ABOUT THIS PAGE
They say that there are two sides to every story. I disagree. There are not always two sides. There are instances where one party to the problem is almost solely at fault. This is one of those instances.
On this page, I'll lay out the steps I took to make Limitless Irrigation successful, and we'll examine some of Kyle's complaints about the project. We'll look at the complaint, and then I'll explain what really happened. What you'll find is that when faced with criticism Kyle tries to rewrite the story so that he doesn't have to own his company's failures.
HELPING THEM BE SUCCESSFUL
I knew this was going to be a big project. We were slated to install about 700 feet of corrugated drainage pipe and approximately 2400 feet of PVC pipe. The sprinkler system was to have a main water line, 16 active zones, and extra piping stubbed in for 3 additional future zones. The wiring for the valves was to be installed inside PVC conduit.
In preparation for the project, I:
- Walked the property multiple times with Kyle Story to ensure that Limitless Irrigation was comfortable with the scope of the project.
- Provided a complete installation diagram for all the drainage and sprinkler components. The design called for us to reuse as much trenched line as possible to minimize the amount of manual digging.
- Provided a complete bill of materials for the sprinkler system that outlined what was to be installed where.
- Broke all the sprinkler components out into individual boxes for each area of the system so that they could just grab a box without having to piece it together.
- Showed Kyle Story the components that I'd purchased.
- Moved the decorative gravel away from the house, making it easier for them to dig.
- Painted the yard to clearly mark where the digging needed to occur.
- Marked the yard with white flags indicating where new sprinklers were to be installed, and yellow flags indicating where old sprinklers needed to be removed.
- Ensured that the utilities were marked to avoid unforeseen issues.
- Made myself available throughout the entire time that they were here and offered to answer any questions that Limitless Irrigation would have.
One might expect that with a project of this size that the contractor would show up beforehand, try to make sure that everything was prepared in advance, and maybe do some prep work themselves. But Limitless Irrigation did nothing to prepare for the project. They just showed up expecting it to be handed to them on a silver platter - which it was. And they still failed.
Contractual Issues
1. I supplied my own parts.
Let's start with this because it really does cut to the heart of how Kyle chooses to manufacture his personal grievance and then attempts to rewrite history.
Kyle mentioned this particular issue several times with the implication being that I somehow cheated him out of revenue. Just before we started, I had him meet me at my house to discuss the particulars of the project. We walked the grounds, talked about the things I wanted to have done, and I showed him the parts that I'd purchased. He got to see that I had the parts separated out into individual boxes for each sprinkler zone. I'd also sent him a bill of materials with a list of components to review so that he'd know what they'd be working with and where it was intended to go. He even wrote into his contract that they would not warranty parts - which is a standard practice when the homeowner buys their own components.
It took me a couple of months to pull together all the parts for these two systems. Kyle's approach is to give Site One Landscape Supply a list of parts, have them place the order, and just pick them up. I wasn't willing to take this approach. I think Site One is massively overpriced, and they don't carry all the parts I needed. Here's a quick comparison of some of the items that Limitless Irrigation quoted to me in May 2024 and their Lowes price in July 2025. Note that the Lowes price doesn't include my 10% military discount.
The price for the PVC pipe assumes that he's installing Schedule 40 piping. If he used Schedule 20 pipe, the price per foot at Lowes would have been $0.39 per foot. A whopping 146.15% markup. When you're installing a full system with multiple zones and a couple of thousand feet of pipe, this markup becomes real money going into his pocket for doing nothing more than dropping off a shopping list and picking up the components.
Kyle wasn't cheated, he just failed to bid the project accurately and then tried to find a way to blame me for it. As a homeowner, you might want to consider the fact that Kyle is buying supplies in a manner that is most convenient for him, and most expensive for you.
