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As @Mr Punter says above. The work is of such poor quality that no more should be paid and as it may well cost you more to rectify than it cost in the first place they should be told that you hold them responsible for the shoddy work and any costs to rectify.

DON'T PAY ANY MORE! Write to them explaining that the work is not satisfactory and you will be withholding all further payments. Attach the photos. Reserve the right to claim all expense to rectify.

@Mr Punter, thanks. That is exactly how I felt when I discovered what they had done. I simply could not trust them to truly remedy all their faults. I think the work proves that they are unable to judge the quality of their own work. Locating and arranging the new company, documenting all the faults, continuing to have to deal with the project: it has all eaten up further time and energy. Does this warrant refusing to pay the outstanding ⅔? What would you do in these circumstances?

@BotusBuild, thanks. I paid ⅓ at end of first day's work. Am awaiting the quote of a recommended builder to make good all the flaws (but probably as you say too redo everything except they basic structure). Should I refuse to pay the outstanding ⅔, or should I only pay whatever is left over once the making good has been completed? What would you suggest?

For anyone generally interested in steel, especially contractors. My business was mostly big steel buildings, mostly portal frame. The frames were supplied in red oxide as standard. They did not need paint other than touch-up or an optional decoratively. A finished coat at the works was not wise as chains etc damage it. Clients recognised it as ' cheap red oxide' and often chose that it needed full over- painting. Then our supplier began to offer grey oxide. This became our norm, and scraped bits were touched up after construction in the same paint. Nobody ever said it was unacceptable. However, for simple beams as above, red oxide is never questioned.

Does anyone know anybody that might be able to recover data from an M20. NVME Type M key SSD main drive? My pc went pop and took the drive with it, I've tried a USB adaptor and the drive shows in Disk Manager, but without any capacity so assuming a hardware fault due to the spike. Data recovery companies seem to be way too expensive route. starting £400. any suggestions? Any budding electronic guys able to float the NAND chips of, resolder and extract the data?

Lol, just get to scout and suggest no code changes.

The work is so bad that I would not offer them the chance to return and make good. Your new firm will need to strip the whole thing and start again. Make sure you see some completed jobs and have a chat to customers.

David, I fear you may have already paid them. If so, save your sanity, and get a(nother?) recommendation from someone locally to completely redo this. Hope you can find someone to sort this out for you

I'll take a deep breath and jump, feet first and see what happens!

we'll all be buried before that rust effects anything, just leave it and move on. For info, this is my huge beam, i just cleaned it off, primer and painted it.

No need to do anything, but touching up in red oxide will look better and avoid anybody questioning it. If there is the slightest chance of dampness on ,say, padstones then some blackjack locally might be worthwhile. Steel needs a lot of dampness combined with oxygen, to rust. A tip for appearance. Do any red oxide as local rectangles rather than splodges. If you need any proof I can find photos of the columns on our project that were exposed to the weather for 30 odd years. Rust looks worse than it is, because the steel expands a lot when oxidising. I'm assuming it will be out of sight. On balance, touch up in red oxide. Then decide whether to stick there ot paint it all in red oxide.

I would have had it galvanised. You still could. It looks like paint was possibly simply painted after welding with little or no prep. It should have been blasted to Sa 2.5 spec and then painted. Depending on paint type most primers are an open film, so water gets below the paint surface and you get rust. An epoxy primer isn't so can be left in a primer state. For me (others will say otherwise) 1. Get them/it galvanized 2. Send to an industrial painter to be blasted and painted correctly.

ChatGPT was only there to clarify the hundred questions I had for the builder. We deliberately chose the no carpets and LVT throughout. As much as I like hardwood/oak floors, the constant upkeep with 2 young kids and a busy lifestyle meant that resanding/oiling etc every few years would be too much. Have gone with something that should be bomb proof (fingers crossed!) for a few years and when we get tired of it, we can always change it to something else.

Lol. Mines a hobby not "real" like yours. But my issue even with previous projects and chat was lack of repo access. Go on give claude repo access just to look/report. BE BRAVE!

