Is the building industry full of cowboys?

[silentC]

In the course of building a house last year, and other works I have been involved in over the years, I have heard many 'tradesmen' saying things like "nah, we don't have to follow the manufacturer's instructions. I've done it this way for years."

I wonder how many people would be happy knowing that this attitude prevails in the building of their house? There are so many guys out there who believe they know better and that the manufacturer goes over the top to try and cover his backside. This is true, the manufacturers recommend how their products should be installed in order to reduce warranty claims. That's good business. But do you think they actually do a bit of research and work out what is most likely to result in long lasting fault-free service, or do they just sit back and think "how can we p!ss off the trades by making them jump through hoops?"

In most cases that I have come across, they always defer to the BCA, which is what you are supposed to follow anyway. I wonder how many guys also think that the BCA is 'over the top' and can be ignored because "I've been doing it like this for years". Don't rely on inspections to pick things up either, because I have witnessed this process a number of times and they can't examine everything.

My favourite one was a guy I had doing some work for me a couple of years ago. His attitude was "I'll be long dead before that ever rusts/fails/falls apart". He was 70!

In this thread, Arms reckons that the average home owner would not be prepared to pay a premium to have everything done according to the manufacturer's instructions - implying that doing things right costs more. In other words, are you prepared to trust someone to come up with their own ideas on how it should be done and hope for the best, or would you rather 'pay a bit more' and have it done the way the manufacturer says it should be?

I have seen a lot of cowboys. I wouldn't want them working on my house. I had one and I got rid of him. I prefer the attitude of a builder mate of mine: "if you do it right the first time, you don't get called back, and I hate getting called back." He also says that doing things cheaply is a false economy because it always costs more to fix a problem than to get it right in the first place.

[Bleedin Thumb]

Well Pilgram, I'd probably take offence at that if I wasn't so darn busy fixing this wagon.

Yippy-Yi-O-Ty-Ay.

[silentC]

Is that it? I expected at least a little bit of outrage!

[Bleedin Thumb]

Well OK I'll be serious for a tick.
I think you can be too officious also and if you did everything according to all the applicable Australian Standards,the Manufacturers guidelines, Workcovers requirements etc the job could not get done as a lot of these standards and guidelines contradict each other.
As you can glean from this forum there are more ways than one to skin a cat..every tradie has a different way of doing things and technology dictates that new products and fixings are tried out without previous experience and you work out what works for you.

I am mostly involved with larger stuff these days and it is so professional you would believe what skills the trades have just to get onto site. I'm not just talking about their trade skills...the management requirements are enormous and the charge out rates reflect this.

This probably results in a greater concentation of cowboys in domestic construction so you notice them when you're getting stuff done to your home, but overall there's probably more cowboys in financial services or car sales/repairs...even....IT... I believe that's where the real shonks hang out.

[pawnhead]

You should have followed the manufacturers specs when you built that wagon BT.

Is the building industry full of cowboys?

The short answer:
Yes.
The long answer:
Yippy-Yi-O-Ty-Ay

Unfortunatelly, Joe public generally can't tell the difference, and goes for the cheapest quote which often gets him in trouble. It gives the industry a bad name, and makes life hard for the decent tradesmen who have to compete with the cowboys.

Most small businesses go broke in their first year. A lot of small builders and tradesmen have registered companies and they don't have a lot to loose if the business goes broke, so they might take the risk of cutting corners to save time and money. That's not usually the case for manufacturers.

They have a lot more to loose if their product isn't up to scratch, and their product/system has to meet Australian Standards. But of course it's in their interest to come up with the cheapest and simplest product/system if they want to stay competitive.
As mentioned, they're not just trying to make people jump through hoops.

In regards to that thread, I can remember years ago that Hardies had a lot of warranty claims on their Villaboard from tiles cracking, despite having followed recommended instalation instructions. It cost them quite a bit, and it resulted in them modifying their instructions by recommending closer centres for perimeter fixing.

[silentC]

Let me also say that I have worked with some great trades who know their business inside and out and are motivated to do a good job, both because they don't want to get called back, but also because they have pride in it.

