Have i been had over?????

[silverbullit]

Well firstly i would like to say greetings to all as i have not used this forum for ages. I have just had some work carried out in my home and it consisted of a bathroom refurbishment and a cloakroom toilet refurbishment, we had a brilliant plumber who did all of the studding out and boxing in and we had another guy who was a tiler to just supply labour for installing the tiles we had purchased.This job took us about six months to get to a stage where we commited to start the work , this was partially due to us locating the right people to do the job for us just how we wanted it to be also we were in no real rush. We went through all of the aspects that we felt needed to be discussed which covered the main important points, from the plumbing side of things it was where the bath goes and where we want the sink etc.... we had a similar conversation with the tiler, we stated that we wanted floor to ceiling tiles and that we were indecisive at that point as to how we were going to finish the corners( plastic trims or cut and angled corners as this was an option from the tiler at that point). We decided that we did not want plastic trims and let the tiler know a week before the job started, when he turned up he told us he could not cut the tiles as they had a slight bevel on the outer edge and his cutter would not do that.. so we were forced into the plastic trim route, so on the first day everything was going well as he laid in the underfloor heating and then tiled it all in , then on the second day he turned up with a school leaver to help him, with all due respect to the lad, he had no idear what the device that was in my garden was for.... this was a wet tile cutter !! so he showed the ;lad how to cut a tile and then he stayed indoors and had the lad runing back and fourth cutting tiles as they were needed ,i lost count of how many tiles the lad broke by pushing the tile too hard resulting in the blade stopping dead and snapping the tiles. So the tiler started on the walls and to the untrained eye was looking very impressive , but as time went by .... little details were beggingnig to not look right , he finished a boxed in section with plastic 12mm tile trim(that he carried on his van) and on the very corner he used no corner quadrants , he just cut the edge with a saw and left a 5mm sharp corner jutting out of the tile edge, then he left a 14mm gap between the ceiling and the tiles on the wall, this he filled with grout that is only qualified for 5mm max. there is areas where he has missed the grouting completely and left six inch horizontal gaps with no grout at ground level, the 14mm grout is now drying out and cracking, also an area of boxing in has yet to be tiled and he has not come back to do it ( and i get the feeling he probably wont as its not worth the time and trouble for him to come out and finish it fully). And the final issues are that he has not filled in the booklet with the test values of the underfloor heating tests , nor has he given us an invoice or a reciept as he has been paid in full allready !!!!

The only reason he wanted paying befrore it was finished was that the job was taking him longer than he had estimated and he had a new job to start on the following monday, we had to go away for the weekend and had to pay up by his insistance in full before we left, when we returned we were not very happy as it looks like it was rushed and he had not used all of the propor trims that he should have used to make the job look great. We also noticed that he did not use any P.V.A. on the painted walls prior to spreading glue on the walls and fitting tiles , he also never used the bottles of bond promotor that he should have used before strting to lay the underfloor heating, we still have them in the hallway!

Thje tiles were polished travertine and we got all of the correct Bal adhesives as per the store who supplied it, we had tow types of grout , one for big gaps and one for small , we also had all of the underfloor kit all sorted as we bought the best that we could find, all in all we stumped up well over 2.5K in materials alone.

We are now feeling like the guy had no real interest in doing a job correctly and this could result in early failure of adhesion of the underfloor heating ar the large travertie tiles.

This guy was not sourced through the forum but he was reccomended through checkatrade....

Any suggestions or do i have any angles to force him to cough up some of the money he has been paid to do the job as there is remedial work needed to sort out some the ugly bits.

Silverbullit:mad2:

 

[united]

Sorry to hear about your problems.

Do you have any photos of the offending areas?

Was you tiler also a qualified electrician to install the UFH?

Have you tried to contact your tiler to go over you concerns? if so what was his response?

 

[Colour Republic]

Check-A-Trade:mad2: I would contact them first althouh reading the small print I don't think they will do much about it, only you can try and leave poor feedback.

Were the tiles travertine or travertine look-a-likes?

 

[enduro]

Have you called him and asked if he could come back and finish?

