Time for a if-you-want-a-job-doing-properly-then-do-it-yourself rant...

I booked a local firm of plumbers in today. Main reason was I wanted to
have my pressurised HW cylinder checked over, as it was long overdue; in
particular as I explained to the manager over the phone I wanted the
sacrifical anode looking at, as I wasn't convinced that had actually
ever been checked. Pressurised cylinders and gas appliances are the two
areas of plumbing I don't go near.

Matey comes round this morning, spends some time in the airing cupboard
tinkering with the tank. When he's done I ask him, 'was the anode OK
then?' 'Oh everythng's fine'. 'But what about the anode - how much
life has it got left?' 'Oh it doesn't have an anode'.

So I trot downstairs and produce the manual for him, and point to the
diagram showing the location of the anode, and the section where it
explains how important it is that said anode is checked visually every
two years.

"Oh, well they don't usually have anodes".

He duly extracted the thing, and was perhaps slightly sheepish(?) to
find that it was mostly eroded away. Hopefully there's enough left to
have still been doing its job. Anyway - I've just ordered a new one and
having seen how easily it fits, certainly won't be summoning Matey back
to fit it....


Moving on: I also wanted another job doing while he was there. Reason
being that my house is still suffering from a previous attack by
plumber, when we had an extension built about 10 years ago. This
character (a different one) managed to plumb two downstairs radiators
into the primary circuit, which meant they came on in synchrony with the
hot water system; and conversely the bathroom towel rail is plumbed in
to the central heating circuit. We unfortunately didn't cotton on to
the error in long after the Lone Ranger had ridden off into the sunset.
Anyway - I've given up on sorting out the downstairs rads (too far
from the rest of the CH system), but had decided to divert the towel
rail to the primary circuit, to keep SWMBO happy. I'd already run 10mm
copper tube under the floors and all that remained was to drain down,
swap over the connections at the towel rail end and splice the other
ends into the primary circuit. However, the location of the pipes was
really fiddly, and I had visions of me chopping into the primary pipes
and being unable to fix them again - resulting in massive loss of all
the hopefully accruing SWMBO brownie points. So I'd decided to let the
plumber do this while he was here. Sorry, rambling.

So, knowing that Matey would need to drain down most of the CH system to
do this job, more CH inhibitor was going to be needed. Knowing my system
is loaded with X-100 (as put there by the same firm when they fitted my
boiler, 2 years ago) and not wanting to mix different types, I asked him
what sort he carried. 'Erm - don't think I've got any'.

Why the hell would a plumber attend a job necessitating a drain-down
without bringing inhibitor? Was he planning on taking an hour out, on
my time, to go and buy some during the day, or - as I suspect - just not
going to bother at all? Never found out. Anyway, I duly nipped out to
B&Q and bought a bottle of X-100 myself.

As I said at the start, sometimes it really makes you wonder what the
point is of employing a pro. If I'd been like most of Joe Public, and
had not a clue about my own system, today I'd have been left with a
potentially highly dangerous HW tank and a gently corroding CH system;
neither of which would have made their presence known for many months,
or even years... at which point a nice big new job would be generated
for the plumber.

Rant over. Time for beer.
David

Lobster wrote:

As I said at the start, sometimes it really makes you wonder what the
point is of employing a pro.

No doubt rhetorically asked but people do as they don't have the time or
knowledge or desire to DIY and therefore don't know any better if a
job's done well or not.

I have long maintained that being "professional" merely meant one is
paid to do the job rather than implying any level of skill or knowledge.

--
Scott

Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?

On Fri, 08 Jul 2011 19:22:31 +0100, Scott M wrote:
Lobster wrote:

As I said at the start, sometimes it really makes you wonder what the
point is of employing a pro.

No doubt rhetorically asked but people do as they don't have the time or
knowledge or desire to DIY and therefore don't know any better if a
job's done well or not.

I have long maintained that being "professional" merely meant one is
paid to do the job rather than implying any level of skill or knowledge.

And plumbing (the depths?) seems to be the epitome of that observation.
The house I have now was previously owned by a "plumber". He had done all
the work on the house himself. I spent the next several months fixing all
his little screw-ups: from radiators that weren't parallel to the walls
as he'd messed up the pipework, to creaking h/w pipes that had been laid
directly onto joists, to washing machine taps that simply could NOT both
be on at the same time - each one blocked the other.
Now, before this I'd never done any more plumbing than turning on a tap, but
the extent of his incompetency and the ease of fixing the basic mistakes
makes me thing anyone with a wrench could do a better job (and I did).

Also, when the guy moved out he failed (an oversight, I thought at
the time) to leave a forwarding address or phone number. It turned out
not to be a mistake at all. For nearly a year afterwards I would get
occasional calls from panicky sounding individuals who "I really need to
get in touch with him" or "he fixed my and it's gone wrong again".
After sympathising many times, I did start to wonder if I should offer
my services I'd usually fixed those things in his/my place and I reckon
I couldn't have done any worse.