As an aside, I want to take a moment to substantiate my assertion that I think Site One is massively overpriced. Lowes wants $245.00 for a 100-foot roll of ADS 6 in. x 100 ft. Single Wall Pipe Solid Pipe (part # 06510100). In Vero Beach, Site One wants $533.20 per roll for the same item - a massive 217.63% markup. In Atlanta, Georgia, Site One's price is $281.20 per roll. I don't know why there's such a massive price difference between Georgia and Florida; but I do know that I'm not interested in paying their markup, trying to do comparative shopping at a store that's not cost competitive, or having a vendor buying parts on my behalf and just passing the costs off to me without regard for price.
2. Their estimate was only for 60 hours of labor. They provided 196.2 total hours and if you split that between 2.5 people (used on your project) that makes it 78.48 labor hours used. Anything left needing to be done is, effectively, unpaid for.
He noted the number of estimated hours on his agreement, but I didn't hire them on an hourly basis and I don't care how many hours of labor he estimated. I hired them to install a passive drainage system and an irrigation system. The burden is on him to bid the job accurately. By the way, who bids a job for 60 hours of labor, claims to have provided 196.2 hours of labor, and then doesn't ask for a change order if it's an hourly contract?
I have no idea if that 196.2 number is accurate or how he does his math. Yes they were here for two and a half weeks, but they weren't here on a continual basis for that period. They were off servicing other customers much of the time - as in whole chunks of various days. I never knew who would be here when or for how long.
My advice to you, make sure that you're clear on what their contracting for. His agreements are too loosely pulled together, and it leaves him too much wiggle room to redefine the rules of engagement after the fact.
Changes in Scope
3. The diagram that I sent him for the bid barely resembles the actual layout in the ground (zones don’t line up, valve locations differ wildly, and head locations changed).
I agree. The final layout changed significantly. But it changed because Gryphon didn't want to have to dig along the eastern side of the property.
Growing along the eastern side of my property are several mature trees with extensive root structures, and it would have been a hard dig. But I had Kyle out here three times to walk the property and I sent him a diagram, which he shared with Gryphon, showing the pipe runs. The real kicker here is that Kyle wanted to come along this area instead of having to run pipe under the driveway in multiple locations and I took his input to heart when I created the design. You can see that he had all the piping running along the eastern (right) edge of the property in his design.
When Gryphon raised the issue about how difficult the dig would be, we discussed it as a group, worked through the layout changes together, and mutually agreed to the necessary changes. These changes involved running pipe under the driveway in three different areas. When the piping changed, the zones changed and the valve locations changed. His assertion about the head locations changing is nonsense. We didn't need to move any heads, we just rerouted the piping.
I want to be clear here - these were changes that they requested. I was perfectly happy with the initial design, but I absorbed the time and material costs necessary to do the redesign for these changes. Their argument at the time was that this would make it easier for them. They can't come back after the fact and then complain about changes they requested.
4. No amount of walking the property beforehand could account for the constant changes.
I didn't ask for these changes and the trees didn't grow overnight. They were there when we walked the property together, and you can clearly see the trees in Kyle's design. I sent Kyle a copy of my design with the trees drawn in, which he shared with Gryphon. If they had issues with the design, they should have raised them beforehand.
5. We changed the locations of valves and added new dead zones not listed on diagrams.
Yes the valve locations changed, because they asked to change the design. This change is on them.
No, we didn't add any new dead zones. The initial design called for three dead zones and that's what they installed. Not only did the design call for these three zones, but I specifically discussed them with Kyle the last time he was here, before we started the project, and he agreed to install them. These zones are there for future landscaping goals without having to dig up the yard yet again.
By the way, there was no extra digging involved for these dead zones. All they had to do was glue the pipe together and lay it in the existing trenches along with the other drainage and irrigation lines.
6. We changed valve locations to include more valves in/ along driveway. More labor to accommodate the additional mainline, conduit needing to be installed under driveway, 2 separate additional times. Hydro drilling 5 extra lines under driveway, all out-of-scope. That addition put us 1.5 days behind with needing to account for the additional parts and labor to hydro-drill the out-of-scope piping under driveways (2 driveways total).
