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Rant - plumbers

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KeepItSimpleStupid

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These guys are supposed to be "professionals", but in one experience they should not be allowed anywhere near plumbing fixture. Moen, the fixture manufacturer should not be making faucets either. The spray head returns to stream every time you use it.

So, 40 dishes, 2x/day * 365 days is a lot of selecting of the spray head. the old Delta stayed where you put it. Rinse is rinse and fill is fill. Mom has arthritis in the hands and this is plain miserable, so the spray only gets used occasionally.

The faucet, a Moen 7560C, Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Moen-7560C-E...TF8&qid=1482985774&sr=8-1&keywords=moen+7560c is an expensive faucet. The plumber charged $900.00 to install it. He had nearly nothing to do for the install. Remove the old one and install. Connections were a couple of flex lines. 2 year warranty parts and labor from the plumbing company. Oh, they do wear fancy booties.

It leaks within 6 months. They come out and all they do is tighten the cartridge nut.

In another 6+ months, it leaks yet again. This time I make noise. I was offered a $120 refund or they would install any faucet of my choice. I chose the former because I can't trust them. That leak really messed up the sink surround and that still isn't fixed at 100% yet.

So, I looked at the issues and decided that Teflon tape should hold the faucet nut in place. So far, so good. Moen, really has a class of fit issue. I then decided that whatever O-ring they use isn't suitable for a bearing (no water seal here), so I replaced them with relatively expensive Polyurethane O-rings. Again, so far so good.

So, we are probably at the 2 year plus mark and what happens this time? The nut attaching the faucet to the sink goes loose. More water where it doesn't belong.
So, Teflon tape and or Locktite 222 should work. I chose Locktite 222. I also used plumber's putty around the 3 penetrations. A stupid plastic piece can't make a sink seal.

There is a lot said, when you do it yourself and a "lot more" said when the manufacturer of the fixture which offers a lifetime parts warranty really messes up.

If I mess up, that's one thing. If a professional messes up, I'm angry.

Rant over.
 
Plumbers may possibly be the worst, I'm not saying all plumbers, but it seems as though most "trades" have a scale to which the "professionals" fit... Apart from plumbers... Excellent or crap are the only two categories..

My business partner has just had a brand new combi boiler installed... The installation engineer couldn't even solder a Yorkshire fitting, stating that he was never trained on them... My business partner ended up installing all the pipework and then was charged for it!!!

The last plumber I used fitted a gas fire.... I fed the pipework right the way through to the fire place... He fitted the fire... tested for leaks ( all of my work) and passed the job off.... After replacing the floorboards and plastering the wall, my wife was convinced there was a leak.... I pulled up the floorboards (convinced it was my joints ) only to find out the only joint I didn't do was leaking... Ooh aren't they good...

I fitted the the fire in the back room completely.... I had a friend from the gas board, come and pass it off... Don't talk to me about plumbers....
 
Some years ago I had a combination boiler central heating system installed in the house.
Came home from work, found that they installed the boiler heating vent flu discharging into the veranda!!!:nailbiting:

It was corrected at their expense.
 
Afraid it is not just plumbers- incompetence is endemic, even down to shop assistants.

Just an example when I wanted to hire a skip (dumpster) over the phone:

"I'mFionatheskiphiremanagerforResistRecyclehowmayIhelpyou".
"Is that Resist Recycle?"
"Yes, I just told YOU!"
"What is your name?"
"F-E-O-N-A."
"Hello Fiona, can you tell me how much your 4.7 cubic meter skips are?"
"I need to know HOW LONG for"
"Ten days"
"I will have to check."
... long pause
"Ten Pounds per day."
"That can't be right!"
... long pause
"Its £290 plus 17.5% tax, and, like I said, £10 per day!"
"That's unusual, you normally make no charge for an initial period."
"I will have to check."
... long pause.
"You get the first fourteen days free, and after that it is £100."
"Is that per day?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure. That sounds very high!"
"YES!"
"Can you check that?"
"Just wait."
... long pause.
"It's £100 for 2 weeks or £10 per day.

