DOWN THE RABBIT-HOLE WITH TROVATO LAWNS

Trovato Lawns (TL) has a poor reputation on Hellopeter as a lawn-service firm ('definitely not value for money', poor customer service, 'Terrible experience', failure to fulfill commitments, 'a 6 month ordeal, with very little to show for it except an empty pocket.') Recently, during Cape Town's water crisis, it branched out into rainwater harvesting, and became a Jojo-accredited installer of tanks. This , combined with an apparent lack of complaints about its water-related services, and a cheaper quote than its rivals, encouraged me to accept its R53,683 quote. The system proposed by TL's owner, Pieter Burger, for my 236 square metre roof, involved a 5kL Jojo tank with a booster pump, a small underground feeder tank with a submersible pump, and a filtration system producing drinkable water throughout my house.

Initially, I assumed that TL was providing me with reputable advice. Gradually, I became aware that its history of poor service and bad value for money was continuing, in the following ways.

1) TL - which required 80% of the quoted price to be paid before doing any work whatever - only began work 11 weeks after I had paid the initial tranche of R32,210, and then only after I had appealed for Jojo's intervention.

2) Although another firm had estimated that the job would take 3 days, it took TL 2 weeks, since it worked only a couple of hours a day, with a skeleton staff. According to one of the labourers, half of TL's 6 workers had recently left.

3) When I checked retail prices for 3 components, TL had marked these up by 43-100%.

4) TL supp**** me with a 5kL Nel tank, with an 8 year warranty, rather than the quoted Jojo tank, with a 10 year warranty. Again, it was only after Jojo's intervention that TL offered to conform to our contract (although I ultimately rejected this, fearing further delays and more garden damage. )

5) TL's workmanship was shoddy. The cheap orange plumbing pipes were invariably skew; electrical cables had amateurish joins, loops and unsightly brackets; drilling extended over days rather than minutes due to lack of appropriate drill bits.

6) The overall design of the system was primitive, displaying little concern for health-related matters. Almost no effort was made to minimize pollutants when collecting rainwater from the roof: leaf-eaters, first-flush diverters and a tank screen for the large tank were omitted, despite my garden being full of trees. Similarly, although my asbestos downpipes were health hazards if fibres were released, and TL was not a licensed asbestos contractor, Burger planned on instructing his employees to 'cut these pipes', thus turning them into permanent carcinogens on my property, either lying on the ground or still attached to the gutters.

On the final morning, after battling to repair a leak in a pump connection, and providing hasty verbal operating instructions, TL departed, claiming to have installed a 'complete and fully functional system', and demanding payment of the final 20% tranche. Yet in addition to inflicting collateral damage on my garden and electrical supply, it had bequeathed me a water-harvesting system that was, technically, badly flawed.

a) The booster pump switched itself on every half hour, for about 10 seconds, 24/7, without my drawing any water, because there was a slow hidden leak in the plumbing system. Much of this was underground, sloppily constructed, using materials which were either among the cheapest on the market, or were (like the pump cover, regarded as essential by the Chinese manufacturers) entirely absent.

b) Although a correctly designed tank should overflow only a few times a year, mine was soon overflowing heavily almost every time it rained, via a shockingly inadequate overflow system. Previously, 4 scattered downpipes had discharged into stormwater drainage, my garden and a sewer. Now, a single overflow pipe discharged entirely into one sodden corner in my garden, from a pipe extending a couple of inches beyond the base of the tank, close to my house's foundations and a boundary wall. This violated Nel installation instructions and hence the warranty.

c) Almost all of TL's electrical work had to be redone by professional electricians, who deemed it unsafe, non-compliant and/or deviant from standard practices. Of particular concern to them was the use of flex (rather than cable) for fixed installations, amateurish taped connections, and the absence of a waterproof plug within a metre of the booster pump.

When I tried to resolve the numerous problems that arose from the start, TL initially responded with procrastination and subterfuge, which soon hardened into hostility, lies or, as other TL clients have noted, no response at all. Having won but a paltry discount (R1429), I was forced to approach other firms to fix the leaking substandard system. This has thus far involved ten visits to my premises by electrical or plumbing firms, costing some R13,000. Any cost advantages TL ever possessed have evaporated.

Overall, a gardening firm with a dubious track record has, during a water crisis, opportunistically branched out into rainwater harvesting, without possessing the appropriate professional s****s. In my experience, it is bad at almost everything it attempts: electricity, plumbing, overarching design, customer service. As for after-sales service: TL has failed to supply me with the brand names of various components, let alone the promised maintenance and operation instructions, and warranty specifications.

Since TL has recently been removed from the list of Jojo-approved installers, customers are no longer able to appeal to Jojo for help in trying to make TL fulfill its contractual obligations or promises. Judging by the experiences of Hellopeter reviewers, clients unfortunate enough to go down the Trovato Lawns rabbit-hole should brace themselves for expensive nightmares.