Advice re actioning a County Court Judgement

[Phil Pascoe]

What was quoted for? Altering the pipework under the floor would be an awful lot neater, but a totally different job to price for.

 

[Chrispy]

Looks like there's a few bits missing to me.

 

[Mark Hancock]

Me layman when it comes to Plumbing.
Looks to be positioned a bit high.
Someone nearly burnt the house down.
Bends should be below floor.
It would look nice in Chrome pipes.

I'm also a layman though a bit more informed after this experience :!:

1 out of 4 for spotting paintwork damage. No Plumber's Mat used to protect paintwork when soldering.

He also didn't remove the bathroom floor mats before starting the work. I quickly picked them up and put them in the bath. When I returned the plumber had emptied the dregs out of the old radiator on to them in the bath. :roll:

For the 4th failure you would need to know that the heating requirements for the room is around 2200 BTU.....

 

[Mark Hancock]

Looks like there's a few bits missing to me.

Well spotted. No values were fitted. When asked how we could isolate the towel rail if there was a problem/leak the response was to drain the system. The Misses isn't that practical and I had visions of her trying to find the hose from the garden shed, to attach to the downstairs drain value, leading it outside, trying to find the radiator key to open the value etc etc. The plumber's answer...always available 24 hours a day and would be on site in no time at all :!: He was on holiday 10 days later :!:

 

[Mark Hancock]

What was quoted for? Altering the pipework under the floor would be an awful lot neater, but a totally different job to price for.

The quote for the bathroom part was to replace the existing radiator with a suitable flat chrome towel radiator.

 

[Graham Orm]

Abysmal. Hope you didn't pay him. Is he Gas Safe? He has to be to touch central heating and no Gas Safe plumber would leave that mess. I take it he didn't want to go below the floor because it's laminate? He should have made that clear before starting work.

The right way to do it would be to take the laminate up and re-pipe below the floor. You would then have holes where the old pipes were (or at least one), so new flooring (unless you can match it up) required if you want a perfect job. All this should have been explained before starting work.

Furthermore. When I first joined this forum a guy posted that he had started his own business doing all sorts of repairs, on anything and everything around the house. I said I wasn't impressed as he had no trade and was advertising for everything. I was berated for squashing the guy's enthusiasm, and not wishing him luck in his new venture. This is typical of what you can expect from that type of enthusiastic jack of no trade, and master of even less. I've seen this so many times over the years.

I'm sorry you've had to go through this. I wish people would take more care when choosing tradesmen. Cheapest is NEVER best.

 

[Mark Hancock]

Abysmal. Hope you didn't pay him. Is he Gas Safe? He has to be to touch central heating and no Gas Safe plumber would leave that mess. I take it he didn't want to go below the floor because it's laminate? He should have made that clear before starting work.

The right way to do it would be to take the laminate up and re-pipe below the floor. You would then have holes where the old pipes were (or at least one), so new flooring (unless you can match it up) required if you want a perfect job. All this should have been explained before starting work.

Yes he is Gas Safe.. Number 542710 http://www.gassaferegister.co.uk/re...s.aspx&returnname=Find a business&reload=true

Wrote them but although they understood my concerns about him could do nothing as the work didn't involve gas appliances :!: I just hope no one employs him to work in that area.

Regarding going below the flooring, it wasn't necessary. If the guy had worked out the heating requirements for the room he would have found that a suitable size for the towel radiator was 600 x 1600; 600 just happening to be the existing pipe centres. The only reason for the appalling pipe work was to fit an under sized towel radiator of 400 x1000 which was not capable of heating the bathroom, hence the work not fit for purpose as defined by the Sale of Good Act 1979 upheld on the claim.

There were another 3 areas of concern regarding the fitting of this towel radiator which are detailed in further photos.

 

[Graham Orm]

I have no idea how anyone would be prepared to put their name to work like that. I'm glad you won your case, and wish you luck with the recovery of your money.

