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.

Thanks PeterW The builder said we could pay for them direct but would rather we didn't. He is affiliated to the window company in some way as it's another part of the business. The trust is gone on my part so I don't want to give anyone any money at this point LOL! I was completely aware of the stresses of a build but wasn't anticipating this as well.

Hi All I wasn't sure where to post this topic so just went for this thread in the hope that someone could advise. We started our build back in January, obvious delays due to covid so have been putting the speed of the build which is soul destroyingly slow down to that. Without going into too much detail we have encountered delay after delay with everything, we have recently found out that the builder has cashflow issues - we paid for materials back in May that have still not arrived on site and we have paid for deposits of materials etc that again have not materialised. Groundsmen were telling us that they hadn't been paid etc etc. We have now held back paying this months invoice to avoid 'being out of pocket' until we see what we have paid for or have confirmation that they have been ordered. My gut feel is to stop working with them but my husband is reluctant to do so as he doesn't want to have to find another builder and have more delays. The next step is to order windows and we have been told that they won't order them until we pay a deposit, again I do not want to part with another penny until they are installed (these windows should have been ordered weeks ago but again they have been delaying on this point). What is the normal practise of paying deposits? Thanks for any advice.

Thanks - its a static, I will pass all of this onto my husband!

Thank-you will give that a watch!

Its a 3 bed but after looking online, I'm not sure that it is set up properly, the wheel is still on the ground and I don't think it should be. The whole van moves when anyone turns in bed or walks around - LOL

Hi All, So after all your advice we went for the caravan on site and spent our first night in it last night. As always nothing is smooth running but the issues we have are slowly being sorted. We are going to look into insulating it for the winter. One thing that I would like your advice on now is did any of you have a really wobbly caravan and if so how did you rectify it? Thanks in advance!

Thanks for sharing this with me, your garden looks lovely ? when you say expensive would you be comfortable giving me a rough idea of the cost for just the design?

That's great thanks for giving me a rough idea - from looking at the sites they all seem to differ with images that they offer so obviously need to figure out what is important for us in seeing the visual outcome.

In Surrey

Hi All Can anyone shed some light on where to start with looking for someone to design our garden? Looking on line its just a mine field of people to choose from. We are at the initial stages of our build and we don't currently have any budget to be able to landscape but would really like to get a good idea of what we can work towards with our garden eventually as it is quite a large area. What kind of costs are we looking at to just design? Many thanks Gemma