‘Botched insulation means mushrooms grow on my walls’

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce3zxx1gek1o

Posted by cennep44

11 Comments

  1. A huge amount of the flats my then BF and I looked at renting in Edinburgh had some sort of obvious mould problem. Over 50%.

    Landlords really are grifters with it too. In two of the flats you could see the slight discolouration on a bit of wall where they’d obviously bleached/sanded down it then just slapped a bit of paint on it ready for the next tenant. A friend had a problem with this in their flat and we were told to: Never dry clothes indoors (there was no tumble dryer at the property), buy a dehumidifer, keep windows open at all times. There wasn’t a single contractor sent around to actually look at it.

  2. Saw that on BBC Breakfast earlier total shocker, but not surprising as any time there is any sort of government scheme like this the cowboys soon jump on the bandwagon.

  3. BlackSpinedPlinketto on

    Now THATS a compo face! The gradient of the lip bow, the 2000 yard stare, the wall hole that *tells the whole story*. It’s absolutely perfect photography with nothing in the picture irrelevant. I mean, she doesn’t even have hair, she’s literally a sad face with a wall hole.

  4. SoiledGrundies on

    My bungalow got pretty bad after it was insulated. I ‘managed’ it for years with heat and ventilation but eventually pulled the trigger on a dehudifier when heating became so expensive. It sits in the hallway and reduces the humidity throughout every room. I don’t think I ever spent a better £300 in my life than that machine. It costs to run but less than keeping the heating on low even when I’m working away.

    This woman’s problem seems to be particularly bad though. I doubt my machine would pull much humidity from under the floorboards.

  5. Mushrooms wouldn’t have grown if her “concerned” family had just pulled in, cleaned the mould, turned on the heating and opened some windows.

  6. SeaElephant8890 on

    Whenever there is a new initiative with grants firms pop up offering such services. A lot of the time it is unproven ways of working that have not had long term testing or are installed by people without the understanding to do it.

    Cavity wall retrofitting was a huge problem previously and has caused a lot of problem.

  7. Minister0fSillyWalks on

    rather worrying

    Im currently going through the same eco4 scheme my self.

    When I was looking into it there seemed to be allot of cowboy companies who had jumped on it for the easy money.

    The scheme is actually funded by the energy companies so you can get the works done through them, but even they they seem to farm it out to contractors.

    My council partners with 2 of the energy companies eon and utilita. I went with utilita and so far they have been pretty good.

    It will be utilita engineers that come and install the heat pump in a couple of weeks time. They used a contractor to do the cavity wall insulation using that bead stuff. They also sent a joined who under cut all the internal doors to make sure there is a gap at the bottom for air flow. They also sent a electrician to install a extractor fan in the bathroom.

    They use a contractor for the solar pannels.