NUSITE Contractors Ltd

Nusite was chosen by my contractor who was doing a major renovation of my house. Nusite lowered my basement floor and installed a waterproofing system, including a sump pump and backflow preventer.

Initially I had planned to give them a good review (9 or 10 stars). I was impressed that they showed up every day (unlike my contractor and other subs) and worked steadily. The workers did the back-breaking labour of digging out a whole basement by hand, with apparent good humour, and their supervisor Ryan was very likeable and worked hard alongside them despite being the son of one of the owners. This was just at the time that a house in Toronto had collapsed while being underpinned, killing a worker, so I was reassured that Nusite was proceeding carefully in small sections. My contractor said they did a good job of pouring the new concrete floor.

There were a couple of things that were not as great. For one, they did not supervise the bin collection (for the discarded dirt) carefully, and at one point the bin was dragged across my front lawn, badly damaging it and the front landing pavers; Ryan said he would collect the pavers and set them aside for me to make it easier to re-lay them, but he never did. The owner Geoff Steinberg agreed to give me some money in compensation, but it turned out to be nowhere near enough to do a complete repair. The sump pump they installed had no backup system, so in case of Hydro failure it would not have worked (which of course is likely to be the time it is most needed, when Hydro has gone out because of storms and flood water), and they named a substantial cost if I wanted the upgraded one; my own contractor had to put in the backup himself. They also did not lower the basement quite as much as they had promised initially, without telling me that this would be the case, so I barely got a floor-to-ceiling bookcase to fit. All this lowered my review to 8 stars.

Finally, and this was what turned the tide, the paperwork they gave me was incomplete, leading to months of frustration and wasted time and effort on my part. The City of Toronto was giving a large rebate to homeowners who installed sump pumps and backflow preventers, and Ryan assured me that their work would qualify. Geoff came by himself, mostly I would guess to collect a final payment but also to give me the forms they had completed to pass along to the City as proof of the work. I duly filled out the application and mailed it to Toronto Water. However, the City told me that the information given to me by Geoff was only partly correct, as he was supposed to have given me the actual invoice for the backflow preventer completed by a licensed plumber not by Nusite itself.

(I have to say, I have been impressed by the City staff. Despite some people thinking that city employees have easy jobs or don’t really give good service, the ones I spoke to went out of their way to be helpful.)

When I phoned Geoff, he said he was away from Toronto but would see to finding the correct form when he returned. He expressed concern that I understand one aspect of his bill, that Nusite seemed to be charging more for the work than the plumber would list on his own invoice once I received it, telling me that this was a function of their doing the digging out for the devices which usually the plumber does himself; I wasn’t sure why this was the case, as they were digging out the whole basement anyway so why charge for one section in particular, but I let it go as I was still anticipating a large rebate. So more time goes on, and the City tells me that they still have no updated form. To add another twist, it turns out that the plumber used by Nusite had given a company name that was in fact not properly licensed to do this type of work, and although I called the plumber directly to see if I could expedite matters, he never followed through. I called Nusite’s office several times and left messages, and Geoff never did me the courtesy of responding to them. I finally caught the secretary Wendy in person, and she also sounded worried that I might not understand the discrepancy in the bill amount if I saw the actual plumber’s invoice. She said that they were trying to find the original invoice from the plumber, but that it had been put away in a box somewhere (in an era when everything is via computer!) She said she felt bad about the situation and offered a couple of hundred dollars from Nusite as compensation, but this is not a lot when I was expecting over a thousand dollars in rebate so I did not accept. Finally, the City notified me that because of all the delays in getting the plumber’s invoice from Nusite , they could not give me the rebate for the backflow preventer. (They did provide a rebate for the sump pump, as that was in order.) They agreed to keep the material on file and look at it again later, and apparently when they referred the matter to the Municipal Licensing & Standards Enforcement Unit, the plumber provided the City with a proper receipt (the one that Nusite should have forwarded to me in the first place) and at long last I received that part of the rebate. All this lowered my review to 6 stars.

So be careful if you use them. The work itself seems fine, and of course I’m pleased that my house did not fall down, but make sure you get everything in writing, and double check any paperwork they give you for the city.