Terms

These terms cover the use of this website and what the introduction it arranges is and is not. They take two minutes to read and they save an argument later.

What this site does

Masonry Services Syracuse arranges introductions between property owners in Syracuse and the surrounding Onondaga County area and independent contractors who install new masonry: stone and brick veneer, paver patios, walkways and stone steps, outdoor fireplaces, fire pits and kitchens, and masonry cleaning and sealing. We do not excavate, compact, lay or point anything ourselves. We own no plant, we employ no crew, and we are not a party to the work. When you send a request we read it, work out which of the four builds it belongs to, and pass it to a licensed, insured contractor who covers your town. They look at the property, they price it, they schedule it and they invoice you.

What licensed and insured means here, and what you can check yourself

Where this site says licensed and insured, it means the contractor who takes the job carries what their trade and their own municipality require, and it is theirs to evidence rather than ours. Nothing on this site should be read as a credential held by us. What you can check without taking anybody's word for it is insurance: the Town of Camillus building permit checklist, for example, requires proof of New York State Workers Compensation insurance for the contractor performing the work and names the acceptable forms, so a contractor who cannot produce that paperwork for a permitted job has a problem before they reach your property. Ask for a certificate of insurance naming you, and ask your own town what it wants to see on the permit.

Your contract is with the contractor, and New York says what belongs in it

Whatever is agreed for the work is agreed between you and the contractor. New York General Business Law section 770 defines home improvement to include the construction or improvement of terraces, patios, driveways, landscaping, fences, porches and garages by name, so this work sits inside Article 36-A and its contract requirements apply to your project. Section 771 then requires the contract to carry the approximate or estimated dates when the work will begin and be substantially completed, together with a statement of any contingency that would materially change that completion date, and to say whether a definite completion date has been agreed to be of the essence. Where there are progress payments before substantial completion, the contract must set out a schedule showing each payment in dollars and cents against the state of completion it is due at. Money you pay before completion has to be deposited in accordance with the Lien Law unless the contractor instead posts a bond, a contract of indemnity or an irrevocable letter of credit covering the return or proper application of it. And the contract must tell you that you may cancel until midnight of the third business day after you sign. We are not a party to that contract and can neither alter it nor enforce it for you.

Quotes and prices, and why two of them differ

Every price comes from the contractor, not from us. Nothing on this site is a price, an offer to carry out work, or a prediction of what a project will cost. Two quotes for the same visible stone can be thousands apart without either being dishonest, and the reasons are usually structural: the depth and compaction of the base under a paving job, the drainage provision, the flashing detail at the bottom of a veneer wall, and the month the work is programmed into. The hardscape specification's minimum compacted base for a patio or walkway is 4 inches, and only over well drained soil, with thicker bases required in colder climates and over continually wet or weak soils. That is the sort of line that separates two numbers, and it is a fair question to put to both.

Permits, and who is responsible for getting them

Permits are a matter between the contractor and the property owner, and this site does not obtain them. What needs one varies by municipality here: the City of Syracuse lists retaining walls, driveways, fences, decks, porches and sheds among the residential work it permits; the Town of Clay and the Town of Cicero both name fireplaces on their permit lists and neither names a patio; and the Town of Manlius publishes its own square footage thresholds. Frost depth is decided the same way. Section R301.2 of the Residential Code of New York State leaves the frost line depth column to be filled in by each jurisdiction, and the state's own Technical Bulletin TB-1009-RCNYS says so plainly, which means any footing depth quoted to you as a state or county figure came from somebody's experience rather than from the code. Telephone your town or village code office and get their number in writing before you compare two prices.

Fire features, stormwater and the water supply watershed

Three state and local rules touch this work often enough to name. The Department of Environmental Conservation limits an open outdoor fire to less than 3 feet in height and 4 feet in length, width or diameter, which is a design constraint on a fire pit rather than a formality. The same department's construction stormwater permit begins at one acre of soil disturbance, which an ordinary residential patio does not approach. And the Skaneateles Lake watershed, which supplies the City of Syracuse with drinking water, requires an erosion and sediment control plan for a project in an environmentally sensitive area that disturbs 5,000 square feet or more. Whether any of the three reaches your project is a question about your property and it is the contractor's obligation to work within them.

The standards and the figures quoted on this site

Every factual claim on these pages carries its source beside it, and those sources are published documents: the Brick Industry Association reporting the masonry construction specification, the Concrete Masonry and Hardscapes Association, the Portland Cement Association, the Residential Code of New York State, the New York State Department of State, NOAA, the US Department of Agriculture soil survey, the US Census Bureau, New York General Business Law and individual municipalities. They are quoted so that you can check them. They describe what published guidance and regulation say. They are not a promise about your particular project. A specification is not an outcome: masonry is a variable material in a hard climate, and building to the specification improves the odds rather than settling them. Nothing here is engineering advice, and a retaining wall holding back ground, a structure carrying load, or a footing on questionable soil is a question for a design professional.

Limits

This site is provided as it is. We take reasonable care that what is written here is accurate and current, and every sourced fact carries the date it was checked, but published guidance, municipal rules and regulation change, and we are not liable for a decision taken on the strength of a page that has since been superseded. We are not liable for the work, the workmanship, the timekeeping, the pricing or the conduct of any contractor introduced through this site, and nothing here creates a warranty of any kind on their behalf. Where liability cannot lawfully be excluded, it is not excluded.

Using this site

Use the form to ask about masonry work on a property. Do not submit somebody else's details as your own, do not use the form to send automated or commercial messages, and do not scrape, copy or republish the writing and the compiled source material on these pages. The wording, the layout and the assembled research here are ours.

Changes

These terms and the privacy policy are updated when what the site does changes, in the same edit as the change itself rather than at some later date. The version on the site is the current one.