I had retaining walls for terraces, stairs and a new fence built by them. They seemed like a good balance of cost and quality when I hired them, but the work and communication was pretty bad.
In the beginning it seemed great, the excavation went quickly and they were respectful of the property. However as time went on they did things differently than we discussed, didn't keep an eye on employees or didn't relay information to them, they brought in rocky garbage filled clay for my gardening areas, built a really shoddily made fence, crooked stairs, not as many stairs as the invoice stated or that we discussed (they eventually agreed to finish the stairs but overall it's still a bad job especially for the price), cracks in the concrete walls before they were even done with the job, ruined part of my front yard, and the slope for the terraces and next to the stairs is higher than we talked about. They also weakened my existing retaining wall.
The walls: I chose them because I wanted concrete with sides. They didn't make any sides and were just going to let my soil spill out into neighbors yards, that was the first big miscommunication. I had to pay extra for pressure treated sides which they only built a couple feet back. There were a couple cracks within a week or so of pouring the walls, after a few months 40 cracks. I do like the wood grain finish. They measured the wall wrong before pouring which made the stairs crooked. In the beginning they said dirt had to be on top of the footing for stability, but they exposed the footing on the lower wall, and the higher wall isn't covered much except by the giant stair hills.
The stairs: We talked many times before they started about what type of stairs and how they'd be made. They were supposed to have 2 pieces of pressure treated wood in the sides and one for the riser, those would be stacked on top of each other. Nope, no sides. They made a massive mound of dirt to put the stairs on, which makes a slidy hill to walk down to get down to the terraces. They ended the stairs in what would be a landslide in winter, in top of extra dirt they put there it was a 9' drop for 8-9' to the fence. After telling them about the crappy job they did everywhere including the invoice having 1/3 more stairs on it than what I received they came back and did a crap job finishing it up. The gravel is spilling out the sides, besides the stairs to walls being crooked, some stairs lean down, some are crooked in relation to the next one, they didn't fill in areas where they had rebar that they removed, so there are holes in the gravel every step that I had to fill in. They left big channels next to the lower stairs that I'm going to have to fix before the rains come. Keep in mind that the first part of the conversation was that I'm on landslide zone and stability is crucial to the project. The corners also broke off right away, and there are some splits in the new stairs from the rebar. It seems like they used very cheap wood for that.
The fence: it's so bad ..my 60 year old fence was so much stronger than what they made. I haven't left my dog in the yard while I'm out of the house since they made it...The spreader bars are bent, they said it was because the new material wasn't as strong as the old material (yeah, I noticed that too). For some reason one of the top bars is at the top of the fence for a couple spans, then they attached it 8" lower? Also another top bar was cut too long so they just attached it in front of the vertical bar instead of at the top of it. Lots of the spreader bars aren't connected through their holes at the top and bottom. The chain link is uneven at the top of the fence in many places. They left a big hole at the base of a fence. They said they'd bury the fence 6" below ground on both sides but didn't do that. It's exposed on the outer side so I'm going to have to go down there and fix it before coyotes dig in or my dog digs out. It's already spilling dirt out a lot and I keep filling it up. One of the gates is in the wrong location, I confirmed many times that it would be on the side, but they put it on the bottom part of the fence then told me to not go down there because it was too dangerous.
The fill soil: I told Alex I'd be using it for gardening and wanted good soil. He said yeah, it would be good dirt. They brought clay filled with garbage and rocks...so many rocks.. like more than half. I contacted the project manager before they brought the dirt trying to confirm that it would be good quality for gardening, he said Alex would come talk to me about it. He didn't come until a week later, meanwhile 3 loads had been dumped here. They said they'd clean it. Which they sort of did, one team of workers did while they were bringing it to the back, but the other workers who did most of the dirt bringing just brought all that crap to my backyard. I'm on the edge of parkland, so they were throwing the rocks outside the fence.
They're awful. Do not hire read more