 

[Richard S]

Yeee ha!

 

[ColeyS1]

In screwfix earlier and noticed they had a 600 towel rad reduced from 159.99 to 59.99 - might be worth a look

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

[sawdust1]

Hi Mark, plumbing and electrics are the 2 trades i leave well alone unless its something simple but i can see that is sh*t. But Mark surely a towel is to dry off your towels not to heat the bathroom as you stated. And should their not be a stat to control the temperature of the towel rail ? I have ordered one of the ladder rails from screwfix how can they knock £100 off, but hurry stock is running out.

 

[Hivenhoe]

Abysmal. Hope you didn't pay him. Is he Gas Safe? He has to be to touch central heating and no Gas Safe plumber would leave that mess. I take it he didn't want to go below the floor because it's laminate? He should have made that clear before starting work.

The right way to do it would be to take the laminate up and re-pipe below the floor. You would then have holes where the old pipes were (or at least one), so new flooring (unless you can match it up) required if you want a perfect job. All this should have been explained before starting work.

Furthermore. When I first joined this forum a guy posted that he had started his own business doing all sorts of repairs, on anything and everything around the house. I said I wasn't impressed as he had no trade and was advertising for everything. I was berated for squashing the guy's enthusiasm, and not wishing him luck in his new venture. This is typical of what you can expect from that type of enthusiastic jack of no trade, and master of even less. I've seen this so many times over the years.

I'm sorry you've had to go through this. I wish people would take more care when choosing tradesmen. Cheapest is NEVER best.

Even "tradesmen", as I assume this guy is holding a "GS" cert, can be cr@p.
I think you'll find Gas Safe applies to the appliance only not the rad's etc.
Many people are fooled by someone belonging or claiming to belong to one of the many "trade clubs" and as can be seen "GS" are paper tigers in this case.
There are many competent specific trades tradesmen & non specific trades tradesmen out there, recommendation is usually the start point.

Russ

 

[RogerS]

.... But Mark surely a towel is to dry off your towels not to heat the bathroom as you stated. ..

A radiator or a towel radiator....same difference..they both give off heat. If you have a 2kw towel radiator then that gives off the same heat as a 2kw normal radiator.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

.... But Mark surely a towel is to dry off your towels not to heat the bathroom as you stated. ..

A radiator or a towel radiator....same difference..they both give off heat. If you have a 2kw towel radiator then that gives off the same heat as a 2kw normal radiator.

Obviously, but I for one would fit a towel rail to air a towel, not heat a room. Surely that's rather akin to saying someone bought the wrong kilowatt kettle, because it wouldn't heat the kitchen?

 

[Neil Farrer]

Mark, don't know if this helps at all but here goes. This tale might be of interest to you if the company is a bona fide ltd company and there is value to the individual and company in being Ltd. If not then he can probably recommend trading in another company. If there is value to the company then you may wish to peruse a winding up order against the company. I don't know what the regulations are now but this tale happened in the early 90s.

I was a member of the Round Table organisation and the National Conference that year was held at the Rank Organisations Butlins premises at Skegness. The evening meal they provided for a section of the attendees was awful and below the quality expected of the fee so, the duty manager accepted an offer in law of a lower sum as due recompense. A credit card was duly produced, swiped and signed and the contract was amended, accepted and completed. however the duty managers boss later rescinded the contract by ripping up the credit slip later that night. Through the court the rank organisation claimed for the full fee of the meal, which I defended and after incorrectly submitting the claim and then the rank organisation failing to turn up at the specified time in court the judge found in my favour and decreed that the Rank Organisation had behaved unreasonably, which in law allowed the judge to rack up a higher level of costs against the Rank organisation. This fundamentally meant that the Rank organisation now owed me more than they had claimed against us! They failed to pay in the time allocated by the court and I then went to the post office and for a fee of Fourteen pounds filled in a winding up order against the Rank Organisation and filed it. I had the money sipped transferred within six hours!!!

