We choose the Cowboy Of The Year Award based on a few factors. The first is always safety, the second is the camouflage factor or the level to which the bodge is hidden away and the third factor is the cost of the damage caused or the cost to repair the bodge. So for example this year we had a close contest between the winner and a poor plumbing & central heating job that cost thousands to put right. The runner up however was not as much unsafe as inconvenient and costly to repair. This years winning bodge was UNSAFE, well hidden and costly to put right!

Last year we offered up the three categories of individual we feel sums up the poor workmanship we have seen. If you had to place poor workmanship into only three categories they would these:

1. Johnny Cut Corners – who gets the job done faster than humanly possible gets the cash and gets out usually with poor and unsafe end results
2. Harry Houdini – who starts the job with vigour but then has lots of excuses for not showing up until one day ‘POOF’ – like magic he disappears
3. Bit Off More Than He Can Chew Charlie – who start a job larger than they can cope with and in many cases won’t stop no matter what happens even when unqualified to undertake certain aspects of the job. These guys usually pull a Houdini late in the job.

The latter is the most dangerous from what we see on a day-to-day basis. Although the contractor may be a fully qualified builder, brick layer, carpenter or other such trade person he is not necessarily qualified in electrics, gas, central heating or plumbing. Without the knowledge or clear understanding of what they’re doing, without TEST equipment to check their work and without a thought to the home owners, neighbours, apprentices or even themselves these are the most dangerous person out there. Although a lot of what we see on a daily basis is dangerous with a small ‘d’ many of the jobs we see are DANGEROUS with a capital ‘D.’

The 2009 Cowboy Of The Year Award is from July of this year (original article here) and goes to the two or three electricians who not only created this mess but also who didn’t make any effort to clean up the mess left by the previous electrician. It highlights in every way why you should check the credentials of your contractor or his mates before allowing work to go ahead.

The story goes something like this:

1. The home owner wants to add a conservatory. They hire a recommended builder. He in turn brought in his electrician who may have known what he was doing but was in no way neat about his work. We found missing earth shielding, loose connector screws and many cables routed incorrectly. The conservatory gets completed and everything appears normal.
2. We then move ahead to the new kitchen which was installed by a large national DIY chain – that also fits kitchens. So in come the kitchen fitters who require an electrician and they too bring in their own contractor. More modifications are made. Now these modifications are interesting. From my point of view this group of electricians either found unsafe work from the previous electrician or created the following issues themselves. Either way you slice it this electrician left dangerous work behind. The unsafe work includes the downstairs bathroom and kitchen (none of the fittings were IP rated for kitchen or bathrooms) sharing light circuits not on RCD, upstairs bathroom (non-IP rated) lights not on an RCD, conservatory lights not on a fused spur or RCD. All the workmanship that we viewed was poor. All of the wiring to the kitchen was run on the bottom plane of the floor joists above using small strips of 9mm drywall placed on the bottom plane of the joist then covered with full sheets of drywall. This allowed for little gaps under the joists for the cables to slip through. Unfortunately it also leaves the cables trapped only 9mm from the surface of the ceiling allowing for possible damage from screwing up the remainder of the drywall to the ceiling. Yet another reason to have RCD protection! MOST IMPORTANTLY this electrician by way of not correcting any errors he found is as guilty as if he’s done the poor work himself. Which I suspect he did.
3. Another electrician also added a spur for the home owners new alarm system. See work here. This too was poorly done with an open connection block that was left with  no cover and hanging down almost to the crawl space floor.
4. Finally we were asked if we could install some new bathroom appliances, add a bathroom extractor and some new lighting. As should be the case we inspected the wiring starting at the unlabeled consumer unit which lead to many other issues throughout the property. The issues weren’t only electrical. We also found poor waste pipe work, poor and leaking central heating pipe work and many electrical issues that didn’t make it to these pages.

I have a steadfast rule which I instill into all of our staff. You touch it you own it! That means that even though you uncover a problem that you didn’t create you still have to do something about it. Most trades people know that there are issues lurking under every floor board and behind every wall. These lurking issues are also why ‘builders’ seem to have a bad reputation for surprise price increases. The truth of the matter sits in the middle between these two extremes. Builders don’t have x-ray vision and therefore cannot see what’s under the floorboards or in the ceiling and home owners have to take responsibility for the work that was previously undertaken whether they owned the property when the work was done or not.

