Thread: Is the building industry full of cowboys?

I assure you it was based on the same stringent methodology I apply to all of my estimates

you mean it was a wild guess then !!!!

Originally Posted by echnidna

you mean it was a wild guess then !!!!

Hint: an onager is an asian "wild ass".....

My dear old Dad was the principal of a Tech College( You youngsters know it as a TAFE)
He told me, way back in the 60s that "The trades are buggered"
When I asked why, he said that Tech courses were "infra dig" and that the system was having to lower its admission standards to accommodate and attract trade students.(You oldsters will remember the "Clever Country''slogan---everyone had to have a Uni degree!)
Talk to any old "Tradie", and he'll tell you what his apprentices DON'T know, not what they DO.They are undertrained and over paid.Bring back the Premium, say I.
That's why any tradie under 50 yr old who does work for me does it "a la plumbers' handbook!!""
It's too bloody easy to cut corners!!

An Onager is also a machine for chucking rocks, dead dogs etc at the enemy.

The whole world is full of cowboys, Silent C. It is also full of heroes. Our job is to recognise them. a retired copper once told me that the only reason anyone ever gets conned is because ,deep down,they think they are actually putting one over on the con artist. the BCA and its other state equivelants were not put in place to protect you. They were put in place to siphon a tax upon the activity of the building industry. It has always been your job to sort the goodies from the baddies, and it always will be. There is nothing wrong with this; it is a major part of evolution. Is that a Tiger making the long grass move, or a vagrant puff of wind?

The whole world is full of cowboys

You don't need to tell me that

The reason I started this thread (and it was a year and a half ago) was to get a reaction from some of the people in the building industry who frequented the forums back then. Since we've split off the building stuff into the renovation forums, most of them no longer come here.

Some of these guys were running a de facto building advisory service in which they would often tell people to ignore the installation instructions because they never followed them themselves. To my mind, that is bad advice to give and bad advice to follow. It led me to question the quality of the jobs being done by these guys themselves given the fact they seemed to feel you could ignore what the manufacturer said about their own products. I've seen nothing here to convince me otherwise.

It has nothing to do with the BCA or trade qualifications.

hey SC is retreating.

Originally Posted by echnidna

hey SC is retreating.

Don't bet on it.
My guess is a small tactical retreat so as to regroup and push for an all out final assault.

Originally Posted by echnidna

hey SC is retreating.

Don't believe it - it's a trap!

SC,
How can you assert that your Thread had nothing to do with trade qualifications when you constantly refer to "Trades" and "Tradies" as the people most likely NOT to follow the manufacturers' instructions.
At the risk of being accused of going back on my original rant, only well trained and experienced tradesmen would be selective enough to know WHICH instructions could be ignored, and, in the opinion of a lot of experienced (read "OLDER) tradesmen of my acquaintance, apprenticeships nowadays are to "Narrow and Shallow".
I ,as a practicing Luddite, am very aware that technology moves on, but most of the raw materials are still the same, and, if you understand them, you're half way there.
I cannot comment on the Building Codes.I'll leave that to someone with more experience!!!!

I can assert that because I started the thread and I know what I was on about.

The reason that trades come into it is because they are the people doing the work. I would not walk into a pub and say to the drunk in the corner "hey would you like to come and do some plastering for me", would I? So it is natural to assume that the people I am referring to are (or consider themselves to be) trades.

It's not about whether or not a person has qualifications. It's about people who say things like "they're just covering their arses" as they throw the installation instructions in the bin.

Originally Posted by silentC

I can assert that because I started the thread and I know what I was on about.

The reason that trades come into it is because they are the people doing the work. I would not walk into a pub and say to the drunk in the corner "hey would you like to come and do some plastering for me", would I? So it is natural to assume that the people I am referring to are (or consider themselves to be) trades.

It's not about whether or not a person has qualifications. It's about people who say things like "they're just covering their arses" as they throw the installation instructions in the bin.

But a tradie plasterer might walk into a pub and say to the drunk in the corner "hey would you like to come and do some plastering for me" when he needs someone with a weak mind and a strong back to hump the sheets sround and lift them up while the tradey fixes the sheets to the frame.

What's wrong with that?

Nothing - but the plasterer is responsible for making sure the job is done to standards, not the drunk. You don't need a qualification to hang plaster, you don't even need one to run wires - anyone can do either. But you need a contractor's license to do both and it is under that license that the assumption is made you will follow standards and provide a warranty.

Answer me this: to use the example of the Duragal deck frame. Would you ignore the manufacturer's recommendation to not use screws?

Probably not as I haven't worked with duragal, so I cannot draw on practical experience.