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Hard to see from your little photo, but I guess there were no wall ties put in between the arch and the brick infill, the bricks are not keyed into to the arch, the lintel has dropped a little, the mortar bond between the bricks and the arch has failed. Defective workmanship or design, quite...

Your link is no good without a logon. How old is the house? Ivor

Sounds as if the flue is blocked. Your description of the way the smoke backs up suggests more than just lack of draw. Maybe a muck-up when it was built, or perhaps disgruntled builders deliberately blocked it, who knows, stuff happens. Or something as simple as a bird's nest. If you have...

So, here's the start of the timber frame of our double garage, graded 4x2s on a 9x2 sole plate, fixed to a brick & Bradstone & block wall with 130 x 8mm coach screws in 12mm plugs. Treated timber, was quite fresh when the frames were made up. Fixed about 3/4 days ago, by packing it up, with...

The switch was a double-pole which swapped the live feed from one stat to the other. For convenience, the switch was in the kitchen but could be anywhere. We had a standard indirect cylinder with sprayed foam insulation, we just cut two pockets in the insulation for the stats. Whether it's...

Thankyou. Now I know what I'm looking for. Oddly enough though, 15 mins Googling and I'm not seeing any attached to a flue insert. Only separate versions, like the sort of collar that's put on a dog to stop it scratching itself. Any idea who might sell them? Ivor

Woodburner installed by a HETAS installer. Yes, the flue goes all the way down. The top 2ft or so inside the chimney is solid, the rest of it is twinwall stainless flexible. Yes, I suppose I could get a larger diameter stainless skirt made to sit under the existing skirt, but it's another...

If you check your summer/winter gas usage, you may deduce that despite having a well insulated cylinder, a significant portion of your bill goes on water heating. We saved a good amount by having two stats on our cylinder; one about a third the way from the top, the other a third up from the...

I'm changing the chimney pot for an older one. The top diameter is bigger, so I need one of these with a bigger diameter 'skirt'. As you can see, it's stainless and fits inside the 6" flue pipe. Can't find one for sale, but it might help if I knew what it's called. On top of it there's a...

The day before the readymix & concrete pump were coming, I hired a puddlesucker and pumped out most of the water. On the day, weather was dry, luckily. We bailed out the rest of the water and skimmed the gloop off the bottom. Between 1400h & 1700h, 10cum of concrete went in the ground. Next...

Down to 3ft now, and on one side where we were in made ground, down to 4ft. Bottom is drying out. Looks more hopeful. Structural engineer came to look today, said so long as we bail out any standing water it will be OK. Here's hoping for a few dry days, hurrr. Ivor

Not sure if this is Building or Woodwork.... anyway... Building a garage, softwood frame, oak feather-edge, dwarf walls 2ft high of concrete block inner/Bradstone outer and block inner/brick outer. The dwarf walls will be solid, ie no cavity, will be some ties to bond the two skins...

Two weeks into a double garage build. Under 30m2 so no Building Control. Perimeter footings 36" x 18", then an 8" reinforced raft. We're on clay. Varies across the site from very hard even when wet, to slightly squishy when wet. So far the trenches for the footings are down 2ft, another...

Garage at the bottom of the steps, 30 feet from the house. Would like to have an outside light on the garage with outdoor switch on the side of the garage, and two-way control from the house. Is there a remote control that will save me having to run an additional 4-core SWA down to the garage...

You can tell me the earth is flat as well while you're at it :} But I can tell you that working on a circuit where you've pulled the fuse, you can rattle the conductors together like castanets, and it does not trip any other circuit, nor, oddly enough, does it trip the 100A main fuse...

Exactly. A so-called safety device that plunges the whole house into darkness and crashes the computer because I touch two wires on a 'dead' circuit, it just plain daft. I've even had this happen with a blown bulb. If ever I have nothing else to do - unlikely - I might just install a system...

Perhaps it's the goon who installed the rcd/mcb board - before my ownership - who shouldn't be doing electrical work, because I certainly turn off the relevant circuit -= not that's it's always easy to identify as we have upstairs lights on the downstairs circuit, and vice versa, some even in...

The advantage of fuses is that when working on the wiring in the house, if one switches off the circuit, the fuse doesn't mind when you touch the ends together, but the blasted MCB imagines there's a problem and plunges the whole house into darkness. I realise this is supposed to be progress...

Oops, yes. And a right pain in the neck they can be, if there's fiddly wiring to do in a confined space. Bring back the fuse box, I say, lol.

Hmmm, I haven't checked the light fitting. I'll take it off tomorrow and have a look. Switch is live in/out. I'll report back. Thankyou.