Emanuel Santana

I initially hired Emmanuel to do some electrical work around my house. He was very prompt in answering my post and came over to address the issues quickly. His electrical work was good, his knowledge in electrical seems to be acceptable. It is not the prettiest work, but I didn’t want finish work done, I just wanted some things around the house to be working and he got them working. Unfortunately they are falling apart a year later.

I’ve then took a few quotes from different companies for bigger projects around the house. These projects included releveling my roof deck, removing a non-structural wall in the house, and creating new walls to make the master bedroom. This is where things started to go wrong. Once I hired Emmanuel for this work I rarely saw him around the house. He sent a crew of less experience workers to do the work themselves without a project manager. I had hired a Emmanuel for this work believing that he would be overseeing the project, but he was rarely there. The first day when they started to put up the new walls inside the house, a worker measured from a wall that was clearly uneven with the other wall to be at a right angle and parallel to the far wall, which it was not. It was very easy to see that this was the case because the wall had a curve in it of about 15 cm, so the first day they ended up having to take down the wall that they had constructed and re-make it leaving holes in my floor that they did not cover up.

The next issue I had was when they were making the wall for the master bedroom, I wanted a thicker layer of mortar on the outside covered with mesh to make the wall feel more substantial, I had asked for this to be created and it was just not done. There was no problem with my communication as I am a native English speaker and I was communicating in Portuguese, but it was very clear tell them that I needed a thicker layer on the wall because there were some electrical ports on the other wall that I said needed to be moved because of the wall thickness and the workers there said “of course it does.” The next day the wall was covered with a very thin layer of screed and they moved onto another project.

They started doing the roof deck tear out and reconstruction, and I had asked them to take all of the roof tiles off, he gave me a quote which I thought was fair and then only removed the top layer of tarpaper, which was a complete waste of time, as I have them remove the rest of the tiles once I had seen what they’d done.

Next, they made a railing for the roof. The railing that I had was a single layer of bricks and I wanted a second course of bricks put there to strengthen it. When they were connecting the bricks, they only used one small piece of rebar per 2 square meters of railing to connect the two courses of bricks. When I asked for more rebar to be used, I could see no evidence that it was used.

The issues with the railing did not in there, as they did not use any mesh to connect the concrete to the concrete that existed. When they put the mortar on the outside of the concrete, they let it dry far too quickly in the sun and at the current time it is chipping and flaking away in many different areas. It was a very bad job.

Within a week of the wall in the master bedroom being created, it started to crack. Again this was because they didn’t use any mesh to connect the concrete to the existing concrete. I have a very large crack in the wall and it doesn’t look like that is going away anytime soon. I will need another contractor to fix that error.

The last straw was leveling the roof. The worker that Emmanuel had hired started on pouring the concrete and then realized he would run out of the materials that he needed to use for the job. I was then asked to go and buy new materials, the worker did not have any of the materials that we were to be using, so I went and bought what I thought were the correct materials. It turned out that they were not exactly the same and needed an additional concrete additive to mix in. It was supposed to be a leveled rooftop, and the mixture that was used was clearly not able to be leveled, neither with the materials that I had bought or the materials that were purchased for the project initially. At no point in time was Emmanuel there for selecting the materials or directing this part of the project, the person in charge that day was one of the workers that I said I didn’t want to work with anymore because he had done sloppy work on the interior walls.

Add to this that Emanuel’s workers kept using my tools without asking or accountability. When I asked him for more accountability as far as the tool usage went, he said he would be more accountable, and he was not – I never heard anything again about tool usage accountability and they continued to use my tools. His workers broke things in my house used tools that I didn’t authorize them to completely used up a full order of sandpaper, and have not reimbursed me for the damaged items or used materials.

I would hire Emanuel for electrical work that was meant to be temporary. If you’re looking for somebody to do electrical work that will last longer than a year, I don’t think Emmanuel is the right person for the job. If you’re looking for a project manager, I would avoid Emmanuel at all costs. I had a terrible experience with Emmanuel.

Muita conversa e disponibilidade aparente, mas na prática revelou uma má gestão de obra e do dinheiro pago e total inércia na sua suposta área profissional (eletricidade). Um trabalho que, segundo o sr. Emanuel, estaria feito em 4 semanas, já leva quase mais 2 meses e ainda não foi terminado. Pagámos a totalidade, porque dizia sempre que faltava dinheito e as pessoas sub-contratadas deixaram de aparecer para fazer o que lhes competia e o sr. até agora, tem o trabalho da parte elétrica por terminar. O habitissimo deveria requerer algum tipo de requisitos profissionais, pois neste caso não existe qualquer brio.

Uma parte do trabalho já está bem efetuada dentro do combinado, prestável.

Trabalho ainda não foi feito, mas o profissional foi muito simpático, e deu um orçamento razoavel.

O senhor emanuel foi muito profissional, desde a rápida resposta até a realização dos trabalhos e incluso a resolução dum problema da instalação em casa, fora do que foi pedido no orçamento. Estou contente com o seu trabalho e com certeza vou ~lhe recomendar aos meus conhecidos e voltarei a contatá-lo, caso de precisar.

Experiência muito boa. Muito profissional e atencioso ao pormenor. Voltarei a contratar para futuros trabalhos.

Acabou de acabar. Fez um ótimo trabalho. Obrigado!!!