who's your home insured by if you dont mind me asking?

a slight head's up to anyone buying a new home, if it doesnt have the new home warantee under Travellers, odd's are it's a shotty builder :P

Its all about S.T.B




slap, throw and bang it in

my parents home isnt all that great either, we have a missing stud in one of the walls. try finding it with a stud finder and well, it was way past 16in on center...

walls arent even close to 90 degrees!

If you think your house is shitty, you should go look at all the new townhomes being built in richmond

its all about the cheap labour and no care about quality.

It's covered by Aviva, I believe. As with any insurance company that covers the 2-5-10, it must meet the standards set out by the Homeowner Protection Office and the insurance company must be approved by the Financial Institutions Commission.

This is as of any home built after July 1, 1999. The government passed the Homeowner Protection Act to ensure uniformity as far as standards of coverage, commencement dates, exclusions, and limits on coverage are concerned - to protect the consumer.

Having said all that, the insurance companies work within the parameters, so I suppose one can assume some are better than others. There's corruption everywhere, but the bottom line is, no builder wants complaints lodged against them if they want to continue building and build any kind of reputation. I met the builder today and he seemed quite genuine. He's been in the business for thirty years. I think too many complaints and nobody will cover him.

The question is, how many people take the time to complain or know how to go about filing a complaint. Anyway...........

I'm sure you know this (Hondaracer), but for those of you who are a little confused by it all, the above insurance company is not my regular insurance company that covers your basic theft, fire, etc. It's the company the builder is with to cover anything that may go wrong.

Just an FYI, being European is only a good thing if the Euro country they come from actually has the famous strict standards and trades education, such as Germany, and even then it's only applicable if that person has gone through said education.

Here's a hint: Countries like Poland, Romania, Croatia, etc don't actually have those super high standards as the national norm, and are just as shady quality-wise as EIs and Chinese people.

When I started I had a German boss that went through the certification process in Germany, and it's not even funny how much the stereotypes are true. I still haven't met another painter that knew and actually followed the proper ways of doing things like he did.

Since then I've worked for Polish, Chinese, Mexican and Canadian bosses, and the two-bit bullshit they try to pull sometimes is just depressing. I'm really glad I got to learn the right way, because most of the time it ends up being cheaper to do it the right way once than to have to come back later, undo all the shit that was done wrong, and do it right anyways, all the while having people screaming at you.

As far as cheap labour goes, like Ferra said, no one could afford houses built by quality tradesman doing all the work, the trick is to have someone actually checking what they do. The biggest problem wasn't that there was a lot of cheap labour being used, it's that there was no supervision. Even now you go to a jobsite and there's a bunch of yahoos and no foreman, and sure enough they're running wild fucking everything up, and no one catches them in time before everything gets boarded up and painted over.

Quickly scrolled through, but a European doesn't cut corners, usually you'll find excellent craftsmanship. My dad used to do all sorts of things and when he did them he did them to the best of his abilitys and never ever cut corners because he knew whats the point in doing somthing when it cant be done right.

how would you guys compare the old timer homes (50ish years old) to new houses nowadays? good quality b/c of the way they're built, regardless of age? i guess if it was also properly maintained and kept.

my parents bought a new house 10 years ago and i also noticed the lack of workmanship compared to our vancouver special we had before which was built in the 80's.

How many ppl r willing to pay more for high quality stuff? Ppl tend to look for cheap stuff & take the chance that nothing will go wrong.

More like people pay for high quality finishing and don't pay enough attention to what it's build on/attached to.

and yes i agree that the quality of homes have gone down..

the last house i was in the drywallers did a shitty taping job and in under a year you could se seams noq the first "new" house we had built the workmenship was AMAZING house was solid and built out of 2x6's for all exterior walls instead of 2x4's every thing was perfect
the last 3 houses were made by indo-canadians and well, they were simply built to sell for profit and th quality shows.

thats why the new house we are having built is going to be done by reputable companys even if its going to cost more, atleast this way the hosue will be perfect

honestly dude, in the last 4 houses ive lived in we had hot water heating ,(due to allergies to dust) not a single problem, last 3 houses had infloor heating and by far was the BEST
and now in our new home being built(hosue 5) its with infloor heating and heat pump which is really the BEST of both worlds, a/c and infloor heating FTW