Posted by: @toodles

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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.

@toodles yes that is regrettably the standard approach when dealing with most contractors, I would agree. It appears evident (?) that you had to tackle cinergi on a number of points, whereas I just felt I didn't want to double check and question their proposal anymore. 

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.

@benson Sounds very familiar (unfortunately) Of course, those who read and contribute to this forum are likely to be the keen and more enlightened potential customer / consumer of renewable energy projects. If we are wary of the vagaries of various installers and their foibles - what chance does the man on the 49 bus stand???

Regards, Toodles.

@benson & @toodles from both your previous posts and our experience the heat loss in the larger rooms was correct (compared to my own analysis using Heatpunk) but they wanted to increase the radiators in the two smallest rooms which was unnecessary.

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

@judith Good, I did have all my fusspot snags resolved to my satisfaction and we have been very pleased with the performance and the COP of 4+ most of the time seems to confirm that though there is an LLH in the circuit, fpr all that it still works well and silently too. Regards, Toodles.