Good morning all

I have a house that was badly damaged by fire and due to my insurance Company (No Names but they have a big red phone) being a bunch of pancake flippers and only paying out about 25% of the claim I am having to repair it myself.

Going down the whole building notice and doing a full renovation would cost far more than I can afford due to the modifications required to meet current building regulations including a massive sacrifice on space due to the requirement of encased stairs ways.

The Building regulations do not apply to repairing a building, and doing a like for like replacment needs no involvment of building control but i'm worried that when they come out to do their pre wiring inspection that they will start picking holes in what's been done.

The current building has main supports running across the building into the walls and the floor joists were nailed to them, I have just replaced the damaged beams with the same or next size up and put on joist hangers as this it safer and better than just nailed.

Should I put the ceilings up before they visit to hide it all so they can get on with their window and wiring inspection and leave the rest alone or should I leave it all open and hope they only do what they are supposed to do ??

I am re-wiring and fitting the windows myself so need to go through building notice on these bits as the BCO knows they need replacing already.

Any help or advice would be great.

Thanks

Pat

Pat-UK wrote:

I have a house that was badly damaged by fire and due to my insurance
Company (No Names but they have a big red phone) being a bunch of
pancake flippers and only paying out about 25% of the claim I am
having to repair it myself.

Care to elaborate why they are only paying 25% of the claim, does seem
strange!
Jon

"Jonathan Pearson" wrote in message
...
Pat-UK wrote:

I have a house that was badly damaged by fire and due to my insurance
Company (No Names but they have a big red phone) being a bunch of
pancake flippers and only paying out about 25% of the claim I am
having to repair it myself.

Care to elaborate why they are only paying 25% of the claim, does seem
strange!

Well they dont' appear to be any better at House Ins than Pet Ins - where
they refused to pay our claim alltogether. Only when I threatened to take
the to court for causing suffering to the animal insured as the vet would no
longer treat them - and delivered a letter by registered post did they cough
up *anything* and then took 6 weeks to do it.

Cheers
Dan.

Why do you hide the name(s) of these comapanies? Providing you are
telling the truth, surely you have nothing to worry about.

Chris.

Building control will/can only be concerned with the relevent works as
per your application. If the works are not controlled works, then it is
not their concern. They may advise but that is all it will be.
But if work is a structural alteration, or repair work is seen to be
dangerous, then they may be interested.

dg

I presumed it was forum rules not to flame or abuse anyone, I have plenty of proof, letters and transcripts of telephone converstaions obtained be the FOS.


(Why didn't they pay out ???)

It was mainly because it had a flat roof, I was given the option to take them to court but was advised this could take up to 5 years, in which time i'd have to continue to pay rent on alternative accomodation, and keep up the repayments on the mortgage, in addition to funding legal costs of about £150 per hour for solicitors. which could run in to 10's of thousands.

a word of warning, if you have a house with a flat felt roof that covers more that 30% of the entire property (so if you have a huge flat roofed extension) This company can get out of paying out on the claim, they say that a felt roof is a "non standard material" (again I have written evidence to prove this statment) and as such they claimed they were in a position to avoid the policy from day one, and made a token payment.

I am in the middle of creating a website regarding the whole thing which can be seen at www.directline2disaster.co.uk please note it is in an unfinished state and will be fully finished as soon as I have finished scanning the letters and writing it all up.

Anyhow any Advice on my original question

On 25 Jan 2006 03:27:10 -0800, dg wrote:

Building control will/can only be concerned with the relevent works as
per your application. If the works are not controlled works, then it is
not their concern. They may advise but that is all it will be.
But if work is a structural alteration, or repair work is seen to be
dangerous, then they may be interested.

dg

Having said that, if your BCO is halfway decent he will advise pre-reapir
oin what he expects to see, and why.

If you disagree, then you can pay a structural engineer a few hundred to
tell him enough to cover his arse, and he will be happy

What you DO NOT want to do is have either the house fall about your ears,
or have the BCO demand expensive remedial work.

Frankly repairing to modern BC standards is gooid practice ANYWAY...you
might decide that beefier joiats with herringbone bracing and a less
flexible floor are what you want after all...

as far as using jiost hangars goes..well I prefer to have joists actually
stitting on SOMETHING...surely if its ammost a total rebuild you can knock
up a load bearing structure somewhere to take the floor weight- if its a
timber farme building, this isn't hard, and you can use the extra depth to
put more insulation in..

Pat-UK wrote:

I am in the middle of creating a website regarding the whole thing
which can be seen at www.directline2disaster.co.uk please note it
is in an unfinished state and will be fully finished as soon as I
have finished scanning the letters and writing it all up.

That's a pretty good site, keep working on it. Particularly good to see
you identifying positive service experiences, as it makes it much harder to
write you off as an awkward customer. Once it's complete and tidy, you
need to start building up the traffic - set an e-mail sig for example.

From the correspondence, it seems to me that they suspected you of some kind
of dishonesty (or withholding of relevant information), and I'd guess that
you were being treated by staff who were aware of that 'tag' upon your file.

Thank you for your post, exactly what I wanted to know, their is no structural alterations as such, the house is going back as it was, the only difference being next size up timbers where the old size is not available as stock, most or the new timber is 195x50 where the old was 160 to 175 x45 ( bit of a mixture all round with bit's of packing to level it out) don't know who built the thing, but they need shooting.

And the joist hangers instead of nails.

Thanks again