Recent content by HDRW

No sarking, the tiles were originally just hung from the battens, and the inside of the roof was the underside of the tiles (not even roofing felt!) but it's since been insulated with sprayed foam on the underside of the tiles - I'm going to chop it away in the relevant area, but the tiles don't...

OK, thanks for the advice. Not sure what you mean about the grinder, though - I'll need about a one-inch circular hole in the middle of the tile, and I don't know how you could grind that? Cheers, Howard

I am a Radio Amateur and want to run an antenna cable through my house's tiled roof up by the chimney (length of cable run is important and running it down over the tiles, over the gutter then up and in through the soffit is too long - and there's no way to fix the cable on the 5m run down the...

Thanks - I was hoping there was another way, but I suspected there wasn't - that syphon nut trapped in the cistern-pan joint really decides it, as the mechanism is inside the syphon itself as you describe. Cheers, Howard

When I was a sprog my father told me the radiator under a window causes an updraft of warm air, deflecting drafts and cold air from the window and warming it up, so under the window was the "right" place for it (this was before double glazing BTW). Cheers, Howard

A few years ago I installed a Stelrad Doulton close-coupled loo, and the syphon that came with it was dual flush (quick push = short flush, hold down = full flush). Recently it's been doing only the short flush even when you hold the handle down. Peering inside the cistern I can't see...

Thanks for that - I'm not sure if there's room to fit this in and then adapt down to 15mm, but I suppose I could remote-mount the expansion vessel and use a braided flexible pipe to connect it. There's very little space and the measurements of the three arms of the tee are critical - fixed...

I have a Polystel unvented hot tank (ancient, but working OK!) and I had to replace the immersion heater thermostat. To do this you have to remove the expansion tank and the tee that connects it to the cold feed. Unfortunately I managed to damage the tee. I unsoldered the connectors and...

Thanks for the update - glad it worked out! Expansion vessel has probably been low on pressure for a while, causing over-sensitivity to changing pressures. Glad to help - I've had lots of useful advice from this place so it's good to be able to give some back. Yes, but I bet they'll find...

Difficult to see from the photo, but it looks like the drain valve has been soldered directly into the Tee, in which case if you unsolder it you'll need a stub of pipe to fit the stop-end, but an easier solution would be to change the tee for an elbow - but you'll lose the ability to drain at...

Have you checked that the expansion vessel (in the boiler) is properly pressurised? Hopefully the boiler instructions tell you how to do this. If it is, then you need more expansion volume and an external expansion vessel would do that, but perhaps that's not a DIY job, most people would...

The "high pressure" from the taps then dropping sounds like the expansion vessel isn't doing its job, and the water hammer may be caused by that too. The expansion vessel has a rubber diaphragm or bladder which has the water on one side, and pressurised air on the other, with a schrader...

Thanks for that - I hadn't seen that type of flashing unit before. The open end of the conduit won't be exposed - it's going into an IP66 box that's screwed to the chimney, and all the connections happen inside there. Cheers, Howard

There must be a timer somewhere, or things couldn't change depending on the time (although more recent installations use a radio signal, since yours isn't at the correct time you won't have one of those). Look at the electricity meter and you should see two sets of dials, and some sort of...

I'm a Radio Amateur ("Ham") and I want to run cables to antennas on the chimney, in the middle of the pitched roof, which is tiled with red (Marley?) tiles and has a 45 degree pitch. I have some flexible conduit which is 32mm o/d, so what I'm thinking of doing is drilling a hole (35mm...