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newhome

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Everything posted by newhome

  1. newhome
    I think people who don’t even know they’re going to be doing a self build yet will be caught up with @Onoff‘s bathroom. I estimate another year to go re the bathroom but at least @Onoff is giving it all a whirl himself. I think I would probably kill myself if I attempted to fiddle around with heating wiring etc. It’s not all bad tho. Since this thread started I now know how to use an electric drill / screwdriver (after a fashion!), I know there are more different types of screws and screwdrivers than I previously ever imagined, and I can name most of the parts in my heating system even if I can’t fix them. Previously when I needed to drill a hole in some plastic plant pots I used a barbeque lighter to burn a hole in them rather than attempt to drill anything. I could hear the hubby yelling at me from beyond the grave shouting “what the feck are you doing!”. It worked tho! I’m hoping my heating is fixed in just over a week (fingers crossed!!).
  2. newhome
    I would have put money on you before you even started yours @ProDave Sorry @Onoff But for the avoidance of doubt we don’t need photo evidence from either of you
  3. newhome
    I use stuff past its use by date for eons. Not dead yet . People rely on dates too much. Taste and smell are the best indicators although I’m not advocating that anyone uses year old prawns!
  4. newhome
    Lol, coconut oil has a long use buy date generally and that’s for food use. Doubt the skin minds too much . And it’s solid at normal room temperatures.
  5. newhome
    I’ll buy decent biscuits! Any special requests?
  6. newhome
    Coming soon - Heating Nightmare Part 2, The Ressurection (well it is Easter ) AKA @Nickfromwales and @PeterW do Scotland .
  7. newhome
    Yay, real progress (as opposed to fannying ). And if it’s looking bigger - good for you
  8. newhome
    Worst case, do what I did and pay him the excl vat amount and argue the point later. He’s wrong, you do not need to pay the vat so paying the excl vat figure is entirely appropriate in my view and forces him to address.
  9. newhome
    Yes I was surprised when I had a look at some case studies. One guy got 13k when a scaffolding pole bounced up and hit him in the face and smashed his cheek and eye socket causing him permanent scarring and a plate in his face. Another guy got 80k when he was electrocuted when the scaffolding was erected too near a pylon. He lost his arm and a foot and sustained other injuries. I know they use pretty strict criteria to determine loss of capacity, earnings etc due to very personal experience in my case surrounding my husband’s illness (mesothelioma) which has now been going on years with no sign of a settlement being offered, but as I’m not dependent on him I’ve already been told I won’t be entitled to much and most of it will go straight back to DWP to repay the personal independence benefits he got when he could no longer walk more than a few feet. It’s the big cases that hit the headlines I guess which lead people to believe that the payouts are huge. In reality where people sustain life changing injuries or even death they rarely make up for any of that.
  10. newhome
    That’s what the insurance company were going to do in this case I believe (as in pay a small sum and avoid court action), and given that the individual wasn’t able to prove any official earnings in his loss of earnings claim I rather suspect it was a couple of grand. They told me early on that they didn’t expect it to reach the court, even though we were served with papers. In the beginning the scaffolding company offered to pay the guy loss of earnings for a few weeks while he recovered but he wanted too much money so it never happened. I rather suspect that he could have got more than he eventually would end up with if he had accepted their offer, and wouldn’t have needed to wait years for it. That information was all verbal however and whilst I told the solicitor that in my view this was evidence of the scaffolding company assuming liability there wasn’t anything in writing so couldn’t be used.
  11. newhome
    I found asking trades to not add vat to labour invoices incredibly difficult in many cases even when quoting from the legislation. I felt that several of them thought I was some sort of tax avoider! I ended up not employing one of our favoured contractors because of his refusal to zero rate. I just don’t think he’d had any experience of self builders before, or at least not one who was asking for vat to be removed. One contractor who supplied and laid the screed sent in an invoice with vat despite being told that we did not expect to see vat added. I sent off a cheque for the excluding vat amount along with a note of the legislation and never heard anything further so assume he sorted it out!
  12. newhome
    I wonder who would have been liable had someone fallen off because something had come undone (for example) that no one had noticed. The scaffolding company would argue that it was fit for purpose when erected, you could claim that you undertook due diligence and checked the scaffolding every day, and the person falling can say that their expectation was that the scaffolding was safe and there wasn’t anything noticeably wrong with it that would cause them to be concerned before it gave way and they fell. Poor example but who is liable for the Grenfell Tower disaster for example? There doesn’t seem to be a completely obvious liable person where scaffolding is concerned in my view.
  13. newhome
    My husband did exactly that, as in live on site and do as much of it as possible himself (some bits I’d rather he hadn’t done in truth ), but you can’t do the main construction work on your own.
  14. newhome
    I believe from the above that we were not the employer of this individual as he was instructed to attend the site by our contractor who had the right to substitute workers as needed (although clearly we would have complained if we judged a worker not fit for purpose) and none of the team were there every day so presumably they had other jobs on the go as we had no exclusivity rights. The main contractor seemed to have 1 employee who was with him throughout but he brought others in when needed who I suspect were all self employed. In fact, when the timber frame kit was delivered and erected as it was craned off the lorry the contractor brought his uncle who appeared to direct the whole operation during those 2 days but who we never saw again on site, as presumably he returned to his own jobs along with others who appeared for just those 2 days. It was the most labour intensive time however and time critical given that the crane was on hire. The ‘you don’t know whether you’re buggered or not until afterwards’ is certainly the case here, and none of my protestations to the solicitor covering the sorts of arguments above amounted to anything once the guy claimed that he had been instructed purely by my husband as we didn’t have proof that we hadn’t engaged him. The only way round this I can see is to hold a booking in register on site, or for contractors to be told that they must notify the owner of all persons attending in writing before anyone new attends the site. That’s probably easier than having a register.
