Hi all,
So I did a job for a customer recently which involved swapping out an incredibly dangerous and poorly installed unvented hot water cylinder installation. It was my first time installing an UHWC by myself as I've recently started my own business. Before I started the job I realised that I needed to notify the local building control authority. This was very briefly mentioned during my G3 HWSS course by the teacher and he purposely made it sound like he didn't care about it. I've never heard anybody ever talk about it or mention it outside of that situation. I also looked into applying to become part of APHC but quickly realised that I'd need to spend several days of my time on paperwork to submit to APHC and the expected standard of said paperwork had not been clearly laid out so I left it to another time when I had some.
Anyways, after applying for the BC to certify the install they sent me an email demanding that in order to get it installed I had to pay £700! The total job was only billed at £3750 (which in my area is a very good deal). The cylinder was a dual immersion 400L indirect so I don't know if that would've increased the price. Needless to say, I informed my customers who thankfully laughed it off before we agreed that we would ignore it after me explaining that we could all get in serious legal issues if we didn't pay.
Firstly, I think this amount of money is shocking and sickening. Why so much? To send somebody out (which in all likelihood they wouldn't) to check that my work does, in fact, meet standards - because it did. It really did. The job was immaculate. I'm the sort of guy to brasso and label the Damning pipes and I take my job really seriously and study plumbing constantly in my spare time.
Secondly, they've now forced my hand to open myself up to litigation which would bankrupt my business.
Thirdly, it means that I couldn't Benchmark it or register it with the cylinder manufacturer or get any of their warranties filled out in case it ever came back to me.
To get to the point ... would you guys have paid it? How many of you are APHC registered? How many of you actually register your installs with BC and if you don't can you still fill out the Benchmark and warranties - the last thing I want to do is cause issues for my customers because I can't certify the work. Does anybody else think the amount is ridiculous or is this commonplace?
Or, am I overthinking this?
So I did a job for a customer recently which involved swapping out an incredibly dangerous and poorly installed unvented hot water cylinder installation. It was my first time installing an UHWC by myself as I've recently started my own business. Before I started the job I realised that I needed to notify the local building control authority. This was very briefly mentioned during my G3 HWSS course by the teacher and he purposely made it sound like he didn't care about it. I've never heard anybody ever talk about it or mention it outside of that situation. I also looked into applying to become part of APHC but quickly realised that I'd need to spend several days of my time on paperwork to submit to APHC and the expected standard of said paperwork had not been clearly laid out so I left it to another time when I had some.
Anyways, after applying for the BC to certify the install they sent me an email demanding that in order to get it installed I had to pay £700! The total job was only billed at £3750 (which in my area is a very good deal). The cylinder was a dual immersion 400L indirect so I don't know if that would've increased the price. Needless to say, I informed my customers who thankfully laughed it off before we agreed that we would ignore it after me explaining that we could all get in serious legal issues if we didn't pay.
Firstly, I think this amount of money is shocking and sickening. Why so much? To send somebody out (which in all likelihood they wouldn't) to check that my work does, in fact, meet standards - because it did. It really did. The job was immaculate. I'm the sort of guy to brasso and label the Damning pipes and I take my job really seriously and study plumbing constantly in my spare time.
Secondly, they've now forced my hand to open myself up to litigation which would bankrupt my business.
Thirdly, it means that I couldn't Benchmark it or register it with the cylinder manufacturer or get any of their warranties filled out in case it ever came back to me.
To get to the point ... would you guys have paid it? How many of you are APHC registered? How many of you actually register your installs with BC and if you don't can you still fill out the Benchmark and warranties - the last thing I want to do is cause issues for my customers because I can't certify the work. Does anybody else think the amount is ridiculous or is this commonplace?
Or, am I overthinking this?