If the previous work was undertaken by a competent operative then things usually go well. If the previous work was undertaken by an incompetent operative then it will require extra work to sort out. If you find something unsafe and decide to keep your mouth shut then you’re as guilty as the person that did the work in the first place. A home owner will be unhappy to hear that the previous builder left unsafe work behind but will be happy that it’s been pointed out to them. With the exception of this home owner who igored our warnings!

Related Posts

1. Cowboy Of The Year 2008
2. Danger of the Week Award – Cowboy Gas Fitters
3. Danger of the Week Award – Cowboy Gas Fitters

Bad Electricians

Is there anything sadder than a fully grown adult treating someone like dirt. There is! It’s watching a fully grown building professional treating an client like dirt. So having witnessed the exact scenario this week I can safely say ‘there is nothing sadder.’ While working in a council flat this week where we are renovating a bathroom we came across live a ring main cable in Zone 1 of a shower cubicle. On our advice the tenant called the council to have an electrician come around and put it right. The sparks flew when he finally showed up.

To set the stage we were called in to install a new bathroom suite which included all walls to be tiled. We started by removing all unnecessary accessories from the ceilings and walls. When we opened up one of two left over blanking plates we found a live connection to the ring main. In a private home we would have removed the connection to  a safe location (in this case the loft directly above) and terminated the cables into a connector block. This however was a council property and although we’ll happily replace an electric shower or light fitting we are certainly not going to re-route cables. They are responsible for the infrastructure so the tenant rang them to see if someone could come by and sort it out.

The decision as to what to do with a live cable in a shower cubicle doesn’t require too much grey matter. Although the cable was placed behind a blanking plate the assembly wasn’t IP rated (Ingress Protection Rating) and therefore should not be in Zone 1. The ring main was connected with a properly sized connection block but was only wrapped with a bit of tape. The metal back box had not been earthed. Had the bit of tape continued to get damp from the moisture in the bathroom and brittle from the cold of the outside wall the failures could have caused the metal back box and the screws to become live. Our remit was to tile the area where the ring main was located so we would have to move the connection as it would be inaccessible as well as outside of a Permitted Cable Route Zone once tiled over. Also if there were ever an issue troubleshooting an electrical fault it would be difficult to repair without the removing the tiles. That’s if anyone ever found the cables again.

[Show as slideshow]

With all that said I introduce to you the most obnoxious, unpleasant and sad electrician I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet. When we found this box we decided to call the council and have their electricians move the box. Why? Simple. Although we’re qualified the council is responsible for the infrastructure. It is their problem. The solution would only take five minutes or so to repair so we carried on with other work we had to complete.

When the electrician shows up he was already huffing and puffing and effing and blinding as he came into the flat. In a surely tone he asked what our problem was and after a quick explanation of what we found he told us, and I quote,  ‘that’s the way they used to do it mate; it’s fine.’ So when I pointed out that it wasn’ t fine. It wasn’t safe, it wasn’t earthed, it wasn’t waterproof  and then asked if he had qualifications his head came off. He again snarled that it WAS safe and that THERE WAS NO ISSUES. I insisted however that he take care of it and after another hissy fit he stormed off to get a ladder and a connection box. We all had a chuckle at his dim view of safety and lack of professionalism in somebodies home. He returned to do the work while muttering under his breath throughout the entire FIVE MINUTE repair. When  he was leaving the tenant said that in a whispered voice he said ‘he would have just tiled over it the wiring.’

Unbelievable! No. We see unsafe, incomplete, poorly thought out and substandard work in council properties all the time. See BLOG on unsafe boiler flues that to date has still not been sorted. Here’s another one. The condsation pipes pictured in the lower left picture are Oldham Town Council entry into the realm of poor work that are NOT to the standard required by the building regulations. Sadly I have hundreds of photos just like these. It’s a shame that most government bodies have let the control of their services trickle away to the point where there are not enough people to inspect the outsourced work adequately and it’s going to get worse. Thank you Darling. I fear that even if there was enough inspectors they certainly wouldn’t know more than a qualified council electrician. They certainly won’t know what to look for in bodges work by contractors who view the world through RUSH coloured glasses. Who wouldn’t see an issue with 240 volts ac in a non-IP rated box installed IN a shower cubicle within easy reach of anybody.

