Structural wall DIY

The person doing the work usually has adequate public liability insurance and its sensible for a house holder to check a trades person has liability insurance.

Helptobuy18.Ask your insurance company.Email (dont phone) them and see what they come up with,they can impose an extra one off payment to cover single building events.

good luck,enjoy the dust.

Helptobuy18 wrote: »

Now it gets interesting, my girlfriend's dad is an ex builder and has done a couple of these jobs before and reckons we could get it done in a weekend excluding plastering. He doesn't want cash but I'll pay him . My only issue with this is the insurance aspect, and something going wrong and the house falling in. Is there a DIY insurance I can get.

Coming to it from a slightly different perspective, if the girlfriend's dad is competent, then the risk of him causing the house to collapse should be low, and therefore the likelihood of having to claim on a DIY insurance policy is vanishingly small.

If he isn't competent and causes the house to collapse, then you are likely to be too busy helping to arrange funerals (unless one of them is your own) and perhaps helping the police with their enquiries, to really be that interested in making a claim on the insurance, even though the insurance may help pay for some of the costs involved.

In other words, if you have doubts about his competence then you shouldn't be using him. Buildings don't collapse during building works due to accidents, they collapse due to incompetent builders/DIYers.

I'd suggest you need to think more carefully about involving the girlfriend's dad. In aviation safety there is something called the 'power gradient' - things go wrong where the less experienced first officer is scared to challenge the decisions/actions of the more experienced pilot.

You could find yourself in the same position - for example if your structural engineer specifies a 200mm bearing but the girlfriend's dad says 100mm is enough, who are you going to go with, and how will the dad react if you (with little experience) tell him you want something different to what he (with lots of experience) wants. It is your house, but will you be allowed to make your own decisions about it? Having the girlfriend's dad do work for you could be a quick way to make her an ex-girlfriend if the project doesn't work out well.

And if the girlfriend's dad's suggestion is to do the job in a weekend without any involvement by a structural engineer and building control (on the basis he's done a couple before and thinks he knows what he's doing) then his competence has to be questioned and you should find yourself a proper builder, rather than trying to get insurance in case he makes your house fall down.

Putting in a beam isn't necessarily difficult or complicated (if at least one person involved knows what they are doing and has competent assistance)and can certainly be done in a short time and the entire job completed in phases.

What is essential however is that your calculations and plans are drawn up by a suitably qualified and competent person. It is also imperative that the joists above are suitably supported throughout.

OP your post is a little unclear, are you saying you will get the plans drawn up professionally, apply for building regs then with gf's dad put in the beam? If so, if you're sure he is a competent builder then it could work out fine, but you must follow the plans to the letter and get everything checked and signed off. If you go off piste so to speak your house will be potentially unsafe, uninsurable and unmortgageable.