newhome

I’m trying to understand that photo. The wall marked in green that you say is yours. What is it in relation to your house, only to the top left of the photo there looks to be a tarpaulin with bricks on top? As @ProDave says a sketch would help.

Ours was up for 5 months but it came down a bit earlier than planned as there was an accident on it (details on this forum). The HSE got involved and slapped a prohibition notice on it and it turns out that the crook of a scaffolder had never insured it here. The day the accident happened he rushed over and put a ‘ticket’ on it dated that day and said that he hadn’t signed it off to be used before then. It had been up a couple of months by then and erected it just before the frame was due. He knew when we were needing it! We didn’t know that it should have had a ticket on it to note that it was insured but that’s one thing to watch out for. Ironically I had suggested buying scaffolding but the OH said that he wanted to use a registered company due to the safety aspect. There wasn’t much wrong with the scaffolding (a few clips missing IIRC) so that was corrected and the HSE allowed it to be used again pretty quickly. The scaffolder then slapped us with a massive bill for ongoing use beyond a certain number of weeks on a per week basis so we had to rush and get it down as soon as we could. It came down even earlier than planned in the end once we were hit with the personal injury claim ... Not a good experience.

God knows!

Thought ready mix was for the likes of the DIY community. Surely a professional would use the bags? No ready mix used here ...

We did the caravan thing. That’s the royal we. He did the caravan and I had an apartment in town. I used to go back at weekends to check on progress ?

That’s not what you said a couple of weeks ago! ?

Here the lights go off if no movement, sometimes when I’m working so clearly no sign of life lol. No opening windows just aircon. No fan heaters allowed. Fans are only allowed as a special order if you’re pregnant or menopausal - yes really! ?

AKA daylight robbery!

If the pylon is on your land do they have a Wayleave that allows them to site it there? If not you could ask them to remove it potentially with the compromise that they facilitate you being able to hook up to it.

I would have an ASHP if I could get someone to fit one without needing a mortgage but the costs don’t stack up otherwise. I would look at ASHP and PV in your situation only because that’s what I would do if I was starting again.

@PeterW? Email being sent?

If I had gas I wouldn't even consider solar thermal TBH.

I thought you had pylons right next to your plot? Or are those not able to be used to connect to? Probably my naivety on how these things connect.

I can't get anyone round here who knows about solar thermal (which is what I assume you mean by solar hot water?). Bloke installed it and scarpered and now it needs to be fixed no one wants to come and do it as it needs roof access. So it's a white elephant sitting up there. There seem to be very few companies that install solar thermal these days. Even UFH up here seems pretty unusual. Most plumbers only really seem au fait with gas or oil boilers and rads. So choose your system with maintenance in mind too.

I know . That's how I felt paying the joiner but felt I had to given that he had quoted an amount and I had accepted. He rushed everything dreadfully, didn't sort the level access as I requested (luckily BC accepted it but they weren't truly happy about what he had done), he left a crazy mess everywhere as he just sawed literally where he stood (fixing skirting in various rooms) and chipped one of the tiles in the vestibule.

@Christine Walker sounds like you need to tell @jamieled how you went about raising a complaint. That could be a way of getting an initial price cut and then apply for the grant based on the reduced cost.

Wow! I hope you didn't pay that! Having said that I was fleeced by a joiner. A grand for what amounted to 2 half days. That was before I found this forum however. I have learnt a lot by reading various threads here and have somewhere to validate any future work now.

Nope they don't seem to have to 'approve' that you can move it TBH. At least not in my experience. The completion certificate just states that the building conforms to building regs but I would expect that this may also be the trigger for a home insurance policy to judge that your house is insurable using a 'normal' insurance policy (others may have a different view). Certainly when our self build insurance ran out before we had finished the build we were unable to extend the insurance so I ended up trawling the market for another insurance policy that would cover the (at the time) empty unfinished property and then allow occupation with building work continuing (and contents included). Such a policy was hard to find but I did manage to find one. They wouldn't cover any accidental damage however whilst building work continued. What sort of insurance do you have now? See if that will cover you occupying the property. If not I used a company called quoterack to arrange my insurance through having been unsuccessful trying to arrange cover by calling various insurance companies direct. I filled out their Challenge Quoterack form and 3 brokers called me within 24 hours. My insurance was through Halifax so pretty mainstream, but it was not one I was able to arrange myself. https://www.quoterack.co.uk/ChallengeQuoteRack.aspx There are a few people on here now who are living in their not yet signed off properties. They will have more recent experience of insurance cover I'm sure. As an aside I'm sure that there are many people who don't tell their insurer that they are having major building works done on their existing property such as an extension, or move into a house where a completion certificate has not been issued for an alteration to the property. In each case they are leaving themselves open to not being covered by their household insurance. If an insurance company can refuse a claim based on the small print, they will.

