Astraseal

I bought a conservatory from Astraseal with my redundancy payment in 2004. I believed the long guarantee offered by the company and looked forward to many years of quiet enjoyment , overlooking my garden, and the park land at the back. The meagre 5 year guarantee on the base did not become apparent until about 6 years after construction, cracks began to appear in the structure, as the base literally started to 'float' away from the house. The blame was placed on the many nearby trees, which, incidentally were there and already mature at the time of construction. A later survey by a qualified engineer revealed that the foundations had only been dug to a depth of only 60cm when the recommendation was 2.5m ! I had visits by an Astraseal engineer. Some cosmetic work was carried out, but somehow the inference was that the existence of the surrounding trees which were not even on my land, was somehow my fault. I spoke with the director a Mr McMullen on one occasion and I asked him what he would do in my situation. His answer was to knock the whole thing down and start again as conservatories are only regarded as temporary structures! Needless to say I did seek legal advice but time had passed and the deadline of limitation , set by the date when McMullen told me the building should be knocked down, had by then expired. In the end, the conservatory, of which I was so proud when it was first built, had to be taken down at my own expense, and Astraseal just walked away. In summary, my advice to anyone thinking of dealing with this company can be summed up in one word - DON'T!!! I only gave it a 1-star rating because there wasn't a 0-star option.