Barratt Homes

Pssst

I dont have direct experience but some years ago,i regularly visisted a new Barratt premier development becuase they suffered continual water leaks from radiators. Further examination confirmed that the sub contract plumbers who did the install of the central heating used self cleaning acidic flux throughout and didnt flush it out thoroughly on commissioning. Result? lots of acidic corrosion in the system. Problem was widespread on the development. It isnt just Barratts though.

Craftsmen arent what they used to be. Thats what happens when you "create" skills shortages then fill them with cheap,poorly trained labour clutching certificates which they have paid for,not earned through quality apprenticeships.

Frozenace

I recently moved into a barratts flat in london.

I must say that I'm pretty impressed with the sound proofing. I used to live in a new build in Reading and the walls were plaster board.

I've now got an elevator running by the bed room and I can't hear anything. when the neighbors put on their stereo, I only hear it, because it's coming through the windows... thank god I bought the best underlay.

I,_Geek

I've got no love for mass-produced new-builds, and neither has my OH which meant he didn't go into a job at work with much enthusiasm recently...

Barratts had given the company he works for the task of doing their detailed drawings. They had some basic ones to work from, and had to do them properly. OH had constant problems getting straight answers out of them. They would say one thing, he'd go through each drawing changing the same thing, then they would change their mind and he'd have to do it all again. Measurements didn't add up, wall depths, plasterboard depths were wrong or missing. These basic drawings had come from architects and he's looking at them thinking whoever made these doesn't know what they're doing and can't even use a calculator.

To get around regulations which mean you need a toilet on the ground floor, they turned the house upside down. So the toilet and bedroom (only one bedroom) are on the ground floor and the living room/kitchen are upstairs. On the one hand I'm thinking, "well, they have to come up with inventive solutions to get as much space into the house as possible", but on the other I'm thinking they're shoe-horning tiny houses in to their development because people are so desperate to have a house.

Like zappahey said, new-builds (particularly ones designed for FTBs) don't seem to consider that people will have to live in them.

skint-student-nurse

i currently live in a barrat flat,that was finished in january,the ho.uses here are halfway through being built the faults we have are:

• the main entrance (security door) does not lock,anyone can gain access
• huge (settlement?) crack above my front door
• front door not fitted into the frame properly, looks wonky!
• big dent in the hall wall - painted over so they knew it was there...
• windows do not open properly
• poorly fitted window sills
• sinking kitchen floor :eek: (my fault apparently,ive got too much in my fridge:rotfl:)
• poorly fitted shower - it kept dripping hot water and ended up being replaced
• poorly fitted bath panel - broken by the builders when they fixed my shower
• generally poor paint work in every room
• very small parking spaces
• no visitor parking

there are several people already selling/moving out of their flats,and the houses are not selling very well....needless to say, we are moving out at the next oppertunity! :T

exitroute?

Slightly off the subject here but I went to view a new build social housing house last week. 5 rectangular boxes had been built in a wall to wall row on the last scrap of land to the side of a new private estate. If you think new build private homes are bad..pop into a new build social housing one if you get the chance!

carrottsforlunch

Pssst wrote: »

I dont have direct experience but some years ago,i regularly visisted a new Barratt premier development becuase they suffered continual water leaks from radiators. Further examination confirmed that the sub contract plumbers who did the install of the central heating used self cleaning acidic flux throughout and didnt flush it out thoroughly on commissioning. Result? lots of acidic corrosion in the system. Problem was widespread on the development. It isnt just Barratts though.

Craftsmen arent what they used to be. Thats what happens when you "create" skills shortages then fill them with cheap,poorly trained labour clutching certificates which they have paid for,not earned through quality apprenticeships.

