Re: Huf Haus on last night's Grand Designs

What an amazing house!

I was impressed too but I guess if you're spending nearly 1/2 a million pounds on a prefab, it darned well ought to be impressive!

The Huf website seems to be down (

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) but for anyone who didn't see it, you can see some Huf houses at
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Reply to
Tim Downie
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But if the programme had been realistic they would signed the contract for the new house and then the day before the demolition crew moved in their existing house would have been listed .

Reply to
Tony Bryer

The good thing about Huf is that the price is fixed, so you pretty well know where you stand financially. Huf make house a lot cheaper than £450,000. You can lay the slab yourself, omit the plumbing and wiring and others bits and do them yourself saving a ton of money.

Reply to
IMM

"IMM" wrote | "Mike Mitchell" wrote | > But those brand new Huf vans! I'm pretty sure they were purchased by | > Huf especially for the show - and why not? | No they were not. That us how Huf do it.

And the builders cleaned them afterwards!!

| John Prescott is attempting to force the UK construction industry into a | similar type of design and efficiency.

A fitted kitchen in a day (even though it was presumably pre-designed and pre-fab'd) - British builders couldn't do a fitted kitchen in a day with Lego bricks. One of the square bricks would fall down the back of the sofa and they'd have to take three hours off to go to the toyshop for a new one.

| He will need to use that left | hook a lot to even get the cowboys to look.

He'll probably make it illegal to own a trowel unless you're a member of a trade association, to which all the big speculative developers and Moben/Dolphin will belong, and that will immediately raise standards in the industry.

Owain

Reply to
Owain

500 grand for a greenhouse? Not for me thanks...! David
Reply to
Lobster
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She forgot one.

Huff knew they were on telly. He sent his best team and told them to work their arses off.

Reply to
Huge

You don't have to have all the glass. Insulated wall panels can be fitted.

Reply to
IMM

In Germany they do not BCOs. The builder is educated and qualified and registered and he passes the house. Self certification.

Reply to
IMM

Hey, that IS interesting! I wonder how cheaply a Huf Haus could be built for. I was not particularly enamoured with the overall 'look' of the house, but more with the utmost attention to detail and quality. I would be satisfied if a number of British builders had been watching and would come away from the programme with a burning urge to do better with their own products. I believe we tolerate far too much skimping and cheap and tatty workmanship than is either fair to us or good for posterity and the repuation of the country.

MM

Reply to
Mike Mitchell

I don't see anything wrong in insisting that tradesmen, craftsmen are recognised as having undergone training to a certain degree of proficiency. The Trading Standards people recently discovered the huge anmount of scams being perpetrated on the British public by a very large number of cowboys. If it so easy in Britain to pass oneself off as a so-called professional, then obviously there will be those who see a quick way of making a few quid. The whole industry does need to be regulated far more than it is - or do we simply allow the cowboys to get away with it ad nauseaum? I would say that the chances in the Greater London area of finding an honest workman is practically nil. I would also say that the further away from London one lives, the higher the level of personal trust one could place in most local craftsmen.

MM

Reply to
Mike Mitchell

Well said that man ... its not even necessary to scrap the institutions (although many of their staff would have to go). The resulting qualification can be called a "degree" if that satisfies the need of the PTB to have meaningless statistics about the number of graduates in the working population.

However, it should be evident to all but the most dogmatic of politcally motivated social-engineers that it would be of immense benefit to all (students, tax payers, consumers, ...) to restore the distinction between tertiary *education* (academic, oriented towards research, maximizing the potential of intellectual capability, etc.) and tertiary *training* (vocational, job- and skills-oriented).

Of course, *accessiblity* would have to be universal -- children from low income families should be able to benefit from academic education if they have the ability to do so, just as those from higher income families, without the ability to benefit from academia, should be routed towards vocational training and prevented from taking academic university places from those more deserving of them.

Julian

Reply to
Julian Fowler

Did the show the first series of "Auf Wiedersehen, Pet" in Germany?

Reply to
Neil Jones

Quite. IIRC, the means tested grant arrangement worked quite well for dealing with the access issue..

.andy

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Reply to
Andy Hall

That requires (a) a freeing up of the planning system - greater supply = greater choice; and (b) more discerning customers. It seems to be generally accepted that houses sell on the appearance of the kitchen and bathroom: almost no one cares about issues of real quality.

Reply to
Tony Bryer

"Mike Mitchell" wrote | "Owain" wrote: | >But weren't those German versions of British 13A sockets (with horizontal | >rockers) hideous. And they never put that missing screw back in. | The missing screw was not missing. There was a metal plate behind, | which precluded having a screw at that point.

Then they used an incorrect bracket with an excess hole. Or they could have used a dummy screwhead to retain the regular pattern of screwheads.

| I also note your mention of the word "German" in your criticism of | the sockets. Do you *know* they were German? Or merely installed | by Germans, perhaps?

I don't care if they were German or Belgian or French ... they were clearly not BS square faceplate style and they were clearly hideous.

I wonder if they were wired in brown/blue cable ...?

Owain

Reply to
Owain

"Mike Mitchell" wrote | How good it would be for our national pride and the economy | for Germans to be watching a programme on German TV showing | a group of British builders constructing a British house | somewhere in Germany! And I don't mean a Wimpey or a Barratt.

I think they did get The Builders episode of Fawlty Towers in Germany.

Owain

Reply to
Owain

It is a little more involved than that, I think. At some point we, as a society, need to come to grips with prejudices that affect the accessibility issue - for example, the attriude of some lower-income parents that tertiary information isn't "for their sort of people", schools and teachers that discourage pupils from applying to certain universities for reasons of reverse snobbery, etc. In addition, something would need to be done to avoid the trap in which students from low income families are fully funded from taxation, students from high income families are funded with little real impact on parents' disposible income, leaving those in the middle to dig really deep into their pockets ...

I suspect also a significant dent in the need for taxpayer-funded tertiary education could be made by bringing back / re-emphasizing the sorts of courses that are undertaken part time alongside paid employment - again, names are unimportant - call them "apprenticeships", "sandwich courses", etc. Again, a cultural attitude shift is needed such that these are recognized as of equal value to "academic" university courses whilst being substantially different in their content and intent.

Julian

Reply to
Julian Fowler

Of course.

Also the political correctness of having a target of 50% of the population "going to a university".

That's a matter of choosing the means criteria correctly.

I think that that is the essence.

.andy

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Reply to
Andy Hall

If I remember correctly, something like 40% of 16-year olds get less than 5 GCSE A-C grades. The 50% target is ludicrous.

Reply to
Neil Jones

True, but all you have to do is keep dropping the standards and encouraging people to borrow money to pay for access and you can achieve them.

The question is whether that happens before people realise that it is all a rather cruel con.

.andy

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Reply to
Andy Hall

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