Home DIY

That's Greek to me. I just undid all sockets, tightened up connectors (some were loose) and tried them all: same as before. Left-most one works fine, next to the right one works and the other is intermittent, right-most socket both are intermittent. I can't quite bring myself to actually undo all the connectors and put the new sockets on to the two that are playing up to see if that fixes it.

That's Greek to me

get an electrician in

if you're not confident/prepared to try and isolate the fault, then if you have two new replacement sockets you're going to have to replace anyway..

..or else live with unreliable sockets - worst case is that the back box is screwed to combustible material, there's a slow earth fault and earth leakage current (the back box in the picture is not earthed..) meets high resistance, snowballs (logarithmic heat accumulation), resulting in fire.

Mashton's brother Barney is a qualified sparks and thoroughly nice chap - PM Mashton for his deets.

Cheers Dammit

Plasterboard walls. Twin slot shelving. Am I asking for trouble here?
I'm going to go with battens attached to studs.
It's for clothes, so a fair amount of mass attached to lovely plasterboard.

Yes/No?

I've used plasterboard anchors (the metal ones that splay out) to hang free floating cupboards etc on my plasterboard walls. Nothings fallen off yet...

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How deep is your cavity? Surprised if it's single lined ...

Does anyone have any experience of mixing radiator and underfloor heating from a single combi boiler? We are about to have a loft conversion done and I would love to not need radiators up there. We will use a plumber, but I want to know what I am talking about.

I also wonder a lot about calculating flow from the boiler for a shower in the loft, but that is another story.

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Minimum it's likely to be (if it's a thin dividing wall) would be 12mm plasterboard on a 50mm stud.

Which would put it within range of a standard drill bit going into the "far" wall when you drill through the "near" wall, if that makes sense.

When drilling into plasterboard you only need to go through the 12mm of board (which might be thinner than that if they've used the shallow stuff), so putting a collar on the bit (i.e. wrap the bit in electrical tape ~1.5cm from the tip) and not putting that into the wall should stop "poke through" issues.

For plasterboard the key thing to remember is that whilst it's weak, if you spread the load so all the point loads are fairly low (i.e. Souls cupboards) then you should be fine.

With the shelving you are talking about (if I've got the right thing in mind) there should be screw fixings every foot or so on the vertical rails that the shelf brackets go into?

If so, they'll be fine, either using the butterfly-style "poke through and open" type, or the conical metal "plugs", which would be my choice:

You can screw those directly into the wall, but I'd probably mark (rail against wall, pencil through screw-holes) then use a bradawl (or a pilot drill) to make the initial guide hole, then screw the plugs in.

All of that said, going into the stud is always going to be stronger, but of course you need to find the stud.

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I mean. I'm ill. Humour me.

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Gimme a shout if you want a hand. It is not that hard to check things through.

If a new build it should have an NICIEC wiring certificate.

Isn't there an earth to the back box missing?

Technically it will probably be earthed by the two screws that attach to the box as the socket will bring bare earth contacts to the screw hole area.

It's not a proper test (ie. not under a decent current load), but a simple way to test a mains ring for very obvious wiring issues is to isolate the power entirely at the consumer unit, and then measure the resistance at a single mains socket round the live ring, neutral ring, and earth ring.

Send them a complaint signed by the neighbours upstairs.

Play the bagpipes in time

Just removed some shelving (if anyone wants white Ikea shelves let me know) and wondering what the best way is to get rid of the screw-in mounts? You know, those little threaded or clipped metal or plastic bits that you then screw stuff into. They're quite large, ugly and hard to remove - should I just punch them into the plaster and fill over them or try to remove them?

Nevermind, the metal ones can just be unscrewed. The smaller plastic ones cause too much damage removed so just sanding over them.

If you carefully drill into them you can get them snagged onto the bit: pull back and remove the mangled pieces.

I had to undo the u bend in the bathroom today, but when I came to put it back on I couldn't get it tight: it's a smooth, circular connector with nowhere to get a spanner to. So now it's dripping. I managed to remove a lot of skin from my thumb trying, but to no avail. Is there a special tool?

Try wearing a rubber (washing up) glove - what you need is grip.

If that fails: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Silverline-598531-Rubber-Wrenches-2-Piece/dp/B000O51BWW