  15. newhome
    Wonder how they would act if they were putting an extension on someone's house (for example). I think them viewing you as their 'employer' is pushing the boundaries when someone is self employed. You are not paying them a wage based on time (presumably) you are paying them to deliver an agreed outcome. You are not involved in paying their tax, NI, and nor are they generally working exclusively for you, in that any contract they have with you will rarely state that they cannot take on other work whilst doing yours. This link gives some guidance, and certainly it seems that there is a distinction to be made that in my view falls towards them being self employed rather than employed by you. http://taxaid.org.uk/guides/information/issues-for-employees/employer/am-i-an-employer
  16. newhome
    How come they didn't have their own insurance cover?
  17. newhome
    This is very much of use now, not to me but for the countless self builders who will read your post and make your advice their modus operandi. This was entirely the point of this thread - to act as a warning and for others to provide ideas as to best practice to hopefully mitigate against issues encountered. Knowledge is power (and good for arse covering too). Re the unbolting, it could easily have been the employees of the contractor who did fiddle around with the clips as up to that point they were the only folk who had used it. I just read my husband's statement to the solicitor after the incident and he states that originally the contractor told my husband that the insurance claim was going to be against the scaffolding company. I don't know what led to that not being the case but the next thing we knew the claim was served on us, even though the H&S report noted that the scaffolding had missing clips and the H&S officer demanded a site meeting with the scaffolder and ripped into him about the missing clips. The insurance company had the H&S report too but chose to admit liability in the end rather than try to flip the claim to a third party. I have a feeling that they wanted to avoid any court action and had already determined that they would not need to pay out very much money so decided to cut their losses.
  18. newhome
    Yep, that's what ours was missing!!
  19. newhome
    In my case the claim was that the scaffolding was defective and he was instructed to use it by my husband thus rendering him liable for the accident. The scaffolding of course was on hire from elsewhere so one might assume that the liability would pass onto the scaffolding company but in this case it did not and they came after us.
  20. newhome
    And also, purely out of interest, what defines a self builder and their need for insurance from any other type of work that someone has done on their house? So clearly there is a greater risk of accidents during the main construction phase where someone is working at height but there are similar jobs that are done to maintain houses too. So if I, as a householder, ask a local tradesman to repoint my chimney (for example) how liable am I as the householder? I'll wager that 99% of households won't ask to see someone's insurance before contracting them to do the work. In the event of an accident at my house who is liable?
  21. newhome
    Thanks @HerbJ. The policy I took out does not contain those clauses. It was taken out in 2009 however so quite a long time ago and I'm sure things change quite a lot, especially in the H&S world we now live in. Out of interest here is what we were requested to provide by the claimant’s solicitor. It's a long list and I wonder whether it is all applicable to self builders. Most would surely only come under the banner if you were an employer? The statement from the guy says that he was self employed, and then names my husband as his employer. I would have thought those 2 things were mutually exclusive but perhaps not. However it's what we were faced with when caught up in this incident. Thankfully the insurer's solicitor dealt with all of it, and just came to us for information.
  22. newhome
    Oh I am absolutely sure that this was the case. No question in my mind at all. They knew we had insurance so it was all heaped on us. I argued endlessly with the solicitor appointed by the insurer over this. Unfortunately the bloke, the employer, and the other guy on site all cooked up a story in relation to this so it was their word against my husband’s. The incident including the refusal of treatment, walking back to his car, driving off etc was all in the very detailed written statement my husband made. After it happened and before we knew about the insurance claim one of the other guys on site let slip that the bloke had a lot of debt. I requested that the insurance company’s solicitor dig into proof of earnings as he was claiming for loss of earnings so as a ‘self employed’ tradesman he should be able to prove his taxable earnings which I rather suspect were non existent. He was also claiming that he would no longer be able to work although there was later a statement from a medical expert that stated that his injuries were ‘unremarkable’ and in his view there would be no difficulty in him doing the same job in the future. I have a folder of stuff on it somewhere! The consequences for us were the not insignificant hassle and stress, the scaffolding came down a bit earlier than we planned (but we purchased a scaffold tower to do the remaining jobs instead), and the insurance company wouldn’t extend the policy when we hadn’t finished when it expired. It pushed me into getting ‘unoccupied house under construction’ insurance instead which was buildings cover rather than a full blown building policy, but there were just bits to be completed by then (lots of bits nonetheless!). Plus every tradesman that we had on site after that was quizzed about their own insurance cover.
  23. newhome
    Jeez, it took me years to get the OH to put the bloody seat down, let alone the lid!
  24. newhome
    I’m with the girls. The aesthetics wouldn’t be right if it was on the wall .
  25. newhome
    Yes possibly. We chose him as he had decent references and he was much cheaper than another quote we got from a large building company. We were given a fixed price and in fairness he stuck to it, apart from some extra things we wanted which cost a bit more. Although obviously there was a big falling out over the incident at the end. He wasn’t here every day as he had other jobs on the go, and that suited us as apart from the main construction period he fitted around my hubby doing his own bits and pieces such as the wiring etc. He was most definitely a ‘small local builder’ so I doubt that endless cashflow was at his disposal. Lived in the next road to us as it happened. We had no complaints about his work per se, just the incident that happened.
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