Recent content by choff

Only 2 outlets in the house are drawing cold water from the loft tank; everything else is mains. The pressure imbalance is dramatic, baths take forever to run, and the shower pump is super noisy. This vented system is doing us no favours, and has reached end of life.

Hi there. Converting from a vented to unvented HW system, off a condensing system boiler (already fitted). S plan layout. We've got through the winter with flow temps of around 55, to keep the boiler in condensing range. One guy quoting suggests a high gain cylinder. That seems to make...

A thin skim of gypsum is pretty vapour-permeable. I've often suspected (albeit without solid evidence either way) that cause and effect are reversed: old skims go over areas of lime that were already problematic; the skim is a symptom, not a cause. At least on internal walls, anyway! If I...

I'm renovating a bedroom with original Victorian lath and plaster walls. Due to be reskimmed. I noticed a bodge in one corner - bulging pink gypsum patches covered in some kind of waterproofing paint - and pulled at them. Lo and behold, it's small rectangles of thin plasterboard, nailed into...

Sparkie says no faults on the circuit - all clear. Must be an induced (I.e. phantom) voltage. During my own testing beforehand, I did however find that two of the sockets were full of dead ants, and that two light switches had loose wires...

So, the sparky is coming round today. What testing would you all expect a competent pro to do, to identify/ confirm the absence of a problem - just a V reading with a low impedance meter? Earth loop test? 500V DC insulation resistance across the three wires (testing each pairing?)

I feel like an obvious test I could do is unbundle the wires coming off my CU - they're ziptied together - and see if the effect goes away.

Could this just be phantom voltage? Using a multimeter across termini in sockets on the circuit (with the MCB off), I'm seeing voltages in the 0-5V range, or 0-3V when the lighting circuit MCB is also turned off.

Moved into an old house, and I'm turning things off at the MCB + using a socket tester to see what's on each circuit from the CU (the stickers aren't particularly helpful). I saw something odd: there's a set of sockets (4 doubles) in the basement that leave the socket tester partially lit even...