 

[Diamond Pool Finishers]

hi :welcome: to the forum, sorry to hear of your prob's:yikes:

 

[silverbullit]

Hi folks.

Yep he is supposed to be well qualified and he is also rated to do underfloor heating , i dont have any pics at the moment but i could take some and see if i can figure out how to attach them to this thread. I have just spoken to checkatrade and they were quite helpful, they are keen to have me fill in a complaint form and give it to them, they will look at it from there and contact him.... by all accounts, he has only been a member since April and he has not got one single negative feedback , this is a bit unusual as you would expect more honest feedback. Its a shame really as i know to fit plastic trims up on the ceiling will involve me purchasing them and then butchering the anchors off them as they cant be located behind the tile no more as he has fitted the tiles..... he was quite a difficult fella to talk with on any subject involving the work , i was quite annoyed when he told me that i had got the wrong adhesive for the tiles (Bal rapid two part flexible) as he could not work with that type of adhesive as it was too fast for him !!! he said never mind... i`ll change them as he uses the same supplier all the time , the next day he turnes up with 5 20 Kilo bags of Ardex and bills me for well over £200.00 quid , he never asked me for the original reciepts for the Bal (which we had) as that way we would not have been stung.

I know that i am heading for problems here as i know he may well have voided my warranties of my underfloor heating by not using the supplied material primer , and also using the wrong grouts.... the sad thing is that i feel that when a customer says he wants tiles from floor to ceiling there should not be a gap at all at the ceiling line.With a little luck i may get a result to fix this bag of issues out but to be honest i dot really want him back over our door as i dont want to have to put up with the attitude that he has.... its just in his make up i suppose and its just the way he is.

 

[silverbullit]

No i have not asked him back to sort the issues out yet but i do know that he flat refused to come back when the builder asked him to in order to tile the boxing in of some pipe work ,this aspect of the job he knew he had to do and it was an understanding that he would come back and do it, the tiler said no as its too far to come back and anyway, you will have to tile it now, he went on to tell the plumber to go out and buy a cutter to do the job .

 

[silverbullit]

Tiles are genuine travertine (polished with bevelled edge)

 

[Dan]

Who did the final connection for the underfloor heating, him or a qualified electrician (needs to be Part-P certified electrical installer)?

 

[Colour Republic]

I would take some pictures and then we can help you upload them, then we can advise on the state of the job (although sounds very bad tbh), then I would write to the tiler stating the problems and how he would like to sort them out. At the moment the law is on your side, so dealing with this down the correct channels is essential.

 

[mikethetile]

theres a few issues here

the waste caused by the lad learning to cut, where these used for cuts later to minimise waste or were they just dumped

setting out was wrong as it should have been a 3/4 cut to the ceiling not finished 15 mm short

fortunatly he had the sense not to pva the walls , why if you took so much care to spec the job did you specify pva to the walls. if you have been reading from here you have known otherwise

painted walls, was the emulsion removed, if not why not

why was the plumber asked to finish the tiling was it the plumbers contract

its always best to go to a proper tiler and have him spec the job for you as they have the experiance and knowledge

 

[silverbullit]

Wow, am getting lots of feedback on this, thanks you all very much. As for the lad cutting the tiles and breaking them, they were just dumped, i still have the big bag full of all of the waste and in there are all of the off cuts and broken tiles from the lads training. The walls still had emulsion on them, it was not removed as the tiler who saw the room before we had given him the job did not say it had to be removed , when he did start the job he never said anything about it and just carried on, incidently, he tiled over a wall above the bath that prevoiusly had ceramic tiles on it , they had been removed leaving the wall with reasonably flat cement , the new adhesive was just trowelled on and tiles fitted , now purely from ignorence... are you supposed to stabilise a bare wall before you proceed?.The tiler was contracted to finish the job , but i have no real idea why he thought that he could get away with telling the plumber to finish it other than he had another job to start on monday and he was not going to miss the start of the new job, we never went as far as to spec out the job in a technical way but we did say how we wanted the tiles finished, how that was acchived would be up to the tiler as he was the expert, all we said was no plastic trims ! to be fair we was away from our home at that point and most of this has only really come to light opon our return. i appreciate all of the feedbacks so keep em comming.

