Contractor Does Not Want to Fulfill Warranty

[edsolo]

My house experienced a fire about a year and a half ago. It is located in Delaware. Construction was finally complete in July 2015. The contract stated that I have a two year warranty on all work completed. Part of the work involved replacing the roof and rewiring the entire house. When I purchased the house in ~2002, it had a slightly high radon level which required remediation. They system is several lengths of PVC piping hooked up to a fan. In order to replace the roof and rewire the house, the piping was taken down and the fan disconnected. The contractor left the fan outdoors, exposed to the elements for about nine months during construction. About November 2015, the system began vibrating a lot and the fan was making a lot of noise. I called in the radon vendor who installed the system in 2002 and he said it was not reinstalled properly (however, I doubt he would go on the record in a court of law) and gave be a quote of $530 to replace the fan and fix the system (probably about the cost of a new system). The construction contractor is stating he will not pay for because he did not "work" on the system and I can't prove that the system wasn't broken before the fire. The contractor stated that the system "appeared" to be working after it was hooked back up. Part of the scope of the work in the contract lists disassembling the system, rewiring the fan and reinstalling the system. I also have several minor items that he has not addressed (broken window screen, broken window well cover, buckling carpet on brand new carpet and garage door won't close properly). For Delaware, anything under $15,000 is the equivalent of small claims court in other states which require a minimal fee to bring a case forward. I would assume the construction company has some sort of lawyer and play games with delays and such to try to drag things out past the life of the warranty. I also know that the fan is quite old and probably past its useful life so I'm not sure what the judge would say. I am wondering if I have any leg to stand on with the radon system. I know he is on the hook for the other items, but all he will say is he won't cover the radon system and will not give me a time frame to complete the other items. Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated.

 

[Zigner]

Perhaps it was simply time for your ~13 year old system to die...it happens.

 

[OHRoadwarrior]

It does not sound like he warranted the radon system and it would be unfair to give you a new fan and install it, when clearly yours was well beyond it manufacturers useful life. Drop that and the other issues are minor and he would likely fix them promptly.

 

[edsolo]

Unfortunately, he is very unresponsive to any requests for warranty work. The overall quality of work was poor and he took over three times as long as the promised timeline of the original job. He has also tried to get out of the warranty due to an "unpaid" invoice that his company never tried to collect. It turns out the "unpaid" balance was due to the repair to the HVAC system that he damaged and promised to pay for. If any of his subcontractors are to be believed, he is highly unethical. He has said he will fix the screens, but has not scheduled to do so, nor has he said anything about any of the work that does not involve the radon system. Fixing the carpet isn't minor and would most likely require the removal of all contents of a room to fix.