Recent content by paralucent

Okay, so I just thought 'Sod it', raised the collar of the old valve, pulled the top part off and it replaced it with the new one. There. Job done,. It took 5 minites instead of 2 hours. Sometimes you have to know when to stop. ;)

Flat as a pancake, terryplumb. I can only conclude that the hole is slightly too small for the inner part of the washer and that's why it won't seal properly.

The toilet was sometimes not refilling. At other times it was overflowing so I bought a new Fluidmaster flush valve, identical to the original one. There were two problems. The supplied screw would not screw onto the shank. It would turn a few times then stop. However the screw from the old...

I don't really blame the guy. It was just unfortunate. A old double door between two rooms was replaced years ago but it left an uncarpeted gap which was filled with a plank of wood. The phone wire ran along the edge of the plank. I wrongly assumed the plank was loose. In fact it was hammered...

He actually broke some skirting as well but who's counting. He was very apologetic, which makes it so much better.:D

Thanks for replying Wayners. Yes, I did remove the face plate for testing. When the phone line was switched over to digital I persuaded Virgin to send an engineer to connect up the digital line to the old wiring, which basically involved splicing the wires together (see attached photo). That...

Hi there I recently had some new carpet fitted and during the work the fitter accidentally severed the internal phone wiring. It's a Virgin Media 'fibre' phone line so I was able to reconnect a phone directly to the router but obviously the extensions no longer worked. I got some new cable to...

Of course I was only guessing that soot was the reason. Already after getting the fire 'repaired' again yesterday it takes two attempts to get it to light.

I really appreciate your advice, Ian. Could you point me in the direction of a suitable pilot injector cleaner? I've already spent nearly £200 paying engineers not to fix this fire. Blowing out the soot allows the fire to light and stay lighted, but only for a week or so until the soot starts...

Thanks Ian. I may give that a go.

The fire is a Flavel Calibre Balanced Flue Brass FBFC1SRN3. It would be fair to say that it's been doing my head in. Cleaning the pilot should normally fix the problem, but not in this case.

It's on a Flavel gas fire. I had two engineers look at it. They both cleaned it out and one of them replaced the thermocouple but the flame is still very weak. What do you think might be causing it?

I found the culprit! A faulty adapter was to blame. The sockets and wiring were fine. There are two extension sockets in the upstairs bedroom. Normally these would be hard wired, but one of them ended in a RJ11 plug. The RJ11 plug was connected to an adapter, and that adapter was plugged into...

No; it's a cable modem. This problem is likely to repeated for a lot of people during digital switchover. The 'digital' phone line master socket (the router) is often nowhere near the old analogue master socket. The router is then connected to a defunct extension socket, and hitherto unknown...

I have been helping my brother set up his new 21CV internet phone line. His router is in an upstairs bedroom. When a phone is connected directly to the router the sound is fine, but when the router is connected to an extension socket there is a buzzing sound/interference on the line. I have...