Nail on head , as a time served painter and decorator who worked on new builds there is a lot of poor workers (i refuse to call them tradesman) . It`s all 12-18 month NVQ`s nowadays not 4 year apprentiships like in my day (im only 39 by the way) . I was working with a young lad who had to take photo`s of what he had done for his coursework , he spent more time photographing everyone else`s work and passing it off as his .
To be fair , the big housebuilders treat the sub-contractors like crap a lot of the time and only recently were forcing them to take a 20% cut in money , pay peanuts you get monkey`s . Lots of sites don`t even have labourers on them nowadays .
One bit of advice , i could always tell what sort of site it was by the attitude of the site agent , was there car parking and was the general site clean and tidy (no excuse for it not to be) . If it was , they took a bit of pride in there work , if it was`nt they did`nt . I would never buy new build .

stingy_rach

Moved into our new Barratt home in Feb. Thankfully our snag list has been short but mainly because our house was empty between Aug 08 and Feb 09 due to two previous buyers failing to complete.

We have however had a couple of major snags, the last one involved them rebuilding our bay window as someone had missed an inch of sealant. Builder who fixed it advised that to save money on employing a seperate window contractor they get the carpenters to put in the new windows and they are not qualified for the job.

Hmmm!

gld73

I bought a Barratt house when it was 2 years old - I've had no problems with it. But reading these posts, maybe the first owner had a few things to sort out!

Marivanna

My review:
I rent a flat in ~5 yr old house. Fully furnished, fitted carpets.

Windows would not close, even locked had a see through gap - agents sent someone to fix it after couple of calls. Lock on the front door has loose bolts that would not catch any thread. These are minor things compare to:-

There is no insulation on the floor. Guess they have used cheapest of the cheapest underlay. Temperature at the floor level keeps stable at 12 degrees Celsius no matter how high, how many and how long heaters I run. Two Dimplex@750kWt plus one portable@1000kWt in a living room. The highest temperature I was able to achieve with all of them constantly running was 19 at the table level. It cost me £123 for two Christmas weeks, again, living room only, no heating in bedrooms.

Floor insulation is not even included in NHBC warranty. Why floor is being treated differently from walls? I live on top of archway and not insulated and not heated garages. Warmth completely dissipates in 2 hours. Meaning being on the Economy 7 is a huge disadvantage as we need to run heating almost 24/7. If this estate was ever meant to be 'green' - it failed.

Walls are plasterboards. I know when my neighbours wake up, shower., etc.

Additionally, our kitchen seems to have 'unacceptable' layout according to the best practice guidelines of 2001. I wanted to post a blueprint of the model and actual layout, but as a new user can't do that.

[Deleted User]

My father's a builder and has worked for a variety of home builders - and a friend of mine also works for the company mentioned in this thread.

To be honest, I think a lot of your concerns are pretty generic to 'new builds' in general - and you'll find that most of the developers are just as bad as each other. There's not much unique to Barratts - and as you'll have noted over the past few years, most of the well-known home builders all fit into each other as parent companies, subsidiaries etc...so there's not a huge amount of difference! In fact, I've heard family friends commenting how 'they'll never buy barratts' before singing the praises of Ward homes...who are part of Barratts.

Having worked with my dad as a kid, I'm sure he'd agree with the posts here about the standard of homebuilding, but it's not a Barratts specific problem. You can't compared a new build to a home built twenty years ago because there are major differences:

New builds are much more commoditised: smaller gardens, for example
New builds use more sophisticated building technologies: whereas in the past it was plasterboard, now it's fireboard, double-thick board...so although your walls may feel 'thin' it's probably because of fire regulations.
In the past, homes were bricks and mortar with masonry dividing walls - now it's partition walls. Again, not Barratt-specific. It means costs are down and speed of build massively increased, but noise might be higher.

Homes these days are much more flat-pack but at the same time technologies are better - soundproofing, fireproofing, insulation...all much better than older homes.

In terms of snagging - it's not a trade secret - it's part of the new build process! If you're got issues with the property when you move in, then snagging gives you the opportunity to ask the developer to put these right. They EXPECT you to come back to them...

A final thought re: some of the comments on here about gardens: I couldn't agree more. We own a new-build (not Barratt) and - as my father will attest - all they do is just chuck all their rubble and crap into the ground, chuck a bunch of low-quality soil on top and then turf it. Because of this, most new builds will exhibit the same problems after a few years:

Compaction and waterlogging
Poor quality soil for plants
Uneven turf as the soil 'settles'

This is the big issue for me - I'd like to move house to a new new-build but the gardens are so small!