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Hello A fox has given birth to six cubs in my garden. My cat whose tail has been bitten off by a fox is terrified to go out. The cubs cannot follow their mother because she jumps up a one foot ledge and they can't. I cannot chase the cubs away because they have nowhere to go. But my garden is...

How hard would it be to DIY retrofit RCDs to a quite old consumer unit? I attach a photo, I was thinking is there a matching RCD to replace the main on/off switch? If yes, how would I bypass it if it tripped all the time? The photo shows the left hand side consumer unit, it does the lights and...

Hello I tried to look in the consumer unit space (inside a large cupboard) and try to trace the Earth line. The mains cable comes in upwards from the ground. Very near it is the telephone cable also from the ground. Finally there is the water mains rising from the ground as well. The water...

I do not have a residual current breaker on the consumer unit. I have hooked up a small electronic device that draws 1mA on the mains between L and E rather than L and N. There is no N where the device is located. Could anyone please tell me how bad/dangerous/suicidal/terrible or good this is...

We had an older dishwasher and it smelled badly no matter what we cleaned it with. One day it blocked and did not drain any more. I pulled it out and removed its drain hose. Inside the drain hose was filled with a very dense, creamy, very white paste, across all its length. It was some sort of...

I have a Whirlpool fridge model ARC4190IX. It has a freezer compartment at the top and a main fridge at the bottom. It has an LCD display and some buttons on the freezer door at the top. You can set the temperatures of the freezer and the fridge separately, and electronically. It has never...

I want to install a water filter on the incoming mains (and a softener etc) but I want to be able to bypass everything as easily as possible. For example to bypass the water softener I currently need to switch three separate valves. I think I would need a valve that has one input and two...

Could someone please tell me, do the above two designations refer to the one and same thing? Many thanks

We have an old apartment that has very large doors and frames and we would like to know what is the right procedure for removing the old paint, maybe as old as 50 years, and exposing the wood underneath? In some places the paint has flaked off, and I can clearly see the wood underneath. The...

My gas meter is very old, maybe 30-40+ years. the electricity meter is maybe 15 years old. I have been getting very large electricity and gas bills and while reviewing the whole situation I was wondering about how I could check whether the meters are functioning properly. Is there any...

I have a 20" water filter, with two canisters, that apparently uses a 3/4" port. I visited two plumbing supplies shops yesterday and the "standard" BSP (or was it BST) 3/4" male thread does not fit, appears to be too large, but just. The suppliers of the water filter in Germany say that this...

Hello I have been using a Megaflo for 17 years now. For those that do not know the Megaflo is a pressurised, steel, hot water cylinder. Internally it has an air gap and when the hot water gets hot and expands, the air inside the megaflo gets compressed. When it heats up there is a significant...

Hello, my house is fed with a plastic mains water pipe that runs underground for a distance of around 80 metres. The external diameter of this plastic pipe is approx 22mm and the internal diameter is around 15mm. There is a water meter down at the property boundary with the main street. Static...

I have applied to extend my garage's length (sideways as we look at it from the front). The garage was built in the 80s and its back wall sits on the boundary between myself and a very uncooperative neighbour. In other words the back wall of the garage interrupts the fence line. I want to...

Back in spring I applied to have the house extended significantly and its roof raised from 4.8m to 6.3m. That application was approved. In autumn I applied for the detached garage to be extended significantly and a pitched roof to be built over it at a height of 4.5m. That application was also...

Hello My neighbour and I share a common drive off the street. The drive is 4-5 meters long and then it spits into a Y. On both sides of the drive facing the street both plots have enough land to have completely separate driveways, but the original builder 40 years ago decided to build...

Hello We have applied and got planning approval for extending the detached double garage and putting a pitched roof over it. However due to a miscommunication with the draftsman the roof height is slightly less than I would have liked and the roof ridge length is also shorter than I would have...

My garage has been built on the boundary such as its back wall is the actual boundfary. That was done in the 80s when the house was originally built. The garage is detached and the only visible sides of it is the back wall and the side wall. My wife was thinking of converting it to...

I had two (expensive) quotes so far to replace my old boiler. Both Worcester and Vaillant cost £1,200 from Travis Perkins or Screwfix ( and the plumbers have quoted me a bigger price as it happens ) However I see that both Travis Perkins and Screwfix offer other boilers at half the price, and...

My 15 year old boiler has sprung a leak and it puts out the flames in the burner. Curiously that is exactly what happened 15 years ago to the previous boiler. Both are the same make and type. The leak is small, I presume, but when the burner starts the steam puts out the flames. On the rare...