I suppose if you have been doing something for 20 or 30 years, you get a feel for what works, although I think some people have a hard time learning lessons. If the product is new to you, then I think the best approach is to follow the guidelines. If it goes wrong, then you can go back to the manufacturer and say "what went wrong?" In that way, you're covering your own backside. I hate that attitude some guys have when they say "ahh, don't worry about that crap, it's unnecessary". The cowboy bell goes into overdrive when I hear that.

If a home owner wants you to take a shortcut to save costs, well I think if it was me I would walk away from the job. It doesn't make any sense to me to spend upwards of $300,000 on a house and try to save a couple of grand by cutting a corner. And these days you have to warrant your work for 10 years, so why would you do it?

I reckon most of the cowboys are the way they are because they are ignorant of the correct way to do something and just think they know better. If they willingly do something on the cheap just to get the job, in the knowledge that it's not up to standards, then they are not cowboys, they are criminals and deserve to have whatsername from Today Tonight chasing them down the street with a camera crew. But that's a different animal.

The cowboys I'm talking about are usually well-meaning. I've been guilty of it myself - ignorance of what we call in the IT business "best practice". Yes there are many ways to skin a cat, but there are usually only a couple of best practice methods of achieving something. And if a manufacturer says "use our product this way, or you void warranty" then I reckon you should listen, despite what your years of experience tell you, because at the end of the day, they have bigger lawyers than you do.

[Bleedin Thumb]

If the product is new to you, then I think the best approach is to follow the guidelines.

Am I taking this phrase out of context or are you suggesting that we break The Code?

The correct way of dealing with a new product is to try it, make a balls up of it, throw it away, then read the instructions.
This way you have successfull undertaken field trials on the manufacturers behalf as well as gaining useful knowledge of how not to use it.

[silentC]

No, I think the appropriate method (and here I think the Code needs updating) when you are doing the job for a paying customer is to cynically refer to the instructions, make a half hearted attempt at doing it their way, then when it doesn't work, you throw your hands in the air, go to the customer and say "these idiots don't know their arms from their aerosols" and do it the way you intended to. That way you impress your customer with your intuitive approach to your job and show up these desk jockey idiots who make up all this crap as a bunch of clowns who would be the first against the wall come the revolution.

Well, that's the way I'd do it...

[echnidna]

Honestly, it goes way beyond tradesmen in the building trades.
Just have a good look at some of the things said in these forums.

Yippy-Yi-O-Ty-Ay.

[Burnsy]

When I stopped running my buisness full time three years ago and decided that I would do it on the side and only work the jobs I wanted to "read well paying and good clients" The cowboy factor was one of the contributing reasons. As the boom started to accelerate in WA it got worse. In WA, landcsaping is not a registered trade and as such any clown with a ute and a wheel barrow was running around with an old evelope writing quotes out on the back of it. In the last six months of running the business I found that nearly half the quotes I was requested to do was to repair other peoples shoddy work, I took on none of those jobs. Some of them were the clients fault, they thought the contractor was a lovely bloke and paid him in full when he was nearly finished - he then never showed up.

It use to really give me the shytes when a client would rip out a quote that was hand written on the back of a business card or old envelope (yes I saw them) and proceed to ask me if I could match the quote. I would then tell them to read the fine print on my printed quote and ask the other guy if he would match my quote ie, full insurance, work guaranteed and no final payment until work is complete.

I have spoken about this before here https://www.woodworkforums.com/showth...302#post532302

There are definitely cowboys out there and in WA at the moment, chosing a higher quote is no way of guaranteeing anything, the "you get what you pay for" rule only applies to cheap quotes.

[Rossluck]

I was reading your little spat with Arms, Silent, and to be quite frank I could see where he was coming from. While I agree that people who new to building work should adhere to instructions, I think that experienced tradies and builders (or people in other fields) can deviate.

I've just about finished turning a laundry into a bathroom to give our house a second bathroom, and I was following manufacturers instructions to the letter. It was sending me mad, and it was costing more and depleting my confidence. This is because their practices didn't particulalrly suit what I was doing.