I haven't given Claude access to the repo, so there's quite a bit of manual stuff - but the issues are bugs that require a lot of oversight - e.g. not updating the project files after an update, and referring back to superceded files in memory. Yes, the coding is amazing, and the commenting is on another level so very easy to navigate the code where necessary. It's just these bugs that create workflow friction. Now, if I was brave enough to provide access to the repo, we'd probably be in a different place.

Chat still ignores things which it gets in it's prompt still! The 'loop' is everything goes back to chat. Ledger, patch outcome, scout etc etc etc. I'm just human doing boring stuff in the middle that creates project but writes zero code. Because my ambition was i do ZERO code we need a tight and rather repetitive loop. My assumption is that Claude nails this in a far better way. But chat with pi as repo scout just requires drag n drop of output files into chatgpt window. I was thrown by codex thinking it was chat but with repo access. But it isn't. It can patch etc but it doesnt understand the project and its structure. ChatGPT does - proves it constantly even if it has the odd wobble now and again. @SimonD I'm confused what the issue is TBH. Claude see's the repo thats the best bit. I have to use local llm to scout repo to uload to chat. Also I naturally assume Claude better reasoner and coder than chat. So I'd assume this arrangement would work better tbh. After all I'm doing a 'poor mans' claude code

I had a rather large UC delivered a few months ago that is to be used as a beam to form a new opening at the back of my house for a single storey extension to be built off it. None of the surrounding brick/blockwork will be an externally exposed surface. There are some patches of rust on the beam, these were basically there from point of delivery and are mostly from where it has been supported etc from moving it around. Will I need to touch these up with some red oxide before it is covered or will it not make any difference?

The thought of being trapped in @Pocster's basement with no stimulus, apart from Coldplay, makes me want to walk out to sea and not return.

That's exactly how I built our 2 "garden rooms", except ours are 4.8 x 3.0, and I used Rockwool (not as good, but cheaper and easier). Been 2 years now and no problems at all. Have the osb on the inside and covered the outside with membrane and then featheredge, which seemed the cheapest solution.

I clearly need to be a bit more disciplined and sort this side out. I've been finding some real limitations with not working locally and version management. I haven't given it access to my local machine so this is definitely causing some friction and the Claude project area has some serious limitations. As I found out, I uploaded all my project files into the depository, but then found out that as soon as Claude does a re-write/patch or whatever edit of the file, it provides an output for download but doesn't update the project file. Then it goes back to use the project file without telling you, ignoring the new output. Even with clear instructions to check with me the latest deployed files, it sometimes completely forgets, completes a new write and output and some of the earlier code is then missing - VS Code deploy version comparison has been a bit of a godsend). I'm currently on very clear instructions and when it creates a new output, I still upload the deployed file to ask it to check the versions are consistent. Now, this is okay for small stuff, but it becomes a right PIA on anything larger (although it still saves hours, weeks and months of human time in what it's able to output - I'm just getting spoiled nowadays). And another little bug I found is that sometimes, if I select download all for the new artifacts, some of the contents are actually previous versions, not what has just been produced! So, having learnt what it takes to prompt, I'm now working out the next step which you've clearly nailed.

LOL! I understand exactly what you mean and exactly that bug. But as I've said to date not had to look at 1 line of code. Chat provides the patch but we have a array of multiple tests it has to pass. If it fails the tests etc I get an output file of why. This is then chucked back at chat where it either does another patch or a better scout. I've added stuff to the pi harness to reduce failing patches quite substantially e.g. pi can now grep/sed/tail files into its prompt for local 120b scout. Commits only happen when I say so. Ledger updates must match i.e. what we did, what was tested, what was commited. Basically so many guardrails that any patching applied has to be rock solid. I spend 90% of my time after supplying the spec/task pressing '7' to scout or '2' to apply patch. A few copy n pastes when chat gets pissy and stuck i.e. it tells me what it needs and I do it manually. TBH it's working really well. Soon I'll tie this into the 1st version of voice transcript and upload a demo. Here's where I spend most my time!

Birds, 9x10 it is birds, they love the mastic for some reason. I've had to repair mastic on numerous windows and rubber seals over the years.

Why in the Southern States the VCL is on the inside. Mind you, with climate change affecting the regional weather patterns, there may need to be some rethink about condensation risks.

Thanks @SimonD I should have said, I am planning to use C16 47x95 stud, o fit the 90mm PIR and thanks for the tip on OSB size.