That said I’m sure we could work with them.

Regards, Toodles.

What you have said about your small bedroom rad seems to have certain parallels and again they were looking at replacing a rad in one of our smallest rooms that looks massively oversized to me and the TRV will usually turn the rad off within 10 minutes of the heating coming on. This would have been disruptive for sure to replace.

I have no doubt if I had the time and inclination I could get to a point where I'd be reasonably happy to proceed with them. That said a few weeks ago my only other benchmark was a company called Neater Heat (advertising themselves as renewable heating specialists) who popped round, had a somewhat meaningless chat for the entire morning, and next step was sending me a contract to sign requesting a 25% deposit (£3000), with not even an attempt at a heat loss survey or proposal regarding what radiators we'd need to change. Thus in comparison to them, they were a significant step up.

My point is, has it become the norm to expect failings in any work one has carried out by a contractor?

It may well have become the norm to expect failings but that still doesn't make it acceptable.

Legally, we can expect a paid service to be of a reasonable standard. At a bare minimum, it should deliver what it is required to and that includes things like "making good". In relation to a heat pump installation, everything should have been installed according to specifications and to manufacturers' requirements, and if something like lagging is normal to expect (which, of course, it is) then it should be installed fully and properly. It should be presentable given it's in someone's home and it should meet the design criteria - if they said it would keep the house at a given temperature at a predicted power consumption that is what it should do.

Of course, in any complex job there will be an element of uncertainty; things will go wrong, faulty parts are a fact of life, people get sick, expectations vary. In my opinion, snagging is the process of bridging the delivery of what, properly installed, should do the job and identifying where it actually still has issues. Installing a pump upside down is not a proper installation so is NOT something a customer should have to pick up. If everything has been lagged tidily and properly but one small run in an obscure area has been missed, that's exactly what I'd expect snagging to pick up.

Expecting a good standard of work is not being fussy. Any installer/engineer/workman/builder worth their salt will be just as fussy as any customer could reasonably be expected to be and any that see the customer as fussy aren't professional enough to be trusted. This does, of course, exclude the exceptions that prove the rule; the odd customer that won't be happy unless each piece of pipework has been polished to a shine before the lagging is applied or the one who prefers contrasting coloured cable clips and so asks for the cabling to be redone.

In short, snagging is acceptance that we're all human. It finds and corrects honest mistakes. The practice of some tradespeople to do a shoddy job and only fix what's found out is a completely separate matter and unacceptable in all cases.

Maybe ‘snagging’ is an inevitable result of evermore complex systems and or my demand for higher performance and excellence in any work I contract to have carried out. The sort of ‘snagging’ I am thinking of is having to request that pipework for hot water be lagged, installing a pump the right way up rather than upside down, repairing mortar where holes have been drilled through a wall for cabling.

These are just examples from one installation contract but by no means the only instance; being a fusspot when any work is carried out is second nature these days. It is not just in work involving heating contractors; it also happens with vertical blinds, fitted bedroom furniture, fitted kitchens, driveway ….. the list is long so I’ll stop here.

My point is, has it become the norm to expect failings in any work one has carried out by a contractor?

Regards, Toodles.

We've written Cinergi off. They just come across as Octopus-esque in their approach with sales, production teams, surveyors and for us at least, lack of attention to detail as a result of this.

Toodles- the more you describe your experience with them, the more it endorses in my mind that we made the right decision to decline their proposal. Their surveyor told me that they assume no insulation in all of our upstairs rooms when they did their heat loss survey and therefore one might assume a tendency to overcompensate. Again this whole process just felt a bit rushed which I guess comes with a company that are churning through free surveys constantly. 

We’ve also been in contact with Cinergi and sent back 14 questions on their first quote.

When the engineer came round he outlined their design which was for a flow design temperature of 55C (much too high) and he said we really wouldn’t want our desired 40-45C flow temperature because of the huge radiators that would require. Their standard design was using a LLH but they called it a buffer (4 port). Our questions were all around these issues.

Now after a conversation with the owner/boss we have some answers which we're working through. It is still a work in progress though.

We have one other quote from a guy who is so busy that installation dates are September and another coming for outline discussions tomorrow. I’ll PM you.