Home DIY

Looking for structural engineer recommendations in and around E10/17. Thankee

If your walls are true and close to flat it's not too difficult with large tiles. You need to plan the layout properly to make sure the corners look good. If possible use a laser spirit level to get your initial lines sorted. Cutting depends on the tile material but I prefer a wet cutter with a flat bed. I use the suction handles for glass sheet to handle the tiles if they are that size. Use a good quality tile adhesive and keep it off the face of the tiles at all times, have a wet cloth in a bucket of cleanish water to wipe any excess tile adhesive from anywhere except the back of the tiles. Take your time and don't mix more adhesive than you need, put up your whole tiles first then make your cuts, allow 10% extra sq. meterage for breakage and cutting.

Some people are better at tiling than others, anyone can learn but you would normally start on a smaller project. The trick is to keep the working area and your hands clean and don't go too fast to start with.

As an example of planning you can see from the picture that they have a whole tile at the ceiling and a cut tile around the floor level.

PM me, I think we're around most of sat and sun!

I'm needing to re-route some cold supply pipework in the house as some muppet has routed it outside the house and back round the side before it gets back into the kitchen. I'm doing some building work soon which means taking down one external wall where the pipework passes through.

Anyway, the pipe from the stopcock to the back of my house is lead. Do I really need to change it? It tees off upstairs too, and since I've recently had the upstairs bathroom done, I don't really fancy ripping out the tiling, etc. so that I can replace this pipe.

I wouldn't bother. Pipes in my place are all lead and it doesn't bother me.

first sign of lead poisoning - denial

You know I posted just in the hope that someone would say that.

By the way, it took me ages to find where the pipe work ran in this victorian 2-up/2-down. Pipe runs through hallway and then rises upstairs before it reaches the kitchen. At about three foot high off the ground it then tees off into the kitchen wall. From there, in not sure where it will appear again: is it typical for it to come back out the wall where the original sink would have been in the kitchen?

Like I said, some muppet has done some questionable updates to the pipe work, so hard to find where it runs. There's also some hot water pipe work running uninsulated outside. FFS.

I assume it'd be preferable to have the cut tiles at the ceiling level (slightly out of eyesight)?

All depends on the sight lines, floor levels, personal taste. I always check options with clients, it's can be a surprise what delights one eye offends another. In your example pic the floor level is different in the shower so you may have a whole tile at floor level outside the shower and cut inside, some people would want a whole tile at floor level inside the shower. Unless the walls are newly built your bigger problem will be how straight they are. Victorian walls often slope in at the corners and top of walls because plasterers tended not to smooth out the plaster so much in those areas. If you get an 8ft straight edge and run it all over the walls it will give you an idea of any problem areas.

When tiles are big it's harder to even out problems with the walls. On the other hand mosaics are the hardest tiles to work with and probably best left to someone with experience. Luckily they're out of fashion at the moment.

Forgot to mention to always use a notched adhesive spreader and keep the adhesive clean of any lumps or debris.

I've taken some tiles back to follow this lead pipe, and it actually converts into a rusty iron pipe via a compression fitting (around middle of photo). Nearer the left hand side the iron pipe seems to be slowly leaking as the surrounding plaster has a damp feel and has discoloured black. I think I'm just going to cap-off this whole section and ask a plumber to tee-off the lead main with new copper piping to feed the ground floor.

(I've obviously already capped-off the sink which I've just ripped off the wall too).

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Balls! I know a local plumber, so I'll invite him round and see what he thinks. Lead runs upstairs and is under tiles now, so could be expensive to take them back up.

I think you can get plastic fittings to connect to the lead these days, certainly on waste it works, never had to do one on a pressured pipe. The biggest problem with lead is irregular size, biggest advantage is it's easy to shape.

Thanks. Yes, it's barely consistent in size and profile, so I guess getting a compression joint on it could be tricky. Will report back when I get the job done. Fingers-crossed I don't have to pull half the bathroom out again.

Incredible! I'll save that for when my plumber comes round. Slice of bread in my hand, waiting.

Sounds like a character! I'd probably want to flush the bread into a bucket after the joint was done, 30 years ago I'd expect the plumbing could cope with a bit of bread, these days who knows.

Just reminded me I did lead to copper in a mates basement 10 years ago with a copper compression fitting. It has a massive o ring instead of the olive. Bit of a bitch to get it sitting right but never leaked.

Do you mean a plastic or rubber o-ring? Just asking in case I have to do this myself.

google "copper lead plastic". There are modern options in plastic or copper compression fitting versions. They work by having a big compressible rubber o ring in them that gets clamped around the dodgy misshapen exterior of the lead pipe. You clean the lead up a bit, get it as smooth and circular as possible then fit the compression fitting. The plastic can be harder to fit as they often have a piece that goes in the pipe. The difficulty I found with the process is sizing the lead pipe.

If you can cut a bit off the end and take it to the plumbers merchant they can mess you about for a while sucking their teeth and talking about imperial lead pipe sizes before eventually giving you a close proximity of the correct part, which you'll then have to return having found it doesn't quite work before finally getting the right part.

Sweating the lead to the copper is a dying art but for someone who can do it it's very much easier.

Great info, thanks. I've taken a look at sweating lead onto copper, and I reckon I may also be able to do that myself too, if the plumber doesn't want to touch it.

I'm sure the plumber will have a solution. You should have a go at sweating it on though, come the zombie apocalypse that would be a useful skill.

Can anyone recommend a good glazier in North London?

I've got 2 panes, both 5'2" x 5'8" (ish) need replacing.

Checkatrade quote was worryingly low if you get my drift....

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Which Saw film is this from?

would rep.

It's the one where the parquet floor takes ages to get hold of, and the tiles from Germany get held up at customs. Horrifying.

Any builders recommendations for Brighton? We want to re-do our kitchen but there's a funny (completely unfunny) walk-in cupboard/pantry thing in the corner. Unfortunately the obtruding wall is actually the load bearer as it supports a staircase above it. We want to remove the wall and presumably stick in a steel right-angle or at a diagonal to support the weight instead and want some quotes. Kitchen budget isn't massive - about 4k for what we're looking at on Ikea. Don't want to end up doubling that on construction so if it's too much then we won't bother.