Just to show there are no hard feeling towards our overworked and underpaid electrician lets include the gas fitters and plumbers too. The two remaining pictures were taken in the loft when we were tracing a water pipe that appeared to go nowhere. The first two snaps are of an old steel F&E tank that used to feed the back boiler. The back boiler was replaced with a combi boiler a few years ago but the tank was left in place still full of water and still hooked to the mains with the isolation vale OPEN!  The central heating engineer simply cut the output pipe and left the tank hooked up to freeze, continue to corrode and eventually leak. Second up shows a 22mm  gas pipe being supported by styrofoam blocks! It is unlikely that you’ll find that solution in the building regulations but let me know if you do. We also disconnected an old air extractor control system from the bathroom which was redundant after the window fan was removed earlier this year. And last but not least we repaired a small water leak around the waste stack pipe that was leaking from the roof into the loft space. Someone had broken away the four inch cast iron pipe work , shoved a three inch pipe up the middle and wrapped a bit of asphalt roofing material between the two. We replaced a section of the ceiling which was water damaged by the bodged repair before skimming the bathroom ceiling.

Bodged, unsafe, sloppy and uncaring workmanship seemed to have been the order in this council property. We have now corrected the issues and the electrics are safe, the leaks are gone, and the impending flood from the corroded F&E tank in the loft has been averted.

And the moral to the story is. Even if the council is doing the work you had better keep an eye on what they’re getting up to.

Related Posts

1. Danger of the Week Award – Dangerous Flue Installation

Bad – Kitchen Fitters

[Show as slideshow]

We can’t prove who screwed up the electrics and caused some very serious safety breaches. We can’t prove who wreaked havoc with the plumbing and the ‘up hill’ waste pipe work . We do however have the receipts for the company who installed the kitchen and supplied the fitter. The kitchen looks more like a patch work quilt than smartly fitted cabinet work. The two pictures above are an just one example of the poorly cabinets.

The upper cabinets in the left and right hand picture should be perfectly centred above the ceramic kitchen basin. If you look at the details of where the overhead cabinets meet the full height cabinets you can see that the end panels have been cut to differing heights at each side. The left hand end panel runs from the bottom of the tall cabinet to the bottom of the overhead cabinet. The right side panel however runs from the bottom of the tall cabinet right to the top. While on the subject of the end panels the right end panel does not come down far enough to join up with the bottom of the cupboard and leaves a small gap just above the trim work. As the end panels were cut wrong the upper cabinets could not possibly be centred so the fitter then planed down a sliver of an end panel and attached it to the door unit on the upper right cabinet. To further punctuate the mistake the fitter trimmed the sliver of wood unevenly and then screwed it to the door. You can see the gaps between the door and the added trim piece! They look a lot worse in real life!

So how should the cabinets have been fit to eliminate the mistakes? The initial problem was probably made with the design team who measure up and then show the home owner a few pretty coloured prints of how good the kitchen will look. Most of the time this works out but sometimes the fitter may have to squeeze an extra inch from the room to make everything fit. It’s hard to tell from the pictures but the only choice in this kitchen was to plane the side panels down to half of there original thickness which would have allowed the upper cabinets to be properly centred. With the cabinets centred all of the other issues would have vanished.

It looks as though M. C. Escher installed this kitchen and not a professional kitchen fitter backed by a big company with a design team, lots of expertise and hundreds of models to choose from.  Always vet your kitchen fitter before allowing them into your home. Bigger isn’t necessarily better. Kitchen fitting is as much art as it is technical and the difference between good and bad comes only with experience. There are lots of one to four day courses on the web but I would defy anyone to learn how to fit a set of straight, plumb and level kitchen cabinets in an old Victorian house that’s been skimmed ten times and has un-level, un-square and non-plumbed doors, windows, floors, walls and ceilings. To add to that puzzle there are always changes required to the electrics (Part-P) that require some real  thinking to sort out safely, safety issues relating to boiler location (DO NOT BOX IN YOU BOILER!!!!!!!),central heating pipe work, flues, gas and general plumbing. After years and years and years of fitting and modifying kitchens  I can assure you that kitchens are the most challenging of jobs to do creatively but also the most satisfying when done correctly.

