I recently had the best night's sleep in weeks, back in my own bed rather than on the sofa bed in my living room. Why was I sleeping on a sofa bed for a month or so? The answer lies in the sorry saga of the Saniflo...
If you have no idea what a Saniflo is and what it does, it's simply a machine which mashes up material which has been flushed down the loo so that it can travel to the sewer via a small diameter pipe, rather than the big 4" foul water pipe usually used in toilets. It means that sanitary fittings and fixtures can be installed in places like lofts and understairs where it's difficult to use large diameter pipes.
There was a Saniflo in the loft before the start of the house project, but adding a shower in the guest bedroom en-suite meant that the original macerator had to be replaced by a model with an extra intake connection point.
The replacement Saniflo was to be installed behind a bulkhead wall, in a small compartment also housing the concealed toilet cistern, which was accessed via a hatch at the back for ease of maintenance. Quite simple and straight forward, you would have thought, given that the builder was working to the manufacturer's installation instructions, as you can see from the photo below taken at the time it was fitted back in December 2018...
Because the builder didn't finish all the jobs in the loft before works ground to a halt in spring 2019, the room was left unused for most of that year while I was away traveling, other than the occasional overnight visit from family not worried about sleeping in a room full of boxes. As a result, the en-suite facilities were only used on a handful of occasions for more than a year after they had been installed.
It wasn't until 2020, when the builders finally returned to continue the snagging works, that the loft guest bedroom was eventually painted, carpeted and furnished. Around that time, having spent quite a lot of time up there, I noticed the Saniflo occasionally self-activating with a characteristic rumble, even though no taps were running and the toilet hadn't been flushed.
At first, these episodes were few and far between, so I attempted to deal with the noise (which was audible in my bedroom immediately below) by putting acoustic pads under the Saniflo to absorb vibration and lining the walls of the maintenance cupboard with cork to deaden the sound. However, the benefits were small and as the frequency of self activation increased and with it the noise, it became quite annoying. In the end, I contacted PumpMaster (the firm that services Sanilfo macerators) to get the unit checked out, thinking it must be faulty.
The engineer took one look and spotted the problem at once. The unit had not been installed properly. Rather than being attached to the toilet pan by a short straight pipe, the builder had used a long, flexible pipe and bent it into a U-shape to fit into the cupboard.
I duly notified the man in charge and turned off the Saniflo while waiting for him to reply so that my beauty sleep was not interrupted as the machine turned itself on and off during the night...A few days later, and still no word from the builder, my son (who moved back into the family home during lockdown) came downstairs to ask if I'd used the shower in the loft. The shower tray was full of water which had overflowed onto the cork flooring adjacent to the shower, nearby carpet in the loft bedroom and the landing outside, where it had seeped through the floor and damaged the ceiling of the landing below.
It seems that turning off the Saniflo meant that water couldn't get away down the discharge drain, so backed up along the incoming pipe and eventually came up and out of the shower drain, into the shower tray, eventually overflowing and causing the flood and water damage. We soaked up as much as possible with towels, contacted the builder again and waited for him to arrive.
The brother in law of the man in charge eventually turned up with a plumber to assess the problem. I took the opportunity to point out to him that (according to Saniflo) the shower and wash basin should have been connected to the macerator separately, rather than being connected into one drain pipe, below the wash basin (the reason why a new Saniflo with an extra intake had to be installed)...
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...I also pointed out that there was no way to access the concealed cistern for maintenance purposes because of the way the builder had supported it with bits of wood, rather than a proper frame, with an access point from inside the toilet cubicle. He agreed to come back and fix everything as soon as they could get hold of the necessary parts from Saniflo. And then they went away.
With the Saniflo turned back on and rumbling away every few hours, even though it wasn't in use, I gave up trying to sleep in my bedroom immediately below and moved the bedding downstairs to sleep on the sofa bed, thinking that it shouldn't be for long...
In the meantime, I arranged for an electrician to come and move the Saniflo power point from inside the maintenance cupboard to the outside, where I could easily reach it to turn off if necessary, without having to move all the artwork usually stacked up behind the maintenance hatch. This had the added benefit of giving a bit more room for manoeuvre inside the very restricted maintenance cupboard when it came to repositioning the macerator unit closer to the WC pan.
Unfortunately, when the builder notified me of the date on which he would return with the plumber to fix the Saniflo, it turned out to be the same day I'd arranged for the electrician to work in the same space, on the same bit of kit. Having three different tradespeople working in a very tight space would have been difficult at the best of times, but impossible during a pandemic when you have to work within Covid safe guidelines. So I asked the builder to come a different day - in fact any day the following week, other than the one on which the electrician was coming. That's when the strained relationship really went from bad to rock bottom...
The brother in law of the man in charge was most put out that he couldn't come on the day he'd pencilled in (without first checking that it was good for me!) and argued the toss about Covid safety, but I stood firm, asked for an alternative date and waited for him to get in touch again to rearrange.
The electrician duly arrived on the appointed day and started work in the loft. A short while later, to my surprise, the plumber turned up unexpectedly. I had to apologise, explain that someone else was working in the loft, show him the exchange of messages between myself and the builder and ask if he could return another day. He told me the message had not been passed on by the builder, but he could shift jobs around and come back the next day - not a problem. He left a spare part in an envelope, ready to use when he returned the next day.
Shortly after he left, the brother in law of the man in charge phoned - very angry that I had turned away the plumber, saying that I was being unreasonable and over cautious about Covid safety. When I tried to explain, he hung up on me!
And, with the benefit of hindsight, that was the beginning of the end of my long standing, strained relationship with the builder...
...The plumber didn't return the next day as agreed. When I contacted him to find out what was going on (easy to track down as his name and address was on the envelope containing the spare part he'd left behind), all he could say was that he'd been instructed to wait by the builder.
That exchange provoked an email from the builder telling me not to contact his sub-contractors, which in turn prompted a gentle reminder from me about his contractual obligation to inform and agree with me before any work was sub-contracted out.
The builder's response was to say that they needed 2 weeks to complete the outstanding works and would do no further work on my project after 2 October 2020. And that was the last I heard from them.
In spite of several reminders, a request for a timetable letting me know who was coming when, to do what (so we could clear those parts of the house where they would be working), and even a begging email asking for the Saniflo to be sorted out before my daughter was due to stay over in the loft room mid October, there was a resounding silence from the other end.
Their own self-imposed deadline of 2 October passed, as did the week's grace I gave them in writing, spelling out the consequences if the works weren't finished by then. With no response whatsoever by the final deadline of 9 October, it was clear they had walked away from their contractual obligations.
The firm was reported to Trading Standards who gave me very helpful advice which I am following. I invited a Trading Standards approved plumber to quote for all the outstanding plumbing works. The macerator now appears to have been fixed (though still not 100% in line with the manufacturer's instructions - the pipe is straight but longer than maximum 20cm shown on the installation leaflet!)
Obviously, that's not the end of it - I'm sure I will have a battle on my hands to reclaim the monies I am now having to spend to get others to fix the outstanding problems left by the man in charge and his brother in law. But it feels like a great weight has been lifted now I'm not having to work with the people who caused all the problems in the fist place!
But there are still more problems to sort out - the biggest being drainage, which could involve digging up the floor in the kitchen diner and ground floor WC/utility room. More of that in a future post...
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