Search results

  1. D

    To Pin or to Float?

    I've some 14mm engineered oak flooring I intend to fit in our hallway. They are the click together boards and are 1090 long. The hall is 970 wide so they'll be fitted width ways rather than length ways. Current floor is a well ventilated suspended floor with insulation underneath and 18mm ply on...
  2. D

    Digital Shower - Reuse Existing

    Hope this is a simple one to answer ... SWMBO grumbles about our thermostatic shower (fed from the combi) and has got wind of digital ones. Given the heads in our current shower do the job and I have plenty of space to fit/hide the pump part, a) is it possible to just buy the pump/controller...
  3. D

    Cityfibre and location of ONT

    I'm planning to ditch VM's cable service and defect to Cityfibre as they've installed fibre to our street. Has anyone had any experience of CF refusing to mount their ONT inside of the house rather than on the interior of the external wall the fibre comes in at? My plan is to have the ONT in a...
  4. D

    Where to Put Fixings in a New Frame

    Over the next few days I'm going to replace our old wooden backdoor with a composite. Instructions are clear enough, and I've watched a few YouTube videos so have enough knowledge to bodge with confidence. My only concern is drilling into the concrete lintel Now where I'm a little puzzled is...
  5. D

    Salant for Pipe to Pan

    Plastic pipe from the toilet pan to the solid pipe. Seal has aged and needs replacing. What gloop would you recommend?
  6. D

    Frost Protection of Heating System

    I'm planning to leave a house unoccupied over the winter and popping round to check on it is not an option thanks to the distance. Hot water is supplied on demand from the boiler, so that's not a worry. Mains water I'll turn off at the stop cock and leave taps open to allow for expansion so I'm...
  7. D

    MCS Rule - Homeowners Present

    Just out of curiosity, and serendipity, I have a visit from a PV seller tomorrow to give me a quote. I had to deal with "head office" and was told that under the MCS rules, both homeowners (me and my wife) are supposed to be present during their quotation process. Does anyone know if this is true?
  8. D

    Sourcing Bricks

    I'm going to replace a few damaged bricks but where do I get just 10 bricks from? Current ones are 73mm and have weathered from black to a dark brown. Not having done this before, I hopped onto a well known building supplies site and spotted some that will probably do the job. However, they...
  9. D

    To Drain or Keep Running

    I shall be abandoning my late mother's house for 6 months. I'm in the process of clearing it, but it is taking an age and I have little time I can dedicate to the task just now. It's also 300+ miles away so dropping by for a weekend is impractical. There is empty property insurance in place...
  10. D

    Junction Box Habit

    So here's one for the proper sparkies... You're doing a bit of work in a house and while tracing a cable you come across a junction box which you open up. Now, do you close it up and be on your way, tighten up those screws out of habit, go crazy with your torque screwdriver and tighten them...
  11. D

    Levelling a Hedge

    As usual, the hedge has grown taller than I realised and is in need of a good trim. Think 3 feet. Every two or three years I bring it down to size but it takes an age since it's 30m long. Some branches are too thick for my hedge trimmers so have to be lopped with cutters or a hand saw. Yes...
  12. D

    Temporary Fix to Reduce Further Damage

    A while back my elderly mother turned her toes up leaving me and my sister the unenviable challenge of clearing the house. Little progress has been made mainly due to neither of us living within 400 miles of the place and both having families and jobs of our own. This evening my sister called...
  13. D

    Would You Bother with Conduit?

    So the original ceiling pull light switch in my garage has packed up. By "garage", I mean junk room with a big up and over external door. Plan will be to run T&E down to the white switch which operates an external light, replace the single switch with a double and reuse the existing 20mm back...
  14. D

    Sealants

    I hope someone can educate me. I want to seal the gap between brickwork and a new UPVC frame. (Previous frame was wooden and sealed with something that's hardened over the years.) Frame sealant: Matt and overpaintable Silicon sealant: Shiny and can't easily be painted Must be more of a...
  15. D

    External Door Reveal Size

    I'm planning to replace a wooden back door with a composite and I'm thinking about dimensions and positioning, My current plan is to fix the new frame (~70mm thick) to the outer brick skin (100mm) as I have a better chance of finding a firm fixing. I'll seal the frame to masonry gap with...
  16. D

    Extending a 43mm OD waste pipe

    Basin waste has started dripping so I stripped it down cursing the bodge of the previous repairer. The 43mmOD vertical waste pipe is ~20mm too short so it pulls on the side outlet from the trap. To get a good seal, I need to extend the 43mm pipe. I have some 43mm pipe so I was thinking of...
  17. D

    Setting an Automatic Balancing Valve

    Any tips on setting an ABV? I did read somewhere that an old timer's trick was to close all rads and set the ABV to it's highest setting then open 30% of the rads and keep opening the ABV until it started to flow. Thoughts please.
  18. D

    When to measure a rad temperature?

    Panel rad, nothing fancy, lockshield on one end, TRV on the other. Fancy k type thermocouples clamped to the feed and return to measure the temperature drop. Boiler is an old fashioned non-condensing combi. So when is the correct time to take a measurement? Too soon and the system is coming up...
  19. D

    Dynamic Heating Balancing

    Spotted Danfoss' RAS-B2 dynamic TRVs recently. Set the value according to rad size etc and replace across the house to automatically balance the heating system. Anyone any experience of using these? Are there alternatives from other manufacturers?
  20. D

    Balancing After Adding a Rad

    Let's say I were to go round my house balancing the heating system by adjusting each lockshield using the delta T ~12C method across all 14 rads. Now let's say I add a new radiator in. It won't be closest to the boiler but relatively close. Do I need to just adjust the new one to the required...
Back
Top