by Catherine Lear

Created on: January 31, 2010

It will be impossible for a homeowner to go through life without having to employ someone either to repair your home or to build some sort of extension to your home; this person will be called a contractor.

Yes, we can do the odd few jobs around the home like painting or even the odd bit of plumbing, we can if we try that little bit harder and have certain little bit of knowledge do a little bit more. Nevertheless, for certain jobs, we will need a contractor to help us, and as we, all know they will not come cheap.

So how do we go about getting the right one that will do the job that we require? In addition, what questions do we ask when we find one. First, though let us look at some of the jobs that we must use a contractor for.

I live in Britain and we have certain laws that prevent us doing certain jobs for ourselves they come under our British safety laws. Two jobs spring to mind and they are as follows, we cannot repair or install a gas heating boiler or anything to do with gas. The second is that we cannot install our electricity we have to have both these jobs done professionally. That is not to say that some people do not install there own boilers and fit the own cables into there homes many do, but we have to get both these items tested by the relevant authority's before we can use them.

I am going to take both these as an example of how to find and what to say to a contractor before hiring him or her.

First, we will take the gas installer.

Many gas fitters are competent; however, there are many more that we would call cowboys. Moreover, there are many ways to find both, the first way is to look through the phone book, the second way is the word of mouth way, a third way is to keep your eyes peeled and to look for transport with the words gas fitter or plumbers written all over the van or car. There is a fourth way and that is to look at houses that are being built, these will all have competent tradesmen working there.

When you have found one you must ask him or her for there relevant documents, all plumbers, and gas fitters in Great Britain will have a plastic card that looks like a credit card with there photo and there qualifications written on the back. All persons that work on gas appliances will have one of these, however just because he will have one of these cards does not mean that he can work on your gas boiler that heats your home. Look at the back of the card when he shows you and it will tell you what he can work on. It might say

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