James O'Connor's Bedford home was located on a conservation boundary line. (Globe Staff Photo / John Tlumacki)

Their Toll Brothers homes are not yet three years old. But both houses have serious cracks in walls and ceilings, two years after Toll jacked up and later reinforced the sinking foundation under O'Connor's unit.

Both homeowners love the development -- 164 units clustered on just 55 acres, mostly in cul de sacs, on a 300-acre tract that adjoins other conservation land. And they are happy with most everything about their homes.

But from the outset, O'Connor and the Stollers have been victimized by a series of miscues by Toll, according to town and state records. The first and worst of the problems: Even though the planned development clearly spelled out where the homes could be built, Toll somehow sited their units, the last two on the far side of a cul de sac, atop -- and over -- the boundary line.

So when the Stollers' part of the foundation was first poured, town officials discovered that part of the 12-by-8 foot sun porch at the back of their house would stray across the conservation land. Toll was forced to dig up part of the foundation. The Stoller sun porch, planned as Joan Stoller's art studio, is now 12-by-5. And there was no room for the fireplace they planned for the unit's back wall.

According to town officials and a complaint O'Connor filed with the attorney general's office, O'Connor paid an additional $1,500 for glass doors to open onto the deck Toll had assured him he could build off the back. Only on the day he closed on the unit was he informed there could be no deck because of the siting error.

Richard Joly, Bedford's planning director, recently reviewed the plans Toll was supposed to follow. Had it not been for the error, Joly said, there would have been a 20-foot buffer between the Stoller unit and the restricted land; and a 40-foot buffer for the O'Connor home. Toll later settled the claim with O'Connor.

O'Connor had also paid for the piping and hookups in each room for a central vacuum system. But when he went to purchase the vacuum unit itself, he said he was stunned to learn that there was no origin point provided for the system -- nowhere in the house to install the vacuum unit itself.

Toll's project manager, he said, admitted that the unit's originating point should have been built in a utility closet. Yet Toll had not even made plans for wiring in the closet.

Said O'Connor: "It's the incredible weirdness of Toll Brothers." Toll ultimately fixed the vacuum unit, which now works fine.

But subsequently, O'Connor discovered he had structural problems as well. "The center of the house was coming down into the basement. The ceilings and walls were buckling." Toll, he said, sent workers down into the crawl space. They jacked up supporting beams, put shims underneath to shore up the foundation, and repaired cracks in a half dozen walls and ceilings. The repairs seemed to work.

Recently however, severe cracking in upstairs walls and ceilings have reappeared in O'Connor's unit. The Stollers also had recent cracking. But their problem has now been repaired by Toll.