We started demo on a renovation + addition process in June 2022. The approved plans called for fire sprinklers as required by local law. Our contractor forgot to install them. We were not aware we needed them until final inspection in March 2024 (at which point we thought everything that could go wrong already had...).

Our GC admitted he missed it, though said the city should have alerted us much earlier in the process and not let us close up walls. We install sprinklers and he does pay for all the work needed to rip up cielings and walls and repaint and to his credit, does not cut corners.

But we have to pack away entire parts of the house and spend 3 weeks -- with an 18-month old and at a disasterously inconvenient time for us work-wise--- bouncing around family/friend homes and hotels. And now have to wait what could be 3-12 months for the city to install some pipe so we can finally FINALLY get a CoO. Some financing we were waiting on for outdoor projects can't happen until the CoO so outside is on hold, which sucks since it's not safe for toddler, and terrible in the rain.

In addition to forgetting sprinklers from the start, we also now know that the project manager was alerted by the city that we needed fire sprinklers back in October 2023 but just ignored it until the GC found out in March 2024. We're still trying to figure this part out.

Anyway, thanks for reading this far to my actual question.. what is appropriate at this point? Despite all this, we do think our contractor is a very decent guy who just has too much going on and some very nice but very incompetent people working for him. He has screwed up a few things (not quite this big) but always fixed them on his dime (though our time and frustration..).

Is it appropriate to ask the contractor to pay for our hotels during this time? And/or ask for the exterior work to be done now but paid for upon final inspection approval? Anything else we should be thinking about?

Thank you