'Homes from Hell' - TV prog.

[4square]

Anyone seen any of these programmes? Shouldn't the local council building control inspect these sort of things? When I built an extension a few years ago, I had to submit details, correct the faults on the drawings, then the works were inspected at intervals. Cost about =A3300, IIRC. Presumably, on a whole house now, the fee must be close to =A31000? Is most of NHBC now?

[Andrew Gabriel]

Yes. I can't imagine Wilson Connoley (sp?) are selling too many new homes after that program. For those who didn't see it, one family initially managed to drill through their water main whilst putting up a curtain rail. Investigation showed the water main was routed up 1/2" behind the living room wall, across the ceiling, and came down in the kitchen where the main stop c*ck was. They had it rerouted undergound round the outside of the house, but were still waiting for the livingroom to dry out so they could redecorate. Next, with the resulting holes in the plasterboard, somehow (can't remember what triggered it) they checked the timber structure and found it had only 1/3rd the required number of wall ties. This means the external walls of the house are liable to collapse in a strong wind, killing anyone nearby. Wilson Connoley had to demolish and rebuild all the external walls of the house, which took some 6 months,

4 times longer than they were initially told. This got other residents on the estate concerned, and some had structural surveys done, finding exactly the same problem in their houses. Wilson Connoley hadn't as yet fixed any of the other houses.

My impression is this doesn't happen on a housing estate, or at least only one or two houses are inspected. If you look at the building control fee structure, you don't have to pay much to build the second and subsequent identical houses. But it wasn't just a failure of building control, it was a failure of Wilson Connoley, their subcontractors, and the workers, i.e. the whole chain.

[Paul Barker]

I recently attended an emergency to find an unvented hot water syste had been installed by the builder of some properties incorrectly. I wasn't actually the fault (CH pump running dry because a regular boile had been converted to a sealed system, but owner of brand new hom hadn't been given any advice about it, and was clueless). No benchmar logs were filled in for the unvented or the gas boiler.

I've furnished the home owner with a report to take round to thei local council. The unveneted is actually safe but it isn't installed t the letter, and since one has to be certified to install one, and tha it is illegal to do so without informing the loacal planning departmen in writing 10 days in advance stating who you are what you qualifications are and your plans, the shoddy work practices and lac of completion of benchmarks raises alarm bells

-- Paul Barker

[.]

In article ,

4square writes

Building Control is now being contracted out so its not even the council doing the inspection, also they are only really interested in looking at structural issues, foundations, footings, that sort of stuff

[IMM]

I think you may find the BCO on new homes signs off the boiler and unvented cylinder.

_________________________________________ Usenet Zone Free Binaries Usenet Server More than 120,000 groups Unlimited download

to open account