Little house of horrors

[Rob Horton]

Saw a bit of this last night when I was down the gym. so no audio. Anyway, some dodgy geezers were doing a garden feature for a little old lady. It had lights and a water pump. These were all powered from what looked like unprotected T&E that was fed through a newly drilled hole in the house and attached by some means to a double socket.

At least it's not a permanent connection.

This cable then ran the length of the garden to the feature that they had constructed. All the electric connections and pumps etc. seemed to be wrapped in plastic bags, sealed with tape and buried a few cm's under the earth. Nice.

A testimony to the effectiveness of Part P.

[Steve Firth]

What amused me was that after the program makers did a "this is how it should be done" feature where they installed a new water feature and pavement someone stole the lot. Hmm, which dodgy character with a truck had recently been at the house?

[Andy Cap]

Also it would have been interesting to know what they spent on the replacement rockery. Me thinks a tad more than the £2500 the customer wanted to spend.

Andy

[Steve Firth]

They needed double the number of workers to finish the job in the alloted time. That said, the sort of project i=involved is hte sort of thing I've done in a weeked by myself. Much of the re-work was bollocks, for example the renting of a skip. Why in the name of $DEITY? When I did a similar water feature and rockery at a previous home the dug up old concrete pavement was used as the structural element in the new rockery, saving a fortune in good stone which only needs to be in a location where you can see it.

The new scheme also used hundreds of bedding plants which is damned silly in a rockery.

[John]

My thoughts exactly! Yes the 'little old lady' was ripped off by 'Water features R Us' but they never said how much it cost to do it right, I bet it would have cost a lot more than £2500 if she was paying for the labour etc. I do like the program and agree that rouges should be 'named and shamed' but sometimes I think the examples are programme biased.

Cheers

John

[Andy Luckman (AJL Electronics)]

Always the way in TV. I would normally take any opportunity to knock the aerial cowboys featured. I agree that he was a con artist, but take issue with the fact that "A new aerial was not required". Maybe in the strictest sense, but we would have advised that the aerial was obviously a cheap "contractor" type and so would be unsuitable for reliable digital performance, bearing in mind the analogue closedown not far away. She would then have had the option of repairing the existing rig. or replacing to full digital spec.

One other point was the lashing. If he had replaced that, he would have been critisised for more non required work! If it was in good condition, there would be no need to replace it. The brief glimpse I saw, looked fine, but maybe it was u/s?

[Ian White]

Whoops, spell checker strikes again...

Certainly rogues should be named and shamed, but it's wrong to persecute rouges.

[Guy King]

The message from Ian White contains these words:

Nah, hound the pinkos.