Lobster wrote:


As I said at the start, sometimes it really makes you wonder what the
point is of employing a pro. If I'd been like most of Joe Public, and
had not a clue about my own system, today I'd have been left with a
potentially highly dangerous HW tank and a gently corroding CH system;
neither of which would have made their presence known for many months,
or even years... at which point a nice big new job would be generated
for the plumber.


There are pros and "pros".

Having just titted about with a good chisel and a bad smaller chisel opening
out a mortice lock hole and frame plate to take a new lock in a hurry on the
front door (old one broke today)... I have decided my lock fitting skills
are "medieval" - works OK, decentish fit, looks crap - I will be employing a
joiner for more of the same... Weird, because I can install bare wood
skirting (ie no making good with filler allowed) and make nice but simple
shelves and build studwork that is perfect. Guess I'm just ****e with a
chisel.

I've had a good foor tiler, and a decent plasterer, but noone else touches
my electrics and plumbing - or wall tiles, ever! I've discovered what I'm
really good at, what I can do in an emergency and be "serviceable" and what
I'm crap at. Fortunately my crap and mediocre skills are the ones it's
usually easier to find a good "man" for... IME anyway.

--
Tim Watts

On Fri, 08 Jul 2011 21:47:38 +0100, Tim Watts wrote:


Having just titted about with a good chisel and a bad smaller chisel
opening out a mortice lock hole and frame plate to take a new lock in a
hurry on the front door (old one broke today)... I have decided my lock
fitting skills are "medieval" - works OK, decentish fit, looks crap - I
will be employing a joiner for more of the same... Weird, because I can
install bare wood skirting (ie no making good with filler allowed) and
make nice but simple shelves and build studwork that is perfect. Guess
I'm just ****e with a chisel.

My feeling exactly. I'm going to need a lock job like that soon, and
after last time I'm going to get a man in!



--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

*lightning protection* - a w_tom conductor

En el artículo , Tim Watts
escribió:

I've discovered what I'm
really good at, what I can do in an emergency and be "serviceable" and what
I'm crap at.

I think that's absolutely key for DIY. Know your limitations, and by
all means have a go, but if you have to call in a pro, do so.

And not everyone has the time or energy (especially if they work) to DIY
everything.

--
(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

In article ,
Lobster writes:
As I said at the start, sometimes it really makes you wonder what the
point is of employing a pro. If I'd been like most of Joe Public, and
had not a clue about my own system, today I'd have been left with a
potentially highly dangerous HW tank and a gently corroding CH system;
neither of which would have made their presence known for many months,
or even years... at which point a nice big new job would be generated
for the plumber.

The only "professional" plumbing I ever had done was a British Gas
engineer who fitted a gas fire in the living room. About 10 minutes
after lit, it would go out because the pressure drop in the pipework
stopped the pilot tickling the flame sensor. He had connected it to
the existing gas fire point, which I traced under the floor, and it
went back via a tortuous route to the gas lamp pipework. 3' away from
the fire was the main feed in from the meter, so I reconnected it to
that, and it's been fine for the ~20 years since (although now
hardly used).

Since then, I've done all my own plumbing, including replumbing the
whole house and installing central heating (and disconnecting those
parts of the gas lamp pipework which were still connected;-).

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

Lobster wrote:

snip

So, knowing that Matey would need to drain down most of the CH system
to do this job, more CH inhibitor was going to be needed. Knowing my
system is loaded with X-100 (as put there by the same firm when they
fitted my boiler, 2 years ago) and not wanting to mix different
types, I asked him what sort he carried. 'Erm - don't think I've got
any'.
Why the hell would a plumber attend a job necessitating a drain-down
without bringing inhibitor? Was he planning on taking an hour out, on
my time, to go and buy some during the day, or - as I suspect - just
not going to bother at all? Never found out. Anyway, I duly nipped
out to B&Q and bought a bottle of X-100 myself.

I don't see why a pro should expect to be paid for travel time to fetch
basic parts. Those parts should be on the van.

--
Adam

I recently got a member of a small local plumbing company in to do a small
job - draining down the system and fitting TRVs to my radiators. I supplied
the TRVs and the inhibitor; I was originally going to do it myself, but
lacked time and also wanted to learn a couple of things. It all went
basically OK and he was perfectly fine, except that

a) he asked *me* for a container to drain each radiator into. I was
interested to see how they normally did it, but "mine's broken" (?!)

b) he couldn't get one valve off the old radiator with his universal allen
key, and asked me if I had an allen key myself. He didn't seem to know that
these were of a 'less than standard' size. We had to leave this rad in the
end.

c) One radiator I had replaced a while ago but never properly connected up
or commissioned. Turns out it needed a short (15mm or so) extension adapter,
which I thought I had bought and fitted, but it turns out not so. He didn't
offer to get hold of one of these - clearly not an item stocked in the van.

Clearly none of this amounts to anything like a disaster story, but given
that this was otherwise a decently regarded local company with good 'front'
(replies to emails and phone calls promptly, turns up on time, payment as
discused, etc.) I was surprised at how the small things threw him. It's not
as if he didn't know the scope of the job in the first place.

I think I probably translate the standards I aim at re. a customer in my day
work, to those I expect from a tradesman. Perhaps this is unreasonable ... I
dunno.

J^n