I don't know whether a winding up order would work or be worth it, if the individual lives in his own house is there a possibility that you could put a charge on it against the costs that he owes you? That would make life very difficult for him and whilst not getting your money immediately it would work in the long run.

best of luck

 

[Mark Hancock]

.... But Mark surely a towel is to dry off your towels not to heat the bathroom as you stated. ..

A radiator or a towel radiator....same difference..they both give off heat. If you have a 2kw towel radiator then that gives off the same heat as a 2kw normal radiator.

Obviously, but I for one would fit a towel rail to air a towel, not heat a room. Surely that's rather akin to saying someone bought the wrong kilowatt kettle, because it wouldn't heat the kitchen?

In answer to the question about a towel radiator heating the room in this case it was a requirement. It was to replace the existing damaged radiator. The bathroom is not large enough to have both a radiator and a towel radiator so the latter had to be capable of heating the room.

 

[Mark Hancock]

Mark, don't know if this helps at all but here goes. This tale might be of interest to you if the company is a bona fide ltd company and there is value to the individual and company in being Ltd. If not then he can probably recommend trading in another company. If there is value to the company then you may wish to peruse a winding up order against the company. I don't know what the regulations are now but this tale happened in the early 90s.

I was a member of the Round Table organisation and the National Conference that year was held at the Rank Organisations Butlins premises at Skegness. The evening meal they provided for a section of the attendees was awful and below the quality expected of the fee so, the duty manager accepted an offer in law of a lower sum as due recompense. A credit card was duly produced, swiped and signed and the contract was amended, accepted and completed. however the duty managers boss later rescinded the contract by ripping up the credit slip later that night. Through the court the rank organisation claimed for the full fee of the meal, which I defended and after incorrectly submitting the claim and then the rank organisation failing to turn up at the specified time in court the judge found in my favour and decreed that the Rank Organisation had behaved unreasonably, which in law allowed the judge to rack up a higher level of costs against the Rank organisation. This fundamentally meant that the Rank organisation now owed me more than they had claimed against us! They failed to pay in the time allocated by the court and I then went to the post office and for a fee of Fourteen pounds filled in a winding up order against the Rank Organisation and filed it. I had the money sipped transferred within six hours!!!

I don't know whether a winding up order would work or be worth it, if the individual lives in his own house is there a possibility that you could put a charge on it against the costs that he owes you? That would make life very difficult for him and whilst not getting your money immediately it would work in the long run.

best of luck

Neil

Thank you for that. It is one of the legal remedies I'm looking in to. I have to decide if it is worth it as obviously any action I take will incur further cost on my part although those costs can be added to the claim.

 

[whiskywill]

Is he Gas Safe? He has to be to touch central heating

Even if the central heating is oil fired, woodfired, coalfired, electricity powered, solar powered or geothermal? In any case he wasn't touching the boiler so it would definitely not be a requirement.

 

[Graham Orm]

Is he Gas Safe? He has to be to touch central heating

Even if the central heating is oil fired, woodfired, coalfired, electricity powered, solar powered or geothermal? In any case he wasn't touching the boiler so it would definitely not be a requirement.

Gas fired, obviously. And how does shut down the boiler to drain it, re-fill the system and check that it re lights etc without touching it? What does he do if it doesn't re-light or there is a problem re-filling the system?

 

[dj.]

Is he Gas Safe? He has to be to touch central heating

Even if the central heating is oil fired, woodfired, coalfired, electricity powered, solar powered or geothermal? In any case he wasn't touching the boiler so it would definitely not be a requirement.

Gas fired, obviously. And how does shut down the boiler to drain it, re-fill the system and check that it re lights etc without touching it? What does he do if it doesn't re-light or there is a problem re-filling the system?

He is using the same controls & filling system the end user could use, hence he is not touching anything the house holder would not be safe to use & as such does not need to be gas safe registered.

Regards.

dj.