Related Posts

1. Reinstall cabinets and appliances after cowboy fit the kitchen
2. Cut Earth Cables By Kitchen Fitters
3. Danger of the Week Award – Cowboy Gas Fitter

Bad – New Home Builder

[Show as slideshow]

The problem here is that there are two distinct sockets. For them both to be switched from the single cooker isolator meant that they had to have been connected together. As the cooker circuit is already a spur (a single cable from the consumer unit) then this also means that one of the sockets is feeding the other hence a spur connected to another spur. A BIG no-no unless installed in a certain fashion. So with the knowledge that both circuits were controlled by a single switch it was time to check and make sure that the breaker had been adjusted to suit the situation. In other words the breaker would probably have been a 32AMP breaker to supply the current required for a double oven but should have been downgraded to 20AMP to supply the multiple sockets. Keep in mind that there is already one socket attached to the cooker isolator hence we are supplying three sockets here. As suspected the breaker was never changed and was 32AMP as required for an electric cooker.

The original cooker connector was removed at some point and replaced with a 13amp single socket which then fed another single socket just below. The top socket is fed from the original 6mm T&E feed as most often used to feed an electric oven. The spur to the second socket was connected with a short piece of 2.5mm T&E.  Although in this instance the setup is unlikely to cause an issue it is not a safe connection nor is it allowed under the building regulations  (BS7671). Even though the plugs themselves are fused at 3amp on the top and 13amp on the bottom. The fuse is to protect the cable, not the cable protect the fuse – cable must be sized accordingly or the circuit can be fused down.

It means that the cooker was plugged into the spur-off-spur sockets which was fed from the single fed spur above it which in turn was fed from the cooker isolator which also contained a single socket.  As the 6mm cable on a 32amp breaker could take a fare amount of current the problem comes in if there is a short in the cable behind the cooker. It is worth noting that the location of the plug we are talking about is directly behind the fan located on the old cooker. So very hot air is already heating up the cable to start with. The 2.5mm cable will not take the high load that the 6mm cable with and the circuit breaker which is TOO large for this type of circuit will not blow quick enough. The outcome could be anything from the plastic melting off the cables to a fire starting behind the wall. As with all of these cases you just never know what could happen when things start getting hot enough to melt. I’ve also seen a lot of walls that have been stuffed with newsprint to plug holes before plastering up a big hole in the wall. Hot cables and newsprint in a hollow wall. Lovely! We are heading back next week to correct the electrics, install the new cooker and hob and finish off the extractor from last week.  Se update below.

As for the extractor repair as mentioned above, it had to be postponed. As reported last week the builder had cut a hole in the outside wall but not extended the hole to the inside wall. We were wrong. Unfortunately however we weren’t completely wrong. The builder had actual cut a hole on the inside of the building but it happened to be about four inches below the outside hole. His solution was to ignore it and leave the extracted kitchen air to be expelled into the buildings air space3 between the inside and outside wall. We will be repairing that next week when the rain stops long enough to replace a few bricks on the outside wall at which time we will core a new hols low enough to line up with the inside cut.

Related Posts

1. Kitchen Fitters Unsafe Electrical PLUS
2. Reinstall cabinets and appliances after cowboy fit the kitchen
3. Kitchen Extractors That Could Never Work

Date: July-Aug 2009

Description: We were originally asked if we could replace just the appliances in this bathroom and we said ‘of course we would.’ When we arrived to view the job it turned out that the home owner had already removed the bathtub and flooring and another builder had added some velux windows. The job was to relocate the tub from the left side of the room to the right side so that a mixer shower could be added. We would also add a shower screen, new basin, toilet, radiator and add a towel warmer, extractor, new lights and a razor point. With that in mind we went away while the home owner purchased the bits they liked.

