According to representatives of the building companies 'gagging' clauses are rare and often at the insistance of the home owner 🤣

Posted By: jms452They left more wiggle room than that 8m40s - The homebuilders federation said of NDAs 'They are not widely used...' '... some times at the request of the customer'

Plausible deniability.....

Posted By: Rexthe camera is so sensitive, with a display between cold (blue) to red (warm) based upon only a few degrees temp difference, it is easy to become paranoid based upon the thermal colour when the reality is almost insignificant. But of course, the quality of a new build developer house is a different issue.

Seeing the subtleties is interesting but when you're looking for 'stuff worth fixing' in retrofit find the bad areas, lock the scale and use this to resurvey. Put's it all nicely into perspective.

I recently found out that the EPC audit failed and a rectified EPC cannot yet be lodged.

I think the basic geometry was the wrong scale and evidence was missing to substantiate the heat loss of significant thermal elements.

Hello,

To my understanding, ACD are claimed for some of these junctions; and even after EPC audit where the lintel was defaulted.

The outer leaf of the building in some places is brick and in others a concrete artstone type block so external insulation most likely not suitable.

Insulating the reveals themselves would also put skirtings over glazing etc and I have not done the calculation to work out what thickness would be needed to change the dew point of the junction.

The last update I have is that the warranty provider are now involved and that it was quite hard to communicate the fault to them; so who knows what will be determined.

I would think that it's entirely possible to set the frames back as required, it would need some minor internal works to facilitate. Possibly new deeper uPVC sills if the current ones can't accomdate a 30mm change and there is only one stone artstone sil that might need moving.

Any advice or guidance would be appreciated - the overall feeling is that very few invovled actually understand what's going on.

But on a upside; the window subcontractors workforce now do check the window setbacks specifically for this and query it on other sites - where previously they did not. So there has been some "greater good!" Achieved!

@Newbuild, I confess I've lost track of what the issue is that we're looking at?

The warranty provider have said:

"Our records show cavity closers are correctly fitted and within suitable tolerance. There does not appear to be thermal defect at this location. "

Posted By: NewbuildThe warranty provider have said:

"Our records show cavity closers are correctly fitted and within suitable tolerance. There does not appear to be thermal defect at this location. "

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Then of course there is the as planned / designed and as built / installed and the typical gulf between the two.
Ask to see the actual records and the signed inspection along with the installation standards so that you can assess whether the work was done as specified.

Keep pushing

Are the cavity closers actually the problem? I'm still confused as to what the problem is.

Posted By: Peter_in_HungaryThe problem is poor (out of spec) thermal performance caused by incorrect construction. Surely it is not up to the claimant to determine the actual cause because they are not qualified to do so

Agreed but that's my point. The warranty provider is talking about cavity closer installation, but if that isn't the specific instance of 'incorrect construction' that is causing the trouble then no amount of getting records and specs is going to cause them to change their minds. So, again, what is the cause of the problem? Are we clear?

And yes, in an ideal world, there would be a third-party test of thermal performance that was able to verify the existence of a problem and the contractual terms would oblige the builder or warranty provider to correct the problem so the third-party could verify that the problem had been fixed. And it would all be paid for by the builder or warranty provider or insurance company with no additional effort or cash from the householder.

And ideally pigs would fly. (although that brings some unfortunate images to mind )

The reality is likely to be that the householder will need a suitably qualified surveyor to gather third-party evidence in a form that can be used by a suitably qualified lawyer to discover if the builder can be held liable and if so to then enforce that liability. All at the householder's expense unless the lawyer can persuade the builder et al to reimburse the costs.

As an update this is still "progressing".

Waiting for the comming heating season.

Warranty provider have denied all requests to do with thermal defects so far. But they did send a surveyor who promptly took some thermal images on a mobile phone, whilst the house had been ventilated all day (window doors open) for covid with the heating off. So unsurprisingly his images showed no issues... As surprise, surprise the inside and outside were all the same temperature by that point.

Builder have said they had no obligation to build correct thermal details. Despite claiming various ACDs in the as built SAP and resulting EPC.

Trying to mate two ridgid materials by getting both surfaces flat and bonded/fixed tightly together with millimetre accuracy is unlikely to happen in the building industry. Ive only seen one other partial fill build and it was pretty much the same with boards looking like they had been dropped into the cavity.

The cavity closure should be tight up against the cavity insulation with no flexing. My BCO was keen to point this out to me when we did our build and I was careful to cut the boards as exact as I could. Any discrepancy was done with expanding foam and pressing the closer in against the foam and holding in place with a piece of ply up against it and jammed in with some battens in the opening. If after that there were some hollow points drilled 10mm hole an injected foam. The board should be tight against the internal wall I worked alongside my brickie ensuring no mortar snots putting the boards in (T&G) after the mortar had gone off making holes for the ties and making good around them and using quality plastic retainers. I am surprised I cannot see any wall ties there should be ties at least every 300 mm vertically and within 225 mm of the opening as my build was blocks there was a tie every course. Where we are located that detail in the photo would not have passed BCO as in a brick faced build there should be 75 mm mm space between the face of the insulation and the outer leaf. A rendered block construction 50 mm.