Thursday 30 August 2018

B & Q, bathroom fitting.

We wanted a new bathroom , so after a few quotes we decided that as a big company, B&Q, although not the cheapest, should be reliable.

This proved not to be the case. although the finished bathroom looks good, the performance of the appliances leaves a lot to be desired. I would have expected a professional company to note that I had low pressure water supply and take steps to ensure it did not cause any issues.

Wrong. It was only after they put the bathroom back together that it became apparent that the taps were all very slow running and the toilet takes an age to refill after a flush. I did not have this problem with the old sink and toilet. Had they tested this during the install they could have moved the incoming mains feed to supply the cold taps and toilet, but by the time they discovered this needed to be done the room was all finished and plastered, so moving the mains feed would have involved knocking their newly plastered wall back down.

The taps are all 'Cook and Lewis' and have very small feed pipes which are unsuitable for a low pressure supply

B&Q did agree to replace the first set of taps that they fitted for ones that worked with a lower pressure supply but the new ones were only marginally better. Because B&Q do the planning in the showroom and not on site they also supplied a wall mirror that would not fit the space allocated to it, so I had to buy and fit my own mirror as B&Q could not source one from their stock.

An on site survey before the job was started was a very cursory affair, the only thing it really did was push up the estimated price by a substantial amount.

I asked on my first visit to the showroom if they used their own staff to install the bathroom and was told they did, but it appears this wasn't true as they gave the contract to an independent plumber who only spent part of his time of B&Q Work. He did act as project manager of all the other independent contractors required to do the work, although his only tiler was having domestic problems with a new baby and as a result was 4 days late and arrived at 5pm on a Saturday to do the work. The bill was reduced at the end to account for items not used by way of a number of cheques for random amounts but it was still unclear what each refund was for.

We have to hope toilet flushes everything away at first attempt otherwise the waste has to stay there for some time while tank refills before a second attempt.

Overall I would not recommend B&Q for a bathroom installation.