Ed_MK

Well after looking into these for months. Both during the build and now its completed ...I have come to the conclusion that they are COBBLERS! Its REALLY sad that the only reason most of us take these out is to satisfy banks to get mortgages or to resell the house, as they are blatantly not worth the paper they are printed on ..the use of the word "warranty" is as close to a mis-description as you can legally get ! I have collated perhaps a dozen quotes over the last few months from virtually ALL available ..everything from 1500-5000 Quid and they all are basically the same animal ...and cover ...virtually NOTHING. Why do i say that ? ...surely not ....Well for example, for the first 2-5 years (of the ahem..10yr warranty) they will tell you almost certainly to go back to the trade/company that did the sub-standard work ...ah so its an 8yr warranty then? ..well not quite ...there are a list of exclusions and sub clauses that make a medical textbook look like a post-it note! ...Plumbing covered ....No. electrics Covered ...No ..Roof Covered ...No ....Windows and Doors ....Well No. What about the internal stuff ....Well mostly No ....In fact ANYTHING that is likely to fail is exempt or covered in that many codicils and exceptions its bloody useless! I mean if the house falls into a gaping hole in the earth...maybe ...but from what I am being told, when you DO claim you have to jump through that much tape and rings of fire to get anywhere it can take months (or years) to resolve ..and of course by this time you will have fixed it yourself....they KNOW this ... Banks insist on these for mortgages ...but they are getting virtually nothing ..It's just due-diligence in ignorance..Same with new buyers. some retrospectives dont cover the current occupier/developer at ALL ...but only pass on to any new buyer ...so if you have the house for 6 years ...that is wasted payment as the warranty is dripping away, well for what its worth anyway. Lets compare it to car insurance ....You have a bump ..You make a claim ..and you get paid out ....Simples says the meerkats! ...Now my car insurance is £300, and I am sure if it got damaged then I could get 10x that to have it repaired and not be out of pocket. Yes in the world of the Structural Warranty ...you can pay £3000 and the chance of claiming successfully and for anything like the full amount is close to ZERO, in fact after speaking to people I can't name a SINGLE person that is happy...most got (that famous Yorkshire Stately Home) ..BUGGER HALL Its just sad we have to fork out or hard earned for an A4 bit of paper that is less use than a few squares of Andrex ....I mean of course you may as well wipe your rear end on it .. but its not as soft and absorbent. Best thing to do ...IMHO ...Dont bother UNLESS you need to go cap in hand to the bank for a Mortgage/Loan and even then get the BARE minimum cover required, as long as they accept it as a proof of a warranty (doubled up with laughter cramp here!) ...and of course if you are selling it on as the buyer bank will want it too (more laughter cramps) ..but either way retrospective seems the way forward...If you take it from build inception the only thing you are left with at the end is LESS warranty period and paying a bit more normally for the "inspections" (painful laughter cramps now) ...oh yeah i forgot the inspections ...Thats where a guy with glasses and folder pulls up outside in a Vauxhall Insignia and stares through the Heras Fence at a few pallets of brick..If you are lucky he might poke his iphone in the gap and take a few snaps ...Well he has to prove he is "doing his rounds" to get paid. It allows your bank to wipe their hands of any responsibility for lending you money against a building that could be ropey...And it allows a MASSIVE gang of surveyors and engineers to "big up" the RISC boys revenue stream...Win Win? Except for us that is ....as ultimately we will be out of pocket, initially for the cost of paperwork and almost definitely for any work that will probably not be covered by it Yes...all true ...the only piece of paper worth less is Dianne Abbot's O Level Maths Certificate

Hi All, the issue we have is that we want to borrow some money to finish the cosmetics off. Basically a small mortgage We already have our Building Control Cert .. But one of the things in the bank mortgage advice states that for new builds, a NHBC warranty is "preferred" ...hmmm Also mentions title deeds ... Well we built the house ....so we dont have them..did a search on Google and advice differs ...some say that the Land Registry entry is sufficient, but some say that you need "more" ....list of owners since new, covenants, freehold details etc etc....so what do people consider to be OFFICIAL deeds these days ?

a lot of mine looks to be in the "joining" ....apparently as its over 40 metres it needs a "joint" ...not quite sure what for ...but that has put £700 in that price its the dearest joint i ever bought ! ?

i suppose .... its just getting near the end and finances are thin ..scratch that they are anorexic. <sigh> still cant work out who supplies and fits the meters

maybe they want us all to put windmills up in the back garden ....

