We had Casey Castillo of Natural Creations in Rock & Water build an in-ground spa. The experience left us with very mixed feelings, weighted on the negative side. Casey’s artistry is not in question; he does beautiful work. The crew are very nice guys, friendly and personable and excited about creating. However, the customer service, communication, and business acumen leave a lot to be desired.
– CASEY DOES NOT PROVIDE A WRITTEN QUOTE OR CONTRACT. Casey gave us only a verbal quote, which basically was the budget we told him we could work within. He never gave us a written contract so we didn’t know what the various phases of work would be or how long they would take. Casey presented a bill every time they finished another small facet of the job, and the invoices were not detailed so we never knew exactly what we were paying for except in very broad terms. Since he was only quoting us the amount for our pool verbally, without seeing the detail of the charges we had no idea where we were in the construction process with any given invoice, and when we started to go over-budget it was impossible to know how much work was left and how much more we would end up having to pay.
A huge problem was that we discovered about 2/3 of the way through the job that Casey defines “budget” as the amount that is paid directly to Natural Creations, not the cost of the total project including what you pay to other contractors. He has the customer pay all outside vendors directly (the excavator, the gas line installer, the electrician, the concrete company) and does not count those payments as part of the “budget”. So when we told him what our budget was, since he does not provide a written quote or contract we had no clue until far too late in the process that we were going to go significantly over our budget. He did not even attempt to guess what any of those costs were or tell us that they were over and above the budget we gave him.
Because of his screwy definition of what the budget was, we went over ours by quite a bit. We gave him a budget of $55,000, which was to include the spa and a gas fire pit. Casey had a grand vision for the entire (very large) back yard but we said we couldn’t afford all that right now. As it turned out, where he wanted to place the fire pit necessitated taking out our existing deck and putting in a patio, which was expensive and something we had intended to wait on; $7000 got added to the cost for that. And then we found that the fire pit was actually NOT included in the $55k but was an additional $3500. Exclusive of a retaining wall in the front yard that we added to the job later, the pool/patio/fire pit put us at roughly $75,000, nearly 50% more than we had been quoted. But by the time we realized how much over-budget the job was going to go, we were too far into it to stop and were effectively stuck with it.
– WE DIDN’T KNOW EXACTLY WHEN PAYMENTS WOULD BE DUE AND DID NOT GET *DETAILED* INVOICES. When Casey first explained how he operated, he said we would be billed at intervals whenever a certain percentage of the work was done—like 30%, 50%, 80%, and upon final inspection. Instead we were writing checks almost every time they came to the house, for every small increment of the job. These payments were usually requested at very short notice—I would often get calls while they were at the house working, asking if I could get a check to them that day—which was especially inconvenient since both my husband and I work, and not close enough to home that we could just run home for a minute to write a check. Several times Casey requested payment in cash, claiming he was saving us money that way by not charging us sales tax. Since the invoices weren’t detailed there was no proof that this was true, and making a trip to our credit union to obtain thousands of dollars in cash with one day or even same-day notice was extremely inconvenient because of our work hours. Maybe we saved a small amount by paying for some of the job in cash, but it definitely wasn’t worth the inconvenience. Regarding the final payment, there WAS no “final inspection” for anything other than the electrical and gas line work; Snohomish County does not do a final inspection on residential spa constructions. We kept waiting for Casey to call them, and the electrician finally clued us in that there was no final spa inspection.
– THE JOB TOOK MUCH LONGER THAN QUOTED. Casey told us our approximately 1000-gallon spa was about a five-week job. Excavation began on 30 September 2014, and we were hopeful that it might be finished by Thanksgiving...then by Christmas...well, maybe by New Year’s. It wasn’t finished until the middle of April 2015. (Actually, as of this writing on 7/23/15 it is still not completed because we don’t yet have working jets.) Weeks, even months, went by without anyone showing up, despite Casey’s assertion that they worked every day there wasn’t actually snow on the ground. They might have been working somewhere, but it certainly wasn’t on our job. From a week and a half prior to Thanksgiving we didn’t see them again until 26 January. This five-week job took a total of nearly seven MONTHS to complete, and as I say, it’s still not finished.
