Posi joist worry

[Canski]

17 hours ago, joe90 said:

Soo much better and nails in every hole (which it should be) it’s a good job us build hubbers  keep an eye on what the trades (who should know better) are doing.

This is true. It's like so many things it is easier and quicker to do it correctly. I knew it was wrong but when you are standing there arguing with a tradesman who does this day in day out it infuriates me. It cost them about 3 hrs to rectify this one and the other house hadn't got the joists fitted but still cost them a couple of hours to alter. It would have taken them 10 minutes to get the ply cut and  drilled before placing it behind the timbers.

 

Thanks everyone for your input. My floors are complete and we power on with the next lift of brickwork.

[Canski]

17 hours ago, Kelvin said:

I had a similar problem. The excuse was they couldn’t get the nail gun in. They’d also missed all the bolts for the web packers. 

 

that's a poor excuse. These guys have 2 nail guns for shooting twist nails and both had broken down.  The old school hammer was used.

 

Missing bolts is poor.

[Canski]

I tried to last it out with my chippies I really did but this morning our working relationship was terminated. After the joists and the feeble excuses I had the roof set out differently to the plans and several trusses blowing over because they weren’t braced properly. Today was the final straw.
 

I had spent all Thursday afternoon setting out the first floor stud walls to get a better feel for the layout. Once I was happy with the layout I marked both sides of the sole plates to make it idiot proof. The chippies were working today and the first text message I got was asking me if I wanted the centres at 600 centres. The timber is 63mm x 38  CLS. So I asked for 400s. Confident that nothing would go wrong I headed down after breakfast to take a look. I was met with ‘I’ve had to move the walls from your setting out because the stair well is out of square’ ok it is by about 5mm in 2m but to continue this discrepancy over 9.5 m seems like madness to me. In effect the first floor corridor was 50mm out of parallel. I was in the process of measuring everything again to find out where the problem had arisen from with a constant barrage in my ears of I’ve been doing this for 20 years I know what I’m doing blah blah so I said yes but the wall is 50 mm out I’m trying to work out why. ‘If you don’t like it do it your f in self.’ 

Ok I will was my reply. Stud work it is for me next week then. 😀😀

 
The constant feeble excuses for his mistakes have been grinding my nerves for a while now. It feel that it is an insult to my intelligence. Why would I spend an afternoon setting everything out for it to be overridden without so much as a phone call to discuss / query a problem ?  

it’s not easy this self build is it ? 

 

[Kelvin]

I feel your pain. I had all of that too. I fired my plasterers the other week. It’s not easy but you need to live in it and with it so well done! 

[ProDave]

Which is why beyond the heavy stuff, many of us choose to do all the details like this ourselves.

 

If you have the time and can tolerate a slower build, it is the easiest way to make a self build very much cheaper.

 

It also means you can make changes as you go if you see something could be done a slightly different way.

[Canski]

9 minutes ago, ProDave said:

 

Which is why beyond the heavy stuff, many of us choose to do all the details like this ourselves.

 

I already did the hard decisive work by setting it out. I also loaded all the CLS into the building for them even though it was included their price.

 

10 minutes ago, ProDave said:

 

If you have the time and can tolerate a slower build, it is the easiest way to make a self build very much cheaper.

 I know I have done 50% of the brickwork myself. I just fancied a bit of a rest 😀

[Kelvin]

It took me a while to realise that they don’t care about your home as much as you’d like them to, even the very best guys I’ve had on site see it as just a job. For us it’s our eventual home that we’ve sunk a lot of money into but also a lot or ourselves into. It takes years to get to the building stage and we’ll have spent that time staring at plans and fretting over every element of the design and look. One of the kit builders kept saying it’s just wood and nails. Eventually my other half got so fed up hearing this she snapped at him one day saying actually it’s our effing home. I also made a point of calling it our home in any comms rather than house or building. 

[joe90]

Reading this makes me realise again how lucky I was with my builders. I did all my own stud work and found it very rewarding. I got soo much satisfaction from my build and proud of what I did, it’s why we “self build”.

[joe90]

This says it all really.

[Canski]

13 minutes ago, Kelvin said:

It took me a while to realise that they don’t care about your home as much as you’d like them to, even the very best guys I’ve had on site see it as just a job. 

I must be different. I hate working on ‘house factory’ sites and haven’t done it for many years. I only work for small developers, myself and self builders these days. Some of the most rewarding jobs have been for self builders and I don’t mean financially. I sense and share their excitement. I love helping them through problems and offering loads of advice on suppliers and trades. They appreciate it and I am now getting help from them with some finishing trades etc. This carpenter comes from a developer friend who has helped me through my build from purchase then planning drawings and he pops in every couple of weeks for an inspection, catch up and breakfast. He thinks this chippy is mint and is considering employing him as a site manager on his next project. I keep telling him he is making the wrong choice but it falls on deaf ears. If there is ever a 50-50 choice to make he doesn’t think it through and makes the wrong decision then tries to rationalise it with bullshit. ‘I’ve been doing this for 20 years’ is his favourite. It’s not the best phrase to use on me who has seen pretty much everything in my 40 years on site but I’m still learning. We tradesmen lead a blinkered existence on run of the mill projects. I have learned so much since joining this group about stuff that I’d never even heard of before. If I ever get there my next build will be different in style, construction and execution. 

[joe90]

3 minutes ago, Canski said:

I’ve been doing this for 20 years’ is his favourite.

I had a bloke tell me that once but I proved he had been doing it WRONG for 20 years, never saw him again 😉