.. and so it went on.

In the end I put the phone down and tried another skip hire company.

"Hi, Mike here from Always Skips.
"Hi Hike. How much are your 4.7 cubic meter skips?"
"250 Pounds. There is no charge for the first 14, days, then there is a charge of 7 Pounds per day for as long as you want."
If you are putting the skip on a public road, you need a license from the council, which will cost 170 Pounds and will take two days."
By the way, if you delay the order for a couple of days, we have a 10% discount in August"

Guess which company I hired the skip from.:)

spec
 
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Mt father and I did a plumbing project. I forget how old I was, but probably younger than 18. I did all of the joints but one and the one he did leaked. I basically learned from dad how to do plumbing. Then I learned one finer points of pipe soldering from a professional machinist.

I was asked to help a co-worker change a water heater and he wanted to learn how to do plumbing, basically because the copper lines in his just bought house had a lot of pin-holes. I said, I would help and I said, I'll do the hard to do joints and you can do the others, meaning if it would be a real pain to re-do that particular joint if it leaked, I would do it.

This was his very first plumbing project. I can't remember if there were joints that had to be re-done.
Everything went well and months later later, he moved a washer a long distance and had no leaks.

There's a few more areas that need some plumbing (hot and cold water supply lines) done in a 60 YO house. This would mostly be the installation of ball shuttoff valves and the replacement of an outdoor faucet. I did make one "mistake" that I haven't bothered to correct. I added a diverter tub spout and used right angle bends instead of a 45 degree angle bends, so water hangs out in the tub spout to shower line. I wished I would have used a two valve version of the mixing valve (one valve for tub and the other for shower). It makes more sense when you have someone taking sit down showers with a shower wand. I need to replace the tub stopper too. Apparently, the cable versions are better. Then, there is a drain issue I have to deal with.
 
I was fortunate when I learned my trade that I received training from highly skilled individuals, also I had almost daily contact with other skilled trades, one of them was a real Plumber most of the pipe work back then was lead (Plomb), and he taught me how to wipe a joint.
His looked like they had been turned on a lathe!
It came in very useful when lead/armoured power cable connections had to be made which required a sweated joint.
Max.
 
In 2016 I found a plumber on a 'Checkatrade' site, he was local and had 125 good reviews, he changed my 19 y old Gloworm boiler in a day, it was my diy central heating, he said he had never seen such a good job . I gave him 10/10 . I guess as the years go by I will be "getting a little man in" more often . It's decorating i loath !
 
These guys are supposed to be "professionals", but in one experience they should not be allowed anywhere near plumbing fixture. Moen, the fixture manufacturer should not be making faucets either. The spray head returns to stream every time you use it.

You're not the only one who has seen that problem and it's not just plumbers who fit the description either.

To be honest the majority of service and repair work I have done in my life has been going in and fixing what the 'professionals' did wrong or could not solve themselves despite their 'years of experience' and 'certified training'.
To be honest I have come to loath general contractors with a passion now. Plumbing, HVAC, Electrical, construction, you name it. The vast majority are grossly over paid idiots working for grossly incompetent greedy scumbags now if they themselves aren't that on their own.

This week I learned of their latest and greatest money making screw the customer scam they have now. 'Liability fee' which basically is that they give you a up front ******** story about how how expensive their liability insurance is and how it limits them from doing anything but for a fee they will do the work anyway. :mad:

The going rate on their 'liability fee' now is $100 every time they show up (and they will not show up if you don't agree to it) and that's on top of their already $100 fee just for showing up and there 1 hour minimum billable charge regardless of whether they are on site for a minute or a full hour even if they don't actually fix or do what they're hired to do anyway.

On top of that being you paid them the liability fee they are absolved of all wrongdoing and any resulting damage regardelss of how badly they do their job. You paid them and thusly contractually agreed that they hold zero liability for anything they do event its deadly wrong in the end. So basically they show up and even if you tell them to go screw themselves your still out for the $100 show up charge, $100 liability fee and the $100- $200 an hour one hour minimum charge rate. :banghead:

That right there nets them a $350 - $400 charge to you even if they either don't do crap while there, or you told them to get lost for showing up late, and going by what I have seen and heard showing up late and doing crap work, so you have to call them back again, is the general operational procedure. :mad:
 
I know it's not plumbing but!!

