Recent content by drongo

Cor Blimey! It's a corbel. :DThank you all so much for taking the trouble to explain.:)

See the picture attached. The top of the wall has three stepped layers of brick making a sort of shelf for the gutter to sit on. What's that called? Does it have a name? The house is around 1900 build. 40 years ago there was a wooden gutter with a flat bottom sitting directly on the shelf. (As...

Thank you all very much for taking the time to answer. Very useful & reassuring. :D

I've a large plastic header tank in the attic which was put in when I had a shower installed about 20 years ago. It was made by Tanks & Drums in Bradford (no longer trading). It's well lagged and has a lid and hasn't needed anything doing to it except for a new valve or washer once or twice...

Water tank in my attic

Last year I made a window box for an upstairs window. It's made of decking planks and is a simple box shape. It sits on a stone window sill between stone mullions(?) on either side. It works well and tending the plants is easy from the inside as it's a sash window. This year I plan to...

Thanks to all for your comments. They were most enlightening. I think I learned a few things - - Most experts believe 2-pipe has clear advantages over single pipe - Most experts believe single pipe can work well if installed and managed properly - even using a condensing boiler - There's...

Thanks for the question, doitall. You made me think. Which is usually a good thing. Here's the system: It's an old semi. Narrow with very tall rooms. I have 10 radiators and a towel rail. The boiler's in the cellar. There's a single attic room with one radiator, 4 plus towel rail on the 1st...

Hi I'm having a new boiler installed on my old 1-pipe system. Plumber recommends converting to 2-pipe system. Ok but some of the pipes are under a tiled floor I don't want pulled up. So plumber says we'll just convert the rest to two-pipe and leave those on single pipe. I understand the...

I took out some of the fillets. They were glued in hard and some of them split. After that the spindles just fell out. I was surprised how little overlap there was. If they were an eighth shorter they wouldn't stay in. The spindles in my house are nailed in - but they've been there a hundred...

My mum's house has a staircase which was installed several years ago. It looks like the type of thing you see for sale in DIY shops. It seems very flimsy to me and most of the parts are loose. The spindles rattle about in their moorings and the bannister components are loose. Is this how these...