The Trade Vent - the Bad & the Ridiculous

[Willsa]

A thread that I think might be useful three-fold.

*To vent about cowboys and their bodges. It's just nice to share to people who understand these frustrations!

*To show how the cowboys operate and hopefully save someone a similar waste of time&money

*It's sometimes so bad, it's actually funny! There's a laugh to be had at some of the ingenious out-of-the box "solutions".

Pictures very welcome! We might get a meme or two out of this

 

[Willsa]

I'll start with the most recent Quote Farmer (they'll come and give a quote on anything and everything without apparent clue):

The chap from the building contractors was asked to come out and figure what to do with my poured concrete floor in a Victorian Terrace. The floor is throughout all the downstairs of the house, most of it covered in parquet apart from the areas I have exposed for access.

Well... Apparently I need to dig it all up and replace and put DPC (injected of course) under the new concrete floors.

* He knew all of that from standing in my hallway for 10mins.
*Without looking under the parquet.
*Without looking at the cross-section of my current concrete floor visible under the stairs
*Without walking into any rooms
*Without identifying the current DPC
*Without looking at the ground outside

MAGIC! PURE MAGIC! Have to admire the x-ray vision!

 

[Willsa]

Another lot of Cowboy Roofers and Quote Farmers were all diagnosing a need for a new roof. Some of the "inspections" were from the ground only!!
I had numerous leaks all over the house, so pretty desperate for a solution.

I had at least 4 lots of different roofers that went on the roof and shared their "doomsday" reports with me. NONE of them mentioned the gutters, just added a new set of gutters to the new roof quotes.

These are my gutters when I went up there myself :

More meat in them than in Tesco Finest sausages!!

 

[Willsa]

The back over-flow of the gutters was immense.

I cleared them out. I don't need a new roof.

I feel very sorry for anyone who can't see their roof for themselves...

I'm honestly considering starting a roof-surveyor company because ALL the roofers I called in tried to mislead me!

 

[Sam W]

We live in a railway station, which still had the original porcelain toilet in (from a time when small village stations had a public toilet). There was building work going on in the area, but I wanted to reuse the toilet. To ensure it didn't get damaged, I built a substantial wooden frame around it. I explained to the builder that I would be reusing the toilet and didn't want it damaged.
Came back from work to find he had removed the wooden box and used his kango hammer to remove mortar that was holding the toilet in place, unsurprisingly smashing it. He'd also cut through the original lead downpipe with a hacksaw, I'd been intending to reuse that too. Unbelievable.
He's not even a cowboy in the real sense of the word, just not much of a thinker. Or listener apparantly.

 

[88v8]

We live in a railway station, which still had the original porcelain toilet in (from a time when small village stations had a public toilet). There was building work going on in the area, but I wanted to reuse the toilet. To ensure it didn't get damaged, I built a substantial wooden frame around it. I explained to the builder that I would be reusing the toilet and didn't want it damaged.
Came back from work to find he had removed the wooden box and used his kango hammer to remove mortar that was holding the toilet in place, unsurprisingly smashing it. He'd also cut through the original lead downpipe with a hacksaw, I'd been intending to reuse that too. Unbelievable.
He's not even a cowboy in the real sense of the word, just not much of a thinker. Or listener apparantly.

Arrrgh.
I've only once let builders work in the house while I wasn't there.
Digging out and relaying a quarry tile floor, I'd carefully sorted the replacement tiles for quality with instructions as to which would go where. Arrived to find they were randomly mixing them up... then they 'pointed' the floor with drypack....
Will never let anyone work unsupervised again.

Well, I've done it twice really, but the first time was the £££ builders who built our extension in 1990, they were an old-fashioned company and well supervised and lived up to the the £££ price tag.

Ivor

 

[Willsa]

And the stress of pointing out the obvious, is not minute either.

I have been on the receiving end of petty backlash via the phone and some rude incessant messages, so I'm basically safety conscious before "managing" a builder!

 

[Willsa]

For all things to be fair and equal, I'm sharing my own bodge!

I had a leak inside the wall due to those stuffed gutters. Now, with the ceiling leaks I poked holes in the plaster and put a bucket underneath.

With a wall leak though I could only watch plaster bow away from the wall and fall to the ground, then little streams of water running between the bricks, washing away the mortar.... No chance of stopping the streams, no chance of stopping the water reaching the skirting, the floors and the downstairs walls...

Until!! I came up with this beauty!

Imagine calling someone in to stop a leak and coming home to this!

 

[Willsa]

It actually worked though... Allowed me buckets and stopped the leak in it's tracks before it got any further!

*patent pending

 

[Willsa]

The leak never showed up downstairs and the "decorative finishes" stayed perfectly intact.

Is this Damp-Proofing then? I could guarantee it (but on the treated area only)