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At what point do you tell them just to knock it all down and start again.
Terrifying though. How does this happen?
Howard-
When starting out and getting quotes for the work the owner decided that he wanted a "turnkey" fixed price contract. He invited firms to bid for the job and went for the cheapest option, he's told me how much he was quoted and it was laughable, the figure was at least £80k short of what it should have been so it is obvious that the firm didn't have the experience to bid for that job properly. Inevitably the guy ran out of money and the job wasn't done so he was fired. Unfortunately when looking for someone to finish off the work the owner made the same mistake again so he had cowboys trying to put right work that had already gone pear shaped.
I actually don't think that either of the firms set out to rip him off and that in both instances took on work that they massively under priced so started cutting corners to minimise their losses.
It also doesn't help that the owner is in denial about how much he's fucked up and is understandably upset at having pissed so much (borrowed) money up the wall. He's currently around £65k over what I think would have been a decent price for the work in the first place.
Bobbo
New update from hell:
Sparx was in today for the first time. After a couple of hours he came to find me looking as white as a sheet. Unsurprisingly the whole house needs re-wiring. Everything is labelled in polish (even the switches on consumer unit) in illegible hand-writing. There are no RCDs in the consumer unit. There are about 30 times more junction boxes than needed and they are randomly dotted around the house each junction box is crammed with wagos. Perhaps the biggest surprise the sparx found though was that every time a cable terminated the last 4 inches of each wire was stripped and coloured sleeves were added; red to neutral, black to live and solid green to earth.
The Sparx is of the opinion that whoever did the wiring was actively trying to kill someone.
Oh and the landscape gardeners took one look at the roof and ran. As did the three other roofing firms that subsequently turned up to quote for the job. Not sure how to proceed with that one.