09 Jun Working with Building Services Contractors
Renovating a house yourself, if you attempt to project manage everything, including the building contractors (like I did for the first time ever), is a bit like stepping off a cliff and hoping the impact isn’t going to be fatal. That’s because there is a lot to learn and, inevitably, sort out when things start getting tricky.
Possibly my biggest disappointment with working with contractors (of all persuasions bar one or two individual workers) is that they will say anything to get the gig but then spend considerable effort trying to avoid any responsibility for their work. Pride is in very short supply trade in the UK building trade. As you will learn when I post more posthumous blogs about the building of our solar pv house.
At the time of writing this we are now six months into living in the house and still four PV panels (7.5% of the power generating potential) are not producing because of a problem (either with a power optimiser or with some wires). Trying to get the supplier, the manufacturer and the installer to sort it out is like nailing jelly, once, it seems, there’s no cash at stake.
Here is my exasperated and resignatory WhatsApp chat with the installer this morning. I might come across as a bit harsh (Janne thinks so) and do like him, he did help me a lot, and we on well (and are still talking!) but…the system was installed in January and this was written in June and for that whole time we have not had a fully operational system and instead have had a few problems including an earthing issue and faulty power optimisers.
(Update 11th June, 2018: thankfully the installer finally came round at 8am on Sunday and now all power optimisers are showing up – 27 out of 27 – and seem to be producing. However, two of the four panels are now showing up producing on the inverter’s app but there are still two panels that it says are not producing, which is illogical if all 27 optimisers are producing, because it is two panels per optimiser! The saga continues and as I said to the installer afterwards, write back to the manufacturer, cc me and I’ll take it from there, complaining to top brass is one of my more useful skills).
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