Hi all. I sort of need some of your insights here.
I've been living in this townhouse development for five months now. We don't yet have a closing date, but it's probably soon.
Over the past five months,
we've had several issues with this place. Some are aesthetic, and some are structural/workmanship problems. But I sat down and made a list of things that were initially installed incorrectly, which needed a second (sometimes third) visit from the construction crew, and it's starting to worry me.
- The HVAC (when we first moved in in July, the air conditioner condensation tube was installed inside the wall instead of going to an outside pipe so that the water condensation was leaking through our ceiling in the 2nd bedroom)
- The backsplash (the outlets are all at different heights, and because of the nature of the material used - glass, horizontal tile - they had to cut out slits to accommodate the outlets, and they all look like they're crooked)
- The under-cabinet task lighting (all the wires were outside the cabinets, so they were exposed, in all their duck tapey glory)
- The TV coax cable that goes to the 2nd bedroom, which is broken/doesn't work
- The closet shelves which weren’t screwed into the studs (a worker told us that they only get so much time to work on each unit and don’t have time to look for studs. Both bedroom closets collapsed in on themselves in two separate incidences and needed to be reinstalled.)
- The skylight (it was finished really badly - it looked like a five year old installed it)
- The locks on the main doors didn't lock correctly - you had to push in the door with your knee before they'd latch on (my husband fixed this - he found that where they put the bracket was a bit too left or right, so the lock was getting blocked by the wood/bracket)
- The HVAC (we lost water pressure twice this month, and had no hot water, and no heat. Enercare came in and said someone installed it wrong. They fixed some loose wires and tightened some gauges, but it's still not clear what was casing the water pressure drop.)
Most of these things, people might consider minor. The HVAC stuff isn't, of course, especially when it's cold outside like it's been for the past couple of days.
Anyway, my question to you guys is, is this normal? Is it normal that things get installed incorrectly, and workers need to come in and fix mistakes they made so often? Can you share some of your own new home stories with me so that maybe I can put this in some kind of context, and don't feel so disturbed by this?
Thanks for your help and advice. I'm not a new home owner, and neither is my husband. We both own condos, and we didn't encounter even a fraction of the problems we've encountered with this place. Are townhouses different? Is it possible that, simply, more things can go wrong?