Kelvin

I have friends with a timber oak building. Same issue with gaps etc except they’ve not bothered filling the gaps. It’s 8 years old and looks 60 years with all the wonky gaps. Oddly though you tend to look beyond that and admire the craftsmanship and the timber.

They only work inside which makes it useless as security proposition. It’s a solution looking for a problem.

Agree with @SimonD. A retention only works if it’s agreed up front. I had a situation where the trade couldn’t complete the job because it needed another job finished which couldn’t happen because of a delay in getting a window replaced. I retained 20% of the total bill. They weren’t happy with this as we’d not agreed it up front and their argument was it wasn’t their fault. My argument was they should have reasonably known they couldn’t have done the job in a single visit as they knew the situation and that how could I be sure they’d come back if I paid 100% of the bill. They did come back and I paid the remaining 20% but then added about 18% to the bill for the second visit making me commit in email that I’d pay it or they wouldn’t come back to redo an area that had failed. I’m now in dispute with them over the quality of the job. Therefore while I’ve paid 100% of the original bill (plus another £800 on top for a different reason) I’m withholding £1200 due to the quality of the work. It can all get a bit complicated.

My plumber is excellent. Has even dropped by to see how things are going when he’s been passing. Plasterers have been pretty unreliable. Quality of the work is good but I’m weeks behind now because of them.

Given you can’t do anything about it now I’d forget about it. Certainly don’t go drilling holes in your screed. As long as you have enough cover over the UFH which is 16mm if its stapled to the insulation. I had the same mild panic with my screed depth albeit we were nominally at 55mm. What kind of screed is it?

While true, with a lot of builders they tend to be stuck in the past so apply what they learnt 30 years ago like it applies to new houses. (Hooses need tae breathe Kelvin - sick of being told this so I just smile and nod when it comes up) Fundamentally my biggest gripe is the lack of care and respect they demonstrate given they are working on someone’s home.

Only if they advertised having a structural warranty. A new house doesn’t need to have one in place. If your lender won’t offer a mortgage without one then you go back to the vendor and tell them this and that you’ll only proceed if they put one in place. This will be true for anyone buying it with a mortgage. Cash buyers less of a problem and most houses are sold without them. In this current market keen buyers are few and far between so you have a reasonable negotiating hand if you really want the house.

If it’s very bad workmanship then walk away. If all the obvious things are bad then there will be lot of bad workmanship with things like insulation and airtightness (which is likely to be piss poor) which you can’t easily fix. According to many on here structural warranties are hard to claim on so they really just help people get a mortgage. Our previous house was a new barn conversion and had a litany of problems all of which got fixed by the builder eventually. However our neighbours were less fortunate as they had an internal load bearing wall move by 3cm four years after moving in. They managed to eventually get the structural warranty to cover it but it took 9 months then another 6 months to repair it.

Exactly this.

The porch bit of my house was fabricated incorrectly so it’s 100mm too high at the back where it meets the pitched roof. The owner of the company HH use to erect their kits told me and my time served joiner that buildings never match the drawings they are always a bit out. He said this with a straight face. I said to him 10mm might be considered a variation but 100mm is massive (expletive deleted)ing error that has consequences. The consequences are the building doesn’t look like it was supposed to look (there’s no obvious gap between the two buildings which was supposed be clad but now isn’t), there’s not enough fall on the gutter as we could only just squeeze it in so while it works water sits in the middle of it such that algae builds up quite quickly requiring me to clean it every few months, and the flat roofers couldn’t seal the edge of the detail membrane under the gutter as they couldn’t heat gun and roller in to it.

Compensation and live with it vs major disruption to make good. We are fitting a Neff recirculating hob but also have MVHR.

What was your air tightness test result?

Yes need some pictures. There are several drainage experts on here. We uncovered a few ancient field drains when digging out. By ancient I mean trenches filled with stone so a few hundred years old in all likelihood and they were still working. Quite impressive really. We dug back tracing their route and diverted them into our drains and around the building. Therefore, can’t you find where it enters the underneath the trench dig back beyond the foundation and divert away from the building and then reconnect to wherever it goes. Then as John says flood the diverted bit with concrete. Possibly over simplifying the problem.

