Issue with Builders

[Kelly2323]

Hi

Hoping someone can help me!

We are currently having a large side extension and we instructed a main contractor to do this. It was supposed to be finished mid December (14 week project) but has overrun considerably with no reason why, the builders just seem very slow. Currently they are estimating to finish mid February. We have told them it needs to be earlier as we are due to remortgage in February and want to do so with the extension finished. They knew from the beginning we wanted it complete before Christmas and even the week before seemed to think they could still get it finished somehow.

During November/December they started the roof and almost daily left our existing home at risk of damage from rain. Unfortunately we have suffered bad water damage to all the rooms that join the new extension as the builders didn’t ensure it was watertight when they left each night when joining the old roof to new roof.

My husband is good at DIY and spent many evenings/weekends making good the exposed areas the builders left to avoid further damage. We asked our builder to return to site to correct several times but he wasn’t interested and asked my husband to do it.

We are getting another contractor to repair the water damaged areas and we will be deducting this from our main contractors next payment. But we don’t know what to do about the time my husband has spent fixing what the builders should have done. He was on the roof at night in the dark and even had to repair our conservatory roof on Christmas Eve as one of the builders stood on it and bent something which caused more water to come in. We want to deduct an amount of money for my husbands time but don’t know what would be reasonable?
If he hadn’t done the repairs we probably would have had to have moved out as the damage would have destroyed so much of our existing property.
The first night we had a leak water we found water dripping into our then 2 month olds bed while she slept! We moved into the spare room that night.

We are so fed up but don’t know what we can reasonably deduct for the hassle? Any help would be much appreciated!

Thanks

I think you need to have a meeting and tell them you are looking to deduct money from the final bill. I doubt they will be impressed though , it's a tricky line to navigate.

It would be probably be better for them to work with you than have you claim against their insurance.

Thanks.

I have already explained to the builder that we will be seeking a discount of some kind for the issues which he didn’t dispute but I’m sure he will when it’s payment time.

We have no trust in them to do any additional work and they don’t have the resource to complete the repairs along side finishing the extension. As we need to remortgage next month we can’t wait until they have the time.

I think we will just have to come up with what we believe is a reasonable deduction and let the battle commence from there.

I am so sorry because this is just me pouncing on a piece of juicy info I saw in your post but can I ask you a couple of questions regarding your remortgage after an extension please?

I really hope you get it sorted. I can’t imagine how frustrated you must be.

Yes! That is very much the place for it.

Sorry, wrong thread!

Sure PoisonButTasty. Basically our fixed term is due to end in February and I want to fix a new deal with hopefully a lower LTV as the house should’ve become worth more.

Ahh I see! I thought maybe you had some sort of agreement in place with your bank and the work had to be completed to a certain stage before you could do that. Thank you :)

I would be contacting a solicitor and going down the route of a small claims court.

Not your question but regarding the remortgage we were in the same situation of need to rush and finish the build to remortgage, we applied for the remortgage and sent the planning permission document and then expected them to come and inspect as we were even relying on the work to improve the loan to value, anyway they just approved it on our say so and never actually checked a thing! We were a bit shocked!

We also made a remortgage application during a build. We also couldn’t wait until after as had a deal finishing - they don’t really care about the finish we found out and valued the house as the larger size. Is it watertight now? If so, I think you could go ahead with the application.

No advice on managing your builder. Sounds very tricky.

Thanks for the remortgage advice. We are nearly watertight so I think I’ll just start the application soon and see if they’ll accept it with the property not finished. Who is your mortgage with?

As for the builders I think we are going to terminate our contract with them and get another builder in to complete it. I’m going to see citizens advice next week.

I was hoping that wind and watertight would be enough for the banks valuation so this is good news for me! Not sure we can afford to even get it to that stage though

We are with Santander i think and used their legal, i think they asked if we had done any building work and we put yes but they didn't specifically ask if the house was totally finished. So they never really knew. But i think from their point of view as long as it's weather tight and has a working kitchen, bathroom, toilet then that's good enough.

I would be getting an independent report on the quality of the work and the cost of putting right the damage and tell the builders they won’t be receiving any more money. Probably a bit late in the day for you to consider, but we never employ anyone without seeing evidence of their liability insurance. Luckily for us that paid off as one cowboy flicked varnish all over our new Amtico floor when varnishing the skirting boards. The whole floor had to be replaced which his insurers paid up for.

Thanks all. We do have a copy of their liability insurance.

So we terminated our contract with them and have sourced an independent person to check the quality of the work complete so far. We also have a few different contractors coming to quote to complete the build.
He is still demanding money but we are being as fair as we can be and saying we will resolve the financial dispute once we know the costs to complete and repair the damages. He’s not happy and has threatened to come and take what they believe we haven’t paid for. We are certain they will owe us once we have all the figures. They are collecting their tools tomorrow and I am nervous about them coming here following the threats. We have told them we will put everything on the roadside for them to collect as we do not feel comfortable with them stepping foot on our property anymore.