7k! Do u live in the Orkneys ?

Hmmmm. i have just got my FINAL quote for service connections Water is expensive .....full of zonal charges and this that and the other .. with me digging the trench on own land it still is over £2000 (but we were told to expect that last year) Gas is not too bad ...again I am digging the trench and it is coming in at £800 I just got my electric one from WPD and i nearly FELL Over ....its almost £2500 notes ! I mean all they have to do is connect 1m (yes under 4 foot) on the pavement ...same as gas and then flop an armoured cable in my waiting trench I have notices the "quote" is full of the term "contestable charge" ....i take it that means i can haggle. ...well I have already tried that today and got the old "frozen scapula" thrust at me ... Am i getting done here? ....big time?? ...or does everyone on newbuilds get a Shock with electric ..(see what i did there?) I think i will have a cold bath in Flash Floor Cleaner ...just handling that quote has left me feeling financially abused and fiscally molested ???

i got frustrated and started just stuffing it in ....seems to be working ...fingers crossed

I LOOKED CRAIG ...BUT THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO MARKINGS ON IT i contacted he company that fitted it ...but as they have been paid and i have waited now over a week ...i am getting the impression they dont know ...or dont want me to know their supplier

Evening All. Its along story ...so i will condense. Basically Window company was supplying some bi-folds to go with our chartwell green UPVC theirs was aluminium ...and they asked is for a RAL ....we told then couldnt they just match it and that said they worked off RAL etc etc anyway the net result of all this is that RAL 6021 looks NOTHING like chartwell green ...far far darker So we decided to have them sprayed ...as the "blame game" was going on forever .... A company came out and try as they might they did not have a tape that would stick to the internal rubber seal to mask it ... no problem they said ....we will pull it out ....its a wedge gasket 5 minutes later they handed me a bunch of varying lengths of rubber and said "keep them clean and pop them in once its all dry and unmasked! I had to hand it to them their paint colour was SPOT ON ...but ..... when i went to put the gaskets in 2 days later ...no way would they go...tried using thin tools ..plastic tools euro wedges everything ... any more pressure and the glass would break for sure. Now along came the joiner and he noticed that around the aluminium doors was a detachable profile ...and after a bit of a wiggle and waggle it came loose BINGO ! ...so off i went with silicone spray and a plastic scraper and squeezed it into the profile ...as i THOUGHT it should go ....but it doesn't LOOK right and when i try to clip the profile back on its like there is TOO MUCH rubber on the other side or something ..it must be in wrong So i am hoping someone can tell me how to proceed ..I have some pics of the detachable profile and a rough image of the gasket cross section PS as you look at the pic...the LONG corner of the profile is the bit that sits deep in and effectively under the glass edge...and the tall flattest section is the one that faces into the sun-room. I know the bead MUST go into that rectangle notch some way ...but how is the question What a palava !

thanks for the advice guys ...and where was that coil price please ? The BCO hasn't signed it off yet ...but I am making sure that it is compliant with section H specifically the tank size / no of bedrooms and alarm if no redundancy is built in (single pump) and the fact we are running it to a mains sewer I cant see him having much objection ..but i will run it by him the alternative is cesspit ..and they seem to hate those

Pump station specs are nightmare to evaluate.. *Some systems are quoted as 3in when they are actually only 2.5" systems with a 3" external pipe outlet!..the terminology used is often "kitted to 3"" or "discharging through 3"" with no mention of the ACTUAL pump diameter anywhere ....bit naughty *Alarms are included on some ...but not others ..."Alert indicator" sounds fancy ...but its not an alarm its a red light on the pump to show its getting current *Guide rail and Guide Chain!?! are not the same as they seem ..Guide "chain" is just a bloody chain * Tank sizes are often quoted to discharge height which is how you would want it, i mean if its over that ...its knackered ...but often you will hear "brim capacity" which means basically to overflowing I have 4 quotes in front of me ...so I will make a decision on Monday

