First, there’s the driveway. The weather’s been a bit warm recently, with temperatures in the 26-27C range. Unfortunately, this is enough to slightly melt the material they’ve used on the driveway. As a result if you then drive off it it gets a little churned up, damaging the surface.

No photos of that yet, but I do have a photo of the handle on the dishwasher door. Somewhat ironically this handle had already been snagged and fixed (after several attempts) by Crest. That snag was that the screw on the right side of the handle was loose.

This one, however… well, let the picture speak for itself.

Yes, that’s right. The left hand side of the handle has detached from the door. Either the screw is too short or the handle’s faulty. What’s worse is that Crest knew about this. But instead of trying to fix it by, say, replacing the handle, their contractors just tried to glue the handle back on. You can see the remnants of the glue on the door.

This only manifested itself a few days ago, after the dishwasher door had been opened and closed a few times. A couple of other door handles in the kitchen have the same problem — a little light use and they work loose. Looks like this might be a design flaw in some Symphony Group kitchens.

Staying in the kitchen, some of the lights don’t work. I’d known that some of the ceiling bulbs had gone on the previous inspection. I told Crest that I didn’t care about them fitting the bulbs, but that they should just leave me some spares. But now some of the under unit lights don’t work — I don’t know whether or not the bulbs have gone, or whether it’s a wiring issue.

I called and spoke to Crest about these earlier today (around 9.30am) and spoke to Janet in Customer Services. She tells me that she’ll pass these to Site Services, as apparently Customer Services don’t deal with things until three weeks after the handover. She promised me that Site Services will be in touch soon.

Solicitor delays

A chunk of the delay to exchange over the last 10 days has been down to Pictons being very slow. To the point where Crest Nicholson’s solicitors have been forwarding queries direct to me instead of passing them through the solicitors.

When I go to check these out it turns out that Pictons have had some of these queries (and it’s basic stuff like “Planning permission for an extension was obtained. Was an extension built?” that I can answer in minutes) since the beginning of June and haven’t passed them on to.

My mind is well and truly boggled.

Inspection report issues

I’ve also been going back and forth with Crest Nicholson about some of the issues that came up in the New Build Inspections (NBI) report. After some back and forth they’ve agreed that (amongst other things) yes, the manholes in the garden do need to be screwed down so the children can’t lift them up and fall in. And that (contrary to their earlier comments) this is an NHBC requirement that they’ve failed to follow.

But that’s not the half of it.

As mentioned back on 15th June, Crest Nicholson agreed to carry out the necessary work by the 24th June.

That was last Friday, so last Saturday I got the keys to the property from the estate agents and headed off down there armed with a copy of the inspection report.

To cut a long story short I only bothered to check the ground floor. Because of the 50 or so defects that NBI had identified on the ground floor, almost half of them (that Crest had agreed, in writing, to put right by the 24th) have not been put right. And have obviously not been put right. And these aren’t the sort of thing where there might be scope for a difference of opinion as to whether or not they’ve been done.

For example, if you’ve been following along you’ll remember this photo:

showing paint on the edge of the worktop in the kitchen. Trivial for them to put right, and it’s still not been done.

This didn’t leave me in the best frame of mind, so on Monday morning the Crest Nicholson sales manager dealing with this purchase is going to discover a lengthy e-mail from me in her Inbox. In it I’ve said that although I’ve got everything ready to Exchange at my end, we’re not going to be doing that until I’ve met the build manager (and, ideally, her) at the site and pointed out every issue to them. And then extracted from them a firm commitment to rectify them (with completion dependent on this).

I suspect that they don’t get to deal with informed customers terribly often, so this should be a nice surprise to them.

Contracts and coincidences

Pictons did manage to get a second set of contract paperwork to me this week. Actually, that’s not strictly true, as I had to go down to their office to collect it. This is another inch thick or so pile of documentation that I’ve been going through. That took a few evenings this week.

No nasty surprises so far, but it did throw up an interesting date coincidence — my birthday’s 28th November. My girlfriend moved in to her current place on the 28th November. Crest signed the paperwork to buy the land they’ve built on the 28th November. Hmm.

Postcode

Oh, and one more thing — a tip for anyone buying a new build. You’d be surprised how many people won’t have heard of the postcode.

This is quite important when trying to organise things like home insurance, and the insurer has problems quoting because they don’t recognise the postcode.

It’s the little things you don’t think of that come to bite you.

Anyway, that’s it for the moment. I’m looking forward to blogging notes from tomorrow’s conversations with Crest Nicholson…

Almost 150 defects…

This report highlights in excess of 145 defects, which is below average for a property of this size and value.

…

Despite the large number or minor items, which are damaged, not finished or missing, there is nothing that would prevent a timely completion on this property. The garden drainage has been flagged as a question which requires further answers from the builder.

