Gem77

Hi All All being well we are hoping to gain possession of our site next week after terminating the contract we have with the contractor we employed, unfortunately we employed a crook and although he is continuing to fight us we hope to have him out of our lives next week. We are at a point in the project when we feel we can take it on working with the tradesmen directly without having to bring another contractor in. Can anyone point us to a checklist that we can refer to, to cover us on H&S and insurances etc so we can continue to build our home? Many thanks!

That is interesting we have had someone out a couple of times already to check things

Hi all We are in the midst of a self build, currently have a structural warranty with Protek. We are parting ways with the main contractors and continuing alone I would like advice on whether I need another insurance to cover theft/damage to the property or can I just upgrade my structural warranty to cover us for public liability etc. to cover us for employing tradesmen?

Thanks all for your words of encouragement - much appreciated. Just trying to sort insurance out so I can sleep a little easier if anything happens to it in the meantime.

Hi All Back in September I posted asking advice about our building contractor appearing to be in financial trouble and what we could do. Lots of of you posted which I was very grateful for. To cut a very long story short we ended up staying with them with a fair few more blips along the way. We are still behind in our project and have tried to part ways a number of times but been reminded that we have a JCT in place (although not signed). Yesterday we had a situation on site where roofers arrived and started to dismantle the roof due to non payment. We pay all our invoices and clearly the money we are paying is not always going to the tradesmen that have carried out the work, we have known this to happen on previous occasions. We spent the day trying to sort the situation out. We have since been emailed by the contractor who has now realised that the relationship and trust is not longer there (this went months ago LOL) and he has given us a number of financial options for him to walk away. We do not want him to gain control of this situation for his gain. What do you suggest? We could issue notice based on 6.4 of the JCT? I worry about where that leaves us with warranties, site insurance, site security etc etc. The windows are going in, plastering is taking place. We were due to have the kitchen installed next week (I've postponed this), tilers were due to start the week after. Are we legally allowed to contact the tradesmen direct to ask them if they have been paid for their work to date (the contractor says they have but we do not trust anything he says)? Are we allowed to ask the tradesmen to continue without the contractor? We are in the process of getting building control on site to walk through and ensure everything is ok up to this point. Sorry for the brain dump!

That's great - I don't actually think there is any water in yet - they have run an air test.

@ProDave they have plastic up at them - so I guess that this will do what you say?

Hi All Just reaching out for advice on something that has happened our on build. In short we have had the underfloor heating installed and screed laid before the windows have been installed. Should we be concerned about this as the winter is now approaching and its not likely that we'll have windows in before Christmas? Will the screed or underfloor be damaged by the cold weather? Thanks!

Hi Can anyone give any opinions on whether spotlights work on a vaulted ceilings seeing as they are at an angle? We are being steered away from them as they make the air test difficult. One suggestion is that we have the top part of the vault flat so we can run spotlights down the middle but I wasn't sure this would work from a lighting perspective and would look a bit like a runway?

@epsilonGreedy It's a timber frame and the roof is felt and batoned, half tiled, which can't be finished until the chimneys have been built.

Not really, I think they simply didn't order the bricks, probably used the money to fund something else? Apparently the screed etc are turning up next week, but that is because we are now querying everything whereas before we were trusting and paying up. You live and learn.....

Groundsmen telling us they were not getting paid, pallets of materials just turning up one at a time not in bulk so in the end we just asked the question outright and got the answer we were expecting ? We paid for bricks and deposits for screed and underfloor heating.

We could definitely look at this option, the issue we have is time at the moment what with both myself and my husband working full time, the whole point of having one company oversee the whole build was supposed to be less stress!!

Thanks - quite a few have mentioned credit card payments so I'll definitely look into that.

It's good to get this from another perspective. As we understand it our invoice payments are allowing the next lot of work to continue. But I then wonder why should we have the extra pressure on top of everything else about keeping his business afloat - as selfish at that sounds. There have been constant delays, no one on site etc etc. We just want our home to be built. I have got to the point that I am worried that if we continue to pay for things up front and deposits they will declare bankruptcy and then we'll be in real trouble.