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Downstairs toilet flush has broken, and looking at the water input pipe, there's this metal connector with the screw on the side. Is that screw the means of shutting off the water? The upstairs toilets have different, plastic shutoff valves. There's nothing else accessible; the rest of the...

The cold taps in our upstairs and downstairs bathrooms have seized up over about 5 years. 5 years ago, they were similarly seized, so we called a plumber and he fixed them in about 10 minutes - I wasn't paying a huge amount of attention, but all he seemed to do was pop the top cap off the tap...

I'm sure that I once read somewhere that dishwashers typically have a small tube round the back (not the big chunky drain tube) that can be blown into manually to clear a pressure differential issue that's causing the appliance to stop and flash an error message during a wash cycle. Is that...

I've just repaired our 8-year-old Bosch washing machine thanks to YouTube videos that happened to cover the same fault on the same machine. But is it really still a waste of time trying to obtain a proper repair manual if you're a DIYer?

The large central burner on our Kenwood oven has ended up with a load of cooking oil in it. We've soaked up most of it, but it could obviously do with a more thorough clean. Can I just remove those three screws and lift it out, or will I be disturbing seals that will need to be replaced with new?

When you start a cycle it will run normally for about 2 minutes, then you'll hear the gurgling noise from the drain (totally normal for when the unit is draining) and immediately the error code indication is displayed. It will then run something (the pump?) for another few minutes and then stop...

I want to use one so I can switch from black exterior cable (where it comes in through a wall), to white for internal use. Ideally I want rear entry for the black cable, side entry for the white one. I can't find anything online that does this, all the junction boxes I've found are side entry...

I've run a network cable from the living room to an upstairs bedroom up the front wall of the house. When I drilled the upstairs hole, I discovered that it came out in the strip of serrated soft black material (sorry, don't know what it's properly called) that covers the join between the porch...

I want to put Ethernet sockets in my living room and in the bedroom directly above, connected by a cable that will run up the front exterior wall of the house. See the photo below (not my house) for how I'd like the cable to be positioned relative to the windows. I want both sockets to sit just...

After many years (well over 20 I think) of summer use, our trusty floor-standing bedroom fan has decided to seize up. I'd rather repair than replace if possible. Having stripped it down, it looks like the issue is with this bit at the back; it seems to be some kind of bearing that allows the...

I'm going to be using cement screws to attach wooden battens to some concrete fence posts. I've never used cement screws before, and the ones I bought say they need a 6mm pilot hole. I experimented by drilling into a breeze block and winding the screw halfway in. With a 6mm hole, there was a...

I need to fix wooden battens to concrete fence posts. Screwfix has two different types of concrete screw - ones with Torx heads with a thread pitch that looks like regular wood screw, and screwbolts that have a *much* wider thread pitch. The screwbolts are significantly more expensive. Is there...

Rather surprised to discover a very young oak tree growing unbidden at the front of the house. It's only about 6 feet from the front wall. Is it ultimately going to have to be moved to avoid root damage to the foundations?

A couple of months ago I replaced the flush unit in a close-coupled toilet, and I resealed using a new doughnut and a ring of Plumber's Mait on both sides of the (new) metal coupling plate. I let the cistern refill as soon as everything was reinstalled. Everything seemed fine, but I've now got...

This is probably a very dumb question, but I'm uncertain why the screw gauges on this strip of Plasplugs are that elongated teardrop shape. Is the idea that the slot for (say) the 5mm plug is sized to indicate the maximum and minimum thicknesses of screw thread that can be used with that plug...

With one of our toilets, when the cistern is about 95% refilled the stream of water becomes just a drip, which goes on effectively forever since it'll never get to the completely full mark before someone else needs to flush. It's just loud enough to be annoying at night when the house is quiet...

So about a week ago, I noticed that the water level in our downstairs toilet was higher than usual. Coincidentally, this was the same day that the flush in one of our upstairs toilets stopped working due to a disintegrated washer. I figured that it was probably due to the kids being...

I've never done any toilet DIY before, but I need to replace a siphon in a close-coupled cistern. Googling around, none of the usual DIY suppliers seem to indicate whether their siphons are for 1.5" or 2" connections, but most of the close-coupling kits with sealing rings seem to be for 1.5"...

This lock has been getting progressively more unreliable, to the point where now we can't unlock it from inside, the key will only turn a few degrees. From outside, the key works as smooth as glass with no resistance whatsoever. Is it fixable in a way that allows us to keep using the existing keys?

Our neighbour asked - very nicely - if we had some kind of outflow on the back of house, because he was seeing water seeping under the fence. I looked behind a large heavy wooden settee thing that hasn't been moved in a couple of years and saw this: It's dripping very slightly, but...