– THEY CLAIMED THEY WOULD, BUT DID NOT, SHOW US HOW TO WORK ALL THE CONTROLS—THEREBY ENSURING THAT EVERYTHING WAS IN WORKING ORDER—BEFORE THEY PACKED UP AND LEFT FOR THE LAST TIME. Because I couldn’t take time off work to go home to make the final payment, I left the final check for them when I knew they were coming to do the last day of work. Casey said they would come out later and have a “demo day” to show us how everything worked and how to test the pool water (we had never had a pool before and didn’t know how to do this), but it never happened. Instead, the electrician (an independent contractor who works with Casey a lot) kindly came out and explained what he knew of the controls when I called with questions. For the chemical testing, Casey merely told us to look on YouTube to find a tutorial! It’s true that you can do that, but if you have questions the videos don’t answer, you’re out of luck. Once Casey had that final payment in hand he was apparently finished with us; I have made several inquiries about the non-working jets, but they respond to emails and text messages only haphazardly, sometimes claiming they didn’t receive them.
Two things remain unfinished: the patio concrete has not been sealed, although the last time my husband spoke with Casey, in April, he said as soon as there were to be a couple of nice days in a row he would come do that. There have been a good couple of months’ worth of nice days but the patio remains unsealed.
More importantly, the spa jets still don’t work properly. The pump that was installed is not powerful enough, and/or is too far from the spa, to run them. (That means you can turn on the jets but the water won’t froth and bubble like a spa is supposed to.) A contractor with Casey’s 30 years of experience should know what size pump is required for a given job, so it’s unclear why he installed an insufficient one in the first place. He has known since mid-April when the spa was filled that the pump needed changing out; however, despite multiple assurances that they are working on it, three months later here in mid July it still hasn’t happened. The last email I got with any real details was on 10 June saying they expected the pump to arrive in the next week or so and then would be out to install it. That appears to have been a stalling maneuver since my inquiries after that have received no further response except a vague “Yes, we’ll get that done!” At this point we feel we have given Casey the benefit of the doubt for long enough and are engaging another contractor to change out the pump. We shouldn’t have to pay a second time for something that should have been done right originally, but that’s the reality if we want it to get done.
– THEY DON’T NECESSARILY DO THE JOB THE WAY *YOU* WANT IT. Casey had his own ideas and sometimes either didn’t really listen to what we wanted or thought he had a better idea and went with that. He had grandiose ideas for the entire back yard, other pieces of paving and landscaping and a whole outdoor kitchen installation he envisioned at one side of the patio, but we knew all we could afford was the spa and fire pit so we told him no on the rest of it. I think most contractors would understand that—after all, $55k is a lot of money and we felt lucky to even be able to do that much—but we got a passive-aggressive reproachful vibe from him when we said no, we were just going to do the spa stuff. It left us feeling somehow wrong-footed...not very professional of him to try and guilt us into doing what HE wanted us to do, which is what it felt like.
We had him do a small retaining wall next to our driveway in addition to the pool/patio construction. Casey spoke with my husband at length about what was wanted, but went ahead and poured the wall 3+ feet shy of the height it needed to be. When my husband asked Casey why he hadn’t made it high enough, Casey said he couldn’t go higher without a permit. First off, if that was the case he should have said something when they were in the planning stage, not after it was done. Second, it is NOT the case; a fence or wall can be up to three feet tall at the sidewalk, and once it’s 15 feet away from the sidewalk it can go up to six feet high, all without a permit. Either Casey was not really listening when my husband explained what he wanted, or he made a decision to do something drastically different without consulting us. So we also now need to find another contractor to add to the existing retaining wall. This could make it weaker than if it had been all one cohesive unit, and the new part won’t match the part that’s already done.
For projects as expensive as spas and swimming pools, having a written quote and contract is super important for the customer’s protection. We have learned our lesson; I wouldn’t use Natural Creations again and I would not recommend them to anyone who doesn’t plan to watch them every minute they’re working and take all of the precautions mentioned herein, or who expects their pool to be built in a timely manner or on budget. Casey does nice work, but for his 30 years of experience he doesn’t know nearly enough about job finance, seems blasé about customer service, and doesn’t take responsibility for making sure the job is done correctly. I imagine if/when he sees my review he will take exception to it and claim that he has every intention of replacing the pump and sealing the patio...when he has time. Since they have not found time in the past three months but have merely made noises periodically like it’s still on their radar, I have no reason to believe they will really finish, thus our search for another contractor to do so.
