Search results

Likely a bird is building its nest in your chimney, and the sound you hear is dislodged mortar from its nest-based activities. I had this in my previous house, for a few weeks every year, normally between 7am and 9am.

Lucky it didn't rain before he got the tiles on. When mine was done a few months back we got 36mm of rain in 5 hours with 40mph winds - there wasn't a tile on the roof, just membrane.

I'm just getting a fan installed in the gable end with a 150mm hole and a vent on the outside. Controlled by a Wifi adapter so I don't need to go up there to change the settings.

Only 40C? Mine's that at night. I'm having an thermostatic extractor fan fitted tomorrow, just so it's possible to go up there without dying.

That's the roofing equivalent of Tom Cruise's shoes.

If mine was, then so is yours.

Except I didn't. I commented one hour after the previous post, which appeared earlier today and was deleted after I commented on it. I edited mine to reflect that, as you can see.

ChatGPT enters the, um, chat. ...now it's been deleted and my comments looks weird.

If it's particularly stubborn he could still be struggling.

It depends on the temperature difference. If it's small, air will flow upwards for a time and the house will cool. If it's large, air will flow both ways and the house will heat up. I intend to fit an extractor fan in the loft to dispel the nuclear reactor levels of heat we get on hot days.

I lifted my two with a 10in Stanley claw bar to create a gap big enough for a thin utility bar. I wish I hadn't, it's horrible down there.

Mine was certainly improved by removing the chimney and all those other horrible protrusions surrounded by manky leadwork and plastic. But I imagine if you have a more rustic house a chimney is more of a feature.

I can't see any cracks, just a few places where the pointing has crumbled away. That said, chimneys can be a pain - not from falling down, there's no possibility of it doing that short of a tornado strike - but from leaks and damp and the general maintenance they require. I had mine taken off...

Holy balls. Worse than useless.

You post like we can't see what you wrote. "never paint masonry - & never paint plastic." So don't pretend you were talking about difficulties or exceptions. There is no issue whatsoever painting properly prepared masonry or plastic with the correct materials.

In the same way I wouldn't advise respraying your car if it's rusted through, covered in moss and half buried in a marsh, I wouldn't advise painting your wall if it's 'sodden' through, stuffed with wet insulation and subject to rising damp.

Not really. Poor quality masonry paint, especially on badly prepared walls, will crack and allow water penetration, plus will not permit evaporation, leading to moisture retention. Prepare your walls and use quality breathable paint and you can reduce water absorption to practically zero, and...

That's the worst thing I've set eyes on this week. Jesus wept. And beyond the obvious criminal atrocity of the whole thing, it looks like the peculiar leadwork towards the top of that gap actually feeds underneath the membrane half way down.

That angle is somewhere between 1 and 2 degrees. When it gets to 20 you need to worry.

Thanks.