When the new bathroom arrived we scheduled some time and got stuck in. The addition of the shower was easy but we found problems with the existing waste pipe work which had been plumbed ‘uphill’ and had been leaking for some time and leaking into the kitchen extractor electrics too! We also uncovered a long tie leak from the central heating pipe work which had to be sorted out. The electrics were in a bad way with the previous ‘electrican’ having installed a new consumer unit without adding the upstairs bathroom, downstairs bathroom/utility room or kitchen to an RCD protected spur. We also took care of those safety issues before starting into our own work.

Once the first fix was completed we went away an awaited a callback from the homeowner who wanted to use his own builder to make repairs to the walls and skim the room. We received a callback that the builder couldn’t do the job so we had our team look after it. Once completed it was finally time to get onto the tiling, hanging the towel warmer and new radiator, dressing of the shower unit and then finally grouting, sealing and hanging the shower door. The homeowners provided the decorating skills themselves and as can be seen the room turned out looking fantastic even though there were many other issues to sort out during the refurbishment.

Related Posts

1. Bathroom Swap (Bathroom and Bedroom)
2. Complete Bathroom Refurbishment
3. Complete Bathroom Refurbishment

Bad New Home Builder

[Show as slideshow]

In a related incident I found the following extractor about four weeks ago in a flat where we were looking for a plumbing leak. When I removed the covering to look for pipe work I found that this extractor was never actually hooked up to the aluminium vent pipe. This flat was also only a few years old and had only one owner.

[Show as slideshow]

Related Posts

1. Ventilation Intergration Complication Alteration
2. Kitchen Extractor Heart Defibrillator
3. Double Oven, Hob and Extractor

Bad Electricians…

[Show as slideshow]

To replace a consumer unit the electrician takes responsibility for the wiring in the whole house. It’s a big responsibility that the home owner should be aware of. If problems are found as is often the case the problems MUST be put right. If circuits have faults they cannot be safely hooked back up. Without going in to great detail all light switches, light fittings, sockets and placement should be checked, all earth bonding MUST be brought up to current specifications, all colour coding (brown and blue sleeving) should be corrected and all circuits must be correctly fused/RCDed to today’s regulations. Safety and warning decals must be fitted and of course all test results are to be recorded and a copy left with the home owner. Things will generally happen in the following order: electricity off at the mains, check all original labels and then inspect, test and record the results for all circuits, repairs if required somewhere in between these steps, install and then connect up new consumer unit, check all work visually, turn power back on, test and record the results for each circuit. In contrast (and we’ve heard this story more times than Carter has liver pills) the electrician who installed this consumer unit, may or may not have checked his work, didn’t record any results and THEN told the client he would be back in a few days to test everything and just like Keyser Söze he disappeared.

It is difficult to test your own work; I know. As one NIC EIC inspector told me, “you have to step back from the work you just finished and look at it with a different eye.” It is difficult. The inspection and testing are so important to making sure that something wasn’t missed or in the case of a consumer unit swap that something unseen and lurking from years earlier wasn’t missed. Had this job been inspected the missing earth connector at the consumer unit would have been seen and the kitchen circuits would have been safer. Had the job been tested the missing earth to the kitchen would have shown up when trying to get one of several readings. This bloke missed finding the problem on three separate occasions! There is just no excuse.

Sloppy work, sloppy work and more sloppy work. Protect yourself. Always ask for credentials (NIC EIC, ECA) and make sure the electrician is Part-P Registered. Don’t take the word of your builder or your mate. Check your electrician out on the web. It’ll take you less than five minutes. If he’s not listed find one that is and use them instead. It’s your house, it’s your life, it’s your children’s lives; protect them.

Related Posts

1. Danger of the Week Award – Cowboy Electricians
2. Danger of the Week Award – Cowboy Electrics x 2
3. Danger of the Week Award – Cowboy Electricians

Bad Bathroom Fitter

When the basin was removed it was clear that the waste pipe ran uphill so it was constantly full of standing water. The ceiling under the basin had signs of leakage too as the standing water was dripping from the elbow under the floor. We decided to re-run the waste pipe via a different route so drained the standing water and went outside to remove the old pipe work. When up on the ladder and close enough to see behind the vent we could see that is was half covered over with the old standby; duct tape! There were no screws holding the cover to the wall so we cut the silicone caulking and as we peeled the vent aside the lack of quality workmanship became apparent.