Sorry ..me again! does anyone know why the suppliers say am better running the 90mm pipe to the manhole 37M away ? If i was to Boss it up to 110 it would be a quarter of the price ...I take it they have their reasons ? (apart from getting another 400 notes from us)

engineer said on our ground 600mm would be adequate ....but we KNEW we sat low and wanted to basically minimise site waste AND make sure we were high enough for a long flow..so ASKED for a 1000mm "foundation" ( i KNOW they KNEW very well what we meant, and WHY we were doing it ... and we had a datum on the site too) But when it came to the pour we were told that the 1000mm we were quoted for wasnt 1000mm of concrete it included the base block and kick brick and these are 400mm and so based on OUR datum we are now 400mm BELOW where we thought ... So ..we have 60+ tonne of subsoil to move about ....and are now pumping up (sigh) It's done and dusted and I cant go over the old argument ...needless to say get any term clearly "defined" in writing...but now it is what it is

Yes ...and i think its what we have settled on after talking to Anglian Water contractors Basically on our side of the fence will be a 3in Single Pump (solid handling at 65%)with a 1000L tank, guide rails and Automatic Alarm the outlet will be at 500m below DPC it will feed into 90mm pipe and run 30 metres down the wall of our in-laws into a new manhole that they are installing and then gravity out to the main sewer a further 25m this will mean we can fall gradually to a trench that will only be a metre at MOST (if that) at the inlaws corner ..(which is well past the narrow between houses) I am getting prices of between £1500 and £2300 for this setup (almost identical) ..including all the fittings to take 2 x 4" waste feeds and am told i basically REPLACE the planned manhole wit this station ..and away we go! I cant work out why the costs vary a bit ....but i do know that a 50m roll of 90mm drainage pipe is lot of money anyone got any advice .... (or a coil of 90mm!)

Groundworkers were tools basically! and after stating the footings would be 1m of concrete changed his mind and set them for 600mm he said his 1m (included the trench block) which it didnt in my original plan ..needless to say we got into a big ruck and he demanded more dosh if we wanted 1m and so we had to settle at 600mm foundation pour Thing is the house now sits 400-600mm lower than planned and what was a LONG fall at 1:60 to get to the inlaws invert now means we are below their invert already buy about 200mm so we need to lower their run so we can feed into it so even with a shallow fall 1:80 tops we will be 1500mm down by the time we get to them 1:60 would leave us closer to 1800mm does that make sense ? We could easily run out at 1:60 to the road as the sewer is so bloody deep , but somewher along the line we havbe to 1. Fall a fair bit as the council will only allow a connection at invert level 2. Pick up the inlaws waste ...as if it wasn't for them ..none of this would be possible ...so i cant just sail past leaving them on a leaking cesspit

Well perhaps the workers that came (Anglian subcontractors) were doom and gloom, but sadly they put the willies up my father-in-law with all the talk of subsidence, underrmining, underpinning et al ! I drew it out roughly to scale below ...but as i have no experience in civil engineering, does it look like a chilean mining disaster waiting to happen ? I mustb admit when 3 irishmen are stood around a laser level repeating as a mantra "its deep, maybe too deep Pat" ..."oh its deep alright Mick, very deep" ..."what do you think Michael" ...."it's a deep bas*** alright boys" etc etc

hmmm. i see. well the inlaws are currently on a 40yr old cesspit in the rear garden ...so their current invert level isn't deep at all ...around 450mm down! whilst the main mahole in the road is 2.7 metres down ...but again the road surface is about 500mm lower than their land ...so in total the fall from theirs would be over 3M and the distance is about 25M from their invert to the main manhole ...so QUITE a fall !! the plan was to dig theirs deeper and i would originally connect to them and then fall out at a respectable 1:60 to the road. Regarding the under-pinning ...the team that came estimated for plan A ...(normal pipe run) to work with a decent fall when the trench had to go along our inlaws house it would be falling at between 1.5M and 2.0M deep and due to the space between their house and a neighbours garden wall (2M gap ..it would be TOO deep to be so CLOSE as the trench would be almost 500mm away from the in laws exterior wall which they estimated at 600mm foundation deep) and so would be BELOW them and potentially unsafe..if that makes sense attached pic should help the challenge is the highlighted line in regards to the zig-zag (section close to building) the things i CANNOT change are A - my invert D - Anglians invert we can "play" with anything else but where it gets close to the in-laws house, i don't really want to risk undermining, and we only have 2m gap to play with ..and at least ONCE i hear them talking about the "angle of repose" ... which as we know is always a bad phrase I am told