I don't know the full back story here but I'm surprised that you are having to deal with the insurer. Surely your claim is against the roofing company and they have their insurance policy to pay out on negligence claims against them? I have had an ongoing issue with my company pension where the administrator 'forgot' (their word) to do a switch of funds I requested and I lost circa 2k by the time they made the switch. It took over a year of me fighting for this compensation during which time they made several other errors that compounded the issue and eventually they compensated me. I asked for be compensated for the considerable amount of time I had to spend getting them to put it right and they offered me a derisory £200 on a take it or leave it basis. I wasn't happy so told them I was going to the Financial Ombudsman. Anyway, the reason I mention this is that I did try to go straight to the Financial Ombudsman before the pension company had responded to my complaint and I spent time on their website filling in their complaint form and it pretty much said go away if you haven't raised a formal complaint with the company concerned. I am about to progress to the Financial Ombudsman. I think the problem you will have is that you are not Aviva's customer so I'm not clear whether you can ask the Financial Ombudsman to intervene. You are the customer of the roofing company not Aviva and you have no direct relationship with Aviva. My advice would be to ring the Financial Ombudsman and ask if in this scenario you can bring a complaint against Aviva. There is this link from Citizen's Advice about a third party case. It's not the same scenario but it has some advice that I imagine is pretty standard surely. Third Party Insurer I don't suppose you have legal cover with your home insurance policy that might help with this? I would a. raise a formal complaint with Aviva and ask them to confirm that they are treating it as such (if indeed you can given that you are not the customer). I think you need to give them 8 weeks to respond generally but they should have their complaints procedure on their website. I would also state very clearly the compensation that you are looking to receive including the amount of compensation you are seeking to add for the additional items you list. Without putting that in writing you leave yourself open to getting offered nothing (in this case) or very little. Give them something tangible to work from, and state that this is the amount you intend to progress through the small claims process (if under the limit - you can still progress through the county court if it's over the limit but it's more complex / costly). If you are not satisfied after raising a formal complaint ask Aviva for a letter of deadlock or final response so that you have this for the financial ombudsman but do check that you are able to raise a complaint with the ombudsman via a quick phone call. Put the roofing company on notice that you will be bringing a claim against them in court due to their insurer's offer being unacceptable to you. As the company you have the relationship with you may well need to being the case against the roofing company rather than Aviva anyway. The roofing company needs to understand their obligations to you and stop being so passive. When we had the scaffolding incident here I had insurance and the complainant had his own no win no fee personal injury specialist. Apart from making statements etc the case was all dealt with between the lawyers but when there was a time critical event (as in over x years since the case started according to my insurance company and court papers needed to be served to keep it 'alive') we had papers served on us as the party being claimed against not against the insurance company.

Those are not dissimilar to the ones I have. I chose the distance between each pullout dependent on what I was storing in there. So cans vs bottles for example. Tequila and voddy at the bottom ?

Even if you do get it done in a hurry tomorrow won’t you want to leave 24 hours before you have people, tools and stepladders all over it? Seems a recipe for disaster having someone doing heavy work there the instant they are laid?

So your tiler is coming to do walls and you need the floors to be done tomorrow before he starts? You intend to lay LVT on the floors? Who is doing that? What has to be laid on the floor in order to fit LVT on top? Sounds a bit rushed in all honesty. Can the tiler be put back? Does LVT definitely need to be fitted before wall tiles? You’ll need some way of covering it safely before the wall tiling starts.

I think some people see setting up a company as the holy grail to avoid paying full VAT without necessarily seeing the full implications of doing so. It's certainly not something anyone should do without seeking professional advice (that will also come at a cost). Let’s face it, if it was so straightforward everyone would be doing it.

You can move in whenever you’re ready in my experience. We moved in when the kitchen / family room and the downstairs wet room were finished. We didn’t have kids to worry about though. @ProDave and @jack moved in with kids though so perhaps they can advise. It makes sense to get your garage completed for sure though.

Yep, that’s where the risk premium comes in and is why (at work at least) we break it down into phases because asking someone to quote on a fixed price basis right at the start of the job will result in the risk premium being too high due to the level of unknowns and uncertainty. So in the IT world that means having a define phase where those unknowns are investigated and clarified. That’s not really feasible in your example however as you can’t really pull up floorboards to see what’s there just to provide a better view of the cost. ‘Clean’ jobs and by that I mean where it is very easy to see what needs to be done are always going to have a lower risk premium than those with the potential to uncover a nightmare. There are pros and cons with each. The most important thing bar none however whichever way you go is to use someone trustworthy. There are sharks out there who will catch you out using either method.