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Rest assured that I will be enlisting the services of an expert in dealing with this but in the mean time (the football means few are answering the phone at the moment), how does this happen...? I'm told that the tenants were "cooking" at the time; I'm not sure whether that means oven or hob...

Tonight I may have drilled through a cable but at no point did I notice it, in terms of drill feel, reaction, or anything dramatic happening. I merely have the coincidence of drilling into walls and an electrical problem. Perhaps you guys can help me figure out if I should rip the walls open or...

Hi, guys. I have a thermal shutoff in an electric storage heater which failed suddenly with burn marks on one side and onto the connecting wire (pic). I ordered the replacement component and connected it in, all the wire cut back and cleaned, etc. As soon as I turned the heater back on, it...

An extractor fan in a windowless bathroom is barely drawing, I can feel only the slightest pull and a smoke test confirms. Tenants report that steam is very slow to clear and, indeed, after years of no problem the black mould is advancing. The fan sounds normal - not too loud or quiet. I can't...

NB - my question has nothing to do with gas or electricity connection. I'm installing an oven/grill/hob in a camper van. The cooker is designed for boats/caravans/campers etc. so its meant for this purpose. But it's of a strange type I haven't encountered in the home - the oven needs mounting...

This sounds like a silly issue, but a toilet seat (basic screwfix one, tried two different sorts) simply will NOT stay attacked to the toilet. This is in a rental property and the problem has lasted two sets of tenants. I've siliconed the crap out of it, tightened the fittings as best I can...

I am dealing with a toilet with a stubborn partial blockage (i.e. very slow draining) which easily becomes a full blockage with too much waste. However, it has a curious characteristic in that, when allowed time to drain, the water in the bowl empties almost completely, i.e. goes much lower...

Hello. This heating system keeps seeing pressure drops (down to zero) every few months but now increasing in frequency. It can be successfully re-pressurised with the filling loop, but then drops again over a period of time. There are absolutely no discernible leaks, inside or outside the...

Hello. I have an old backboiler with the typical tanks in the loft (HW and CH) and a cylinder in the bedroom (vertically between the boiler and the header tanks) The CH expansion tank is continually overflowing: > water level is at the overflow point > a steady drip out of the plastic overflow...

I am flashing a woodburner flue in a garden building. The roof is bitumen corrugated stuff, screwed down onto battens in the usual way. The flashing needs to be siliconed and screwed, but surely there will be no purchase on the screws where they go into the roof alone, and not also into a...

There was a sudden and fairly strong flow of water through the ceiling (downstairs), mostly through the ceiling rose hole and a line of damp visible either side of it. After a minute or two it slowed to a drip, and then almost stopped. There are central heating pipes in the region of the leak...

I have a quote to wire up an electric oven to an existing CU. The quote is broken down into materials, labour, and then an extra £40 for "issue of minor electrical works certificate" and "notification to Building Control in order to comply with Part P of the Building Regulations" I hadn't...

I need a new circuit for an oven (there wasn't one there before) and an electrician has said that he can't work with my CU as it's too old. Is this really the case? It has space for one more breaker. I know it "could be updated", but if it's safe and functional then I'd rather keep it. Will...

I have a stove, actually a sauna stove but basically like any other woodburner, and the spigot is 115mm OD. That's by my measurement, but it is also described as 115mm in the manual (i.e. not in inches). There do not seem to be stove pipes available of that size - will I need to go up/down to...

I let out a house and the shower runs from a mixer, with hot water coming from a tank. The hot water tank is at floor level upstairs, the shower is also upstairs, and the header tank is in the attic immediately above them both - so the usual arrangement, I think. Pressure from the shower is...

I had some plastering done as part of a larger job, and it went over an artex ceiling. This is the finish I've found today after completion - almost the entire ceiling has the pattern still visible on it and in much of it I can feel the ridges if I touch it. The pictures are pretty bad from my...

I want to put up a stud wall in an opening 3.3m W * 2.1m H, to re-establish a division which has previously been knocked through (quite a while ago, not sure when). I'm told that the ceiling in that opening is an RSJ, as we might expect, and it clearly has plasterboard over it. Will there...

I have a shed base (framed in 100x50 stuff) decked in 19mm OSB. The shed itself doesn't cover the whole base - there's a strip about 400mm deep along the front (and the full 2400mm width of the shed) which is uncovered by the building (but overhung by the roof) left as a kind of porch or step...

Hello. I'm building a sauna (outside) and it will be clad internally with some kind of specialised sauna cladding that will cope with the heat. The internal face of the door can be clad similarly. But: the door jambs, stops, and the "edges"/sides of the door itself (it will be quite thick in...

I'm sure this is a hard question to answer, and depends on the area and lots of other things, but basically I have some builders whose quote I like and whom I've met and feel comfortable with, and I'd like them to do an extension for me - but they're not free until late May. I would much rather...