Then a person I'd sold a spa to via Ebay turned up and gave me some invaluable advice. He is a tiler, and a professional renovator, and he suggested that I make myself familar with the best practices and manufactuers instructions, but not be afraid to deviate from them.

But I do know the cowboys. All of the concreting cowboys in S.E. QLD have poured a slab at my place .

[silentC]

I was reading your little spat with Arms, Silent, and to be quite frank I could see where he was coming from.

The point about that is that here you have a person new to the forum asking how waterproofing should be done. All I was doing was giving the guy access to the information published by the manufacturer, which I believe to be the most sensible approach. If he chooses not to follow it, then that is his problem. What I wouldn't do (and it's a bit like the electrical threads) is to advise someone to blatantly ignore it because, "as we all know", manufacturers are just covering their backsides and you follow their guidelines at your own peril and expense.

How does the new forum member know that Arms knows anything about waterproofing? Should he just take his word for it? Maybe he hasn't got a clue. His signature line says "Flat pack kitchens". Does that qualify him to override the Hardies recommendations with his own?

So the sensible thing to me seemed to be to direct the guy to Hardie's web site. I made no comment about the advice given by others. I'm no expert on it. What I would do in that situation is either speak to a tradie that I trust, or I would read the manufacturer's recommendations and follow them.

My question is, are you happy to have trades who dismiss the recommended method of installation as overkill working on your house? If that's overkill, what is their threshold? Where else are they looking to cut corners because in their opinion it's not necessary? What about the guys who don't fit parts because they don't reckon you need them? Are you happy to see safety covers, bolts, screws and other bits and pieces left over in the box and, when questioned, have the tradie say "oh, I never bother with that bit"?

[echnidna]

There is a big difference between deviations based on practical trades experience and being sloppy & haphazard.

I can't think of any prescriptive way a non trades person can reasonably differentiate between a cowboy and a good experienced tradesman except for speaking to prior customers. But even then, dodgy brothers inc probably have a network of good references (who they drink beer with) they can throw up.

[silentC]

Here's an example:

A number of times over the last couple of years, I have seen the question asked "should I nail or screw my timber decking to my Duragal steel joists". The gut reaction of most 'experienced' people, is to say "screwing is better". This is the accepted wisdom.

However, if you look in the installation manual for Duragal, it says clearly "OneSteel does not recommend screwing timber decking to Duragal steel joists". It's not excluded by omission, it specifically states that it is not recommended. Now how many blokes do you reckon have screwed their deck down, either not knowing any better, or thinking that they do? Why has OneSteel gone to the trouble of pointing it out?

I bet I know why. I bet in the early days of the product, they had some warranty problems and the boffins determined that the cause was the screws. So to avoid future warranty issues, they print on all their material that screwing is not recommended. If Bob the Builder goes ahead and screws it anyway, he is screwed when it comes time to make a warranty claim.

I don't know why screwing instead of nailing causes a problem. Try and find anyone who works for OneSteel who knows. In fact I've heard at least one story of a OneSteel employee telling someone to ignore it.

Don't you think there is a reason though? Why would they limit their application that way if there wasn't a good reason? Yet so many tradies feel that it can be ignored, or are completely ignorant of the recommendation. Because they know better than the boffins at OneSteel. If they proceed to get their screwgun out regardless, then as far as I'm concerned that is cowboy behaviour. If I felt strongly enough that it was worng, I would ring OneSteel and keep trying until I found someone who could explain to me why. Then I would decide if it was warranted or not on the basis of the information they provide, rather than just saying "well, it makes no sense to me, so I'll just ignore it".

[Rossluck]

Fair enough. I like what Echidna said: that competent experienced people may be able to employ their knowledge to ad lib, but amateurs should follow the code.

The trouble is that the building boom has meant the entry into trades of people whose mechanical aptitude is such that they should really be public servants or something. Serious professionals who know their trade and the materials that they use don't do bodgy stuff.

A few months agopicked up a bit of scrap timber from a building site (it was packing timber used to deliver tiles or bricks or something) and I was stunned to note that it was silky oak! I showed a chippie, who said: "what's that?", I said: "It's silky oak!!!". His response: "What's silky oak?"

A chippie