Hi,
You may have seen my post from 2-3 weeks ago about the troubles I was having with cowboy builders/electrician/plumber/gas engineer that I had the misfortune of hiring.
Today, I decided to lift up the floorboard to see how they ran the wiring and pipes around the joist and was horrified to find their "handy" work.
The joists in the attached photo span about 3.2m (you can see a wall to the right but that's just a partition wall and the joist runs under the bathroom behind the wall). The joist depth is about 18cm.
I lifted up the board to find that the electrician and the plumber "liberally" made notches and holes everywhere.
1. By pure luck, the notches are located between 0.07x and 0.25x of the joist span from one end (between 23cm and 80cm), however one notch is about 7cm deep on a 18cm joist! That's nearly cutting the depth of joist by 40%. The plumber angled the pipes down just so that he could avoid cutting an old pipe that was running along a joist.
2. The electrician drilled multiple holes. They are all located under 80cm from the end of the joist (0.25x joist span of 3.2m), so to start off with, they are at the wrong location.
3. To make the matters worse, some holes are directly under the notch that the plumber made
4. And multiple holes were made too close to each other
5. Not all holes are in the centre (depth-wise) of the joist. Some are too close to the top of the joist.
Luckily I have yet to pay £3,900 to the builder, who brought in the plumber and the electrician (they are all friends and family members).
What do you suggest I do to fix this? I can't trust these cowboys to come back to my home to do further damage. I am thinking, get a proper electrician, plumber and joiner to re-run the cables, re-laid the pipe and sister the joists to strengthen them again. (And only pay the cowboy builder what remains after the proper traders, if there is any left that is)
Thanks.
You may have seen my post from 2-3 weeks ago about the troubles I was having with cowboy builders/electrician/plumber/gas engineer that I had the misfortune of hiring.
Today, I decided to lift up the floorboard to see how they ran the wiring and pipes around the joist and was horrified to find their "handy" work.
The joists in the attached photo span about 3.2m (you can see a wall to the right but that's just a partition wall and the joist runs under the bathroom behind the wall). The joist depth is about 18cm.
I lifted up the board to find that the electrician and the plumber "liberally" made notches and holes everywhere.
1. By pure luck, the notches are located between 0.07x and 0.25x of the joist span from one end (between 23cm and 80cm), however one notch is about 7cm deep on a 18cm joist! That's nearly cutting the depth of joist by 40%. The plumber angled the pipes down just so that he could avoid cutting an old pipe that was running along a joist.
2. The electrician drilled multiple holes. They are all located under 80cm from the end of the joist (0.25x joist span of 3.2m), so to start off with, they are at the wrong location.
3. To make the matters worse, some holes are directly under the notch that the plumber made
4. And multiple holes were made too close to each other
5. Not all holes are in the centre (depth-wise) of the joist. Some are too close to the top of the joist.
Luckily I have yet to pay £3,900 to the builder, who brought in the plumber and the electrician (they are all friends and family members).
What do you suggest I do to fix this? I can't trust these cowboys to come back to my home to do further damage. I am thinking, get a proper electrician, plumber and joiner to re-run the cables, re-laid the pipe and sister the joists to strengthen them again. (And only pay the cowboy builder what remains after the proper traders, if there is any left that is)
Thanks.
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