you porch when the rest of the house is to low to start with. You will have a serious mess on your hand's come winter. Unfortunately "Best of Houzz" is really not much of anything to prove anything.

Thank you design fan for your advice.

the roof does have gutters which all connect down to a drywell. there are curtain drains at the bottom of the retaining wall and around patio edges 2 feet out. i had hoped more dirt just needed to be excavated to pitch the ground properly away from house and towards the curtain drains

That pic with water up against the house is pretty bad. I have never seen so much water up against a house when the land nearby doesn't have standing water. There is negative slope here towards the house - the opposite of what it should be. There is no room to add soil without having it against the siding.

It would seem to be the solution is digging out a lot of dirt about 10 feet away from the house but how that is handled with this new large wall right there is going to be tricky. Not to mention the patio.

The L shaped wall on the patio has to be sloped away from the wall also - which creates 2 different planes. Did they put a drain in the patio in the "L"? Putting an L wall against a house with a flat impervious patio seems like a really bad idea generally (unless covered).

The good news is that you have slope to deal with all this water but there will be some work to get it right.

A couple of things - plan for 100 year rain events and plan on having those every few years. No part of the country is free from occasional super rain events. This trend is only going to worsen.

We had a challenging backyard and had an engineer come in and sign off on the drainage plan. Sure - maybe they just speced double the size pipes but we needed some liability protection also.

From the pics, I would generally look at that backyard as a disaster waiting to happen if I were a buyer. I would want to see detailed drawings of the drainage system and pics during 100 year rain events. I imagine that everyone knows about a house that has flooded and how bad that can be.

yes we did have an engineer draw up the drainage system which was submitted to the town. the ground was supposed to be graded towards the drainage which is along fhe patio and the bottom of the retaining walls. currently it seems sloped to go past all this drainagw and tothe back of the house.

from what everyone has said it seems to me my contractor decided to raise the patio to minimize the amount of dirt he’d have to ship out. the backyard elevation is a few inches higher than it used to be. where the water is now pooling used to be the highest point but has now turned to be the lowest point.

so do you all think shipping out more dirt to grade the backyard correctly will work?

i have somebody coming today to give a second opinion in the patio and L kitchen today

With global climate change you situation will probably only get worse. 100 year rain events are happening far more frequently that in years past. So, would definitely would discuss with contractor and maybe even hire a landscape architect or civil engineer.

" i have somebody coming today to give a second opinion in the patio and L kitchen today "

That is a good start. As far as stripping away more dirt to slope the ground away from the house that is typically how it is done. But without more and better sire info it is tough for anyone on the internet to offer solid advice. Which is why I suggested getting some knowledgeable out to the site. I am sure soil will need to be moved, just not sure what your site conditions will dictate. The main issue is you cannot build up around your house as the siding is way to low already, it needs to be help 6" minimum off the ground.

Your state should have an online lookup for contractors licenses. That is separate from you asking about their liability insurance, and calling their carrier to verify it is still in force.

I looked. they have a home improvement license. Its a husband and wife team. she is a landscape designer. they had to submit contractor info to the town. i feel very blindsided by all this. they have beautiful work up on instagram. you can check it out zavaglia associates. i guess i should write an honest review of my experience after all this. would never have imagined i’d run into this many issues based on their reviews now

Maybe the project manager on your job is new, or just stupid. The biggest truism in all of construction is that water goes downhill, and you have to manage that water to keep it out of your home, as a first level priority. If this is new construction though, that inadequate yard grading is on the builder primarily, and on these landscape people to bring to your attention. No one used a transit or water level here??? It evidently needs a lot of earth moved to achieve the proper slope away from the house. That pond against the foundation is pretty damning evidence against their skills in making water flow where it should flow.

Call the owners and get them involved.

Yup…i have talked to the owners multiple times about the water issue with similar pictures dated all through the summer. they seem in no rush to fix this. last email today ”we will remediate” with no time frame what so ever of sending a crew out. when mg last email specficially says can we expedite fixing this issue as its been like this the last 6 months

You are very rapidly getting past remediation and into a hot mess that is going to cost someone a hell a lot of money as you are running out of option very quickly.

Why hire a landscaper when you need grading/excavation/stormwater management?

ShadyWillowFarm landscape designer was the wife part of the husband and wife team acting as the GC. They are also the ones that have pretty much screwed the pooch here pretty good from all appearances.

Give your general contractor opportunity to solve the problem, and repair the attempted solutions, 100% the right way regardless of what it will cost them; even if it means tearing out new construction and regrading the entire site.