No surprise here but Kyle's math is wrong. Under the original plan for the sprinkler system, with no changes, we were going to need 3 lines under the driveway. Based on the changes they asked for, we had to add 3 more for a total of 6 lines. There was already a line under the driveway in front of the garage that we didn't know about - which Kyle reused. I paid for the original three, but we only needed to do the work to install two of them. If we take the labor credit from the one that Kyle reused, and apply it to the three new lines, we only added labor for 2 additional lines - not five.
These changes were supposed to make things easier for them - and they did. What he fails to mention is that as a result of these changes they got out of having to install 200+ feet of pipe in an area that could only be hand dug. It would have taken them more than 1.5 days to dig through the tree roots and lay that 200+ feet of pipe along the eastern edge of the property.
Other than the Xfinity conduit, which I talk about later, he has no grounds for complaint. As the project manager he should be able to manage the scope of the project and do a proper accounting of what's changed. If Kyle was unwilling to accommodate these changes, he should have looked at Gryphon and said: "No, we're not making any changes."
7. The materials changed too quickly. They had to redirect while waiting on parts supplied by me. They would then need to walk it out, to ensure all parts were accounted for.
This is what happens when you ask for changes. His assertion that they had to "ensure all parts were accounted for" is a bunch of rubbish. They didn't do any parts management.
8. We added the Xfinity conduit. The conduit line for xfinity (completely out of scope) put us back 2 full days with the additional task of trenching and setting new line in conduit and trench.
Here is the one area where there's some validity to their complaint - but only some. There were two coax cable runs in the same area and even though the utilities were marked, Gryphon managed to cut the one to the house not once, but twice. We were without internet service for about three days, and it took me a week of working with Xfinity to get it fixed properly.
This is the second time that the Xfinity cable to the house had been cut and I decided to fix it properly by reinstalling the coax inside PVC conduit. I bought the conduit, and routed it through trenches that had already been dug for drainage and irrigation. What I asked Limitless Irrigation to do, was to install segments of conduit under the driveway in three areas. Two of the three segments went smoothly, but one of them they had problems with, and it took both Kyle and Gryphon several hours to get it installed. Net time to run these pipes, about 6 to 8 labor hours - not 2 full days.
Had Kyle asked, I'd have agreed to a change order and would have paid him for that effort. He's the project manager, and he didn't ask. If you don't ask, you can't complain.
I do want to note that they weren't necessarily taken advantage of here. I gave him two sprinkler controllers worth about $500 new. He got my two-year-old Rainbird with a wi-fi adapter and a brand-new Hunter controller, also with wi-fi, that I bought but wasn't compatible with the two wire system components. I also offered to give him the extra 200+ feet of unused Schedule 40 PVC pipe. He took the two controllers but didn't come back for the pipe. It seems convenient that he'd complain about a change that I asked for, while forgetting about the indirect compensation that he willingly accepted.
9. We opted to install flexible hydroblue pipe in the center island.
When I showed him the parts that I had, one of the items I hadn't worked through was the center island in our driveway. I was wrestling with how to lay that pipe in. I didn't want to use 1/2-inch flexible riser pipe because it would restrict the water flow, and I didn't want to try to get straight PVC to conform to a circular layout. I pointed this out to him and told him that I'd have it solved by the time we started the project.
On the first day of the project, I showed him the solution, and he was excited about how easy polypipe is to install. Nary a word of complaint. When they got to the point of needing to install the piping in the driveway circle, Gryphon was apprehensive because he hadn't installed the Blu-Lock piping before. Kyle on the other hand was excited to show Gryphon how easy it was to put together - and proceeded to show Gryphon how it's done.
Blu-Lock assembles without needing to be glued. It's as easy to install as flexible riser pipe and much easier to install than PVC. Kyle is being disingenuous and grasping for a reason to detract from their failures.