Houston ...we have a ... (well you know what we have) Basically the engineer working for Anglian water came out today and checked the falls. (If you know already ..i wont bore you ...but we are running all the services through our inlaws house to the road in front of their house as the road we have an entrance on the services are "unadopted" ....long story .....but) ...anyway. Due to the distance of around 45m from main sewer to our invert ...we have to fall TOO far.. ...and it would be a smidge under 2m deep along the house which is too close for comfort ...without underpinning which is financially a non starter ..so someone suggested a pump ...! ...sounds good ... But of course we are ALSO picking up our inlaws waste when we run out to the mains sewer ...as that was part of the deal (they are currently on an old and dilapidated rear garden cesspit) So my question (which even the waste company couldn't answer) is ... Will my pump a the proposed location effectively SHOVE the waste out to the sewer when it HAS to pass through our inlaws manhole as well ? any Pump Gurus online ? see attached for a handy pic

Well it is nothing drastically stunning like some of the tiling jobs i have seen on here. but i DO have 2 bathrooms to do in our self build ...not so big about 2x3M each Its ONLY the floor ...as I will get a REAL tradesman to do the little ones on the wall. But i need to get these done to fit the sanitary ware etc and i thought i would "have a go" So.... the floors are 22mm Structural Ply ..solid as a rock they are .... but just in case (and lookig at Youtube advice) I have bought some 6mm Hardbacker and I will screw this down on thinfix to the floor for added stability I had planned to then just use my flexible adhesive to fix the tiles and flexible grout to finish and VOILA..done! but a tradesman (Joiner) said i should really "tank" the floor ...hmmm. I am already adding 6-8mm for the hardback and thinset and then say another 6-7mm for the adhesive and they are a 10mm tile to boot!! ...So I am already into quite a transition from the carpet and thick underlay planned for the landing. what do you think he meant by "tanking" ...I mean I was already thinking of slapping some PVA on the floor before the thinset and hardback ..or would this hurt adhesion I mean i thought tanking was for cellars, wetrooms or swimming pools ..I mean how much water can splash out of a bath when me and the wife get in ? ...not at the same time ....cheeky!

Thanks Craig I went with a local company ....as distance seemed to factor in price ... they are sorting the right colour using some outsource spectrometer thingy Watch this space

Well the Japs can keep it ! Its a pigging eyesore LOL If you see them about ....tell them I have about 20 broken pallets lying about .... ..I am sure they could knock up a masterpiece of modern urban and industrial decay with them

well... i have been told I have the best ground for building. .its basically 12 inches of loose earth and grit. ..and as you get deeper it gets grittier. stoner and sandier. water just bloody vanishes in it... not so good for flowers me thinks

Hi Peter I like Hit and Miss...sadly the wife thinks it is too "gappy" I will call Jewsons ..as I have a good contact there and see what the costs for various will be

Hi all, Hope you having a good Crimbo ...so far! I have started thinking about my fence ....I am clearing the site and will be getting a mini-digger in just to smooth it about and also dig the soakaway and other BIG holes! But now all the trees are bare it is really exposed to the road and the wife has asked me how much it will cost to do ...I am dreading all those bloody holes ...but there you go . currently it is a mixture of council Post and rail ...along road side about 200 foot of it ....which i wont be moving just erecting within it. The remainder of the side is mostly facing my inlaws and the back of the neighbours gardens and is composed of mainly rotting waney lap panels and in some cases ...no fence at all , i have had to chicken wire it to keep the dog in So the plan is to erect a closeboard fence on post and rail to match the 30 foot that was erected by a neighbour 2 years ago and is good looking and solid I have only ever done Concrete and Panel ...so I am hoping I got my calcs right...its about 350 foot all around excluding gate and good bit and i was told Post and rail is normally 10 foot spans ..So i come up with (the attached) To match the good fence there it needs to be 7 foot ..SO I have allowed for this...Down here I have noticed Southerners refer to "gravel boards" While us up north call them "base panels" ...I am sure they are the same I plan top treat the 2 foot of the post in he ground with roofing bitumen to over ground level and also drive several 6" nail into it before concrete (I used to see my old dad do this ...and his fences seemed to stand forever ...so I will copy it!) Wherever i look to buy the wood seems to suggest the following 1. Feather boards (shaped like a wedge) .....but the good ones in place are 10x1 cm planks (lapping 1cm) ...so should i not copy them ? 2. Also the rails I am quoted seem to be cut diagonally ..I have never seen this ...I would normally "presume" they were 4x2 ..stronger? 3. Some timber place told me I would need to put a rebated capping along the top ...presumable to help water drip off ...the current solid fence doesn't have this...its more money again ....but is it worth it ? Any advice of clarification from anyone that knows better is appreciated