We had a similiar problem a couple years ago when we where building our house. We picked out our house plan and our lot form the builder. After about 4 months went by with nothing happening, we where contacted by the builder saying that they had to redesign the outside entrance way to be able to fit on the lot we picked, and they also said they had to charge us $2500 more to build it on this lot. They had their designers redisgn it and it looked very bad. They changed the door location and narrowed our entrance stairs to the front door. So we complained and they came back with something else that looked equally bad, and again raised the price $1000. We ended up cancelling the deal and got back our entire deposit.

It took a few phone calls and a conversation with the owner of the building company to get our deposit back. We ended up building wiht a different builder and that process went so much smoother.

You should see their take on home fondation problems like cracks. My home inspector told me that unless you can fit more than one finger deeply into the crack, Tarion will not even touch it - water coming in or not. Thank god my problems weren't that serious.

As per the giuldlines on the Traion site, it states:

Cracks resulting from normal shrinkage are acceptable; cracks in excess of 6 mm in width are not acceptable.


As for leaks, you better call them back if it does. As per the their guidelines:


Condition: Foundation walls shall allow no water penetration.

Warranty: One-Year – Work and Materials • Cracks resulting from normal shrinkage of materials caused by drying after construction are excluded from the statutory warranty.

Action: Cracks in excess of the acceptable condition shall be repaired.

Remarks: Concrete floors naturally crack during curing due to shrinkage. Actual crack widths shall be determined using a wire feeler gauge* inserted inside the crack. Where repairs are necessary, colour and/or texture may not match the surrounding concrete


Hmmm, it seems the builder's PDI guy lied to my friend and I during the PDI inspection. I just checked the Tarion site for "walls with bows", and it says:

Condition: WALL IS BOWED

Acceptable Performance/Condition: On the interior of a home, where bowed framing causes local distortion, the variation shall not be more than ±20 mm from the specified plane.

Warranty: One-Year – Work and Materials • Distortion due to shrinkage caused by normal drying after construction is not covered by the statutory warranty.

Action: Bows exceeding the acceptable condition shall be repaired.

Remarks: It is reasonable to expect walls to have variances in their finished surface. Varying light conditions can exaggerate minor variations in appearance.

So, with the wall being off by 23mm, the builder should have fixed it. (I'm sure my friend is going to have a nice long talk with the builder tomorrow.)


For those of you that are interested, go to Tarion.com, and then click on the "Construction Performance Guidelines" link to see what minimum standards your home builder has to abide by.