What would you do if they won’t do it? they have been resistant to any issues Ive brought up in the past im trying to prepare for the worst now. highly doubt they will agree to redo the patio

second contractor just stopped by who said the patio and cement being poured against the siding that is above foundation level needs to have a membrane and flashing. told me to ask if one was done during install but unfortunately based on limited pictures i have of that stage of the project it does not seem so.

he was less concerned about the counter abutting the siding since it is hardi board siding. said would not have done that way. would ideally now put flashing from siding to countertop but may also be ok with silicone caulking countertop to siding.

gave lots of additional input on fixing the grading in addition to excavating more dirt, adding catch basin and surface drains to catch more water before it hits the house

sounds like another 6 figure hole for me…

Is this a new build? Was the builder supposed to do a final grading?

No not a new build anymore. built in 2016. it was graded properly before backyard project which we started last winter nov 2022.

Start shopping for a good construction attorney.

Just to be clear, you experienced no water standing against the house, until the backyard project was begun?

Yup definitely no standing water against the house prior to project.

" I still have a large payment remaining. "

Hang on to it and as above find a good construction lawyer.

Well just keeps getting better. contractors response ”i dont know what youre talking about. the cement was poured properly. there is nothing to review”

Sorry to hear that they aren't taking any ownership into the issues. At this point, I would clearly document your primary concerns in a concise email and give them one last chance to address them. If they won't address them, I would put the project on pause, consult an attorney, and go from there. Ideally you won't pay them anything and they will either fix it or end their work (with possible damages paid out to you). You're right, their website and Google reviews are very well done and they look like a stand up company with high quality work online. Interestingly, a 5 star review posted last week seems to have the same setup of the outdoor kitchen counter butting up against the siding. I suspect they always do it that way. I can't tell if the patio is also raised too high.

If "the cement was poured properly", then why did "Contractor told us he was raising the patio several inches to pitch it more away from the house."

Tell him you have a architect that thinks he is lying and is trying to cover his ass. Tell him to fix it now or spend the rest of his life trying to recover from his mistake. Fixing it properly will bring more work his way, trying to weasel out of it will be digging his grave. People do not appreciate construction, but they sure appreciate good customer service.

Yes i looked back on how they built that kitchen that was featured on instagram. it is also all against the siding. looks like cedar siding so seems even worse for water. the before on instagram shows the cedar siding with algae and not great shape to begin with. same area that is all covered now by the kitchen counters. u see them install the countertops and some caulking from countertop to cedar siding. i really dont think they do any flashing there either. i am so confused does he just lack the knowledge in this area?

if i had never posted about the countertops on here i’d be in ignorant bliss too assuming everything was done right

Mark, we got an invoice to pay in full today and we sent email back detailing our concerns 1) patio elevated to level of door 2) patio above foundation level without flashing 3) grading of property pitched into the house. he seemed to realize we were serious and we received the most detailed email response ever over the last year working with him.

“Between the new patio foundation and the house is metal flashing to protect against moisture. It’s not observable because it is approximately one inch below the bluestone. If you don’t believe we have done this you can pay me time and material to remove a section of bluestone to show you so you can rest easy that it was installed.”

Thinking now that is the shiny gray i see in the first photos above where siding is cut. he must have tucked it under the raw cut siding. there is no flashing that protrudes on the bluestone tho like i see along other areas of my house. see pics.

Above is pic of my front siding with flashinf that my builder showed me to look for

Above is one corner of my patio

i talked to my original builder of my house who shared photos of when house was being built with the siding going up. appears the nook area protrusion, the white PVC area, has a black membrane going all the way down. so this seems reassuring to me. the sheathing used was zip greenboard. so if he had not put anything then we should have seen green.

perhaps biggest issue that remains then is the grading of the property. it rained today and it was a lake in my backyard roperty. it rained today and it was a lake in my backyard

It does appear that your house is at the low point, and the surrounding properties all have runoff onto yours. Looks like several swales were handling routing that to (somewhere)? If you never had water against the house until now, then something about the patio installation disturbed the grading that had the water running away from the home.

It would be helpful if you had a copy of the grading plan from your builder. Or if you had pictures of the property while raining, before the patio. If it does come down to a court case, it will also be helpful to have your builder’s input on what has changed about the grading since he turned it over to you.

they raised the elevation of the flat part of the backyard by about 6 inches. but did not change the elevation closest to the house. therefore while the area closest to the house used to be higher than the flat backyard it is now the lowest point. i actually had to have my gutter guys raise the adaptor from the gutter downspouts by 8 inches because it was getting covered by the dirt and entering the underground drains

also the old patio had drains at the edge of the patio. there are none here so watee runs around the patio striaght to the back

It probably does not help any to now be able to tell people that you have a lake house.

I would send them those pictures and state that the grading and drainage is now a significant issue because they raised the flat area without addressing any of the impacts on drainage. This is basic stuff that a landscape architect should do. Imagine how people would react seeing you pist a review with those pictures of a lake against your foundation after the work they did...

Also it may help to be a bit kind, and state that you know they pride themselves on high quality work and you respectfully ask that they make this right.