Body Corporates Beware - painting OK, waterproofing terrible, don’t honour contracts, tough it out, and walk away

David Matthews, advertising and trading as a painting and waterproofing company seriously disappoint.

We post this as a warning to all body corporates who are looking to find a reliable and competent contractor for patining and waterproofing works. What follows is set out in some detail, for those interested enough to get the full picture.

The “executive summary” is: David Matthews can handle paint jobs, but do not have sufficient expertise or understanding to solve waterproofing issues, or to manage sub-contractors to do this, although they hold themselves out to be a painting and waterproofing company. Faced with a detailed remedial report from a waterproofing expert after they botched our job, they argued and obfuscated and ultimately refused to contribute to the considerable costs of fixing what they had done wrongly.

Here is the whole story:

Towards the end of 2016 they quoted competitively to repaint our block of 9 flats in Green Point. Although the block was new – just 5 years old – there were waterproofing defects which were pointed out to DM in great detail, most important being our western weather wall which had been twice repaired by the original builder – specifically the cavities and weepholes had been repaired on two separate occasions – to no avail.

DM advised us to re-institute the cavities and to call in a window company to possibly reseal the windows. They subcontracted with Quantum Solutions to re-institute the cavities as part of their quote which we accepted. We elected not to have the windows removed and re-sealed, as the damp pattern in and through this wall was not consistent with windows as the source of water ingress. Painting then took place, and seemed to go smoothly.

Less than 6 months after the completion of the work by DM, despite very little in the way of rainfall, we noticed multiple large bubbles had appeared all over the exterior western wall beneath the surface of the paint they applied. We called DM in and they confirmed that the wall was very wet, expressed satisfaction with the cavity work Quantum solutions had done and advised, that there was a problem with the joint lines having being painted in the wrong places, and again advised us to approach a window company for the sealing of the windows.

Not being satisfied with this advice, our body corporate hired a dedicated waterproofing company headed by an experienced civil engineer to provide a report on the source of the damp problems with this wall. We received a professional report after this company had opened up inspection hatches at two representative sections of the wall, including cavities and the joints between brick and concrete, exposing outer and inner wall skins. Several defects causing damp were found by them - some of these were the responsibility of the original builder, but two defects in particular were directly attributable to the shoddy workmanship of DM and their subcontractor QS.

Firstly, the cavity re-institution work done by QS was shown to be ineffective in that they had applied torch-on material to the bottom of the cavities which was supposed to lead the water in the cavities out through the external brick wall skin by way of the weepholes. This was ineffectively applied and the torch-on layer had delaminated from the brick surface of the inner brick skin and from the floor of the cavity, leading to water getting into and through the inner brick wall skin under the torch-on layer, thereby continuing to make the wall exceedingly damp. Secondly, the paint specification chosen by DM was a fully waterproof coating which should not have been used on a damp wall which had not dried out at the time of their repainting after the cavity re-institution had been done. Two coats of this fully waterproof paint were applied defectively in that the second coat had delaminated from the first coat, and the water had found its way in there, forming the bubbles we noticed a few months after their completion of the painting job.

All this was expertly documented by photography, and with physical evidence, and in writing by the waterproofing company we hired, and the full report and photos were supplied to DM. DM then requested a site meeting at which our body corporate trustees and the waterproofing company MD were present to discuss these issues.

A few days later DM responded in writing that all those present at this meeting had agreed that there was no problem with their work. This was immediately disputed in writing by both the trustees and the waterproofing company. The trustees then obtained a quote to repair the wall from the waterproofing company. A quote of over R200 000 was provided. As the BC had already spent some R67 000 for the ineffective cavity reinstatement, and as the estimate to remove the wrongly-specified waterproof paint and replace it with an appropriate porous coating was in the vicinity of R30 000, we requested that DM refund us all or some reasonable proportion of R97 000 due to defective work on their part.

By this time DM had refused to admit to there being any problem attributable to their work, despite the bubbling having taken place less than 6 months after the completion of this work which was contractually guaranteed for a year. They failed to admit any liability and sent two waterproofing experts of their choice to inspect the wall. Despite the BC requesting on several occasions to see the reports of these two experts, these were never supplied to us.

This is where the “Catch-22” came in.

Despite repeated requests from our body corporate that DM pay a reasonable contribution towards fixing the problem, DM continued to deny that their work was defective. It goes without saying that given the incorrect waterproofing advice provided by DM initially, and the defective work of their subcontractor QS, we had no confidence in DM’s or QS’s ability to correct the problem effectively, even if they had offered to do this work for free in recompense – which they did not!

We were then forced to have the wall repaired by the waterproofing company who had provided the hard evidence of the cause of the damp, and could provide an evidence-based quote for what needed to be done to fix it.

During the fixing of the wall by this waterproofing company, all the cavities were opened and repaired. In the process this revealed defective application of the torch-on throughout by QS, as well as several other problems pertaining to the cavities that should have been properly re-instituted by them, but were not.

The BC was, however, quite satisfied with the rest of the painting job on the exterior and interior of the block.

Despite repeated attempts by the BC and our management agent to obtain some reasonable contribution from DM, they simply toughed it out and walked away.

In the end the BC was some R100 000 in the red due to DM’s defective waterproofing and painting work in that area.

This is not a nice situation to be in as BCs typically do not have easy access to funds to defray sudden liabilities of the order of R100 000.

By walking away DM relied on the BC being unlikely to have the funds to take them to court to obtain redress. Although we have hard expert evidence that would very likely stand up in court (the dedicated waterproofing company’s expert evidence has proved compelling in previous court cases), there are as yet no law firms that accept this type of case on a contingency basis. DM has no doubt taken advantage of us in this regard by toughing it out.

We have subsequently learned two things about DM. The one is that there are a number of other recent instances of similar behaviour - poor workmanship with DM walking away and leaving BCs to pick up the tab. Our trustees have interests in and knowledge of other apartment blocks in Cape Town and access to other management agents and companies, who have thus far all recounted recent stories about DM. The second is that DM was sold recently. While many of us remember great workmanship from DM in the past when it was still owned by David Matthews, currently the company under its new management is not living up to this standard.

This is why we are writing this review and spreading the word about their unacceptable commercial behaviour.

With the new Sectional Titles Act now mandating a 10-year maintenance plan, there will be a lot more painting work needed. We suggest you avoid DM for this purpose.

P.S. Our body corporate remains open to DM doing the right thing and making an offer of settlement. Should this happen, we will publicise this and do our best to make it known that DM has made good, and can begin to be trusted again.