Bathroom falling apart

Aiysha007

Last summer we had a new bathroom suite put in. I got online and ordered the basin with vanity unit, bath tub and toilet from various sites online and we spent all in all just over £1500 on material which included taps and tiles etc...

Anyway, I was very pleased with the bargains we'd found online... so we hired a builder to fit it all in. His cost came to £1500 and he took about 3 weeks to rip the old bathroom and tiles out and fit the new stuff in...

The quality of work he left behind was quite atrocious but we forgave it considering how 'cheap' his services were since we'd got higher quotes from elsewhere. So we ignored the uneven tile work, and the cabinet door not closing properly, and the loo roll holder slightly bent etc etc... However one thing that annoyed us especially was he'd fixed the expensive towel rail the wrong way around - as the sticker on it visible to us says 'Top and Rear' - which we obviously wouldn't have been able to see had it been fixed the right way round. To make things worse - a few days after he left the ceiling of the living room directly below started to leak and we realised the towel rail was actually dripping... he did come back and do something to it which stopped the leak... but within a week the waste (I think that's what its called) below the sink inside the vanity unit kept dripping everytime we turned the tap. He did come back again and fix that somehow... and that hasn't been a problem for about 8 months but lately I've noticed the shelf in the vanity unit is damp - although there isn't as much water there as the was before.

OK so the problems I've described have been things we could put up with guess - we aren't fussy people - but what's been worrying me now is that the bath is now leaking. Every time someone uses the upstairs bath the ceiling in the living room starts to drip on one edge and I'm worried the ceiling might come down one day. Another thing that has also deteriorated is the toilet - the flush is never ending - water is always collecting in the back of the toilet (you know the bit which stores water for the next flush) and its never ending... so apart from the environmental costs its actually bringing up our water bills...

Other problems in the bathroom include - the towel rail has now completely dislodged - the sealant around the bath is coming away and the hot water tap doesn't stop dripping - which has now been turned off completely by the British Gas guy who tried to help - but he couldn't anything but turn it off completely.

OK - so that's our annoying bathroom existance - I'm sure you can see its not a very environmentally friendly or financially stable situation - as the waterbills are sky high - and the money we spent on buying good quality products (e.g. the bath is from bathstores) has been wasted as we aren't actually enjoying them as aught to be.

so my question is - can we claim a proper fix through our insurance? I was talking to my brother about this and he believes we have to pay an excess on it - which he says is £500 - and if we did that, the insurance will come and fix a very minor part of the problem - like may be replace the sealant around the bath? But I believe the sealant is coming away because may be the idiot builder didn't put the bath on level ground and may be its sinking? So, in order to address the bathroom as a whole through an insurance claim - do we need to wait for the living room ceiling to come down first???

ormus

you cannot claim on insurance for maintenance on a house. nor bad workmanship. get the plumber back in.
you can claim for the water damage. but they may take the view that the workmanship is to blame and refuse to pay out.
in any case you can probably fix all those problems for less than your excess.

Ionkontrol

Good work isn't cheap, cheap work isn't good.

Get the original builder back to fix the problems.

phill99

Strange as it may seem, household insurance doesn't exist as a free maintenance service.

It exists to fix the consequences of perils, such as floods, fire etc.

Your brother unfortunately, is incorrect.

If anything is needed to stop the leak, then that cost is down to you. The insurance will pay for any damage caused bt the leak.

If I were you, I would kick this guy into touch, source a reputable plumber to sort out the problems and take heed in the expression "Pay cheap, pay twice". Its evident that the guy isn't a professional and you need to accept some level of liability as you admitted that you have had it done on the cheap.

Aiysha007

Thanks everyone for your reply... I guess its clear now we will have to fork out again to sort it out, and insurance won't cover it... glad I got that confirmed here. Thanks everyone

keystone

Aiysha007 wrote: »

Thanks everyone for your reply... I guess its clear now we will have to fork out again to sort it out, and insurance won't cover it... glad I got that confirmed here. Thanks everyone

Yes and no. If he reputable (even if utterly incompetant) he should be amenable to fixing this at his cost or having the damage caused fixed against his own PL insurance - if he's got any that is. If he's that bad I'd be thinking about trading standards anyway - how on earth you came to accept a shoddy finish in the first place is beyond me TBH.

Otherwise Phil and Ion are spot-on - you can have a proper job or you can have a cheap job - you can't have a cheap, proper job.

Cheers

sillygoose

Argh! :mad:

I have an en-suite that needs a refit. I have never met anyone that has had a bathroom done thats gone well, never ever, no matter what the cost. resigned to the fact the only guaranteed way to avoid the hassle is to do it myself properly. Would rather not, but trying to find trades that give a damn these days is like looking for the Holy Grail.

Bathrooms are the worst of all for potential trouble, tiles, water, electrics. They should all be wet-rooms, built in a concrete bunker 20 feet away from the house where they can cause the least grief.

keystone

sillygoose wrote: »

.................but trying to find trades that give a damn these days is like looking for the Holy Grail.

You know if I were of less an amenable disposition than I am I might just be offended by this diatribe and I'm sure others here would be too.

Cheers

Dave_Buchan

People who buy on price, pay twice.....

But quality is long remembered when price has been forgotten!

When selecting your contractors, if they are part of a government endorsed scheme i.e Trustmark you stand a greater chance of getting your money back should their workmanship be of poor quality.

themacster

If he couldn't do it properly first time I would be seriously concerned about letting him back to put his incompetent work right. He should be given the opportunity, but the best result would be to get him to agree to pay for it to be put right by someone else who actually is competent. Otherwise you're faced with accepting what you've got and paying yourself to get it rectified. The job shouldn't have taken more than about two weeks in my view. We had bathrooms at both our previous house and our current one done and they took a fortnight each. Current one done 4 years ago and no problems except silicone sealant pointing to base of shower cubicle on top of shower tray leaking slightly - I need to fix that!

dander

Personally i think rather than get the original plumber back yet again, I'd be inclined to face up to the fact that this was going to cost a chunk of extra money and get recommendations of someone good who can come in and fix all the plumbing issues as one job. I suspect they are mostly quite small and simple fixes for someone competent, so better to spend out and get it sorted.

With the toilet though, it sounds like a similar issue that happend with my toilet, and I'm not a plumber so I don't know the technical terms so hopefully someone more knowledgable can make this make sense! But... if it's a push button mechanism where you've got the red bit in the middle and the internal overflow into the pan, with the seperate black inlet valve at the side, then the seal is very sensitive. If you take the top off the black inlet valve, there's a rubber seal. Give that a clean out and make sure there's nothing that stops the seal closing properly. I had this problem with a miniscule flake of limescale - cleaned it out and the water shut off properly again. It's such an easy simple fix, it's worth trying.