Location: Shaw, Oldham, Lancs

Date: Nov 2010

Description: This bathroom renovation was part of a larger refurb…we practically rebuilt the entire house! Our client had purchased the property and had always planned on having all the work completed before she moved in. Although we’re only showing the bathroom here we also installed a new boiler, radiators and relocated the boiler from the kitchen to the upstairs airing cupboard, we completely gutted the kitchen and installed a new kitchen including all electrical work, we cleaned up the rest of the properties electrics and fit a new updated consumer unit, many walls and ceiling were repaired and re-plastered, the outside gutters and facia were repalced and the entire house was decorated and carpeted when complete. continue

DANGER OF THE WEEK AWARD
Bad ‘Plumbing’
Regulations broken: BS7671:2008

We were at this property a month or so ago to repair some dangerous electrical work left over by a central heating engineer. He left some live and uninsulated wires in a wall and told the homeowners it was safe to cut them out. It wasn’t safe and fortunately they urned the power off first. We came back this time to look at running an outside cable to their new shed. They moved the washing machine aside so we could see the wall behind. Ooops! Band plumbing.

continue

DANGER OF THE WEEK AWARD
Bad ‘Electricians’
Regulations broken: BS7671:2008

You may have never heard of a Marrette or Marr connector and I was surprised as anyone to see one in a job to remove a fluorescent light fixture. As an ex-Canadian I’ve used hundreds and have seen thousands of Marrettes over the years…but never in the UK.

continue

DANGER OF THE WEEK AWARD
Bad Builders

Firstly, my apologies for not posting last weeks award  until today. It seems that I didn’t press the Publish button last week.

This particular property has been winning awards for poor workmanship for over a year. We keep getting called back in for one problem, get it sorted, and then several months later get called in for something else. This week was another  issue with the central heating system and another wet patch showing up on the ceiling. There may also be a hive of bees in the flat roof too! continue

DANGER OF THE WEEK AWARD
Bad Electricians

Another week and yet another electrical issue located during a Periodic Inspection.  This is the kind of issue we see on  regular basis. When we removed the oven to test the cooker circuit we found two connections to a single spur which under certain circumstances would be correct. Under this circumstance however all is not good, correct or safe. continue

DANGER OF THE WEEK AWARD
Bad Landlord Planning

We’ve already  highlighted  Landlord Licensing Schemes on several occasions. Our aim in those articles was to highlight other contractors unsafe or poor working practices. An interesting pattern has emerged as we undertake more of these checks on our landlord’s behalf. The pattern is that we are always the last people called in. The assumption by the property owner seems to be that because everything appears to work there should be no issue. That is the wrong assumption and it could end up costing you cold hard cash! continue

DANGER OF THE WEEK AWARD
Bad ‘Electricians’
Regulations broken: BS7671:2008 416.2.2, 134.2.1, 610.6, 631.1, 314.4, 132.13, 514.9

We were on this site to re-install an electric shower about a month ago. See original article here. We installed the shower but were unable to sort out the electrics due to a issues we located with the previous consumer unit. While testing circuits we found some errors in the house wiring. To be specific the circuit feeding the sockets had been bodged by a bad kitchen fitting job. continue