Natural Creations in Rock and Water Reviews
We had Casey Castillo of Natural Creations in Rock & Water build an in-ground spa. The experience left us with very mixed feelings, weighted on the negative side. Casey’s artistry is not in question; he does beautiful work. The crew are very nice guys, friendly and personable and excited about creating. However, the customer service, communication, and business acumen leave a lot to be desired.
– CASEY DOES NOT PROVIDE A WRITTEN QUOTE OR CONTRACT. Casey gave us only a verbal quote, which basically was the budget we told him we could work within. He never gave us a written contract so we didn’t know what the various phases of work would be or how long they would take. Casey presented a bill every time they finished another small facet of the job, and the invoices were not detailed so we never knew exactly what we were paying for except in very broad terms. Since he was only quoting us the amount for our pool verbally, without seeing the detail of the charges we had no idea where we were in the construction process with any given invoice, and when we started to go over-budget it was impossible to know how much work was left and how much more we would end up having to pay.
A huge problem was that we discovered about 2/3 of the way through the job that Casey defines “budget” as the amount that is paid directly to Natural Creations, not the cost of the total project including what you pay to other contractors. He has the customer pay all outside vendors directly (the excavator, the gas line installer, the electrician, the concrete company) and does not count those payments as part of the “budget”. So when we told him what our budget was, since he does not provide a written quote or contract we had no clue until far too late in the process that we were going to go significantly over our budget. He did not even attempt to guess what any of those costs were or tell us that they were over and above the budget we gave him.
Because of his screwy definition of what the budget was, we went over ours by quite a bit. We gave him a budget of $55,000, which was to include the spa and a gas fire pit. Casey had a grand vision for the entire (very large) back yard but we said we couldn’t afford all that right now. As it turned out, where he wanted to place the fire pit necessitated taking out our existing deck and putting in a patio, which was expensive and something we had intended to wait on; $7000 got added to the cost for that. And then we found that the fire pit was actually NOT included in the $55k but was an additional $3500. Exclusive of a retaining wall in the front yard that we added to the job later, the pool/patio/fire pit put us at roughly $75,000, nearly 50% more than we had been quoted. But by the time we realized how much over-budget the job was going to go, we were too far into it to stop and were effectively stuck with it.
– WE DIDN’T KNOW EXACTLY WHEN PAYMENTS WOULD BE DUE AND DID NOT GET *DETAILED* INVOICES. When Casey first explained how he operated, he said we would be billed at intervals whenever a certain percentage of the work was done—like 30%, 50%, 80%, and upon final inspection. Instead we were writing checks almost every time they came to the house, for every small increment of the job. These payments were usually requested at very short notice—I would often get calls while they were at the house working, asking if I could get a check to them that day—which was especially inconvenient since both my husband and I work, and not close enough to home that we could just run home for a minute to write a check. Several times Casey requested payment in cash, claiming he was saving us money that way by not charging us sales tax. Since the invoices weren’t detailed there was no proof that this was true, and making a trip to our credit union to obtain thousands of dollars in cash with one day or even same-day notice was extremely inconvenient because of our work hours. Maybe we saved a small amount by paying for some of the job in cash, but it definitely wasn’t worth the inconvenience. Regarding the final payment, there WAS no “final inspection” for anything other than the electrical and gas line work; Snohomish County does not do a final inspection on residential spa constructions. We kept waiting for Casey to call them, and the electrician finally clued us in that there was no final spa inspection.
– THE JOB TOOK MUCH LONGER THAN QUOTED. Casey told us our approximately 1000-gallon spa was about a five-week job. Excavation began on 30 September 2014, and we were hopeful that it might be finished by Thanksgiving...then by Christmas...well, maybe by New Year’s. It wasn’t finished until the middle of April 2015. (Actually, as of this writing on 7/23/15 it is still not completed because we don’t yet have working jets.) Weeks, even months, went by without anyone showing up, despite Casey’s assertion that they worked every day there wasn’t actually snow on the ground. They might have been working somewhere, but it certainly wasn’t on our job. From a week and a half prior to Thanksgiving we didn’t see them again until 26 January. This five-week job took a total of nearly seven MONTHS to complete, and as I say, it’s still not finished.
