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In my garage there was originally one double socket on an RCD. The previous owner of the house has T'd in to this to add a single socket elsewhere in the garage. The T was done in a very haphazard way which I need to soft out anyway, however, a friend recently pointed out to me that it really...

Sorry if my terminology is a little off. I'm a techie, not a sparky; and I'm just starting to learn about electrics. Diagram below. Essentially what I'm asking is this: can I move the exterior light live from position 7 to 6, making the circuit permanently live. Then replace the outside...

A previous owner of our house installed an exterior light under the porch. Unfortunately he didn't do a terribly good job of it. The light is wired into the hall lighting circuit, meaning when you turn on the hall lights, on comes the one outside too. Not really what we want, and I'm guessing...

Sooooo. The unreliable neon has been resolved. It turned out to be my error. I sent the wife off to B&Q and she returned with another MK 20A switch with a neon. Slightly different model. I wired it in, again following the instructions to the letter. This time the neon stayed stubbornly...

There's no way to re-terminate the neon. It's contained within the black moulded part. I've recently installed an outdoor switch which did have separate thin wires for it's power indicator light, so have seen / done this before. Thanks for the replies. It sounds like the switch is dodgy...

I recently installed a light in our loft. I didn't want there to be a chance of the lights being left on, so I installed a switch near the hatch rather than in the loft. I selected an 20A MK one with a red neon above the switch. I broke into the lighting ring from the bedroom nearest the...

In our hallway we have a double switch. One switch operates the lights in the hall, and the light outside the front door. The other does nothing at all. I'd like to change it so one does the internal lights and the other does the outside light. I assume that's how it's supposed to be wired...

I'm planning to build a lean-to in an awkward space at the side of my house. It's too small for a shed and at the moment is just acts as a giant litter tray for the neighbourhood cats. It's 6m from front to back and 2.7m wide at the front, narrowing to 1.3m at the rear of the property. Once...

Ah. Misunderstood. Couldn't see the relevance of cable routing to the earth wire connection.... but... good point. I'll check the routing. The guy who owned the house before was extremely careless and inept when it comes to DIY. Also an amateur electrician, which seems like a recipe for...

As far as I'm aware, straight up into the loft. It's been moved from one side of the doorway to the other. A horizontal distance of about 1m. Forgive my ignorance, but is this an important factor? If it is, I'll go and check the cable run.

Yes. Yellow and green. Was originally connected to the metal back box. The new one is plastic and doesn't have a screw terminal for it. Switch faceplate is plastic. Only exposed metal parts are the screws.

I recently had to replace a badly installed back box for a light switch. The switch had been moved when the door was 'flipped' to open to the right, not the left, and had been done really badly, with glue, silicon sealant and bits of wood wedging it in place. I decided to do it properly. The...

Great answer. Many thanks. I'll change out the cistern and take a look at what's up in the loft space to see if I can modify that in a simple way. The toilet does have an isolator valve. Would closing this partially work as a temporary fix?

Recently bought a house and having a few plumbing issues. Water pressure is good and nothing appears to be leaking, but the pipework leading from the bathroom to the tank in the loft has a strange quirk. Sometimes, when you flush the toilet or run water in the sink, the pipework under the...

I'm planning to build a lean to at the side of our garage. It's an annoyingly shaped piece of land which isn't much use, and it too small for a shed, so I plan to cover the whole are to maximise the storage space for wheelie-bins, bikes, recycling, etc. The space is 6.6m long, and 2.7m at the...

Yeah, had bad experiences with cheap poly in the past. :) I was planning to use the twin wall stuff. It's more expensive, but I won't need that much. The whole roof will be less than 14 sq/m. Thanks for the tip. I'll have a look at the fibreglass stuff as well.

I'm considering building a lean to at the side of our garage. At the moment it's just an open space with a fence and gate at the front leading down to the back garden. It's a really annoying shape, and not really wide enough for a shed, so thinking about just covering the whole space to the...

In our new home we have a downstairs toilet with no windows. There's an extractor fan in the end wall, which leads to large plastic pipe in the garage on the other side. The fan joins the pipe at right angles. There's a cap at the bottom of the pipe which is about 5cm below the level of the...

Actually, I don't know that it does take 30 minutes to fill. That as just a flippant throw-away comment, sorry. There's nothing wrong with the water pressure for the bath or sink. It's just that the shower in infuriatingly slow.

The thing is, if they had both said the same thing I'd more inclined to believe them, but they didn't. One of them didn't even see the system before starting to tell us how much it would cost to fix. One said it's the (brand new) boiler, while the other didn't really explain what was wrong...