Oxley Woods Living

Following on from my earlier post about our smelly Nuaire eco hat.

We hadn’t heard a response to our call this morning, so after lunch I called the George Wimpey site manager (who is on site here at the Oxley Woods development) to see what the situation was. I got an answer and apology for no sooner response, and by about 2:30 there was a knock on the door.

This is where things are bit weird. We bought the house from George Wimpey who also take credit and stand on the insurance documents with the NHBC and so on as the “house builder”. Everything I can find relates to our warranty and guarantee being with “the housebuilder” (George Wimpey). Now it seems though, we don’t deal with them. Instead a representative of Wood Newton, who actually construct the houses, sub contracted by George Wimpey, is apparently dealing with the (numerous) problems on the Oxley Woods development directly. This seems strange to us, but if problems get resolved effectively then does it really matter who is in charge of fixing them?

Anyway, we powered up the eco hat from the fuse box and waited for it to spin up and run its self checking program. Weirdly, it didn’t seem to power up first time, which I swear also happened when I switched it on briefly in the morning. Perhaps something is up there? Once it was pumping in air you could really smell it again…. only the man from Wood Newton couldn’t?! Quite how he couldn’t smell the stench is beyond either myself or my wife who could both smell it clearly blowing in through the vent, but anyway, he didn’t question us openly and seemingly acknowledged the issue.

The initial response is to call a plumber to come tomorrow morning. Trouble is, a plumber wont be able to do anything to the eco hat. He’ll basically check, well, the plumbing. I questioned this twice, and pointed out the fact the smell is clearly emanating from the eco hat vent, which is blown in from the eco hat, after being sucked in from the roof. The Wood Newton guy again seemingly acknowledged this. I also then, on two occasions, questioned if this was, as we were lead to be believed, a “sealed system”, to which the reply was “yes”. So I asked how could a smell from the plumbing, in the completely smell free bathroom, be making its way into a sealed system and blowing only from the eco hat fresh air vent. No reply. Apart from “I’ll get a plumber to look at it first”.

So, tomorrow we have a plumber scheduled to come and have a look and sniff around. I can’t see this coming to much, because even if there is a plumbing issue, then the smell shouldn’t be coming through the sealed eco hat ventilation system, which would mean its faulty too. My money is firmly on a problem in the eco hat somewhere, but I’ll happily be disproved if it leads to a speedy resolution though. Can’t see it happening mind you.

Tags: eco friendly homes, eco friendly houses, eco hat, eco home, eco homes, eco house, eco houses, george wimpey, milton keynes, nuaire, oxley park, oxley woods

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 2:13 pm and is filed under Problems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.