We had to have a new leccy meter put in... Before the story, I must explain... Behind our TV is the leccy box and only one power outlet.... I bought a 4 way "fused" extension and submersed it in the wall behind the TV... Job done... A few years later we bought our son a PS3 for crimbo.. BUT!!! The PS3 had interference due to poor earthing... I visited a web site where several people were having the same issue.. Some were cutting off the preformed plug and disconnecting the ground wire.... I however took the front off the 4 way extension and just cut the earth to the last socket!!! After building, I place a label on the extension reminding everyone to not use this outlet as it has no earth and was reserved for the PS3... Still on today!!

Anywho!! The electrician promptly fitted the meter and tested his work.. Some time after he turned to me and asked who did the wiring behind the TV... "Me" said I... "Very dangerous and needs reporting" said the leccy man ... "Why" said I..

I had wired a stub to a stub to a stub?? "What"... "Its a bluddy extension" said I... Later I found out he was one of these two week trained guy's and this was his first job....

I'm dangerous..... Go figure..
 
You're not the only one who has seen that problem and it's not just plumbers who fit the description either.

To be honest the majority of service and repair work I have done in my life has been going in and fixing what the 'professionals' did wrong or could not solve themselves despite their 'years of experience' and 'certified training'.
To be honest I have come to loath general contractors with a passion now. Plumbing, HVAC, Electrical, construction, you name it. The vast majority are grossly over paid idiots working for grossly incompetent greedy scumbags now if they themselves aren't that on their own.

This week I learned of their latest and greatest money making screw the customer scam they have now. 'Liability fee' which basically is that they give you a up front ******** story about how how expensive their liability insurance is and how it limits them from doing anything but for a fee they will do the work anyway. :mad:

The going rate on their 'liability fee' now is $100 every time they show up (and they will not show up if you don't agree to it) and that's on top of their already $100 fee just for showing up and there 1 hour minimum billable charge regardless of whether they are on site for a minute or a full hour even if they don't actually fix or do what they're hired to do anyway.

On top of that being you paid them the liability fee they are absolved of all wrongdoing and any resulting damage regardelss of how badly they do their job. You paid them and thusly contractually agreed that they hold zero liability for anything they do event its deadly wrong in the end. So basically they show up and even if you tell them to go screw themselves your still out for the $100 show up charge, $100 liability fee and the $100- $200 an hour one hour minimum charge rate. :banghead:

That right there nets them a $350 - $400 charge to you even if they either don't do crap while there, or you told them to get lost for showing up late, and going by what I have seen and heard showing up late and doing crap work, so you have to call them back again, is the general operational procedure. :mad:

Hell TCM.

That is frightening but that type of thing is more and more common.

House surveyors are a good example. Basically what they say is that they will check anything they can do easily and they cannot be held responsible for any mistakes.

And in practice what they do is if they find the slightest problem with a house, then they make a big thing of it and simply advise, in a very impressive report, full of boiler plate, not to buy the house. Oh and of course they include a substantial bill for their efforts.

I was interested in a house that had a rhyne at the end of the back garden. I asked a local surveyor to check the house out with special attention to the risk of flooding. Part of his report said that the area was not a flood risk and there had been no known floods in the area. Fine I thought.

About a week later I asked one of the neighbors about flooding. He said that the area got regularly flooded and a couple of years ago it was touch and go whether his house would be flooded again. In some of the past floods the water had been up to window sill level.

When I tackled the surveyor about this he said there were no floods in the area according to his maps (he lived locally too).

Talking about electricians- we had a scare six months ago.

The lady next door ran out into the road clutching her kids and screaming. There was thick white smoke bellowing from her open door.