10. The two catch basins by the entry were both unaccounted for and required extra labor.
Here again we have yet another failure on Kyle's part to account for what was and was not in scope. The project called for 17 catch basins and that's all I asked them to install. We removed two catch basins from the backyard. One at my behest and one at Gryphon's. The one Gryphon wanted to remove was because yet again he didn't want to dig through the roots and there was another basin nearby. I simply moved these two catch basins from the backyard to the entryway. There was no extra labor here. They had commited to installing them, and where I have them installed shouldn't matter so long as it's reasonable and not creating more work. In this case, Kyle agreed to the change, and they got out of work because there aren't any roots by our entryway. It's all soft dirt.
Now, take a moment to stop and consider this. They didn't install these two catch basins. If you look at the picture of our entryway at the top of this page, you'll see the pipes sticking up and the two catch basins sitting on top of the ground. Kyle is whining about work that they didn't actually do, and is again looking for something to complain about without owning his failures.
11. They trenched, backfilled, and had to retrench front longest run, to accommodate “missed dead line" (not on plan and unaccounted for) That put us back half a day.
This is yet another example of Kyle mismanaging the project. The piping for this dead zone was discussed with him and agreed to beforehand. It was definitely included in the design as Zone 19. What happened is they closed the trench before laying the pipe. I caught the mistake and made them fix it. If Kyle was managing his people better, maybe it wouldn't have worked out this way, but I wasn't going to give it up just because they weren't paying attention.
By now you should have noticed a pattern of Kyle conveniently not remembering what they agreed to while trying to scapegoat me for their lack of attention to detail.
12. They had already pushed my other customers out to account for the excessive corrections and extra unaccounted for time spent on your property.
At this point you should recognize that I wasn't the cause of what he calls "excessive corrections and extra unaccounted for time spent". The changes I asked for were minimal. I took the two catch basins we removed from the backyard and moved them to my entryway. I asked to have an additional sprinkler installed along the driveway (which they failed to do). I also asked them to connect a sprinkler to Zone 20 that was supposed to be on Zone 18. It took like 5 minutes to dig this out with the trencher. The only place that I asked for something significant was the Xfinity conduit line segments under the driveway, and for this they were somewhat compensated.
In return, I suggested that they move an emitter drain line that hadn't been dug out to another area that was already dug out - which they did. This alone saved them at least two days. I also let them off the hook from having to install six sprinklers in Zone 14 and another three sprinklers in Zone 17. All of this in addition to the 200+ feet of pipe they didn't have to lay due to the changes they requested.
With respect to their other customers, if one of them called, that customer became their priority, and my project got pushed aside. They only gave my project dedicated focus for the first couple of days and then proceeded to continue to service their other customers while my project languished.
Kyle bemoans the fact that he seems to feel unfairly treated, yet he fails to recognize that I gave him two weeks to go do another job he committed to while leaving me with two broken systems. Despite the fact that I graciously gave him space to be successful and paid him in full as an act of good will, he went off on a cruise, left me with 161 issues, and then refused to return and fix his work.
Other Complaints
13. Using his contractor discount (without his knowledge) to get premier pricing from Site One. I went in to Site One, without him, and tried to use my discount behind my back. Then had the audacity to brag to my face that you did it.
None of this occurred. This is pure fabrication on Kyle's part.
Kyle offered to let me use his contractor discount. I accepted his offer as genuine, thanked him for it, and then made use of it. When we realized that we needed a different controller, he personally drove me to Site One in his truck, helped me pick it out, and stood there while I paid for it using his discount. If he had an objection, he could have raised it right then.
To be clear, I only used his discount for items that were to be "installed" as part of the project. I did not use it for personal items. After they'd left, I bought a Hunter EZ Decoder System Wireless Diagnostic Tool so that I could fix their failures - but I didn't use his discount for this because it was a personal tool. Once he raised an objection to me using his discount in the first of our two email exchanges, I quit using it entirely. At no time did I go behind his back, and I never bragged about it.
14. No amount of me answering their questions could prepare them for the constant changes, re-dos, and unattainable goal of perfection required.
If they didn't want changes or re-dos, then they should have installed the system as originally designed and agreed to, without asking for changes after the fact. With respect to my goals - I wanted two professionally installed systems that worked. I received neither.
