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Hi all, Does anyone know what kind of floor we have on the attached pictures. We are in France, the house was built in 1973 and the floor is original. It is an ex council house so I don't think it is anything expensive. When I do I reverse image search I either get limestone, marble...

Hi all, I removed my solar pump from the pond filter for the winter, because it is attached to.an accumulator battery and there isn't enough light to reach the threshold for it to turn on. I left the small fountain in to aerate the water a but as it runs on low light. My understanding is that...

Hi all, We just put a bracket up for a light fitting on our ceiling. The ceiling is thick plaster sheets hung on long screws I think (I.e. there are no battens behind, in the void you see right across and it is just punctuated with metal "screws" or "posts"). We generally have hooks in our...

Hi all, The radiator valve just gave up and started leaking heavily. I have been waiting for the plumber to come for a few weeks. The central heating is off and I closed the flow and return valves on the boiler. However the leak is still enough that it will overflow a washing up bowl...

Hi all, We are creating a bathroom and bedroom in what was previously a kitchen diner on the ground floor of our house. I attached a (badly drawn) plan of what we plan to do here. The floor is concrete and we absolutely do not want to break it up in any way for various reasons. The house is...

Hi all, We have a small.balcony rail that dates from the 1970s and has a wood top bar over a metal frame. We varnish/stain/treat the wood every year, and by July it has peeled off. It is heavily cracked and the cracks are quite deep in places. It also faces south and is in the sun all day and...

Hi all, We are currently having the blown crepi on our house repaired. The house is concrete construction and has a thin layer of a type of crepi followed by paint (sorry, I don't know what crepi is in English, I am in France). The builders have scraped off the loose crepi, and opened out any...

Hi, I have an old twin tube fluorescent strip light that doesn't come on anymore. The ends of the tubes light up and they look in decent condition. In our old place our lights had small cylindrical starters that usually needed replacing when this happened. But when I opened this light I don't...

Hi all, We had our kitchen fitted a couple of years ago and at the time I flagged that I felt the extractor over the hob was not correctly positioned and that using the front ring would cause steam to go up the front if the cupboard and swell the wood(chip). They insisted it was correct. Two...

Hi all, I have a small garden pond with two fountains: - one small run, with a floating pump just under the water surface that contains a battery. The fountain runs all day when there is sun, and once there isn't enough it runs 10 seconds every minute until the battery runs out. The solar...

Hi all, We have a very large (2m x 2m) "wardrobe" that we use in our entrance way for storage. We inherited with the house because the previous owner couldn't get rid of it. I am going to show my ignorance here - I can see on the inside that it is made of a reddish wood, but the outside has a...

Hi all, We have a small damp patch in the corner or the room, which is never wet, but the paint flakes. For info, the wall is an outside wall, the building is concrete, the wall has some sort of plasterboard/insulation on the inside and the ceilings have a gap of about 20cm to the concrete...

Hi, I apologise for the length of the message. About one year ago we had a Sanispeed pump installed on the ground floor of our house to take the washing machine water to the sewer system (it was previously linked to the rainwater system). Since then there have been intermittent very strong...

Hi all I have noticed a series of narrow black lines on an interior wall between the bathroom and the bedroom. They are about 30cm long and 1cm apart and only appear in an area about 30cm by 30cm. This area is behind the tap end of the bath but about 50cm above the bath level. There are none...

Hi all, The plumber took my toilet flush apart and didn't put it back together. I am struggling to figure out how to do it. I.put photos below. Unfortunately there is no brand on it. My questions: - which way round does the joint go and does it go between the two white circles? - what are the...

Hi all, I have checkef through prévois threads and done as advised, but the toilet is still dripping. I have a toilet with the flush concealed in the wall. I have heard dripping from behind the tiles and water runs constantly down the back of the toilet (not enough to see but if I put my...

Hi all, We have a Chappee condensing boiler, Luna Platinum 3.25 HTE, 45L hot water cylinder, fitted in our house (which is around 110 sq m, 4 bedrooms and not that well insulated). The boiler has gas adaptive control and we have an external temperature sensor as well as an internal one. The...

Hi everyone, I have an old shower with a thermostatic control knob that no longer works, so the shower is boiling hot. I think I need to change the cartridge, however I cannot figure out how to take off the control knob. All the info I see says that there is a small notch where you just...

Hi everyone I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice on finding the source of water/damp in our house. The house is rented so it is very difficult to manage the situation as we can't see the problem, except in videos. Background The house is a 1897 terrace with solid walls in the...

Hi all I am posting here because I always had good advice when I lived in the UK and the forums here in France are not so helpful . Could be my French ! I wanted a bit of advice. We are buying a house built in 1978. The electrical report came back with some anomalies, which are fairly standard...