Rant about dirty builders

[shelli]

Having a rant..

We are spending huge amounts of money paying a builder and his various helpers to fix up our house - we spent OUR easter weekend cleaning up plaster, wood, rubble and clearing equipment to tidy corners where it can be easily found when needed ("oh .. theres the diamond tile cutter - was gonna ask you to get me another one of them -- couldn't find it anywhere" - thats because it was buried under a pile of wood shavings and a copy of the daily star, you dirty muppet !!)
When they arrived back after easter - all were very impressed with how lovely and clean and tidy it all was - they had a lovely clean area for lunch too.

One week later we are back to rubble and wood shavings everywhere, cartons of milk going off all over the house, tools dropped where they were last used and subsequently buried in rubbish - OH found builder flicking his fag butts in our newly fitted en suite loo yesterday :x - How can they have so little respect for us - we've employed him full time for the last 16 months!

thanks for listening - rant over

Shelli

 

[Andrew Bodenham]

Shelli,

It's a common and depressing problem, and one which will ring a bell with many readers.

Building work is inherently messy, and I suppose that for some individuals messy becomes a way of life. But it doesn't have to be like this. I had a ceiling skimmed a few years back by a local builder - now there's a potentially messy job. But when we came home the room was spotless. Apart from a perfectly finished job you couldn't tell he'd been there. So, of course, he's had loads of recommendations from me since. On the flip side, another chap skimmed a ceiling in a clients kitchen where the new units had already been fitted. (I know that's the wrong order of work...) If I'd taken a bucket of plaster and just thrown it into the room it couldn't have been much worse. I spent 2 hours cleaning droppings and splashes off everything. Result: that guy hasn't done another days work for me, and never will.

Some builders are fantastic at cleaning up, others, like small children, need to be told and nagged until they do it. I'm afraid that you have to get tough with them: tell them what is unacceptable, set the standards, tell them you'll reduce their bill by £30 for every hour or part hour that you have to spend cleaning up their mess. Better still, just sack them. That does leave you with the problem of finding somebody else, which is why they continue to get away with it. But you're paying the bill, and you should get the site behaviour that you want, so long as you're not too unreasonable. Incidentally, as a place of work your site should be classified as a no smoking area, so fag-butts in the loo are way out of order.

As my wife tells me: maybe you can't make an omlette without breaking eggs, but thay doesn't stop you from putting the shells in the bin afterwards. Maybe that's why my most heavily used power tool is my vacuum cleaner.

 

[shelli]

Thanks Andrew

I wish we could have afforded you!!!

Actually we have a joiner on site and he does sweep up after himself - not that you can tell because the builder then uses the newly tidied area to make his mess in.

charging £30.00 per hour back to him for cleaning sounds good.

and I might insist that when he leaves the site he stumps up for a builders clean.

 

[skier-hughes]

We are lucky, our builders, electricians and woodworker are very clean, unlike me!!!!! At the end of every day they sweep up, wash the floors and I even caught one cleaning down the rayburn.

At the beginning of each job, as they come and go as we move forward, I remind them of the need for cleanliness, dropping the cuttings from amoured cable over the lawn isn't good for dogs feet. So far, we have been lucky!!

At our last house we had the kitchen redone. We were both out at work, so I let the builders in on day one, went over what tehy needed adn what was to be done.

Came home, house locked up, good. Went in, they'd broken 5 wine glasses, from 3 different sets. They'd been up to our bedroom, moved the bed to unplug the radio alarm so they could listen to music while they worked. They left dirty footprints in the bedroom and didn't even push the bed back into place. There were a couple of other things as well, but I can't recall off the top of my head.

I left a strong message on the answerphone of the company concerned.

Next morning I went to work out of the back door after having put the latch down on the front, locking all his tools in. Had irate phone call from him, I told him to phone his office, he was moaning that he couldn't do any work, so couldn't get paid. I told him to think on that if he does another job for someone.
Next day boss came round full of apologies, took his tools away and supplied us with a new builder and I took some time off work. These came recommended from a friend of ours!!!

 

[Moo]

In our experience there seems to be a direct correlation between the fastidiousness of a builder and the quality of his work.

 

[Anita]

Most builders hate being out of pocket - so I'd also recommend that you contra-charge yours for the time spent cleaning up after them! Hopefully they'll soon get the message - but ultimately it's YOUR house and you'll just have to get tough and lay down the "house rules" to them.

