Fao A Plumber, The Builder Or Power Shower People!

[Prudie]

Can anyone please advise on whether this is acceptable, based on plumbing or consumer experience!!

A plumber franchised to a reputable (and flashy) local bathroom design company has quoted us £1300 to replace an old shower pump (in the airing cupboard, roof tank etc stays) breakdown as follows:

£600 ish for the pump - 3bar pressure, double thingy, brand name begins with M + another word (plumber said buy cheap, buy twice)

£200 for bits

£500 labour (2 people @£250 a day each for 1 day)

I'm concerned we are being taken for a ride but neither of us know about these things. What do you think? Much appreciate any advice.

[Canary42]

I'm glad you raised this Prudie, my bathroom needs an upgrade and I was considering visiting a local bathroom showroom.

I'm having second thoughts now, although I'm not sure what the alternative is (Checkatrade possibly).

Thanks for the heads-up.

[bhg481]

We've just had our bathroom done. We started by looking round the bathroom showrooms and discovered that all the ones we went to sold you the bits and then you found a fitter yourself. At that point we turned to Checkatrade and found halk a dozen bathroom fitters with top recommendation and got them round for ideas and quotes. Some suggested designs which were just not our thing, others suited us better. All had about a two-month lead time before they could do the job. The one we chose recommended suppliers to us; different ones for tiles, hardware and flooring but said we could buy where we wanted. If we used his supplier we could have his trade discount and that's what we did. The whole job went exceedingly well so I would recommend finding your fitter via Checkatrade and taking it from there.

[Canary42]

Thanks bhg481.

[Prudie]

I agree we went to the showroom and were swept away by the lushness of it all. We picked everything with the consultant's advice and were shown it all beforehand on a CAD type visual. We didn't realise that the builders and plumber were not employed by them, just people they use. They all came (including the designer) to the house first to discuss everything so they knew the set up. It was only later we found the actual workmen were self-employed and had to be paid separately. 

Some horrors along the way was the original plumber drained a radiator and threw the back sludge out of the upstairs window so it ran down and stained our Purbeck stone house wall. Then a builder threw his left over grout water out of a different upstairs window all over my hydrangea and fuchsia that then had a whitewash that wouldn't hose off for a month. The designer also didn't tell us the tall chrome mixer tap she chose for our basins was designed to work with combi/mains pressure systems. I could go on...

[Canary42]

Crikey Prudie, the tradesmen from hell.

[Prudie]

Yes, unfortunately we trusted them to get on while we were both out at work.

[bhg481]

Prudie - your experience makes me glad we chose our fitter first. He looked at our choice of bits and talked us out of some of them, explaining why they weren't right. He also recommended a few changes because they would work better; he was right. Fitters know what works and they've also seem many bathrooms and know what works best; bathroom salesmen know what gives them the biggest profit.

[royfromaus]

Prudie - hindsight is a wonderful thing x

_____________________________

Hindsight was not needed by the plumber...common sense and good honest decency is what was missing.

Plumbers and electrician really *** me off at times. Greedy bas....s