Helmutz Landscape & Interlock

We just had an old crooked concrete stairway and broken walkway demolished and removed by Helmutz. They then designed and constructed some new stone stairs and an interlocking patio brick walkway. The crew was extremely professional and courteous. Communication with the company was always forthright and customer service was excellent. They not only performed difficult tasks with care and ingenuity, but they repaired and cleaned as they worked.
While I admit that I’m not a professional contractor, I would be surprised if this job could have been accomplished much better than what they have done. The project manager and designer, Adam, was very attentive and approachable.
So far we have no negative criticism of either the work, materials, or service and would happily recommend Helmutz to anyone who may require landscaping.

Hope everyone reads all the 1 star reviews. There seems to be a few people who have a good project but that was not our experience. Sadly we had issue after issue, and spent a lot of time managing the project and reporting all issues that came up. After a few weeks of this I sent an email asking for some support, perhaps a project manager, that could take on some of the management for us as we work full time and weren’t home during the day. Upon asking for help I received a call stating we had a project manager. After apologising from both sides for the misunderstanding, I asked if we could find a way to communicate better. It seemed we were ready to move forward and as we were ready to hang up, a man asked to be put on speaker and proceeding to yell, it started with how he was upset at his distributors for sending him the wrong fire pit and then onto someone else and then turned on me. How dare I ask for a manager he said. I was so shocked after about a 10minute rant/yelling spree that i said “um I think we figured everything out before you joined so I don’t understand what’s happening right now” he proceeded to degrade his distributors and exited the call. When he left the room, I was taken off speaker and I said “who was that?” The reply “The OWNER”. It’s appalling and speaks to the other one star reviews about service. It’s starts from the top unfortunately.

Interlocking front walk and large solid stone block front steps, plus an interlocking back patio, were done at this location about 3 years ago, just before I bought the house.

Last year I noticed some chipping off of pieces of the stone front steps, and thought (incorrectly) they were concrete so I stopped using salt on them, which is supposed to be hard on concrete.

This year by early summer a lot of pieces were chipping off, but I had no idea who’d done the work or who to contact about it.

Then by chance, this fall my next door neighbour had Helmutz doing his driveway and side walk and I asked one of his crew his opinion (as an expert) on the crumbling of my steps and walk. To my surprise the first thing he mentioned was not only did Helmutz do this install, but he’d been on the crew. He said they had gotten a lot of bad stone that year from some supplier and it had crumbled away at many sites, and been replaced. Further, he suggested the reason my interlocking walk was sinking and sliding downhill away from the steps was due to insufficient or incorrect aggregate or sand below it, or a spiking error, or something. My back patio is also already sinking at one corner.

I called Helmutz about this and got a very friendly lady on the phone who said someone would come by to look at everything. A day or two later I got an e-mail saying someone had seen the site (they never even rang the doorbell to talk to me) and as this installation only had a 2 year warranty, they would replace the step blocks for $2000 if I wished. I wrote back relating what the installer had told me about my site having obvious shortcomings in both labour and materials but they were firm on the “out of warranty / nothing can be done” narrative.

I wrote another e-mail suggesting they might wish to better stand behind their work for the purposes of their reputation if nothing else. A day or two later a man called and we had a fairly lengthy conversation. Throughout the call he was very pleasant and polite but the “nothing can be done” narrative remained absolute and was incredibly disappointing.

There are stone works from the Romans and Greeks that have survived thousands of years but stone front steps from Helmutz can’t even make it two years?

The photos I’ve attached are from early November and late November (today) and in just those few weeks you can see the rapid advancing of the disintegration of my steps. One day all that will be left is a gravel pile!

Very disappointed in Helmutz and based on my experience I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone.

Helmutz installed a residential interlock patio in June 2017. I requested a repair at the end of June 2017 which was inadequate. I requested further repairs (interlock has sunk) in Feb. 2018 and it has yet to be addressed (over 3 months and counting) in accordance with the product warranty. The installation crew were great to deal with during the project, but the company's customer service following payment is very unprofessional.

I called Helmutz to do some work on our front yard. They charged us a fortune and the work they did was awful. They re-sodded the grass and planted new plants. But, they didn't kill off the weeds that were already there and they didn't advise us to either. I told the guy who came that we didn't know very much about landscaping (this was our first house) and he promised he would come up with a simple plan. But, he didn't address the weeds that we already had. We had scourge and it is now all through the new grass and new plants. They did the work in the fall and in the spring, you could really see how damaged the new grass and plants were. I called to complain and they sent someone out to look. She said that they should have killed off the weeds before doing the new work. She admitted they made an error. And suggested I use a tiny paint brush to kill off the weeds all through our new garden. I figured that would probably take me 2 weeks straight to kill off all the weeds in our garden. When I called and spoke with Helmut himself, he was extremely rude. He said she shouldn't have told us they made a mistake and could not have cared less that our grass now looks WAY worse than it did before they came. I would not recommend Helmutz landscaping to anyone. They do shoddy work and are rude and aggressive. I have never been so disappointed with a company in my life.

Initial meeting was great, free estimate was provided and Frank arrived early (as opposed to many appointments who were late or never showed up), and the estimate was provided in a timely manner. Once the work started is where the problems began. Frank called on Friday to advice work would start first thing Monday morning. The crew arrived around 11am on the Monday, didnt come to the door to say they were here. The work they did seemed to be of good quality, completing the excavation and laying the granular A and compacting it. I was adviced the job would be completed by the next day. The next day nobody showed up. Wednesday 2 guys came at around 3pm and worked for an hour or so. The next two days were rained out. Monday once again nobody showed up, I called and was assured that Tuesday there would be a crew there and the job would be finished. Nobody arrived Tuesday. At this point I still have a big mud pit in the backyard. The work thusfar seems to be good, but the communication they provide is awful. I have had 4 pallets of interlock and a excavator stitting on my front lawn for over a week with no end in sight.