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Hi. I have just had a shower tray installed. Before everything else is tiled, how do I make sure the installation is such that everything will drain properly and I won't have to be squeegeeing the shower tray? Should the ball fall towards the drain; should the whole tray be sloped towards the...

Hi, I have a very old bathroom with a very old central heating system, back boiler in living room with hot water cylinder upstairs and cold tank in loft. Currently, the bathtub and toilet are tank fed, and the basin cold is mains fed. I am getting the bathroom ripped out and replaced. What...

Hi, I've got an old, pretty small (1.8m x 1.5m) bathroom I'm looking to get redone. It's the only one in the (3 bed) house. I would quite like to get rid of the bathtub and put in a new shower enclosure, toilet and sink - and probably go for fully tiled this time instead of half-tiled. However...

Hi, looking for a plumber to do about a day's worth of work on my house in West London (Harrow area) - changing a basin and some taps, if anyone's interested. Thanks!

Thanks. Includes VAT, and haven't had an EICR before. The quote was £600 to do it with a new separate CU for the cooker, or £1600 (+ extra if the testing brings up more issues, which is likely) to do it with a new CU (12-way RCBO - is this big enough?) Is this reasonable too? I got a good vibe...

Thanks for encouraging me to investigate what circuits are already in place, all! Here's the (slightly weird) outcome: First 30A: living room sockets and downstairs hallway socket 15A: central heating pump in upstairs airing cupboard, kitchen extractor fan, fridge-freezer and heat pump tumble...

Hi, got an old Baxi Bermuda 552 in need of servicing if anyone can work on back boilers. Harrow area. Thanks!

Thanks. My line of thought was that, if we were to sell the house in 5-10 years, it would very likely be completely gutted by the new buyer (walls, plumbing, electrics all need updating) - which would be an efficient time for new CU and probably a full rewire. A small CU is only £100-ish parts...

Yep - the same gas cooker has been there for 30+ years, with piezo spark Cheers - I hadn't thought of that. I don't really mind how it looks if it would save a lot - is that common practice? Ha. Yeah I thought it seemed a lot, though house is in London with solid walls. I'd seen those hobs...

The electrics in my 3-bed mid-terrace house are pretty old, with an old Wylex fusebox. I would like to get an induction cooker (30-45A), and there's currently no cooker circuit (and no space in the fusebox). I had an electrician round who suggested if I didn't want to upgrade the fusebox right...

Hi all, Around a month ago, my old gas hob started pulsing (the ring spits up a bit, making a noise) every few seconds. It varies between the four rings - one is completely fine, one is nearly fine, one pulses a bit, and the other a lot. The flames are still pretty much blue, and all four rings...

Ah - the Wickes tap, the only dual flow I could find, doesn't say anything about it being WRAS approved! Yes - I'm concerned about the cold mains heading back into the hot supply - not sure if the venturi adaptor you noticed will be sufficient to deal with that, or if I need a double check...

Great, thank you. Perhaps many of the taps available now that state they can handle 0.3 bars but claim to be single flow have a similar mechanism to prevent backflow? Sorry a few more follow-up questions: 1) If I install it and it seems to be running fine, how would I be sure I'm not getting...

Hi. Today my kitchen mixer tap broke (head snapped off the cartridge). Pic of the tap: From a quick Google, it's an obscure cartridge so I'm better replacing the tap. However, I have an old heating system with a Baxi back boiler and a cold tank in the loft and hot water in upstairs airing...

Very interesting. Thanks for your patience. Yes, cold tank in the attic, hot tank on the first floor, kitchen and bathroom on ground. Standard-ish ceilings. The bath tap currently has two ceramic quarter cartridges - but the new tap would perform worse? That's a shame, I thought they looked...

Thanks. The shower tap I linked to says "Minimum operating pressure of 1 bar for best performance " - do you know what a conservative lower bound is for the pressure my system likely has?

Ah thanks, that's something I never considered. I just double-checked, and (hot water is tank-fed for all three): Bath shower mixer: cold is tank-fed Bathroom basin and kitchen mixer: cold is mains-fed. I am not sure how to check whether a new tap is suitable for this setup, to avoid...

Yes

Hi. I have an old house with a number of old taps I am hoping to replace with newer designs. None of the taps currently have flexi tails or isolation valves, but I can turn the water off upstream. I haven't changed a tap before (though have done some plumbing), so for each I am looking for...

Unfortunately the room above has a wardrobe over the area, and even if I moved it I wouldn't know how to get into the floorboards under the carpet. Do you have any experience with using nylon string or something to deal with this with the cables in situ? (Power switched off, of course)