New roof on a full house refurbishment or is it War & Peace?

[frslam]

Hi all, Season's Greetings and all that! Where do I start? I'm refurbishing my old family home. I employed a roofing contractor and he agreed to purchase the materials on my behalf for which I provided all the correct order codes. The roof is approximately 140m2, job entails stripping lightweight concrete slates, fitting new membrane, fascia's, 5 x VELUX windows and re-slating. The price for all of this (not including scaffolding) was approximately £30k. The job was supposed to start mid to late October, allowing the roofing contractor to safely strip the roof before my new windows (£15.5k) were going to be installed.

 

My new windows were installed on the due date of 10th November but the roofing contractor spent the previous couple of weeks giving me excuse after excuse why he hadn't started yet. When he did get around to starting, I provided him with as many sheets of OSB as needed in order to protect the new windows before I headed off for a meeting. On my return, the roofer told me he had damaged a window (the biggest window in the house). I inspected the other 2 windows on that elevation and discovered that he had damaged all 3 windows, at a cost of over £1,700.00. At first he said he would pay for the damaged windows (which I naturally, secretly recorded him saying). I received the quote for the repair and relayed this to the contractor, he said "it is what it is..." before again confirming that he would be paying for the damage. He drove away from the site and after a few minutes he phoned me. He said "just calling to let you know that I won't be paying for the repair of your windows because your scaffolding is not 'up to spec' to protect the windows below it. All I could say in reply was, scaffolding's job is for access and safe working at height environment, not to protect windows. I also asked him why he never used a debris chute to safely discard old slates from the roof. Hi response was "well, where's your skip". (I didn't have one, it wouldn't fit and couldn't be positioned on site because of low overhead electric wires), but the tele-handler on site was used with a big bucket to load the old slates into anyway. 

 

The Roofing Contractor starts fitting VELUX windows into framing that had been previously carried out. All he had to do was drop them in and fix them to timber. Then the breathable membrane was installed and finally the slating started (no grading of slates was carried out). I inspected the roof while he wasn't onsite (which was most of the time), and the day before he was due to come back to site I sent him an image on an instant message platform. I needed to inspect the work carried out up until then because we had a storm hit us between the time he left the site and the time he was due to return. This was on a Sunday but we agreed that he'd work Sundays in order to get the job done before the worst of the weather hits us. He didn't actually show up on Sundays, or most other days either. I told him I was unhappy with the membrane fitment, not 'lapping' into the (Scot) Dry Verge channel like it's supposed to, in fact, sarking boards are visible between the membrane and the Dry Verge. His response was to tell me that he couldn't work for me anymore, that he would be in the following day to collect his things. Then came the threats of Court action from him. All I paid him up until this point was approximately £16k for materials and a joiner to work alongside myself. I have to cover myself so went up to inspect his work. The 'cheap' membrane he used on the roof had completely failed or was poorly installed, allowing the rain to soak right through the sarking boards, the water was beading on the inside of untreated timber sarking. The sarking boards aren't a major issue being relatively cheap and easy to replace, what was very concerning was the sheer amount of water coming in, soaking the sarking and all that water starting to soak into all of the rafters. The house had been constructed in the early 1970's and I'd be lucky if the roof timbers were treated at all (against water ingress damage). As it turns out, the contractor ordered the incorrect flashings for the VELUX windows, destroyed the cartons they came in before realising they were the wrong items, then telling me that they couldn't be returned now because the boxes they were in were damaged and not re-usable. I then have to spend another £1k buying the correct flashings ( I had already paid for all materials when they were ordered from JEWSONS). 

 

On discovering the wrong items were delivered, the Contractor telephoned the local JEWSONS to report it. They told him, which I heard as I was standing right beside him, that I had gone in to the local JEWSON Depot and changed the order. I did go in to the Depot but when I asked the staff about the order, they told me they couldn't discuss it with me because it was someone else's (the Roofing Contractor's) order. So I get the blame which should be impossible, going by their own policies, and the roofer destroys the cartons containing the materials, meaning they cannot now be returned.

 

I have plenty photographic evidence of all this. I also taken images from the slating side. There are images of the sarking and rafters taken 9 days after the roof membrane was installed, images of the membrane to Dry Verge fitment and images of the slate installation (which I think isn't great, but am I being too fussy? The difference in position (course height) of the slate upper left of the image with the slate to the right of it is approximately 8-9mm followed by another 5-6mm height difference again to the next slate)

 

 

[Andehh]

Time for a new roofer, or start resolving yourself in afraid. 

 

Part of self building is knowing you get good trades, and (expletive deleted)ing shit hole bastard crooked ones (delete as required). We got lucky in having so many good ones... But I would piss on the electrician if he was in fire.