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Tregonsee
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Lancashire UK
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21-07-2018, 01:23 PM
11

Re: no good tradesmen any more

TBH
I find the accusation that all current tradesmen to be absurd.
I use many different types of tradesmen and find them to be excellent.
One minor aspect of one project means that all current tradesmen are hopeless?

Instead of moaning about it on social media, why not contact the builders and let them sort it out. I would assume that a project of that sort would carry a guarantee longer than 3 years.
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21-07-2018, 01:58 PM
12

Re: no good tradesmen any more

Originally Posted by realspeed ->
Roxy

The problem is the apprenticeship are far too short or even just down to 6 months training. When I did mine it was a 5 year one which should be bought back. One cannot learn any trade properly in 6 months or even a year. Mine was on site training -plus day release and 2 night classes as well
Often left home at 6 am andwith night school back at 10pm, all at a very young age from 15 years old until 20 years old
I agree. I had a four-year apprenticeship has an electrician. We were sent to a `boot-camp` every day for a year which was interspersed with block release courses at a Bradford University annexe. Boot camp taught us the basics of installation, bending radii of cables and conduit etc. Something they don't bother about these days it would seem. College taught us all aspects of electrical theory, Ohms and Kirchoff's Laws, electrical reactance and even properties of transformers. I then went to night school three times a week to learn more electrical theory. None of this is taught today, they don't want jobbing electricians, just somebody who can throw cables in.

The second year was much the same but this time we had on site training with an electrician. We weren't allowed to do anything at this stage, just listen to the sparky and observe what he was doing. At the end of the second year we were expected to know what the sparky was doing and hand him the appropriate tools and equipment at the right time. Our number were whittled down over the four years so only a few remained.

Contrast all that lot with a six month re-training course, the `graduates` of which think they are fully qualified in the course they have taken. Absolute rubbish. Set one of them down in a house and ask them to rewire it and they wouldn't have a clue. Just more massaging of the jobless figures.
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21-07-2018, 02:03 PM
13

Re: no good tradesmen any more

Originally Posted by Tregonsee ->
TBH
I find the accusation that all current tradesmen to be absurd.
I use many different types of tradesmen and find them to be excellent.
One minor aspect of one project means that all current tradesmen are hopeless?

Instead of moaning about it on social media, why not contact the builders and let them sort it out. I would assume that a project of that sort would carry a guarantee longer than 3 years.
Hear hear. I am an exceptional electrician even though I say it myself. I've never had to go back to one of my jobs because of bad workmanship, just the odd socket or switch that has stopped working. My rewires were guaranteed for a five years, no quibble. Any problems that arose in that time were sorted out. Could explain why I kept getting repeat business and recommendations by word of mouth.
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21-07-2018, 02:04 PM
14

Re: no good tradesmen any more

Apprenticeships dried up under Thatcher reign, laborers became the norm on sites, paid less, we are nstill paying the price today for such shortsightedness.

House bashers were turned out at skill centers after 6 months, you could spot them a mile away.
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21-07-2018, 02:29 PM
15

Re: no good tradesmen any more

I do agree with Tregonsee that it should still be under guarantee RS at least a 5 year one.
But then I also agree that there is a lot of "Slapdashery" about in the trades today.
Most because proper long term apprenticeships where done away with around 1990 we also import more foreign tradesmen these days and the standards of other country's are way below what used to be British Standards.
A trade aprenticeship these days can be 6 months to a year.In my day you were only classed as Improver and were only allowed to do small jobs. In my trade at the time (the plastering trade) I was going around after the electricians and carpenters and finishing off also you still had to mix up for the plasterers and brickies.How many houses I personally pointed I lost count.

I got an estimate to paint the front of my house from a local painter only last week we agreed a price and we agreed the start date which was Monday morning at 8 am he said he would be here it was going to take 3 days.

11 am came and still he had not arrived I dug out his card and phoned his landline (home) his wife answered and she shouted his name he came to the phone and I asked why he had not started on my house. His words were sorry but he was just finishing off another job.
I cancelled the job ,he was not amused but I told him we agreed on the price and the start date and time.If he did not have the manners to phone me and tell me he was going to be late then he can look elsewhere for his work.
Anyways I asked if he was finishing another job why was he answering his phone at home.
There are a lot of good trades men about but there are an awful lot of cowboys as well.
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21-07-2018, 03:14 PM
16

Re: no good tradesmen any more

I must say I have been let down many times by local tradesmen.

In all fairness, there have been one or two reliable ones, but the majority have been useless and tell lies.

I was going to rebuild my small extension a while back, and the builder near me gave me a price and seemed a nice enough bloke.
I rushded the architects and council planners to make sure all the paperwork was in order for him, and 2 days before he was going to start I phoned him to let him know everything was ready to start.
It was only at that point I found out he wasn't starting, and had no intention of starting even. He said he hadn't been very well.

Too ill to have the decency to let me know even?
I was fuming.

I have been messed about by decorators, insurance people, car garages, and no end of others. I really dread having to have anything done now.
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21-07-2018, 06:39 PM
17

Re: no good tradesmen any more

Originally Posted by realspeed ->
The problem is the apprenticeships are far too short or even just down to 6 months training. When I did mine it was a 5 year one which should be bought back. One cannot learn any trade properly in 6 months or even a year. Mine was on site training -plus day release and 2 night classes as well Often left home at 6 am and with night school back at 10pm, all at a very young age from 15 years old until 20 years old
Exactly the same here, often the trip home at 10pm was on a very cold train which often broke down (The old nationlised BR) at the time we complained about the pay (much lower than the others) the conditions (apprentices always got the dirty jobs) and the amount of study BUT I can honestly say that it's enabled me to do a better job than almost ANY of todays pampered and arrogant generation who just don't seem to understand the basics of engineering and how things work.
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21-07-2018, 06:47 PM
18

Re: no good tradesmen any more

Originally Posted by Mups ->
I rushded the architects and council planners to make sure all the paperwork was in order for him
There's the problem Mups - paperwork - if it exists then they have to meet certain standards, if (as so many people do) you had just told him to start he could have cut corners, used cheap materials, bodged joints (Like in the OP's case) and done all sorts and you would have had no way of getting it corrected.

With todays muppets, if you can not produce a drawing and show them where they were faulty you'll get nowhere, and if you can produce a drawing (as you've discovered) they just don't want to know and leave you stranded while they go and find another mug who doesn't know the score
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21-07-2018, 06:55 PM
19

Re: no good tradesmen any more

worst experience I had and to him to bu**er off was when a trip switch kept blowing which was for the power sockets in each of the 30 odd kennels in one block.



He wanted me to undo every socket so he could check the wiring. Turned out it was down to a heat lamp causing he fault. I knew the wiring was correct as I, after all it was the trade in did my apprenticeship in.

On pressing him for an explaination he said he only learnt house wiring, no wonder he kept ringing up for advice.

Then he wanted paying! what a joke told him to go learn a trade first.

All the kennels and cattery I rewired power and lighting and new circuit breaker ( fuse boxes) everywhere. One I replaced even the ceramic fuse bridge was broken in it. Another had the old level on/off switch on the outside, one of those old industrial types
In that picture I replaced the kennel front which were bars, built the dividing walls, not easy to level up from a sloping floor, re-layed the floor tiles
Oh doing those walls was in the only 2 week shutdown we allowed ourselves in november

All in all It took 8 years to pull the place up to a reasonable standard
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Tregonsee
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Lancashire UK
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22-07-2018, 10:21 AM
20

Re: no good tradesmen any more

So you did the wiring but when it went wrong you needed to call in a tradesman.
 
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