Why don't new home owners receive a User Manual from the builder?

They deserve a good pat on the back. Or some publicity... who was it?

Andy

I don't know of any car or other piece of high-wizard technology that includes a repair manual with it these days. Indeed, most makers try to make sure you can't buy such a thing. Especially car ones.

If you want an equivalent of a car driver's handbook - fine. But most already know how to switch on a light or flush the loo in the house.

I'm not asking for a *repair* manual. Simply a guide to where pipes and cables are routed and similar technical information about one's new house. Why are you obviously so against it? Builder, are you?

MM

A copy of the drawings as approved under Building Regulations would be useful with any new property, especially if any re-modelling works arise in the future. The local authority will probably not be willing to supply these later, due to copyright restrictions.

I'm not against it at all. Indeed the next purchaser of this house will get very full documentation of such things.

I'm merely saying you don't get such information with anything else you buy these days. You *are* essentially asking for repair details. A car driver's handbook doesn't give you the part numbers for say brake pads. Or tell you where something like the aerial amp is located. Nor does it tell you who actually made these parts. You're expected to go to your dealer for them. With a house, getting someone who knows in would be the same sort of thing.

I think houses are built on the assumption that the occupant has spent all their previous life living in one already and so knows how houses work.

JGH

Real life doesnt match drawing, and the contractors may not have kept the data

'You said the pipe was here but its over there. I drilled over there & flooded the house, its your fault and I want =A35000 and to ruin your reputation.'

NT

In message , jgharston writes

Yebbut.... Technology is moving along and not everyone has exposure.

Currently I don't have any radio controlled gismos. Taking over a house with battery powered thermostats could lead to a lot of wasted time.

Simple things like marking the position of soakaways, drain and cable routes where they are not obvious.

Heat pumps and other exotica will link to current heating systems in ways not obvious to the average householder. How many pumps, non return valves and motorised valves are there in Drivel's thermal store system?

regards

Ah, so you know where all your pipes and cables are routed?

MM

Most people have.

A lot of houses *don't* work, particularly.

And my mother still has problems with light-switches.

Owain

Diagrams or plans?

If diagrams do they agree with what is installed?

If plans has son checked they agree, within say a foot, with reality?

Ah, give over. Look, your house is second hand. Why do you expect the previous owner to construct a 50-page user guide for your benefit? Did you do one for the last car you sold, like: "There are sweet papers under the rug" or "the rear near-side window winder was always a bit dicky"? Eh? Eh? Well - did you or not?

(I'm inclined to agree, not withstanding my windup of MM :-)

But not many people are willing to do that. My enthusiasm for the notion in any case took a nosedive after the purchaser of our last house gazundered us.

Ours did, on the house we bought a year ago. Cost £40 or so for copying, and only applied to the extension work done here, but it did mean that we got answers to many of the questions that we had.

Is it a new house you are referring to, that you bought? Why didn't you ask for such plans as part of the contract?

No, it's not.

MM

Yeah, sitting here in my coat and gloves wondering what idiot thought a single large open-plan ground floor was a good idea in Scotland.

I blame Sarah "let's just take out this wall" Beany.

JGH

If I want to know where cable runs are in my car I can refer to the service manual. OK, I'll have a job getting one, but they do exist and they are a record of what colour wires went where and do what. Those brake pads someone mentioned - the manufacturer will have in their computers somewhere who supplied the originals, and from which batch, in case there's a recall.

Now suppose it turned out that XYZ boiler company had shipped a batch of faulty units, and they were likely to explode when the external temperature got to -10. There is no way that there will be a record of which houses have those units.

Perhaps it's only when they are wired in a certain way. There is no documentation anywhere that will record how the wiring was done - it's all done pretty much on an ad-hoc basis by the people who fitted them.

House building in this country is still a craft, rather than an industry.

Andy

I bought a house like that once. I just put the walls back.