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Thanks for the suggestions @JohnD and @Odds. I like the idea of safety grass actually to maintain the look of the garden. Any first hand experience of a decent spray weed killer?

Hi, I have a particularly unloved area of my garden which I'd like to turn into a kids play area with swings and a trampoline. The area itself is uneven and littered with a layer of bricks and debris just under the surface where the previous owner had bonfires there. It's been strimmed in the...

I should have been more clear - the zip wire is braced between two big trees, the platform is a launch point rather than bracing the wire. We don't have any particularly close neighbours but it's a good point about keeping any 'dwelling' below 3m.

Renting a mini digger for a weekend for a bunch of garden projects so a large hole is entirely possible! If this were a dig by hand job, I'd absolutely not be considering it :) Edited to say: The blocks are really dense - 30kg of weight from a block measuring 44x20x13 so seemed to offer a lot...

I'm building a 3.5M tall climbing frame / zip wire platform in the garden and want to make sure the legs are well secured particularly given the height and leverage. I have a lot of very heavy concrete blocks from a demolished outbuilding, would it be practical to dig a larger hole, throw in a...

Thanks everyone for the guidance and opinions on this. Took the opportunity to learn a new skill and rip out all of the plastic pipework and pushfit connectors, replacing it with soldered copper. Invested in a pressure tester pump to satisfy myself that the pipework held under pressure and I'm...

I think soldered copper is probably the strategy I have the most confidence in - I've never done it but have watched enough YouTube to understand the methods and I'll try most things to learn a new skill. One question - how do you test the joints after fitting? Just whack the system back on and...

Thanks a lot for the reply. I need to raise and level the floor with a screed, would you screed over the top of the sub floor channel or build up the walls of the channel to match the desired floor level?

Just ripped up the old laminate in our porch ready for fitting a new tiled floor and found this channel containing the heating pipes. There's a mix of plastic and copper pipe, mainly joined with push fit connectors. I had planned to screed over the floor to give myself a level starting point...

The house we recently moved into is painted exclusively in this magnolia paint which has an unusual texture. There's a picture below but the easiest way to put it is that it has quite a hard and shiny finish, and areas can be peeled off whole. Any guidance on what kind of paint this is likely...

This project fell by the wayside due to Christmas and other stuff but wanted to come back and give an update. In the end I decided to bite the bullet and run a T&E over to the switch from an existing lighting circuit which gave me the neutral needed to power all of the outside lighting from...

No :( Big bit of SWA vanishes into an exterior wall, presumed to be under the floorboards somewhere

I think that's where we're at - a decision point between tons of disruption or just living without some low level lighting in the driveway (which is where I think I'm at!) I've used a stud finder to identify a couple of spots where the T&E cables run, and picked some small inspection holes in...

Love this suggestion, it makes total sense! However! Just pulled the wall lantern off it's fittings and it has only a live and a neutral meaning (I think) there is still a mysterious junction box somewhere in the mix behind a wall or ceiling which I can't seem to find.

Success on that front - Known good neutral to thick blue + grey to thick brown results in the low level lighting being on. Tried a variety of switches and none seem to change that. The big thing is that the wall lantern could be switched on/off by the switch in the porch independently! So it...

Just to check I understand properly - connect the thick blue to a known working neutral from another light, and the thick brown to grey?

Thanks a lot for going to so much trouble on this, really starting to get a picture for what I have. All the lights in question here - outside, low level, porch, hallway are on the same circuit on the consumer unit. Interestingly, I just tested connecting the thick T&E blue to a neutral for an...

Yep 1 Black and 7 Blue go to the same terminal (B1). Coming into this hallway switch box are 3 cables which have all been labelled: 'H2 Wall' - which I assume to be the wall lights in the hallway, the 3 wires from H2 Wall are on the right side of the switch in 'A Com', 'A1', and 'A2'. 'P' -...

I've attached pictures of both here - the brighter one is the porch switch in question, the other one with more wires is the one inside the hallway of the house which also controls some wall lights in the hallway via the second switch. Flicking the left switch in the hallway does the following...

Ok I think I can answer to the identities of the cables... - It seems by elimination that the thick brown/blue go to the low level lights although I'm confused as to why neither have voltage when standalone. - The thin T&E pair is the constant/switched earth for the wall lantern outside the...