The feeling of the inspector is that this house would benefit from a greater degree of preparation from the finishing trades prior to handover. The main concern is probably the poor quality d

And to quote from the previous entry:

Keep in mind when you look at these that Crest Nicholson had told me that they’d completed all their snagging, and that as far as they were concerned the house was ready.

Enjoy.

We’ll start with this honking big gap between some of the units in the kitchen and the kickboard at the bottom.

The mastic/filler next to it isn’t too great either. While we’re in the kitchen, here’s the edge of the granite work top. As mentioned in the previous entry, there’s paint along the edge that needs to be cleaned off.

Finally, moving outside but staying with the paint-where-it-shouldn’t-be motif, here’s a hinge that’s indicative of the care and attention with which the exterior has been painted.

I’ve got more photos of paint where it shouldn’t be (more hinges, handles, window glass, etc), but I’d hate to bore you.

None of these items from the snagging inspection (so far) have been major¹, or are things that I wouldn’t have noticed myself. But given the amount of money that’s being spent on this purchase you would expect a little more care and attention to detail.

Wouldn’t you?

¹ A couple of them might be, but rather than talk them up here I’m going to wait for the formal report first.

So, would I feel happy if I’d had to shell out my own money? Read on…

The short answer is “Without a doubt”. The peace of mind of having someone with the professional skill to spot the actual or potential problems in the property and explain them to me clearly is, to my mind, worth much more than that.

All told the snagger spent over two hours at the house, examining the exterior, the garden, the garage, and gave a comprehensive going over to the interior.

Now, it’s late on a Saturday night, and to be honest I’d rather be upstairs than typing away on the laptop and fighting with Photoshop, so I’ve only re-worked a few of the photos that I took at the moment. I’ll do more over the next few days.

Keep in mind when you look at these that Crest Nicholson had told me that they’d completed all their snagging, and that as far as they were concerned the house was ready.

So, first off, here’s a tile that’s slipped from the roof in to the gutter.

What’s not obvious from this photo is that that’s on the second floor, above the conservatory, so it would be very difficult for me to get up there on a ladder and fix it. That’s a job for a builder with a lot of scaffolding.

Moving a little lower down, here’s a shot of one end of the gutter on the garage.

There are two problems here. The first is the big gap visible (and highlighted) towards the bottom left of the picture. That’s going to be a problem in the future.

The other problem is that the end of the gutter dips down. Which means water is going to collect in there, along with anything else that happens to fall in. A few months down the line I’ll probably have a small lawn in there.

The third thing is relatively minor. Here’s a composite shot showing the colour of the bannisters, and the colour of another decorative part of the stairs.

As you can see, they’re completely different.

There are other things I don’t have photos ready for the web yet, including:

• Concerns about the drainage in the garden, and what that might do to the patio tiles a few years down the line. This is potentially a really big issue.
• Almost all the internal doors have chains on them that makes them self close. This is a fire regulation. On all bar one of those doors the chain is not sufficiently tight, so the door does not completely close and latch.
• There’s paint all over most of the exterior metal-work — hinges, latches, door handles, and so on. A lot of the interior windows have paint on them still too. I’ll have photos of this up at some point.
• Light switches wired incorrectly (and inconsistently) — for some of them ‘on’ is the up position, instead of the far more common ‘down’.
• One of the upstairs windows, which is (according to the appropriate regulations) supposed to (a) not have a lock on it, and (b) fully open without a spar in the middle of it, fails both these tests. So if you need to get out of the house in a hurry (perhaps there’s a fire, and the fire brigade are down below with a net) you can’t use that as an escape route.
• No rubber stoppers on many of the drawers in the kitchen, or the built-in fridge door, so they slam shut rather than closing softly. About a third of the doors do have them, so perhaps they just ran out of them one day and forgot to fit them.
• The cupboard under the sink had flooded and ‘blown’. We’d noticed that weeks ago, and had been told that it had been replaced.
• Paint on the granite worktops in the kitchen

And so on.

I should be getting the full report on Tuesday. I’m very interested to find out what Crest’s response is. More news soon.

Disclaimer: they sponsor the hosting of this blog, and the inspection’s going to be free. But I was planning on getting a professional snagging inspection (and using them) back before they made that offer.

I’ll be going along with my trusty digital camera when they carry out the inspection, and I’ll post up photos of anything they find. And if you want to see some photos of snagging horror stories, checking out the snagging.org gallery.

Snagging.org has been set up to provide the following:

1. A place to get new home snagging list advice.
2. A place to offer other members snagging list help.
3. A forum for discussing new build homes and developers.
4. Web links related to the new homes industry.
5. News stories and polls about the new home industry.

There’s some useful content in the forums and opportunities for other new build purchasers to sound off about issues they’ve had with building firms.