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Hi, at mums house there is an old Rayburn Regent solid fuel which was probably installed in the 60’s. It works well enough but today we noticed damp below where the back boiler pipe work goes up to the hot water tank so I ripped off the boxing and found this. It seems to be an old tee fitting...

Mum has a 2006 Clio 1.5dci, been having a few issues, for a few months when driving it takes a while to accelerate, if you push it hard it will get there albeit with a cloud of brown/black smoke and then the electronic fault light on the dash will come on. I have cleaned the egr valve which was...

My mum has a 2006 Renault Clio 1.5dci and recently it has developed a problem, it is slow to accelerate and if you put your foot down to get it go when it does it leaves a load of brown/black smoke behind. After a while of putting your foot down to get up hills a dashboard light will come on-...

Hi, I am in the process of redoing my bathroom and will be installing a shower above the bath, and replacing the bath itself. The house is a 10 year old new build, on taking the tiles off the plasterboard is wrecked so will need replacing. What is the best option? A- replace boards with...

Hi, I am taking down tongue & groove varnished cladding from the upstairs bedroom of mums house. I am wondering whether it is acceptable to screw new plasterboard onto the existing battens? These seem secure enough. Or do I pull them off and find the joists?

Hi, mum has a late Victorian end of terrace with a shared stack, there are three flues, a single one from the kitchen chimney breast which houses a solid fuel Rayburn and a double one in the sitting room, originally an open fire in the sitting room and a small open fire in the bedroom above...

In the process of renovating the lounge of mums Victorian end terrace. Floor is up as was mostly rotten or had woodworm damage. Original sill plates on the sleeper walls had rotted due to no dpc under them and poor ventilation as the air bricks were all blocked. Question I have is, there are...

So I removed a built in sideboard/cupboard in the bedroom of mums Victorian house, it had a socket fitted inside and obviously that needed to be relocated. So this is what I found!

My mums house is circa 1883 and I am in the process of restoring it room by room, we have stripped off the old dry lining on the external solid wall that had been installed in the 60’s with a polythene vapour barrier against the bricks with battens for the plasterboard. The previous owner had...

Hi, I've recently moved into a new house, I say new- it's 5 years old. The central heating system consists of a Ferroli Optimax HE PLUS 18S Boiler, a Drayton LP722 programmer, RM homeflow cylinder, room thermostat, hw tank thermostat. I think its a sealed system and is direct fed and an 'S' plan...

I have a 3x50w GU10 halogen light fitting in the lounge which has a dimmer switch fitted to switch it. Now for the second time the dimmer switch has failed- has no effect, lights won't turn off and the knob goes all loose. I.e it is kacked up inside! What is causing this? the light fitting...

Got called here today, the meter was smoking apparently. Turns out that it they'd had the place re-wired/consumer unit change a few months ago. What was smoking was an ancient ELCB between the meter and the CU. I have serious doubts about the spark who did work here, The main earth is only about...

Is this against the regs? Basically can you have one post with a water tap installed half way up and a 4 way electric hook up box installed at the top? Ie water and electric on the same post.

Ok this is just a question that's bugging me at the moment. Basically, say the car in question is a 1989 Peugeot 205 with a carburetor 1.1 engine, could you remove this engine (say its knackered) and replace it with a 1.1 TU1 engine from a more modern peugeot/citroen which is single point...

House was in a timewarp and that included the electrics, Wooden MEM fusebox, vir tails, no doubt vir wiring throughout and round pin sockets. I came to change the cutout and am thankful that our responsibility ends at the meter and i didn't need to even touch anything after! They have had a...

Ok, so I'm up in the loft preparing to put some new insulation down and go around pulling all the 1.5 lighting t&e up over the fiberglass to prevent overheating. I traced where it all went so i can check the terminations and tightness in junction boxes etc before i get too involved. Lifted up a...

I've had this car for 3 1/2 years and done nearly 40k in it with nothing major. Drove it to cardiff on thursday which is about 95 miles from my house and got to 11 miles left on the tomtom and when driving in a 50mph limit, I realised that i'd lost alot of power. It was misfiring and wouldn't...

Just be careful or this might happen!

My mums peugeot 106 1.1 developed a problem with it's starter motor where it was turning over very slowly and then hardly at all with the starter motor leads getting hot. Long story short..... I took out the starter and noticed that a chunk of metal had broken off it and fallen into the clutch...

I know how much you guys like pics of rickety ancient electrics so i thought i'd share these with you. I had to go and do testing on this feeder pillar in this substation a couple of days ago and took a couple of pics. It's an open busbar type- that's right three metal busbars completely exposed...