Things that went wrong with my house
  • Planning permission for a level 6 zero carbon house was failed 2008

  • My own contamination analysis was rejected and a professional one costing ££ saying the same thing was approved.

  • Couldn’t dig the basement hole near enough to the existing house so closed up the wide cavity there by 100mm. This is not a problem as the two houses help to keep each other warm. Dec 2008

  • Water main entry point to basement was drilled in sloping inwards.

  • One starter bar was missed out to allow access to work easily.

  • Ring beam shuttering moved a little (20mm during concreting) at the rear.

  • Starter bars for the hollow blocks were uncomfortably high to lift blocks over.

  • Wall tie insulation clips were fragile and all snapped so dritherm insulation was retained by means of friction fitted vertical strips of polystyrene

  • It was cold and a bit too frosty the day we laid the ground floor concrete planks used a lot of frost proofer and antifreeze.Feb 2010

  • Some wall ties were built in sticking out rather than built in both courses at once.

  • Scaffold was built on soft ground even though I insisted it was built off a solid base—it wasn’t and it sank 50mm pulling the brickwork out of plumb by the back door -- fixed the next day. The scaffold was done using putlocks as ground next to the house was very sinky.

  • Missed out the cavity tray supports to the g/f window heads and didn’t use weep holes – supports will be built in when the windows are fitted and I don’t believe weep holes are necessary!

  • Ordered windows 1800 wide 1200 high £ plenty -- they were going to give me windows 1800 wide x 1230 high ! “who pays if they don’t fit?” -- you do sir OK then make them 1170 high ( so they come 1200) no only some were changed so I cancelled windows -- That’s what they always do in the country where they are made – you should have been told this!!!! 2009

  • First floor we broke a floor plank! That day I phoned 6 times to the supplier no success 11.00 am got a nice girl who said she would have a replacement with me by 4.00pm !!! that day so the crane driver stayed on to put it in place – Miracles still do happen.

  • Labourer used admix instead of frost proofer in two mortar mixes and work had to be repointed.

  • Had a day off to help a friend with foundations -- told bricklayers to build six courses – got back they had done 9 and without any wall ties.

  • They built four courses of bricks in the rendered bay and I made them take it down and build it again because the wall ties didn’t marry up with the mortar courses on the internal blocks.

  • Air duct design got done wrong – ducts across basement windows, loft duct out through roof valley and in again and duct clean through the bottom of the washing machine!

  • The brickies brought their laser level and it wasn’t level!! Caused a few difficulties, confrontations and embarrassments.

  • Electric hoist broke down.

  • Moaned at truss designers about the asymmetry of the girder truss, forgot to order cedar fascias for roof fortunately supplier had them in stock.

  • Battened first roof at the gage for the shallower roof. 4.5 m^2 had to come off and get redone -- me not thinking.

  • Built the front shall gable roof wrongly and had to rebuild.

  • Pig in battens at rear fortunately in first two courses, omitted hip batten but fitted it as an afterthought.

  • Didn’t fit reflectors to solar panels and had to do retro bespoke fit, leak on solar panel and cracked nut trying in vain to stop it, then remove olive and re plumb.

  • Ventilation ducts came with no straight joiners.

  • Drilled hole for down pipe clip in wrong place.

  • Loft quilt was not that great quality but we fitted it very well.

  • One window didn’t fit so sill had to be lowered.

  • Forgot to fit towel rad pipes to the bathroom before plastering, drilled too far into brick for dowel bar support and chipped face of brick

  • scratched the outside of one window -- several arrived with minor scratches too.

  • Lounge floor sockets in the wrong place

  • Bumble bees nest in basement wall.

  • The arch bead to lounge elliptical ceiling was naff -- used thinset stop bead instead.

  • One window sill was wrong size (so I reshaped it!) and had brown end caps.

  • Shower tray came without upstands, bidet mould went pear shaped = delay,

  • Graham BM didn’t order my ensuite gear – came 7 weeks late!

  • Bees nest in cavity wall of basement! Bumble bees so no one wanted them.

  • Had small leek of filling up the plumbing

  • three nails popped in the basement ceilings, but none anywhere else.

  • Basement rooms took a very long time to dry out after plastering.

  • Wrong dimensions for snooker table leg positions from supplier
  • PIR s were slow to respond

  • bath shower hose was too long, one shower unit was faulty,

  • D/R light position was wrong -- different fitting.

  • Floor sockets never were decided so wires got buried under floor

  • , Front wall piers were too low and copings got counted wrong

  • Air leakage test--- forgot to seal up 5 x 25 or 32 mm plastic pipes for poor mans earth tube and cooker extract duct and had a hole above basement window and in electronics cupboard ceiling -- still got 1.31 ach @50 -- will be better now.

  • Water board took 10 weeks to quote, 12 to come and connect up -- typically they came and dug up my road the week after I tarmaced it. Sept 2010

  • I don’t want to admit to this so if you read please E mail me and tell me you did find it! After nearly a year of living in the house a wet patch appeared in the basement in the middle of the house. First I thought it must be a leaking pipe and so I fiddled with the pipes where they disappear through the middle of the slab and there were some connections. The damp dried out but the next time it rained heavily it came back and I could see water on the slab. Yuk. I worked out that water was trickling into the polythene dpm and probably had been for a year and now it was full and seeping up round the interseasonal store pipes. I was disappointed but could have predicted this one. I broke a small hole through the slab near the pipes and the water seeped away and all was well. Almost a nasty incident. The amounts of water will be small, cup fulls and will if anything help the thermal store I recon.

  • In the end I found the problem and predictably it was a rainwater gulley completely blocked with leaves directing half of my rain water from the roof down the outside of the basement walls, I was surprised that so little wet showed up as it rained 75mm over four weeks before I traced it.

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