I'm guilty of looking at the pics first and then reading your comments after already forming an opinion from the pictures. Seeing the United Rental sign on the backhoe led me to believe it was your husband or a friend on the backhoe. I also figured it was the cheap way to go and that you were cutting corners by renting a backhoe to breach the dam instead of an excavator.
Then when I read your comments, I got really confused. Why rent an old backhoe to do this instead of an excavator with enough reach to get the job done right? I know that sometimes you have to rent equipment, but why rent the wrong thing? Heck, it's not that hard to find a backhoe with an ExtandaHoe for more reach if you wanted to go that route. I can see where driving the backhoe down to the pond would be faster and easier then a mini or mid sized excavator, but don't understand why anybody would rent a standard hoe with a 12 digging depth when it needed to go deeper?
Then you really threw me with your comment that he couldn't get his excavator down there. Did he really say that? He's either got one HUGE excavator, or he's making up stories so he doesn't have to deal with moving it for such a small job.
I don't know anybody involved in this, but if I was you and based just on this one post, I'd be just a little cautious of what you are being told. There is no reason to lie about such little things, but those who lie about small things will always lie about big things.
Document everything. Don't change your payment plan with him. When it doubt, don't trust or believe what you are being told, but listen and then verify it. If you ever get that feeling that you need to fire him, but want to wait and hope for the best, or for things to get better, fire him right then. It never gets better, you only lose more money. Either you pay him for work that he doesn't do, or you have to hire somebody else to undo his work, and then do it properly.
I'm a General Contractor. I do remodels and home improvements. I don't do dirt work commercially, but hire it out. I've seen quite a few stunts and have learned to pay very close attention to what I'm told and what I see happening. When I'm told one thing and see another, I get nervous. You should be nervous based on what you wrote here and what I saw in those pictures.
Good luck,
Eddie
PS A good operator wont have any trouble between the various control patterns of an excavator and backhoe. Granted he'll have a favorite based on what he uses the most often, but most hired hands can jump in just about any brand or style of equipment and run it like a pro in just a few minutes. Just another red flag.
