Recent content by fairplay

I must have got lucky. I had B&Q peel and stick tiles and grouted them 1/8" spacers. Looked great, just like stone and lasted 10 years. A great solution if you have a sloping floor, can't rip your kitchen out to re-screed and don't have money to burn.

I spaced my vinyl tiles and grouted them with pretty standard cement based grout. They lasted over ten years in a kitchen and people assumed it was a stone floor. In fact the vinyl layer wore through before the grout failed although a few bits were starting to come loose. They grout peel nd...

I've found another old piece of plastic weld and it has a circumference of 130mm, diameter which calculates at 41.8 mm which is indeed the expected 42mm. The solvent welded outlet pipe has a circumference of 135mm which gives diameter of 43 mm so therein lies the issue as i suspected. So I need...

Well a 40mm compression fitting won't go over it but it is no more than 0.5mm too big in diameter. I haven't tried an actual solvent fitting because I don't have any solvent at the moment but might be cheapest answer to see if a solvent weld fitting will go over it then get some solvent. It's...

I want to slightly modify the outside waste pipe from my sink which discharges to the drain surround that is less than ideal in that over time it has corroded away the concrete surround. I thought it was 40mm solvent weld and just want to angle it away with a 130 deg bend attached. I thought it...

I want my unstable chimney stack (redundant) lowered by about 20 courses of bricks and capped. Would i go to a builder, roofer or a general handyman for quotes?

Thanks for the interesting replies. I didn't know about Opentherm and have read up on it now so thank you. As far as I remember it is not wired up for it and I don't want to risk doing it myself although I did the original Tado hard wiring myself. However the Tado Smart thermostat itself does...

This is my first winter of using my new and first condensing boiler - model 18 kW as above. Now I suspect the heating engineer has over sized it a bit to be "on the safe side" as my old Potterton was only 15 kW and fine for my 3 bedroom semi. Generally have the following radiators on - hall...

Indeed. The majority of drainage channels across the front of drives are a scam by driveway contractors (or they don't understand or don't want to understand) the SUDS drainage regs. This is to fool the local planners into thinking they have a proper drainage system and the Authorities either...

Well in the event I got a permeable resin drive done in a natural gravel colour. It is now one year old and looks fantastic. It has been a worry because the day they started the groundwork the drought broke and we had three days of rain, one record breaking day of 100mm! This left a clay muddy...

Thanks, that sounds like the best idea. "Breaking them off " wouldn't work because the plaster is too crumbly. Also thanks blup for the heads up on the filler.

I have been ripping out the old basic sixties skirting in our spare bedroom. Of course it was fixed with an excess of those hefty great cut clasp nails. I have found the best way to remove it is to cut either side of them with my multitool saw and then remove the skirting then the nails. But it...

Not sure slate over vinyl tiles would work?

Having lived in it for 45 years I've seen a number of floor coverings come and go but until now have never been able to either afford or want the disruption of many options. I still don't really want the disruption. So time to renew again with latest technology or not as the case may be. The...

Two things spring to mind. I thought the use of swa cable was to prevent this sort of thing. Must have been a hell of a sharp spade and strong bloke to cut through swa with one blow. Also shouldn't the armour be earthed and would trip surely?