Hello,
We completed our city villa at the end of October and have moved in. Quite quickly, it became clear that in the ground floor the hot water takes a very long time to arrive in the kitchen and guest bathroom. According to the planning documents, it should not take more than 3 seconds for the hot water to come out. It was officially measured, and it takes 25 seconds and 3.7 liters (about 1 gallon) in the kitchen before hot water arrives. The cause is the missing looped circulation pipe. The plumber admits his mistake and has now asked us whether we want this defect fixed or prefer a financial compensation instead.
What needs to be done:
The pipe in the hallway must be exposed and about 1.5 meters (5 feet) newly installed through a wall toward the utility room. The tiles will have to be broken on parts of the utility room and hallway floors; the screed (concrete subfloor) will likely have to be removed in these areas as well. Then a new pipe will be laid so that the current overly long pipe will be integrated into the hot water circulation system on the upper floor. Afterwards, everything must be restored to its original state. We have some leftover tiles, which we would use, and then ask him to order a new batch (to avoid color differences...).
This does not sound simple or cheap to me. Instead, he also offers money. What do you think would be appropriate for this? He said he would calculate the extra consumption over 20 years. But what about the loss of value of the property? This is a defect, and we have to disclose it when selling (since we are aware of it…). It's not causing major problems; having hot water in the kitchen is nice, but thanks to induction cooking, it heats up quickly anyway 🙂 And in the guest bathroom, well, you can just run the tap for 30 seconds before visitors arrive, and then it works…
How much money do you think would be reasonable? And yes, I know it’s easy for an outsider to say “definitely have it fixed.”
We completed our city villa at the end of October and have moved in. Quite quickly, it became clear that in the ground floor the hot water takes a very long time to arrive in the kitchen and guest bathroom. According to the planning documents, it should not take more than 3 seconds for the hot water to come out. It was officially measured, and it takes 25 seconds and 3.7 liters (about 1 gallon) in the kitchen before hot water arrives. The cause is the missing looped circulation pipe. The plumber admits his mistake and has now asked us whether we want this defect fixed or prefer a financial compensation instead.
What needs to be done:
The pipe in the hallway must be exposed and about 1.5 meters (5 feet) newly installed through a wall toward the utility room. The tiles will have to be broken on parts of the utility room and hallway floors; the screed (concrete subfloor) will likely have to be removed in these areas as well. Then a new pipe will be laid so that the current overly long pipe will be integrated into the hot water circulation system on the upper floor. Afterwards, everything must be restored to its original state. We have some leftover tiles, which we would use, and then ask him to order a new batch (to avoid color differences...).
This does not sound simple or cheap to me. Instead, he also offers money. What do you think would be appropriate for this? He said he would calculate the extra consumption over 20 years. But what about the loss of value of the property? This is a defect, and we have to disclose it when selling (since we are aware of it…). It's not causing major problems; having hot water in the kitchen is nice, but thanks to induction cooking, it heats up quickly anyway 🙂 And in the guest bathroom, well, you can just run the tap for 30 seconds before visitors arrive, and then it works…
How much money do you think would be reasonable? And yes, I know it’s easy for an outsider to say “definitely have it fixed.”
