Recent content by fogster74

Hi! It's been a while; since my post my wife and I have emigrated to the Middle East and never got around to posting the final outcome! Anyway, here goes, hope this is useful (it was some time ago, but I think I've covered most things)!!! After some superb advice from a guy who posts videos...

Hi guys, When renovating our lounge (house is vc.1900, red brick), we opened the chimney breast up intending on putting in a wood burner. The cost of the flue liner etc precludes us doing that so we initially settled on sourcing a cast iron fireplace and wooden surround off ebay - which we've...

What a cool idea - I'll suggest it to the missus! thanks!

Cheers for sharing. I'd agree - there's no way I'd do what I did with clay - I think I'd have achieved nothing more than making myself a very small moat had the house not been sitting on chalk!

I ended up going for the simple route. As the house is on chalk, the soil is incredibly free draining - we've never had so much as a puddle, even in the heaviest of rains. I just needed ground level to be below the DPC. I bought a load of Victorian edging tiles off eBay (£150 for about 30m -...

Hi, Finally got this fixed - thought I'd share my experience. I ended up taking all radiators off, rinsing them through with a hose, then ran x800 and mains-flushed the system under mains pressure, radiator by radiator. This has been written by others elsewhere, but here's what I did...

Thanks for the response, and the warning re: opening the boiler. I won't touch anything inside the boiler casing, I'll leave that to the (certified) professionals - DIY is one thing, breaking the law is another... I'll get Vaillant back out and see what they say. To be fair, I've had three...

Hi there, A year ago we bought a repossession as our first home, with ten weeks to turn it around. We were in a rush to get in the house (we were running out of time as our tenancy was due up) when we discovered the boiler needed replacing. With limited cash, a friend offered to install the...

Hi guys, since buying our house last year work has continued unabated. We're just getting round to sorting the garden - when we bought the house, the damp was horrendous - paving on paving on concrete put the ground level of our 1900's Victorian detached home about 6 inches above DPC! Very...

I've been thinking about boarding our Victorian loft. We've got about 270mm insulation (rockwool roll type)in there currently, which sits 170mm above the top of the ceiling joists (100mm). I've looked into lots of options; I've discounted 'loft legs' (price, fiddly, headroom) and running...

Hi Daddy, We're thinking of doing exactly that too - there's a good parallel post going on - the OP was originally thinking of raising his ceiling joist height, but someone done exactly what you're suggesting...

Our gas meter is stuck in one corner of our lounge - the pipe (yellow polyethylene?) comes in through the wall, into the main isolating valve, a flexible corrugated steel hose goes into the meter and then the gas supply immediately exits the wall and runs up outside the house, where it re-enters...

All, I just wanted to say a very sincere thanks for your help and advice. When I first posted, I was sitting in a cold, dark house on my own - my father in law passed away last Monday (on my wife and I's first wedding anniversary) - the same day as my wife started her new job, my boss quit...

Horrible sinking feeling... 1. When we spoke to the plumbing supply company, they gave the impression more was better.....Boiler was not range rated to the house. House is small - approx 1100 sq ft.. Just 7 rads and a towel rail.. Shower runs off combi too so plumber suggested 832 or 838 -...