Sign off hurdle to overcome. If you are still building read this.

[Canski]

Hi all,

 

I am in the process of trying to get completion on my house and have hit a brick wall. It's concerning the 100's of photos that I took during the build. I wrongly presumed that the geolocation on an Iphone would be sufficient for the SAP assessor. We built 2 plots next to each other and the location data has been deemed to be insufficient for sign off.

 

The SAP assessor has suggested that I may be able to get an exemption from the LABC inspector in writing which they would accept. I emailed and asked him to call me this time last week and I am still waiting for a call back so made a call to them this afternoon and the lady who answers the phone said that this was probably not going to happen and that there was nothing they would do but she will pass my message on to him. 

 

Without the 'as built' sign off from the SAP assessor I can't get completion from Building Control and without that and the EPC I can't get the warranty put in place. Any suggestions.

[Alan Ambrose]

A new SAP assessor maybe?

[Canski]

11 minutes ago, Alan Ambrose said:

A new SAP assessor maybe?

 

I thought that and then thought  that they will still require the photographic evidence in the prescribed format. If it is of any use to others the SAP assessor (now) recommends using an app called My Site Witness  https://www.mysitewitness.com/download. Unfortunately this wasn't suggested before we started building.

[Mr Punter]

Would it help if you referenced each of the photos, date, time, adding plot number, lat, long and altitude from the iphone data, and note (like "cavity closer") so it presents the same information as the app?  I cannot see how slightly inaccurate geolocation entirely invalidates the evidence you have.

[-rick-]

The site refers to meeting the needs of approved document L appendix B. Having just read that I can't see why your photos do not meet the standard.

 

All the app does is stamp the image with the information that is embedded in the metadata. If the assesor isn't happy accessing the meta data how about using a program to extract that data and overlay it on the images. With a little scripting you could even make the last modified date on the files match the original. Not looked but I suspect you could script something like infranview to do this without too much trouble (ask ChatGPT?).

 

Without cryptographic attestation there is no way that there is any way anything could be enforced. Worst case your assessor doesn't accept and look for another with the modified images and don't tell them you modified them by adding the overlay.

[-rick-]

I'm sure there was a previous thread with a similar issue but I can't find it right now.

 

What I did find is this one:

 

 

Which includes the attached PDF that suggests geolocation embedded in the image is ok. It does suggest that the file name of each photo includes which plot though. Something you could handle with some tedious work if needed.

 

 

Technical_Bulletin_A_Guide_to_Photographic_Evidence_for_New_Homes (1).pdf

[nod]

42 minutes ago, Alan Ambrose said:

A new SAP assessor maybe?

Absolutely 

plus 1 

The ones we’ve used are online  no photos are required 

 

 

[nod]

Call tomorrow Done by Friday 

[ADLIan]

Photo evidence of insulation, detailing, junctions etc has been part of latest Regs, in force for last 3 years. One of the reasons I got out of energy assessments - SAP assessor is now seen as the bad guy when it is really a BCO issue. You need to take it up with your BCO to see if he’ll offer some form of waiver/relaxation of the Regs