[Show as slideshow]

The owner mentioned that the extractor stopped working when water from the basin leaked into the motor at some point after it was installed. We have now re-routed the pipe work through a nice neat hole and replaced all of the outside waste pipes as the outside joints also leaked and will shortly be installing the correct vent as well as making repairs to the extractor fan.

Related Posts

1. Kitchen Extractor Heart Defibrillator
2. Uh Oh, Six Inches Short!
3. Skew-Whiff Pipework By Pretzel Man

Bad Kitchen Fitting

We got lucky on the first outlet we removed. We found a 0.5mm flex cable connected directly to the 32amp ring main. Once isolated we removed the unit from the wall and then started what we came to do which was to make the necessary modifications to extract to the outside. We completed that job but will be heading back next week to run a new 3amp fused spur from the nearby ring which will allow for the safe use of  extractor.

We’ve seen the result of using an extractor with too high a fuse rating when there is a fault. In one case the homeowner had replaced a 3amp fuse with a 13 amp fuse after the 3amp fuse  blew. They didn’t have a 3 amp replacement so thought it wouldn’t matter. Unfiortunately there was a fault somewhere in the extractor and the 13 amp fuse didn’t blow fast enough. The circuit board, wiring and switches inside the extractor were fried beyond repair as a result. In the end the circuit replacement and labour was more that the unit originally cost. Low rated fuses are not selected randomly. They are chosen to blow when the load required surpases the normal designed rating.

Sinply put; the fuse is there to protect you, your loved ones, your property and your purchase. If the user manual says use a 3 amp fuse then use a 3 amp fuse.

[Show as slideshow]

Related Posts

1. Hob and Double Oven Dissapointment
2. Danger of the Week Award – Cowboy Kitchen Fitters
3. Built in cooker, hob and extractor replacement

If you had to place poor workmanship into only three categories they would these:

1. Johnny Cut Corners – who gets the job done faster than humanly possible gets the cash and gets out usually with poor and unsafe end results
2. Harry Houdini – who starts the job with vigour but then has lots of excuses for not showing up until one day ‘poof’ – like magic they disappear
3. Bite Off More Than They Can Chew Charlie – who start a job larger than they can cope with and in many cases won’t stop no matter what even when unqualified to undertake certain aspects of the job. These guys sometimes turn into Houdinis late in the job.

The latter is the most dangerous from what we see on a day-to-day basis. The unqualified builder, kitchen fitter, bricky or any trades person who modifies the fabric of the property without the knowledge or a clear understanding of what they’re doing and without the TEST equipment to check their work and without a thought to the homeowners, neighbours, apprentices or even themselves is the most dangerous person out there. Although a lot of what we see on a daily basis are dangerous with a small ‘d’ many of the jobs we see are DANGEROUS with a capital ‘D.’

The 2008 Cowboy Of The Year Award from February of this year is just such a job and the worst in the sense of a dangerous trap set for the homeowner so that if the conditions were just right – BANG! Someone was going to get very hurt! The original post ( see original here ) for the winner was from February of 2008 and was a cowboy kitchen fitter.

A kitchen fitter had already replaced laminated work surfaces with granite and had disconnected the old hob in order to do the work. When queried by the home owner about disconnecting the gas appliances he told the home owner that he was allowed to disconnect the old hob but wasn’t CORGI Registered so could not install the new one.

Despite the fact that the counter top bloke couldn’t check the pipework for leaks (tightness test) before they started they most certainly couldn’t check for leaks after they removed the appliance. Also, you cannot leave an open gas pipe such as the one shown in the first photo! It must be capped using an approved fitting before leaving the site. Mr. Counter Top Installer left an open gas pipe for over a week with no cap or means of isolation except the main gas valve into the property which hadn’t been checked for leaks!

[Show as slideshow]

Not a good scenario at all. Dangerous gas and electrics all in one.

WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!!!!! If you’re not CORGI Registered you can’t touch the gas – PERIOD! If you’re not Part-P you can’t touch electrics in a kitchen.  This is why! This is the perfect example of why you want a time served licensed gas fitter and/or electrician in your house.

Related Posts

1. Danger of the Week Award – Cowboy Kitchen Fitters
2. Danger of the Week Award – Cowboy Gas Fitter
3. Danger of the Week Award – Cowboy Electrics