15. The would have suggested to use multiple colors for flags instead of just white. The differing colors identify which heads to the corresponding flag color.
We did use more than just white flags. As I stated above we used white flags to indicate where new sprinklers were to be installed, and yellow flags to indicate where old sprinklers needed to be removed. Kyle again fails to get it right in his complaint. Even with two colors they didn't remove all the old sprinklers - which they agreed to do.
As I stated above, they did nothing to prepare for the project beforehand. They had the diagram and the parts list. They could have come in and done some pre-work, or at least communicate that they needed something done prior to their arrival, but they didn't.
One last thing. Are they not irrigation professionals? Do they not know what heads are used for what purpose? If they had questions, why didn't they ask?
16. He's unable to understand how they made so many mistakes while I stood so close by.
Kyle Story was the project manager. It was his job to manage his people and to ensure the quality of their work product. I sent him a copy of the issues list. Instead of owning their defective work product and offering to make it right, he instead abandoned the project and left me hanging.
17. They had to ask you to back up a couple feet so that we could properly use our tools without injuring you by accident.
There was one instance where this occurred. It happened while they were improperly installing a drainage catch basin where I had to point out that they needed to punch out the weep holes so that there wouldn't be any standing water to attract mosquitoes.
He committed to go back through the ones they'd already installed and make this correction, but he didn't do so. One of many commitments that he failed to follow through on.
18. Micromanaging his laborers.
I will admit to being an engaged homeowner. When I pay a contractor for something, I want what I want, and I work hard to ensure that they have what they need to deliver what's being agreed to. With that said, I also understand that life is dynamic and compromises need to be made along the way - which is why I agreed to the changes they requested.
Kyle wasn't around enough to manage his employees and I can only imagine what I might have received if I hadn't been engaged. Given that virtually nothing worked, and I was left with 161 issues to correct in order to get everything working, I apparently didn't manage them closely enough.
To get what you expect, you get what you inspect.
19. I have never felt more stressed out or offended against my craft. As an irrigation contractor, I learned how to connect high quality parts together to make high quality systems. You spit in the face of that learning by supplying parts yourself to avoid my company benefitting from that bottom line.
I don't care if he's stressed and offended. They were treated well while they were here. Even when I was forced to ask them to leave and come back, I did my best to try to maintain the relationship. It was only after they failed to return in the agreed to timeframe did I express my dissatisfaction.
His assertion that he knows how to connect high quality systems is laughable. Go back to "the other side of the story..." section of the home page and look at the picture of the water coming out of the pipe to the pump. In no universe is water coming out of a pipe of high quality. Kyle did this work himself, and he assured me that he would fix it. But after I complained about their poor work product, he refused to come back and fix any of their work.
Finally, here we are yet again with the complaint that I bought my own parts. He's an adult. He entered into a contract knowing full well that I was providing the materials. According to him, he has, and I quote, "9 years of landscaping, 7 of those being fully engulfed in irrigation" and yet somehow he's been cheated? With all that experience, you'd think he'd know how to accurately bid, staff, and deliver a project.
20. He said that "he's a man of his word and that he'd take one day to come back and remount the controller and replace the drain adapters on the back runs".
He put this statement in writing and still failed to come back and fix anything. It's hard to know what someone's intentions are, but given that he didn't come back when he had a chance, I wonder if he lied to me intentionally. Here are some of the commitments he made and failed to follow through on:
- Promised to fix the water blowing out of the pipes to the well pump.
- Promised to go back through the drainage catch basins and open up the weep holes.
- Promised to drill weep holes in the drainage emitter elbows.
- Promised to reset the sprinkler controller that was improperly mounted on the wall.
- Promised to replace the drain adapters on the back runs.
- Agreed to come back in two weeks and finish everything.
- Assured me that the sprinkler system would work when I asked him to leave, regroup, and come back.
We are defined by our character, and all a contractor has is their reputation. Based on everything I've documented, you'll need to decide for yourself whether Kyle Story is, or is not, a person of integrity.