In 2007 I purchased my home from Niklas Group. As you can read on their web page they "specialize in creating high quality multi-family and single family homes that are both modern and comfortable, in Calgary's most desirable inner-city locations". After looking at their work I convinced my brother that they were who we should go with as we were both buying homes at the same time. In Sept 2007 I moved into my home and my brother moved into his house late sept 2007. My initial thoughts were that my $820, 000.00 was spent with the right builder. It had high quality finishings and looked sheik and modern, as does everything does on their webpage.
Several months later my first home purchase was seeming to be defect after defect. Three plumbing leaks, continuous eletrical problems, ceiling and drywall issues from the leaks, a basement floor, my first front door bowed, the second front door (which is still on my house) has cracked all the way through so you can see through the "solid wood" door.
Everything listed above was what I deemed to be normal deficiencies. Niklas Group did agree to fix everything in accordance to the National Warranty spec. My biggest issue is that over 100 pieces of hardwood have cracked. The house was solid on its exquisite flooring "Marbeau Blackrock"; an exotic engineered wood made by Kentwood. I notified Niklas Group Jan. 31, 2008 about very low humidity levels and the cracking floors in the house. It took four months for Niklas Group to bring the trades to look at the humidifier. At first glance the trade worker looked puzzled and was not familiar with the humidifier. Eventually two weeks later replacing a valve.
I thought nothing of it. The floors continued to get worse. Finally March 9th, 2009, after having a Kentwood representative analyze the floors, Niklas Group said that they are not responsible for the hardwood and it is due to poor maintenance on my behalf.
Somewhat insulted by the attitude of Niklas Group I decided that I needed to look into the matter myself. The humidifier that was put into my house by Niklas Group was the Honeywell HE225. This is a wetted-media humidifier that has a capacity of 12.0 Gallons of water Per Day. Honeywell specifies that a home with total space of 3000 sq ft requires 17.6 GPD humidity to maintain a humidity of 35%. The floors selected for the house require 35% humidity, yet Niklas Group installed a humidifier that could not even keep humidity up in a smaller home.
Sabotaged by Niklas Homes I am frustrated due to their negligence. This is a total cost of over $15, 000 and they have not even recognized that they are the cause of this issue. To further upset me, one of the days that the foremen for Niklas Homes were trying to complete the initial defects one of them started a conversation about the cracks in the floor trying to poke me about it not being their problem. Being upset I simply said that "Niklas Group was very good at presentation but their quality was very low as my home, my neighbors home, my brother's home and his neighbors home (all built by Niklas Group) all had major floods, plumbing issues, and electrical problems that seemed like amateur work. For the price I paid the quality was simply put just not there". He then laughed and smirked commenting on how much money they made on my home. It was on that day that I decided that this issue should be taken as far as needs to go to ensure that Home developers should not reap the benefits of good markets and not have to face the risks of their speedy build times.
I have now taken my case to my lawyer and will pursue this issue for as long as it takes to get what is fair and right.
Christopher
Calgary, Alberta
Canada
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