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You can cover your joists if you like. The stuff is permeable so the joists can still breathe. The only problem with this will appear if you (or somebody else) ever needs to crawl around in there. If this is likely to be a problem you can add extra timbers across the joists (only needed in...

Dead mice are fully biodegradable so there's nothing wrong with the wheelie bin. They will end up either in an incinerator or a landfill site, both of which are in line with the instructions. You're just getting the council to earn their keep and do it for you. I would put them in a compost...

I seem to remember that in his 1997 manifesto Tony said he would get rid of the licensing laws. I believed him. What a plonker!!!

Are you using the very first release of AVG7? My mother got something like this so I went back to grisoft and found a newer AVG7. This solved the problem. The first AVG7 was downloaded as avg70free_296a409.exe The one that worked properly (so far) was avg70free_300a456.exe

I always use a well known brand of Hardglaze polyurethane varnish on mine. The first coat raises the grain so sand it flat again. Two more coats will finish the job. Note that the stuff will not be fully hard for weeks after it has 'dried'. This is a characteristic of all polyurethane based...

Is this a sloping roof? If it is I'd be tempted to put a false horizontal ceiling at the highest point with the wiring above. You don't need much width for a fluorescent light fitting and a pull cord switch. PS: If you have a 4" void between the plasterboard and the tiles why isn't it full...

I'm not sure what you mean by implant. Will this be in the car or the driver? Let's assume you mean the car. Many years ago I saw something on a Tomorrow's World type programme about a car with a built in breathalyser. You had to blow into the tube and the car wouldn't start if you were...

I do like barbecues but I wouldn't want one every day. It's something you do on a camp or caravan holiday where the cooking facilities indoors aren't that good anyway. There are also a few preconditions: 1) The weather has to be right. A warm, sunny evening (barbecues are not a mid-day...

If you're trying to work out how much is too much then this might help. The legal limit is 80mg per 100ml of blood. That's one part alcohol in 1250 by volume. Now alcohol, being a small molecule, doesn't stay in your blood but distributes itself throughout your body fluid and a vet once...

To avoid this problem in future learn to tell the difference between Philips and Pozi head screws. They're not the same but I've met mechanical engineers who don't seem to know this. The Philips head has tapered flutes whereas the pozi's are parallel sided. The Philips driver also has too...

If you don't like the idea of spraying anything you can get ant traps; little plastic containers with a poison pellet inside. The idea is that you put these down somewhere along the ants' trail. For those who don't know, ants start by scavenging at random but if one of them finds a good food...

There's a bit more to choosing an ISP than speed per pound. A friend of mine who used to swear by Tiscali has been finding this out the hard way. He started out full of praise because he was paying for 3X broadband but appeared to be getting 10X most of the time. Then the trouble started...

In our street, as no doubt in many others, the overworked bin men only have time to hitch our wheelies onto the back of the moving lorry. It would be a piece of cake to hide an old toaster in amongst the tax free rubbish. So who'll get the none too pleasant job of searching the lorry for...

As long as they aren't halogens :wink: :wink: I've got this idea lined up. Centre tapped 24 volt transformer in the house -> 2.5mm flat twin and earth (in heavy duty PVC conduit) -> pair of old 12 volt halogen fog lamps in series. The earth wire connects the transformer centre tap to the...

Have you had a look under your floor? Some of those old houses have quite a lot of crawl space down there and there are even gaps in the sleeper walls. Once you have a way in you might find you have access to the entire sub-floor space. To answer the original question, I'm not an expert on...

FAO Plugwash (and anybody else who's interested): Almost but not quite. The workings of the traditional (non-electronic) fluorescent tube and starter are really quite ingenious. Firstly, full mains voltage appears across the starter which is a small gas discharge lamp. This strikes...

I've always put the bottom of the post in gravel below the concrete. The idea is to allow water to drain away from the wood and also keep 'live' soil with all its wood destroying fungi away from the post. There is no need to put a point on the post either. Another favourite trick is to put...

Well that doesn't sound like too bad a use for the money and so I end up back where I started. I don't mind giving money to charities. They have to raise money from somewhere and in most cases that means asking us for donations. What really p*sses me off is the way so many of them go about...

If you're investigating a crime, the greatest advantage of phone tracking might not be to place a suspect at a scene in the past - that kind of evidence is too easily contested - but to find the actual phone. From this you might get valuable forensic evidence. Finding the suspect's...

Fair enough. There's no reason why dad shouldn't stay at home while mum goes back to work, at least not once baby is off breast milk. I was actually having a go at the government in as much as they have a hidden motive for wanting mums to get back to work. I've even thought of another one...