heating grant - dodgy quote dilemma

[Paul Barker]

OP why not have it fitted then get your own man in to move the boiler?

 

[seneca]

Should have mentioned that when I applied for the grant, it was on behalf of my elderly mother. It was a free energy survey she had done a while ago that gave her the number of warm front. I merely filled the form out for her. She certainly qualifies for it, and I would say derserves any help she can get. The only people I can see who are potentially 'scamming' is the installers who are going to get £1900 for installing a boiler. That is just the boiler, no radiators or anything else. The 'strict' timetable they are running to is currently 9 months old. The grant was given in February, and my mother was assured she would have a new boiler by winter. Well, it's october and nothing much is happening. The cock ups all seem to be from the installers, which me me wonder why Warm Front has approved them.
Also, I'm not the first to complain about Warm Front (I do understand that areas the covered by grants are different as are the installers they sub the work to.) There are numerous websites (mostly for the elderly) that have many stories of people being messed around, mostly because the elderly are an easy target.

 

[Biggles..]

I have to agree with warmfront. My personal policy is to never install flues through flat roofs. If customers dont like that they can go else where. Flat roofs are notourious for leaks even when in tip top condition. No matter how well you reseal the flue hole the first good downpour the customers going to be on the phone complaining and you'll be forever fixing that flat roof FOC.
Form what I've read you appear to want your cake and to eat it, if your not happy with the FREE heating, put your short hand in your long pockets and get someone else to fit what you want where you want. Try BG or will you complain that when they quote £3500-5000 that they are making too much profit.
Let me guess you probably think that the boiler wires it self in so no electrician needed there and the chemicals for cleaning and inhibiting come free with the boiler you just add them, oh and the pipe joins itself no need to buy bends and sockets, solder flux(hate to think they might want to charge for them).You'd be surprised how much profit they probably will make out of it

 

[seneca]

oh dear, I appear to have upset a fully paid up member of the plumbers union. I suspect a few of the responses I've got are from people who do grant work for warmfront.
As I have said all along (read ALL the posts), I only wanted to know roughly what the regulations were for flue termination points. I also was looking for an approximate quote on how much fitting a boiler alone would be. I still think £1900 is a bit excessive, and while I could think "well if the fitter wants to make over a grand extra what do I care, it's just tax payers money" I would rather have allocated a smaller grant and have the remainder given towards another pensioners claim.
To those posters who have been helpful, many thanks. To those who think installers should not be questioned, I would say enjoy the grant work while you can. I gather, from Help the Aged, that Warmfront is going to review it's central heating grant allocations. Apparently, too many installers are giving quotes very close to the the full amount for every job. ie. for £2700 some people get a boiler only, while others get the same boier and 5 new radiators installed for the same price. go figure!

 

[ChrisR]

I suspect a few of the responses I've got are from people who do grant work for warmfront.

That's because you have a preconceived idea of what the job involves and you don't want to listen to unbiased advice.
You keep asking for "the rules" for condensing boiler flues despite being told it depends on the boiler.
If you think the price is high, get some more quotes, starting with BG.

In a recent thread someone complained that £1950 was too much to fit a boiler. After breaking it all down we worked out that the installer would be better off taking salaried employment at £50 a day.

A job always looks simple when you don't know what's involved.

 

[Paul Barker]

"well if the fitter wants to make over a grand extra what do I care, it's just tax payers money"

If you were to read all the posts you would discover that the fitter is paid in the region of £450 by the company you deal with, for two days slave labour, the amount of work I would take 3 days over, and out of which he has to pay an assistant.

On the contrary to your beliefs it is not good work for us, I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole, and I have nothing but admiration and respect for those who do it.

 

[Biggles..]

The way we did grant work was this. Normally we charge around £3500-4000 for full heating upto 7 radiators and around £1500-2000 for a boiler conversion depending on boiler location. So if we were doing 1 of each of these jobs total price would be £5400ish(private customers).So with the grants we would lose on the full heating because we'd only get £2700 but make on the boiler swap still getting £2700. total £5400 for the same jobs. This has always been explained to associations that we fit for and have never had a problem as its always evened out in the long run.Swings and roundabouts!
As youve been informed not all grant jobs are in clean houses many that we attend to are for drug addicts and vagrants put up in housing association properties and are places that you wouldn't want to work.So if you begrudge people earning a decent wage for doing s***y jobs; your problem.

 

[bripl]

just to put the record straight a full heat boiler/cly/seven rads controls and wiring comes to around £3200 gas and a bit more for oil.what you have is a repair which means powerflush,change rad valves,fit trvs,change cly[bs1566] fit full controls and a vertical flue through a flat roof run a new gas line and condense for £2700,we would not touch that with a barge pole too many potential probs for too little reward.if someone is prepared to do that work for that amount good luck to them open the door and keep the kettle on warmfront have been under the microscope for a while now a lot of companies have been spoken too about some of their work methods, do not tar us all with that brush after all most of us have to pay for work to be carried out in our own homes and if someone offered it to me or my parents i would bite their hand off to get it done FREE

 

[Paul Barker]

When I go to do an estimate and I think the people may qualify I actually put them onto it. Plenty of work comes my way anyhow. I can't stand to see the dissabled or elderly miss out on sucvh a generous scheme. The fact that someone would turn their nose up would have never occured to me. The folk I get onto it are always very happy to get free attention where I would have had to charge them quite a bit.

