Owning your own home

Getting our bath stone stripped currently. Paint was hiding a polyfiller horror show as it turns out.

Luckily brick wasn't painted

Quote sanity check required. No heating or hot water with a 6 month old in the house so time is of the essence;

Following David's recent visit to your property, please see below our full boiler installation quote.

Quote brief

Supply and install Vaillant ecoFIT Pure 825 combination boiler
Free 7 year manufacturers warranty (parts and labour included)
Free registration with the Gas Safe Register and local building authority
Total price £2,295 + VAT including initial visit discount

About PGS

Established for over 12 years PGS offers expert advice, installation and aftercare.
All work fully insured and supported by our customer satisfaction guaranteed pledge pgs-services.co.uk/service-level-promise­.
If you choose PGS we will make sure you are happy throughout the process and long in to the future.
Please confirm receipt of this quote and any queries you may have. I would be very happy to assist you and help organise a convenient date for the works.

Thank you in advance for your time and I look forward to hearing from you.

PGS Boiler Installation Quote

Date: 20-11-2019

Recommended boiler to be supplied & fitted
Vaillant ecoFIT Pure 825 combination condensing boiler

Installation details
Remove and dispose of existing boiler
Locate new boiler in same location
Run condense to existing condense pipe
Re-use existing Hive controls
Carry out a full system cleanse
Notify new appliances (as required) with the Gas Safe Register and the relevant Local Authority

Parts, materials and heating controls
Magnetic filtration unit
Standard flue kit
System cleansers and inhibitors
Electrolytic scale reducer
Copper pipe, fixtures and fittings

Manufacturer warranty details
7 year FREE extended manufacturer's warranty: covering parts and labour for all boiler breakdowns or malfunctions
Price £3,045 + VAT
Discount for initial visit £120 + VAT
Total discounted price £2,295 + VAT

I paid 2k + VAT recently in south london. Which was good.

This is Saarf too. I'm thinking to just go for it. Gas supply was replaced yesterday (whole street is being done). Boiler worked fine afterwards, packed in this morning. As they say replacing the gas supply shouldn't affect it and the tech I paid to come out couldn't prove either way, I'm on my own. Could replace two parts but the make is no longer supported (Heat Line) even though it's 5 years old and that wouldn't guarantee a fix. Would also take at least a week to get the parts.

Install of boiler, and central heating system in Edinburgh was £7200 including vat. Which was a slightly more expensive boiler than yours. Paid a premium as they felt like a very professional operation.

Seems fair. I think that's the same as my boiler that I had fitted at the beginning of the year, and that cost the best part of £5k including VAT. My installation did include some whizzy touch screen remote thingy that I've never used, and it did involve scaffolding due to the position of the boiler, so I imagine that would represent a decent chunk of the difference.

Edit: Just checked - mine's actually an EcoTec Plus 832 (natch), and the bill was £3.9k inc VAT. Still think that's a reasonable price for yours, particularly as the boiler itself costs the thick end of a grand.

Cheers all. Pulled the trigger and should have it in by Friday. Luckily working from home means that I can be an unwashed mess until then. Who am I kidding, that's my normal state even with a functioning combi.

F*uk me never use Platform to get a mortgage, round and round with question are question, then everything is done on their portal by our mortgage broker, apart from the 4 page document my employer has just had to fill out.

What a joke

2 days? Easy. When my boiler broke down it took me just over 4 months to get it replaced.

Boiler bro!

I had the same boiler fitted for 1989 about nine months ago

You can do it without an agent. Get tenants from open rent (so no one gets screwed with fees) deposit in the scheme and call out insurance. Key thing is getting decent tenants in and sorting things out quickly when they go wrong.

Should I be pissed off about the quality of this raking out?

1 Attachment

Is that bricks or some kind of terracotta tile? Either way yes. They've cut chunks out of the bricks/tiles.

Bricks, they're pretty thin joints <8mm, but I thought that was the point of paying someone, that they'd do a better job of it than I would.

Not sure what to tell you really.

Its not a good job, they've clearly just tried to get it done as quickly as possible and either not paid attention or not cared. Looks like they've used an angle grinder when an arbour saw would have been more appropriate.

Fuck.

Edit, yes they've used an angle grinder. Any suggestions on how to approach this appreciated, the damage is done to the bricks now, but equally the job is only half way done, so I'm not about to kick them off site.

Are the bricks now at risk of frost damage?

Looks like they've ground off the faces of the bricks too, have they?

No, it's just the type of brick round here, almost like engineering bricks

Assuming it's getting repointed it will mean the joints are wider, would that be terrible? I can't see how it affects the integrity of the brick if its repointed to a good standard.

Approach it with regards to your contractors? I'd let them know nicely that you are less than impressed with the standard of their work so far and that you expect them to buck their ideas up moving forward. You're right about the damage being done there is very little that can be done to make good now short of rebuilding the wall. Make sure that the pointing is top notch if they do a really good job then the wall may yet look good. If they do the same standard job as they did with the raking out it will look shit. Ask the contractor what type of pointing they are doing check with this guide:

Any from the left hand side are good.

They look like standard extruded engineering bricks from your photo. If so there is virtually no risk of frost damage as they are pretty much impervious to water penetration. Even if they aren't frost damage requires more than a couple of freeze/thaw cycles to set in. It would however be a good idea to keep them covered if possible (again assuming they're not engineering bricks) to prevent water getting trapped behind the new pointing.

Probably right, bit of a shame as I was weirdly fond of the thin joints, thought they looked quite elegant. Probably shouldn't have taken for granted that they wouldn't just cut them wider.

Cheers, I'll quiz them on what pointing they're using tomorrow.

Edit: spoke to the next man up and the gaffer, who both seemed much more clued up and sympathetic to my concerns. Their argument was they use a 10mm all over to get consistency (although I'm sure it also has a lot to do with time saving) and to be fair, there are some gaps much bigger than 10mm due to movement, so hopefully it'll even those out, visually. He'll be doing bucket handle pointing so it should look neat in the end hopefully.

Is this the same property you wanted info on lime pointing etc?
Or is that cement?

I remember one of the lime instructors on a course I went saying lots of mortar in South Wales has that black hue due to using the excess mining waste from coal mining being mixed with lime etc as an aggregate
I've not seen that before but reminded me. Might not be the same stuff tho

Compressor start relay has failed.

Or worst case, the compressor has seized.

Our was similar earlier this year after 20 something years of use. The part numbers on the relay weren't very helpful in finding a replacement, so I dropped it off at the local refrigeration maintenance place. They jump started the compressor which proved it was working, then fitted an alternative start/protection relay.