Bottom of joists drilled and taped up wagos

[JohnW2]

How someone can refer to you as mate AND pal in the same sentence is beyond me.

You obviously haven't lived - and at least there were not any occurrences of " bro' ", "bud/buddy", "partner/pardner" etc. etc.

I have to say that even when they use seeming more 'respectful' words, like "guv", "boss", "chief" etc, I find it pretty irritating - and some even seem have have a way of using words like "Sir" and "Ma'am" which makes them sound fairly pejorative!

Having said that, I don't doubt that some people will be irritated by the way I speak, and/or the words I use - so maybe we ought to accept that some of it should come down to "vive la difference"?!

Kind Regards, John

 

[markyd1]

Have you tried Trading standards...and another thing to do is post the pics on the NICEIC twitter page and relay some of the worries you have about their complaints procedure they dont like that because everyone can see it

 

[OvertonPlumber]

Pretty much normal for most sparkies the drilling and notching. If theres a shortcut they will find it.
I bet they left a nice neat pile of rubbish in centre of room as well.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

Indeed I am. I'm not really sure what to do about it. I imagine it will be fine, the joists are from the 90s, so hopefully have some structural integrity unlike today's wood

Nah, not much difference at all to modern materials. It's pretty much all been fast grown 2nd growth carp since the end of WWII, and even between the wars the quality wasn't that much better, mainly because so much timber was cut down or destroyed during WWI.

In any case this country has never really produced much by way of construction softwood. For example the really big timbers from the late 18th century weren't local - much of it came from either the east coast of the USA or Canada or from Baltic ports such as Riga, who exported softwoods from their hinterland, Finland and what is modern day Belarus. The bigger beams you see in double floors in mills and big houses are often pitch pine and north American in origin, but that was more or less clear felled in the 1930s

The Georgian parts of my house are even more fascinating. The floor joists are not massive, but they're only planed on the top (bark still on some of the other surfaces!), and the undersides of the (oak) floorboards (again, with undersides not planed0 have been 'chipped'/chiselled everywhere they cross joists so as to make them (as least originally ) 'perfect fits!

That's down to the effort required to hand plane timber prior to the introduction of machine planing (from the 1830s onwards and quite widespread by the 1860s). Take skirtings off the wall of that period (and up to about the 1870s/1880s) and you often find the back as rough as a bears arris. Hand planing is labour intensive, so you do the minimum you can get away with.

 

[markyd1]

Pretty much normal for most sparkies the drilling and notching. If theres a shortcut they will find it.
I bet they left a nice neat pile of rubbish in centre of room as well.

Isn't there a toilet somewhere that needs your head inside it

 

[Deleted member 174758]

Holes drilled next to eachother and off center.
Holes drilled and not even used.
There are even holes drilled right under notches for the heating pipes.

The holes being off centre is just poor workmanship/lack of pride in the work. The overdrilling is just not acceptable. I can't begin to tell you how much work is involved when you open up the floors or ceilings on a listed building to find this sort of shoddy workmanship. I'm sorry to say that both plumbers and sparkies are guilty of this sort of thing, but at least plumbers have an excuse for notching out for copper pipe at the tops of joists (they often have no real choice), but sparkies have none IMHO

 

[chivers67]

You can always strengthen the joists with extra wood or some metal brackets if you want to.

 

[sparkwright]

You can always strengthen the joists with extra wood or some metal brackets if you want to.

You make that sound easy.

Is there any easy way of doing it, apart from 'sistering' the joist nearly half it's span?

 

[SimonH2]

centre drilling is more to do with compression and tension of the joists which is minimal in the centre of a joist

Indeed, the centreline of the joist is neutral - neither in compression (top) or tension (bottom). That's why the regs say that's the only place its acceptable to drill them. Away from the centre of the span, there is shear along the centre line, but as long as you aren't drilling lots of holes close to the end then it's not going to be an issue.

Also, the fact that they are drilled at a steep angle hints at them not having the right tools for the job. There's no excuse really for not having a right-angle drill which would have allowed then to drill level and in the right place - the reason the holes are so low down is that they've used a straight drill at an angle from below the ceiling.

Unfortunately this is a reply I've recieved from the owner. It seems like I'm not going to be able to get through to him. What he is saying is just worrying to me.

Yeah, it's carp work, they know it's carp, but they have no intention of acknowledging that.

Do you know any builders who will do you a favour ? If you do, ask them if they'll do a quote to repair or replace all those vandalised timbers and ask the electricians how they intend to pay for it. If you are thick skinned enough to make them think you are serious then it will be brown trousers time for them when they realise how expensive their botchery is going to be.

What's the next port of call? NICEIC?

Anecdotally, good luck with that

But the first result in google when you search for "electrical regulatory body" is NICEIC - so they've clearly paid for it to be there.

Yes, they carefully construct a narrative that is designed to give the impression to the general public that they have some sort of legal standing in the same way that Gas Safe regulate gas works, and the BMA regulate doctors. Their material is also carefully worded to give the impression to the general public that using one of their members will give them a safe job, and that only their members can do that. I say carefully worded - sailing really close, but just not quite to the point where anyone could call them lies.

It seems like there's actually nothing out there to save consumers from rogue electricians. The average member of the public will see the NICEIC badge and think that means something (me included). Clearly it doesn't

Correct, there is very little protection. There's ample evidence that being a member of any of the scams, err registration schemes, does not provide any guarantee of quality work - and it's quite clear that there are non-scam members who can do safe and quality work. In Scotland they did a consultation on changes to the regs which would effectively give the scams the legal standing they want people to believe they have - by making it a requirement to be in a scam to trade as an electrician. All that would do is make the situation worse IMO.