 

[Flyfisher]

Incidentally, as a place of work your site should be classified as a no smoking area, so fag-butts in the loo are way out of order.

Not only out of order but a criminal offence to boot! Also, as I understand this daft law, it's a criminal offence not to put up the appropriate signs clearly stating the non-smoking nature of the workplace. And unfortunately Shelli, since you're the employer and the workplace is your property then it's you that is criminally liable for any missing signage. Mad or what?

 

[Nemesis]

I find having builders one of the most stressful of things.

They never seem to do what you want but what they want.

 

[Pford75]

You are not alone.....i lost count of the number of rancid pasties, solid milk and fag-ends I have cleared up.

One tip now, I insist on a portaloo being supplied by the builder (sorts the organised ones from the chancers) and with a previous builder, we agreed at the outset that his quote would include a 'builders clean' from an independant cleaning company at the end of the job.

 

[arl]

We recently had our fireplace fiited and new harth built. The guys were lovely and polite, cleaned up after themselves, even asked to borrow the hoover. They completely changed my view of builders, until that is i discovered where they poured the water from washing out the concrete mixing buckets. Yep, all over my flower beds. :x The soil has a half inch crispy topping - its probably the most effective weed supression method ever tried (didnt stop the slugs though!) Oddly the plants seem unaffected by thier ordeal

 

[Moo]

Another tip:
Hide all your own tools.

 

[Gervase]

Another tip:
Hide all your own tools.

Hmm, that works both ways, though. I was doing a repointing job some while back where, without asking me, the client helped himself to a Tyzak gauging trowel, mixed up some hard cement for some purpose or other and then just left the trowel to harden and ruin. The same client also 'borrowed' a DeWalt SDS hammer drill and burned out the motor by using the rotor-stop function to try to break a concrete floor! Needless to say, his bill was weighted accordingly to cover the replacements.
Also from the other side of the fence, it can be annoying to have to start work somewhere that hasn't been cleared first. I had a ceiling to do recently where I had to strip the beds, remove the mattresses, dismantle the beds and remove everything together with all other furniture and fittings, including lots of fiddly and fragile ornaments. It took me half a day (chargeable, of course) and there was always a risk of damage as things were lugged around.

 

[shelli]

Sent OH down to site this morning with spare A5 no smoking signs to be prominently displayed and to explain about vicarious liability to builder in relation to trip and other hazards on building sites - i.e that WE get sued if a non working visitor to the site is injured.

Anyway, as it's payday i fully expect that they will clean up this afternoon !!

They just need an attitude adjustment really - i didn't mind so much when it was big messy work going on but now we are starting to fit skirtings, bathrooms, window sills, do painting etc I want it to be OUR home rather than THEIR workplace.

Stepfather is painting the outside white today - pass sunglasses! 8)

 

[Taff in Glaws]

I'm with Moo on this one. Only once we had a tradesmam who made a mess in our last property and he was told in no uncertain terms to clean the mess up, I think it also helped that he had not been paid at that point. Our builder, the plumber and sparky we use regularly are all 'tidy'.

Sorry but I wouldn't put up with people direspecting my house and they'd have to go

 

[plumbers mate]

Oh dear. I want some building work done and I've been putting off phoning anyone for months. Many workmen are so patronising when they find themselves talking to a female (Several roofers discovered to their cost that I know more about slate than they do and their show off question was answered, to their chagrin, some never even came back with prices for the job. "Nice new slate like that house over there" PAH! That guy didn't like it when I told him I've seen them making that reconstituted slate. His answer was that you can't get the old stuff anymore - my reply that a friend of mine is an ex-quarryman who has a licence to mine slate miffed the guy even more and he left.) The roof was eventually redone with 70% of the original slates reused and the lady with the reconstituted roof said that it doesn't look any different - Result!!!!
Sadly, people I know tend not to know builders to rec to me so I'm apprehensive and even more so after your wonderfully cheerful contributions ....... I'll have a coffee and browse yellow pages again.

 

[pieman]

I was dreading our building work starting, thinking about the mess etc, but I was pleasantly suprised, everyday he would clean up sweep and all his tools he would take away with him each evening.........and he did not smoke. He did though drink a small plantation worth of tea!! I would definately use him again, he has great respect for old buildings and enjoys working with them.