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We live in a 60's bungalow with solid concrete floors. There have never been problems with damp. For the last 2 or 3 years there has been an elusive smell in the living room, but only in summer during dry weather. I'm pretty sure it's the smell of damp concrete or plaster. There is no water...

I'm planning to replace a worn out monobloc mixer tap in our kitchen. The existing tap has 2 levers and I want to replace with similar. I fancy the Grohe range but I need advice because our system is mains fed to the cold tap and gravity fed to the hot tap - I reckon about 0.2 bar. Our existing...

I'm putting a 2" deep strip of mosaic tiles as a feature around the middle of a bathroom. The rest of the wall area will be ceramic tiles. I don't want to buy a tub of adhesive specially for the mosaics and wondered if it would be OK to use ordinary instant grab adhesive. What's best to use as a...

I'm changing the layout of my upstairs bathroom and bringing the bath waste pipe through the outside wall in a different place. Because of the pipe layout it would be easiest to join the bath waste into the toilet branch (outside the house) before this connects to the SVP. Is this permissible...

I'm knocking a separate upstairs toilet and bathroom into one to make a bigger bathroom. This involves removing the existing toilet doorway. The existing wall is 2 inch cinder block plastered on both sides to give a finished thickness of 3 inches. The issue is how to fill in the doorway. The...

I'm cutting down some big Leylandii alongside a ditch. I plan to replace them with a 6 foot close-boarded fence. I'm using 5x4 notched timber posts concreted in at least 2 feet deep. I'm trying to work out how far to set the posts back from the edge of the ditch to make sure high winds can't...

My central heating radiators are fed by the dreaded 8mm microbore pipes. None of the upstairs radiators work properly. I've fitted a new circulation pump and used desludging stuff in the radiators. There is hardly any improvement so I'm thinking the distribution pipe which runs along the bottom...

I've had the above device controlling my gas boiler for a few years. Sometimes when there is a powercut it loses the settings and I have to reprogram the clock and on/off times. On the original box it mentions a battery back-up, so I thought this might need replacing. I've taken the back...

I want to fit coving in a bedroom but a built-in wardrobe makes standard profile stuff out of the question. Does anyone make uneven coving, preferably plaster, which extends down the wall about 100mm but only about 30mm across the ceiling? Any help appreciated.

I want to fix a wallpaper border halfway up a wall. The walls are covered with new unpainted lining paper which will eventually be painted in matt emulsion. I can't decide if it's better to emulsion the wall and apply the border afterwards, or whether to fix the border onto the unpainted lining...

I plan to paint the walls in a bedroom with one wall a darker shade. The walls are covered with 1200 grade lining paper. How can I get a clean join up the corners where the different shades of emulsion meet? I thought about doing the lighter walls first, then using masking tape up the corners...

When I installed my power shower 16 years ago I used a Watermill twin impeller low voltage pump on the recommendation of the local plumbers' merchants. This worked well for over 12 years until it began to get noisy, so I thought it best to replace it as a precaution. Watermill were taken over...

Two years ago I intalled a Grundfos Danube STL-1.5C low voltage shower pump to replace a similar Watermill pump. The Watermill pump had worked happily for 12 years but I replaced it when it began to get noisy. The Grundfos pump has started to play up. Sometimes it doesn't start so I am left...

I moved house recently and we've got an Alpha 240e. We've just started to use the central heating. The manual on/off works OK but the timer does not switch it on or off. I've checked the user instructions and the settings seem to be right. Any idea what the problem is?

Our bungalow had an extension built onto the lounge about 30 years ago. It's cavity wall construction, brick outer leaf, breeze block internal. A crack runs down the plasterwork where the original wall joins the extension. It's only hairline, I can't get my finger nail into it, and it doesn't...

I've got a Philips LCD TV, 3 years old. Since they starting messing about with transmitters in March I've had lots of problems losing digital channels, so thought maybe an aerial problem since the existing one was 20 years old and pre-digital TV. I've had a new aerial fitted. The guy was very...

I'm planning to build a 6ft close board fence in an exposed position. I want a quality fence that will last. I've had a look at supplies from AVS. I'm not convinced about the posts because they all seem to be cut from the middle of the tree. Am I right in thinking that these posts will have less...

My shower pump stopped working suddenly. It's a Watermill SS45DLV low voltage pump that has been faultless since I installed it 11 years ago. After a sharp tap on the casing with a soft hammer it started up again, so I suspect it needs new brushes. Is it possible to obtain and fit new brushes...

I have an old and very thick row of Leylandii that I want to replace with a close boarded fence. I can't remove the tree roots due to drives on both sides, so I plan to saw them off at ground level. My problem is how to bore holes for the fence posts. This means drilling through Leylandii...

I've just fitted 2 new radiators. An aluminium Faral Tropical and a stainless steel Apollo Genova towel radiator. Both look very good. Problem with both is that I got a drip from where the valve tails screw into the radiator - all 4 of them. I used PTFE tape and I haven't stripped any threads...