Once the fire had been put out it was found that the electrician, who had installed the halogen ceiling lamps, had put the plastic junction boxes on top on the lamps and the junction boxes had melted bit by bit over the years resulting in a spark which had caused a fire.:eek:

spec
 
Reminds me of house-hunting. We looked at several houses and got the next-level-up survey done from the very basic mortgage survey. On each one they pointed out a bunch of stuff that should be checked by an expert because they couldn't access the stuff to check it. So rather than pay for various experts we looked at the next one, same outcome. Gets very expensive. Never mind that these houses had all stood for ~100 years just fine. Complete waste of money.
 
Repair "ing" others was paid for mistakes sounds vaguely familiar. Nothing quite like a 60 Amp breaker (double 30) for a sub well containing a place a PEX pipe where ever just like silly string from a can, and then routing the 230 hot wire from the 3/4 HP pumps power to the standard outlets 120 max inputs then returning the Neutral to the earth connection..... didn't want to waste money on running an extra wire for the 15 and the 20 amp sockets i guess.

:Edited: For those who don't know that wiring method is dangerous that may read and go hmmm.
Afterthought all ways counts afterwards when it's realized, all most sounds after thought as a possible how to on the wiring, rather that this method will apply excessive load on the primary breaker resulting in inductive shunt loading from the primary supplying the submersible pump motor avg 230Volt resulting in damage to powered components plugged into the 120 avg volt or "lesser" sockets when wired as on pump start up and shut downs.

That in this case mentioning the wiring connected in said manner such as is not safe for an obvious aspect, an assumption of well overall the show wasn't bad at this end pretty sparks tho time to call it a day.:eek:
 
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Keep has started something with this thread. Another pet hate is the motor trade, in the UK anyway.

In one instance, our Peugeot started making the most awful noise you have ever heard every time you accelerated or decelerated. It sounded like a machine gun going off in the cabin.

I immediately went to the main Peugeot agent and they said that it sounded like the gearbox was shot, but that a full diagnosis would cost a minimum of £90UK plus 17.5% tax. That did not seem like a good deal, so I went to one of the big discount motor repairers.

Their Peugeot expert was put on the job. He elevated the car on a lift and by poking about with a long screw-driver while an assistant revved the engine, he was able to reproduce the noise. After about 30 minutes of poking about he discovered that if he pushed the exhaust in a particular place the noise would stop. So he proclaimed that the exhaust was the problem and needed to be replaced.

I was not convinced about the exhaust, but as the Peugeot specialist was so emphatic, I had the exhaust changed and, of course, the noise was still there.

I then went to another couple of specialists who were completely baffled. So I just drove the car as it was for about six months. After a time I became quite skilled at balancing the acceleration and deceleration so that the noise did not start up.

Then, quite by chance, I was in a small one-man garage, and in passing mentioned the Peugeot noise. The owner said to bring the car in and he would have a look. So that afternoon I took the Pug around to his garage.

He started the engine, opened the bonnet (hood) and levered the engine around with his hand and managed to reproduce the hammering sound. He then peered into the depths of the engine compartment and said, 'It is the middle engine stabilizer- shot to pieces'. He then disappeared into his office and came back a minute later and said that a replacement part would be available at 8am the next morning, so I if I wanted to bring the car around after that time, he would fix the fault.

Next day I dropped the car off at the garage and went for a pint at the pub.

An hour later I got a phone call to say that the car was ready to collect. And the cost: £40UK labor plus £75UK for the replacement part.

And, to my wife's absolute delight, the Pug was back to its normal smooth, quiet self.

spec
 
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so I went to one of the big discount motor repairers.

....... So he proclaimed that the exhaust was the problem and needed to be replaced.
Now let me guess, these guys mostly change tyres and exhaust pipes "Kwik" ...ly.

Let me tell you a story....
Many years ago I was driving to work on a cold snowy icy morning, I was following a car which was a couple of hundred yards in front off me.
He turned up the little side road in the middle of nowhere, the way I used to go to cut off a long stretch of the main road.
As I was going along the side road I thought, "that guy should be around that corner and up the hill by now".
When I got around the corner, there was the guy standing by the side of the road with the car on its side in the shrubbery.
Being a helpful type, I offered him a lift to civilisation, and it turned out that he worked for the same company that I did, just that he was normally based at a works in another town so I did not know him.