– THEY CLAIMED THEY WOULD, BUT DID NOT, SHOW US HOW TO WORK ALL THE CONTROLS—THEREBY ENSURING THAT EVERYTHING WAS IN WORKING ORDER—BEFORE THEY PACKED UP AND LEFT FOR THE LAST TIME. Because I couldn’t take time off work to go home to make the final payment, I left the final check for them when I knew they were coming to do the last day of work. Casey said they would come out later and have a “demo day” to show us how everything worked and how to test the pool water (we had never had a pool before and didn’t know how to do this), but it never happened. Instead, the electrician (an independent contractor who works with Casey a lot) kindly came out and explained what he knew of the controls when I called with questions. For the chemical testing, Casey merely told us to look on YouTube to find a tutorial! It’s true that you can do that, but if you have questions the videos don’t answer, you’re out of luck. Once Casey had that final payment in hand he was apparently finished with us; I have made several inquiries about the non-working jets, but they respond to emails and text messages only haphazardly, sometimes claiming they didn’t receive them.
Two things remain unfinished: the patio concrete has not been sealed, although the last time my husband spoke with Casey, in April, he said as soon as there were to be a couple of nice days in a row he would come do that. There have been a good couple of months’ worth of nice days but the patio remains unsealed.
More importantly, the spa jets still don’t work properly. The pump that was installed is not powerful enough, and/or is too far from the spa, to run them. (That means you can turn on the jets but the water won’t froth and bubble like a spa is supposed to.) A contractor with Casey’s 30 years of experience should know what size pump is required for a given job, so it’s unclear why he installed an insufficient one in the first place. He has known since mid-April when the spa was filled that the pump needed changing out; however, despite multiple assurances that they are working on it, three months later here in mid July it still hasn’t happened. The last email I got with any real details was on 10 June saying they expected the pump to arrive in the next week or so and then would be out to install it. That appears to have been a stalling maneuver since my inquiries after that have received no further response except a vague “Yes, we’ll get that done!” At this point we feel we have given Casey the benefit of the doubt for long enough and are engaging another contractor to change out the pump. We shouldn’t have to pay a second time for something that should have been done right originally, but that’s the reality if we want it to get done.
– THEY DON’T NECESSARILY DO THE JOB THE WAY *YOU* WANT IT. Casey had his own ideas and sometimes either didn’t really listen to what we wanted or thought he had a better idea and went with that. He had grandiose ideas for the entire back yard, other pieces of paving and landscaping and a whole outdoor kitchen installation he envisioned at one side of the patio, but we knew all we could afford was the spa and fire pit so we told him no on the rest of it. I think most contractors would understand that—after all, $55k is a lot of money and we felt lucky to even be able to do that much—but we got a passive-aggressive reproachful vibe from him when we said no, we were just going to do the spa stuff. It left us feeling somehow wrong-footed...not very professional of him to try and guilt us into doing what HE wanted us to do, which is what it felt like.
We had him do a small retaining wall next to our driveway in addition to the pool/patio construction. Casey spoke with my husband at length about what was wanted, but went ahead and poured the wall 3+ feet shy of the height it needed to be. When my husband asked Casey why he hadn’t made it high enough, Casey said he couldn’t go higher without a permit. First off, if that was the case he should have said something when they were in the planning stage, not after it was done. Second, it is NOT the case; a fence or wall can be up to three feet tall at the sidewalk, and once it’s 15 feet away from the sidewalk it can go up to six feet high, all without a permit. Either Casey was not really listening when my husband explained what he wanted, or he made a decision to do something drastically different without consulting us. So we also now need to find another contractor to add to the existing retaining wall. This could make it weaker than if it had been all one cohesive unit, and the new part won’t match the part that’s already done.
For projects as expensive as spas and swimming pools, having a written quote and contract is super important for the customer’s protection. We have learned our lesson; I wouldn’t use Natural Creations again and I would not recommend them to anyone who doesn’t plan to watch them every minute they’re working and take all of the precautions mentioned herein, or who expects their pool to be built in a timely manner or on budget. Casey does nice work, but for his 30 years of experience he doesn’t know nearly enough about job finance, seems blasé about customer service, and doesn’t take responsibility for making sure the job is done correctly. I imagine if/when he sees my review he will take exception to it and claim that he has every intention of replacing the pump and sealing the patio...when he has time. Since they have not found time in the past three months but have merely made noises periodically like it’s still on their radar, I have no reason to believe they will really finish, thus our search for another contractor to do so.