New patio laid badly, am I unreasonable to complain?

[Purplecarrots123]

We had a new patio laid this week and I’m not too happy with it, the slabs aren’t smooth so some of the joins are a trip hazard, they didn’t put the gravel border round we agreed and the edges have been left in a total mess.

Am I t unreasonable to complain and is there a way this can be fixed without redoing the whole patio?

Here are some pics

Did they just lay the tiles on top of the top soil?! They will move about like mad, was this agreed?

Is that the finished job?

And more pics

There’s cement underneath them. But the finish looks terrible

Depending on the slabs I wouldn’t necessarily expect them to be smooth (level but not smooth) but I am surprised with all the gaps. What have they laid the slabs on?

Supposedly yes. If we want the edges making good etc it’s yet more money. And they seem to have made a codge job of lining the slabs up with the fence and forgot to put the gravel border round!

Have you paid for the gravel?

Absolutely not. What a shoddy job.

Yikes, I hope you haven't paid up in full yet OP.

We have a total amount, of which we have paid half of. Gravel borders were the original agreement. My fear is the gaps between the fence and slabs will be a breeding ground for weeds and I’m concerned about water getting under them too.

Trust you haven’t paid yet as it’s so crap? Absolutely they should put it right.

Why wasn’t somewhere there to say ‘hang on, you haven’t left space for the gravel border’ once they’d done a row?

Oh that is really poor

I think you need to say something and get them to do the job you'd outlined

Very disappointing for you 😕

We’ve paid half. We are withholding half for the moment. Im really upset about it all.

Cross posted as you were saying you haven’t paid.

Its a bad job sorry op. But what did you pay for? Was there a written quote? Was it cheap?

I posted on a thread recently about patios and people were surprised by cost.
Ours took weeks to lay and cost a lot of money. All properly leveled first. Laid onto sharp sand (I think). Drainage added. Jointing compound. Fence relevelled. This cost a lot of money. I'll try and share photo of edge, excuse dirt

I would be too and so you should withhold it. They need to fix it.

Photos

We reconfirmed the work on day 1 and then again on day 3 before the laying started. The on one strip down the side path to the gate they did said gravel border so all looked ok. Sadly we both work in an office so had to go in for some of the days. We got home to find it like this and when we asked they said they’d done something different so no need for gravel borders around the main patio.

Photo

Not their place to change what you’d agreed halfway through!

Stick to your guns OP.

weird, the concrete should have been lifted and removed. sand brought in and packed, then the bricks installed and levelled. then sand on top to fill in the cracks then more tapping it down then more sand. gravel will do nothing to help this job they will float about and roll into the paving stones.

did you not research how this should be done prior to contracting someone? did you not consider drainage and make plans for water run off??

I wouldn't get them to finish it necessarily, they don't seem very good at what they do! I know it's easier said and done to have these conversations with trades at times, but if they are professional they should listen and fix it. That's really poor work.

Coincidentally we had the same thing with a gravel border 'forgotten' to be put in and we made them cut the border in as they'd already placed and fixed all the slabs into place! Looks like your slabs will just lift off easily though so shouldn't be too hard...

There was a written scope of work in an email, its cost circa £9000, our garden one huge tbh. The gravel borders were meant to be there for drainage too so god only knows what happens when it rains. It took just short of 2 weeks to do. It was all dug out with a digger, cement laid etc.

We did consider water drainage etc and had 3 people round to quote and the contractor we chose we had 3 meetings with him prior to starting to confirm scope of work, plans and all else. To a level we had to trust someone as neither DH or I are patio experts.