Complaint Review: Ruiz Masonry and Building Supplies Inc

Ruiz Masonry Inc. was hired by the General Destruction CONtractor to build the walls for a new house. From the perspective of a Register Of Contractor Inspector and several other building professionals, the block work is some of the worst that they have ever seen.

Ruiz Masonary did not place Control / Expansion Joints that are called for on the plans. In the corners there are supposed to be three rebar placed, one in each side block and one in the corner block. In every corner they left out rebar.

There are over 20+ places around the house where there are cracks in the block.  There are 1000's of cracks in the mortar where the mortar meets the verticle side of the block.  There are inconsistancies in the color, texture and the hardness of the mortar.

There are several mortar joints that are too wide to meet building code.  In the 90 degree inside corners where the blocks should have overlapped they left a gap greater than 1" that was filled in with mortar. The inside blocks where the front door is are broken and they filled in the large gaps in with mortar.

There is a column on the back porch that is supposed to be flush against the back wall of the Master Bedroom.  There is a gap between the column and the wall due to rebar being left out. The gap gets larger from the bottom up and is filled with mortar.

Sand was supposed to be placed in every hole in the block where there was no rebar and mortar. Sand was not placed in most of the block around the house.

There are blocks in several corners lhat were cut are uneven.  Instead of using a level table saw which they did not  have on premise Ruiz's workers cut the blocks freehand.

When questioned Ruiz did not even know what type of mortar was used. Luckly I was able to see from the pictures I took.