My gast is really flabbered!

Gadaboutgran The solar panel calls have stopped here now, it is all about replacing boilers, courtesy of a wonderful government scheme which turns out to make boiler sellers lots of money.

We don't get the installers of double-glazed window as often now, they must have twigged that we have all the windows we need and are not likely to be getting any more. A previous salesman was a nice guy who lived a few streets away. Negotiating prices with him was like a game - we knew that he would start high and come down several times before reaching a brick wall, and he knew that we knew, and we knew that he knew that we knew, so we just drank coffee and kept turning down the bargains and the special offers until we reached something affordable. There has been more than one replacement rep, but we are now all windowed out, so they don't succeed. And no, we do not want PVC soffits thank you.

That sounds familiar, Elegran. I still get calls about soffits which I don't need as my house doesn't have them. I have told them that every time, but they don't seem to believe me.

I wonder how many people get them because they are persuaded that everyone but them has soffits, and the PVC ones don't need to be painted or maintained - unlike the non-existent ones, of course, which have to be invisibly painted annually and checked for invisible defects.

I don't have a cavity in my wall. They're solid stone! I'm fed up of people offering to insulate my nonexistent cavity!

Tell them to put the insulation into their own cavity, Galen

Galen one of them once told me that we could still have insulation in our granite walls

Had one this morning about a new boiler. Then I went to get a newspaper and when I got back home, the same company had phoned me up while I was out. I told the first one I had a new boiler three years ago. I do not think it needs replacing yet. Hope that's not asking for a breakdown.

kittylester These salesman sprogs think (as they say around here) that our heads button up at the back.

I recently had roof gutters replaced and a downpipe added where one was needed. When I commented on the need to change the angle of the guttering to send the water to the new pipe, I was asked in amazement whether I was a surveyor. Well, how else would an old lady understand about such things?

The same estimator who asked me this had said the moment he entered my house, and before his eyes had adjusted to the indoor dimness, that I kept it immaculate. Well, how else would a female employ her time except cleaning her house? What other compliment can you pay her except on the immaculateness of her home?

I think I may have asked him if that comment was in his script Elegran. I think it's very rude to make such comments and it would have put me off him straight away.

I wouldn't find it rude if someone said I kept my house immaculate. I'd think they needed new specs, that's all!

I got the impression that his main means of impressing the customer with his knowledge was to say that the gutters would need a 5 degree slope - he mentioned that at almost every meeting we had.

Said gutters discharged into two downpipes and an open T-junction over the glass conservatory roof - I had never liked the water running over the glass roof, that had been done because the original downpipe would have had to go through the roof. So I asked for them to replace it.

"Oooooh, missis! that means cutting into the drain. Ooooh no!" It was suggested (and I with doubts went along with it) that an extra pipe should be added at other side of the house pouring into a "soakaway" This proved to be an open-ended pipe that emptied onto a sloping gravel path a few inches from the house wall and foundations (there is a cellar and workshop under that part of the house, with the outer side of the workshop wall, below the DP course, then exposed to the wet earth under the outlet) A cloudburst a few days later washed away half the gravel path. I prevailed upon them to remove this pipe and add one where I had wanted it in the first place.

BUT! to direct the water in the other direction, the slope of the gutter had been changed. So it should have been changed back again. At the next cloudburst, I stuck my head out of a side landing window to see how the gutter was coping. There was a nice waterfall flowing over the brimming side of the guttering at the low point where the temporary downpipe had been. The end where the new pipe had been added was bone dry. The slope had not been changed back.

It was at that point that I mentioned gutter slopes and was asked whether I was an engineer. No, I replied, I just have a brain.

Ana you took the words right out of my mouth keyboard!

My OH ( a chartered surveyor of many years) always snorts in derision at so called 'surveyors' who are really just sales men trained to a script to sell one product whether it be damp proofing (useless unless you cure original source) double glazing or any of the 101 home improvement products out there. Such people have no in depth knowledge of their 'field' let alone how it can affect other areas of your home. They have merely learned a few word or phrases a bit like a child learns it times tables. They might have the basic info but they have no insight.
Mind you some of them are worse...they just tell huge great porkies!