There have been four apprentices on my site. Two were treated really well by their journeymen especially the joiner. The other two were from the two different roofing companies. The standing seam apprentice did nothing but moan and was obviously not interested in learning much so just laboured mostly. The flat roofer apprentice was constantly berated and bulled mostly for the quality of his work but also for how he looked (was called, and I quote, “you are the ugliest (expletive deleted)ing guy I’ve ever seen”) I went say something but the electrician advised me to stay out of it. When they came back to fix some of the problems with the roof they told me the apprentice was fired in part for the workmanship on my roof. However, my view of this was they just scapegoated him because ultimately it’s the lead guys responsibility to check the work as they go and at the end. Now it’s only four examples but I suspect a lot of apprentices aren’t treated or trained very well.

Exactly I had that whole debate with sparky on-site. I said we’d either need to have access to them from the cupboard beside the ovens but it’s a pull out larder unit so you’d need to cut the back out of the unit. In the end I suggested putting all the switches in the utility room which is immediately behind the ovens and fridge.

It’s good for me as it helps me realise we will finish it 😂

I had plastic bags tacked to the walls throughout the house and they still chucked empty crisp packets etc on the floor. My other half collected it all up and put it in their van 😂 They never did it again.

For this latest trade I went with the recommendation of the materials supplier who signs off all the jobs and provides the warranty. He told me if he was getting a flat roof done he would use these guys. It’s probably why I am more disappointed with it.

I feel your pain. Had similar.

We were getting our utility room delivered. For whatever reason ours was at the back so they had to unload two others to get to mine. They sat some heavy unit up against the aluminium window cill then sat something else on the window cill. I went apeshit at them. They genuinely couldn’t understand the issue. I pointed to the large dry gravel parking area saying wtf is wrong with using that rather than using my window cill as a shelf. My other half told me off as she said I was a bit rude but as I explained they don’t know the grief I had with these window cills so part of my angst was all that so to have someone show such little respect for someone else’s property just pees me off.

Yes quite. I told them the same thing and guess what happened. Rather than use the ladder I had leaning up against the wood cladding lashed to the gutter on the opposite elevation he put his up on the other side of the building which I didn’t notice. A gust of wind caught it and it slid laterally, as you point out, narrowly missing the sparkies van. This caused the worst scratch but it could have clobbered someone or they could have fallen off the ladder.

I’m starting think my expectations are too high. Yet again I find myself at odds with another trade on the quality of their workmanship. In this particular case it’s the flat roof and numerous things like long scratches on the rain trim caused by poor materials handling and banging and sliding the ladders about as just one example. There’s a long list. I’ve asked the materials distributor who recommended them for their opinion on it. But it got me thinking that either it’s them and a great many trades just don’t care enough because it’s a house for some reason or it’s me and my expectations are too high. Some of the work on my house has been exceptional but some of it has been piss poor either requiring it needing re-done or I’ve given up and done it myself. In some cases, like the garage, I just accepted it and they gave me a large discount. I can understand why folk end up doing all of it themselves. One of the trades told me that dings and scratches are to be expected you’ll soon not notice them. So i took my screw driver and pretended to accidentally scratch his new van and he nearly had a fit. I asked him what the difference was because eventually you won’t notice the scratch. What’s everyone else’s experience?

Mine is within 200mm of the appliance but on the opposite side of the wall in the utility room. 🙄

Heb Homes have a partner kitchen and bathroom company. They are obviously keen for the business so we visited their showroom and got a design which had three ovens. I asked why three and was told with a straight face, you’ll likely never use three but I read about the power of three (which is a thing in marketing) so always put three in. 🙄 We sacked them off and did it ourselves so now have two high spec ovens. The microwave is rarely used so that’s stand alone in the utility room out of the way for the very occasional time we use it as we valued the larder space more than the occasional use of a microwave. We also have a separate slow cooker by that’s in the utility room too out of the way.

I’ve used Crown trade super covertex for all the mist coating. I’ll then use a mixture of other paints for other coats. This is a good site for info https://www.thedecoratorsforum.com/best-emulsion-for-walls-and-ceilings/ As I’m sure you know no matter the quality of the paint it’s the prep beforehand that matters more. I’ve has to quite a lot of sanding back (and some filling) of our plaster coat. However, it has meant a good surface for painting on resulting in a nice flat finish.