Come time to go home again, as I was walking through the reception area, there he was again, so I enquired about his car.
"No problem" he said, "I phoned Kwik... and they pulled it out and checked it over in the workshop. All that was wrong with it was the radiator mountings had broken, so they replaced the radiator and it is OK now".

Call me Mr Cynical, but no way did that car break anything on its gentle slide into the shrubbery, but Kwik... do sell radiators!

JimB
 
Anywho!! The electrician promptly fitted the meter and tested his work..

Electricians don't replace meters - it's done by minimally trained staff after a short training course.

Same applies to Gas meter replacements, the people who come to do it work for a third party company, and aren't plumbers or even Gas Safe registered.

They've been trying to replace my gas meter for many years now, and not managed it yet :D

First guy who came, took hours to find us (but didn't bother ringing the phone number he had), he then looked at the meter and said "it's an old one" - so I said "yes, that's why it's been replaced". "But it's not metric he said, so it needs an adaptor" - "so fit an adaptor" I said. He then informed me that they don't carry them, as the gas company won't pay for the adaptors - and he would have to report back, and someone else would come out with an adaptor at a later date.

At a MUCH later date, another guy came out, with exactly the same result as before :banghead:

A while after this date we had new heating fitted, which included a new pipe to connect to the gas meter - when they eventually came out again (with adaptor this time) they couldn't do the job because the meter is free-standing, and they aren't allowed to fit free-standing meters - and he couldn't fit it on the wall as the new gas pipe is in the way (and as he's not a plumber, or qualified in any way, he couldn't move the pipe).

I'm not sure when this all started, but I suspect it was last century :D

I'm hoping that as meters age they start to read low :p
 
You're probably eligible for smart meters Nigel, so you can be moved right into C21. I'm pretty sure they don't read low.
KwikFit staff used to have an unofficial mandate to try to get £200 from every customer. Don't know if it's still true. Personally I only trust small and greasy garages for work which I can't do myself...
 
Electricians don't replace meters - it's done by minimally trained staff after a short training course.

Same applies to Gas meter replacements, the people who come to do it work for a third party company, and aren't plumbers or even Gas Safe registered.

They've been trying to replace my gas meter for many years now, and not managed it yet :D

First guy who came, took hours to find us (but didn't bother ringing the phone number he had), he then looked at the meter and said "it's an old one" - so I said "yes, that's why it's been replaced". "But it's not metric he said, so it needs an adaptor" - "so fit an adaptor" I said. He then informed me that they don't carry them, as the gas company won't pay for the adaptors - and he would have to report back, and someone else would come out with an adaptor at a later date.

At a MUCH later date, another guy came out, with exactly the same result as before :banghead:

A while after this date we had new heating fitted, which included a new pipe to connect to the gas meter - when they eventually came out again (with adaptor this time) they couldn't do the job because the meter is free-standing, and they aren't allowed to fit free-standing meters - and he couldn't fit it on the wall as the new gas pipe is in the way (and as he's not a plumber, or qualified in any way, he couldn't move the pipe).

I'm not sure when this all started, but I suspect it was last century :D

I'm hoping that as meters age they start to read low :p

And yet I bet every one of those people is certified and sure they know way more than you about everything just like the typical certified licensed and bonded dumbasses we have over here in the US that work as contractors.:banghead:

They make $100+K a year drive around in 1 - 2 year old decked out service vehicles with every high end tool (new in the box) known yet have no clue how to use them (that's why they are still new and in the box) and have near zero actual parts or related gear to do their jobs, they don't know anything of value about that they charge you outrageous fees for not actually doing, and will straight faced whine to you about how poor and over worked they are, and it takes at least 5 of them to do a basic job like yours that any old school tech could have done in a few tens of minutes with basic hand tools and a general collection of fittings and adapters he would have carried around with him in old 5 gallon bucket as standard work practice. :mad:
 
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