You may have heard our Sales teams or our Customer Service team tell you that “our products are suitable to be built by someone who is “competent in DIY.”
A dictionary definition of “competent” is to be “adequately qualified or capable” to carry out a task.
This article will help you answer the following…
What am I buying?
Will my garden building require maintenance?
Factors effecting build time
We cannot tell you how easy or difficult it will be to assemble one of our products. This depends largely on factors such as:
- Your/your builder’s personal level of skill
- Your/your builder’s personal level of ability
- The tools and equipment you/your builder has available
- The number of people who will be helping.
- However, this is not a project that will require a large team of people and many of our competent DIY customers find that two people is an optimum number.
What we can say is this; we provide full and comprehensive assembly instructions with all of our products. Additionally we supply, almost all the screws, bolts, nuts and other fixings required to assemble the product. (You may find that you need to supply your own fixings for things such as securing our gazebos to your chosen base, for example).
To assemble our timber products you will need a reasonable variety of DIY tools. For example: socket set, saw, hammer, drills level, etc to facilitate drilling, nailing, sawing, screwing. And checking for square level and plumb assembly and you will have to understand the concept of ensuring that bases for cabins and buildings are level and square.
Remember that should you choose to use an external person or persons to assemble your products then allow time for them to understand the instructions and the parts delivered to your home. You are embarking on a journey of constructing a long term product for your home and you should allow time to understand the instructions, parts and nature of the materials that you will be using, this may take hours to days depending on the size of the project that you are undertaking.
Before you build
We cannot stress enough how important it is for you (or your builder) to read through all of the assembly instructions in full from front to back as many times as is felt necessary to fully grasp the scale of the task you are about to undertake. If you see anything you do not understand, our friendly Customer Service team are on hand to clarify anything. (Please be aware that they cannot take any phone calls post-delivery so anything must be put in writing, and they will respond in writing as soon as possible). Otherwise, if you just jump straight in without reading the instructions, and struggle with a particular step, you could end up with a partially built product in your garden having emailed Customer Services awaiting an answer. Previous customers have been surprised (shocked, almost!) if they get to this stage and can even get aggressive or abusive.
This is why we are giving you this information at this stage.
What am I buying?
The softwood timbers supplied are organic, natural material and will change with time and weather conditions. The timbers used have been planed prior to any cutting drilling or shaping and these are then packaged for delivery.
The characteristics of timber are not those of extruded plastics, aluminium or other metals. Please be aware that we do not supply metal quality finished surfaces in any of our timber products. If you don’t understanding the nature of these types of timbers for use in an external environment, please do not purchase our products, as we do not supply internal finish timbers.
Timber
Timber can be totally unpredictable. With how splits or shelling or development of other properties can take place depending on a multitude of internal and external weather factors, sometimes in a very short space of time. Timber will contract and expand with resultant stresses in the fibres of the material. Sometimes deep and wide shakes and cracks can appear unsightly. However, we have calculated for these in our designs. In some cases customers have contacted us about perceived surface problems which can be easily resolved by simply sanding the affected area – in such cases we advise and would expect a customer to do so.
If, on the day of the delivery, the product delivered is not to your satisfaction please return the whole order with the driver as any further visits to your property may result in a reasonable charge being levied to collect Goods that are as described.
We are well versed as a company on the requirements of a product for ‘fitness of purpose’ and being ‘as described’. Please rest assured that if your delivered goods do not fall into these categories that we will act accordingly.
Should you wish to purchase individual replacement timbers then please contact our Parts Department but any timbers supplied will still be as described above.
Our Drivers are not authorised to accept changes to our Delivery Notes or our pre-advised Terms of Trading.
Maintenance
It is to be expected that all products are maintained and cared for throughout the course of their lifetime to ensure they are kept in a condition which is required by you! We do not provide a physical maintenance service of any kind. To read more about maintenance for specific product groups see our Maintenance Section.
All our timber products are manufactured to the same standards as similar products throughout Europe where they have been in use for many years. Samples of our products can be viewed through our website, using the pictures, augmented reality, customer photos or 360 images before purchase. Alternatively, if you want to see the products for yourself you can organise a video call with a member of the Dunster House team.
Many 1000’s of our products have been happily supplied and assembled over the years by customers that understand the nature of timber. It is also true to say that we do have some service queries from customers who subsequently try to change our Trading Terms and apply standards and conditions that we do not offer or supply.
If you do not understand the nature of timber, with its advantages and disadvantages, and have read and understood our Trading Terms and Conditions please do not purchase our timber products!
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