homebuilders and drains

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Its unfortunate that your homebuilding experience did not go well, and its also unfortunate that your builder was incompetent. I had to make certain assumptions based on what I know about building when I replied to your original post, just to avoid the twenty question routine. I didnt realize you and the builder had determined where the footing drain would discharge to beforehand, and that he therefore knew the length of pipe and extents of trenching he needed to dig through known soils. He shouldn't have needed to add to his footing drain price.

You are absolutely correct, everything should be in writing, and that may include a detailed site plan, showing utilites, grading, sidewalks etc. In general, not specific to your case at all, because I have no idea what your contract was, sometimes people will buy house plans with a bill of materials and get a price, but pay less attention to the asterisk that says "site work extra". With no detailed site work plan for a builder get quantity takeoff data from, he has to be more general/generous in quoting. As you can imagine, that can cause alot of problems.