On Thu, 09 Sep 2004 06:55:51 +0100, Andy Hall
wrote:

On Thu, 09 Sep 2004 01:11:02 +0100,
wrote:


To date I've only paid 10% (by credit card), with 20% more payable on
completion of the building work and the remaining 70% payable on
completion of the whole project, so I have enough leverage (unless
they decide to pull out altogether). To date, they haven't even
indicated that they'll want to charge me at all, but the builder seems
to suggest that the conservatory company will pursue me for what he's
going to charge them for digging a new soakaway.

OK. This is a fairly typical arrangement.

Actually the numbers give a pretty good clue.

The 20-30% is what they will need to pay the builder producing the
base, with 70% being the frame, glass and the conservatory company's
margin.

What I would do is to keep a note of the total time that the builder
takes to make the base, and also for how much time (ask him "as a
matter of interest") it will take to do the soakaway stuff.

I took photos at the end of each working day so that I had a record of
the stage reached.

I'm already doing the same :-)

As it happens, I'm not sure that the builders are on any kind of time
payment. They don't seem to be in any rush, don't start too early,
don't work too late. I've heard them mention that they get paid by the
cubic metre dug. This became relevant when the installations manager,
who they don't like much, came over to have a look. They seemed to
think he was trying to tell them they were deep enough (he wasn't
actually saying that, but they took it that way) when the guy doing
the digging still wasn't happy that he'd got down to solid ground. He
ended up going 1.4 metres before he got to something he was happy to
build on. Its taken a day and half to do that, they're concreting
later on today.

I'm expecting to hear today from the conservatory company about the
cost of the soakaway. Watch this space

Brian