Silverbullit

 

[silverbullit]

Opps almost forgot.

The final conection was by a qualified electrician, the tiler is supposed to be qualified for this work but has left no paperwork at all for what has been done by him, so no test figures!

 

[Dan]

Opps almost forgot.

The final conection was by a qualified electrician, the tiler is supposed to be qualified for this work but has left no paperwork at all for what has been done by him, so no test figures!

You may find the electrician should have done the paperwork regarding the continuity readings at the time of the connection and not the tiler.

There is no qualification for the actual installation of the underfloor heating, so the tiler was fine to do it. And is probably the best person for the job to be honest.

That said, if he's not used the supplied primer (and if that's stipulated in the UFH warranty agreement) clearly you warranty could be void due to just that reason.

 

[mikethetile]

right so you didnt spec the job but left that to the tiler, he should have had the paint off

we now have weight issues with the adhesive stuck to the paint not the wall

if it had simply been a setting out error you could have overboarded the ceiling and skimmed to take up the gap

but as he has adhered to paint theres no point worrying about the gap as you have a much more serious issue to deal with

the bare plaster should have been primed before using a cement based adhesive

and the ufh should have a certificate and the values given to you for further reference

if you dont feel you can work with the tiler to get theses matters resolved you have a simple choice, pay again to have the job done right or take legal action against your tiler to recover the costs of redoing his work

 

[silverbullit]

Thanks Dan.

I at least now have a good idea that this is something that needs to be redressed with the tiler, i will let you know how it goes.

Many thanks again.

Silverbullit

 

[silverbullit]

Sorry to ask what could be perceived as obvious but what are the pros and cons of using pva or not on paint? and why should the tiler have not used it?, personally i would have thought that it would have been beneficial to prime the surfaces first but then again... i am not trained in this area of expertise.

silverbullit

 

[Colour Republic]

It's not a question of priming it's the use of PVA its self

http://www.tilersforums.com/tile-adhesive-grout-substrate-preparation/2511-p-v-versus-primers.html

 

[silverbullit]

Well that is interesting, i now understand why there is issues with pva in this aplication when compared to chemically matched adhesive primers, it now makes perfect sense.

Thanks.

Silverbullit

 

[DHTiling]

Hi silverbullit..

I think another error here is tiling to skimmed walls and not just the paint.. Travertine is well over the BS standard for weight carrying to skimmed walls.

You should also never use plastic trims with stone installations.. looks pure rubbish IMO..

You should also contact trade and standards to get some advice as to progress and try and get this rectified.

 

[silverbullit]

Hi Dave.

Thanks for the update, i do have trading standards on my list of people to contact about this but at the moment i am getting as much info as i can so when i do make a move to sort this out i will be well advised and well armed beforehand. I think that you are quite right about the trims , we did decide to just have him cut the tiles with a mitered joint to avoid the plastic trims situation but he said it could not be done.... and after seeing the kid learning to cut tiles with our expensive travertine , it would have been a much worse disaster than the minor one i am dealing with now.

I would like to say that the wall that was stripped of ceramic tiles was just scraped back to the bare cement rendering , as far as i am aware there was no stabilising materials used on the cement prior to tile adhesive, as i am no expert tiler i am now not sure if what he did was correct or not.

I only found this little tit-bit out about the manufacturer of the trims but they dont make cove trims or corner trims so the plastic trim he carried on the van would have been more acceptable if he made the effort to locate the manufacturers who do make the cove and corner trims to match what he has done.... but as i have found out, this additional set of bits will cost me almost £100.00, then i have to butcher the anchor off the back of the cove as its designed to laid in with a tile to trap it in place , as he has laid the tiles without the trim... i have to adapt the back of the trims and bond them in with silicone.

This job could have been fantastic if only he never underestimated how long it would take to do and if he used all of the correct trims.... or better yet , just cut the tiles correctly himself as trims would not be needed at all.

Silverbullit

 

[jay]

hi pics would help

 

[silverbullit]

Hi Jay.

I will try and get some pics taken and then link them to the forum, unfortunately at work until late tonight so it maybe tomorrow until i can take them.

cheers mate.

Silverbullit