Recent content by damia-b

Thanks for all the advice. Reception has been OK for most of the last few weeks, but the return of the frost on Thursday brought a return of the problem. There was a further weird effect. The digital receiver kept jumping out of channel 1 (BBC1 Scotland) to channel 22 (CBBs)! The display...

Thanks all. Another option that a friend (locally) has mentioned is to turn the aerial about 120 degrees to receive the local station. That way it will not be pointing at the railway. The only thing against that is that it is a relay station and does not carry all the channels that Darvel and...

No chance of going internal I am afraid. The sink and other drainage go through another wall well away from the boiler. I should have realised this was coming as the patio did not drain during the first thaw as that drain was frozen. At that point I should have started looking at the...

During the recent cold spell, the interference in TV has been terrible. Digital was virtually unwatchable and on analog there4 were irregular periods with bars of dots across the screen. I noticed that these periods occured about 8 times per hour during the day and more often during the rush...

I found a thread on this subject dating from last January and wondered whether there have been any developments of ways to avoid this. I did not have a problem last winter, but the boiler went off (showing flame failure) on the day when we were leaving to spend Christmas with our daughter. Not...

Firstly, I hope you have got the problem solved. It seems possible that the supply was frozen underground. It has been terribly cold for over a month now. In Renfrewshire, there were only about four days on which the temperature rose above zero between November 29th and December 27th. In my...

Thank you PrenticeBoyofDerry, I will be waiting anyway until that latest dump of snow has cleared and probably a bit longer before I do anything. I'm wondered about the salt as I have used common salt in past years without damage. I thought perhaps there was a sulphate component in the...

Several years ago, I got a local stonemason to repair my steps and cast new concrete paths. They have been OK until this winter. Now the surface is crumbling in places exposing softer stuff underneath. There is no ground heave cracking except on one step. I could now do with some advice...

Thanks for the advice. I note reference on the Ofcom site to central heating thermostat and I suppose boiler controls may also cause a problem. I will try the ferrite ring trick in case it is mains-borne. It is intermittent, but I get the impression that it appears at certain times of day...

I bought a Humax 9300 HDR to replace an aging VCR but have had a lot of problems. The picture keeps breaking up and freezing and twice the unit has frozen and will not respond to either the remote or the buttons at the front. When the picture freezes, I have switched to the analog signal from...

A 25 kg bag did the job (thought I bought two to be on the safe side) at a cost of just over £2 per bag. I can't remember if it was exactly the £2.18 as per the link above or if VAT was added.

Thanks all, I got them this morning in B&Q. When I was in before, I think I was looking for chips that were more of a white colour, thus did not notice the racks full of bags of grey limestone chips (10mm). so no problem in the end. Thanks again, Ken

Thanks Craig, I'll try B&Q again. I hope it not just Lancashire stores that have it as I will not be down that way for a week or two!

Limestone is specified in the McAlpine kit instructions. It is required to neutralize the acidic condensate and prevent it attacking the house foundations. I believe that the alternative to a soakaway is to lead the pipe to a field drain at least 1 metre from the wall but I would have needed...

Thanks for the quick response. I did try B&Q a while back and they had none at the time. They did have "white chips" which were actually quartz "chuckies", which have no neutralizing properties. It must be limestone I think, though I did wonder if marble would do. They are both calcium...