 

[Bamber gaspipe]

Funny that the original OP all of a sudden stated that the grant was for his elderly Mother after being told that the grant was intended for pensioners & being abused by scam artists, before that it was `my house` & `my street`....call me cynical... read his original enquiry..tell me I`m wrong, your Honour..I rest my case.

 

[Paul Barker]

In a court of law he has proved himself a liar, either by his first post or the one which contradicts it, and because he is in law a liar his testimony is not admissible in law.

 

[Moz]

can I point out all vertical flues dont leak on flat roofs as stated it may be the case with the rough installer but never my old jobs ,lol

 

[seneca]

Funny that the original OP all of a sudden stated that the grant was for his elderly Mother after being told that the grant was intended for pensioners & being abused by scam artists

The only reason I didn't mention it at the beginning was I was it did not seem necessary to go into a detailed explanation of my mothers situation. It would have lengthened my inquiry and it was much easier, for all intents and purposes, to just say "my" rather "my mothers boiler," "my mother got a quote," "my mother applied." I was seeking an opinion on the quote and more generally, the feasibility of a vertical flue. I only brought it up afterwards, to clarify that I was not one of those "scamming" or "abusing" the system. Is this a new conspiracy theory about anyone applying for a grant?

The first page of responses to my original post were on the whole quite useful. I think the suggestion, not only made by myself, that possibly not all heating installers were wholly honest and upright seemed to send people into paranoid psychosis. From nowhere, mud began to be thrown. At that moment I realised this thread was getting away from my original question and was taking an unpleasant turn for the worse. By posting the exact same original post on another forum I have had far more informative, and much less abusive responses." Just look at the responses on this very forum to my other question on vertical flues.

Curiosity made me take another look at this thread, but I needn't have bothered. The mud slinging has gotten worse and now I'm being called a liar.

Is it any wonder that plumbers and central heating engineers have the reputations they do amongst the wider public. It only takes a few bad apples....

 

[Paul Barker]

But hang on, in law you are a liar, even if you can justify it a court wouldn't listen to you.

 

[S900]

I applied with Warmfront a while ago and had an assessor from Harland Rise visit regarding having central heating fitted. I was told it could be done well within the grant within 4 weeks of him visiting. All I would have to do was clear the small bedroom which is where the immersion heater was (we were on economy 7 storage heaters & immersion heater). With me being pregnant, I wanted to make sure I didn't end up with a slot right on my due date so he told me to ring the office and request the work be done end of Dec/beginning Jan. I was also told it would be an extra £200 for any extra radiators we had fitted. I was told where everything would be fitted with no negotiation eg we 'had to have one in the bathroom' where as we would rather have had one in the kids bedroom instead. I asked about moving some of the wardrobes so that the fitters could drop the pipes down to the dining room, he said didn't need to be done; and we have chipboard down not wooden floorboards which he said would have to be all pulled up by the fitters and a joiner would be called in to replace with floorboards. I called the office the following day, they'd not had the paperwork back from him, and he was wrong to mention anything to do with price or dates as until they'd sorted out what parts were needed, how much they would cost and when they could get hold of them, they couldn't give me a date or a price, so I had to wait for them to contact me. I thought that sounded more logical.
I got a letter not long later stating that I had to pay just over £300 to cover the costs. I still felt rather dubious about the whole thing due to what the assessor had said so I looked up Harland Rise and found this site. In the end I agreed to pay the money and have it fitted. When I spoke to the office to arrange a date, the assessor had also said that I had agreed to pull up the flooring in the bathroom and 'tidy' the small bedroom. I found this mildly offensive as if my house was a tip. Anyway, I discussed it with the lady in the office and I had already cleared everything out of the room and needed to 'lift the lino in the bathroom' not take up the flooring. The fitters came the other day, they did need the wardrobes moving to drop the pipes but said they'd move them for me if I emptied them to help avoid any damage and the small room had needed to be emptied not 'tidied'. Lucky I used my noggin instead of listening to the assessor. The fitters did a wonderful job. It took 2 plumbers and 2 electricians 2 days to install central heating from scratch. After an appalling job done by British Gas in my prev house, I thought the fitters from Harland Rise were excellent. They listened to what I said, they were helpful, they did a neat job, tidied up after themselves and throughout the whole of the 2 days, only took half an hours lunch break. They didn't even stop whilst drinking the brews I made. Sooo, although I was not at all happy with the assessor, the fitters really were great and I'd recommend them any day.