Owning your own home

@owl John @ full flame only does Vaillant boilers

http://www.jrplumbinglondon.co.uk/

JR plumbing was recommended to me before by someone here, I think it was @andyp? Never personally used them but I have spoken to them in a couple of hairy situations and they sounded reasonably priced. Reason for not having gone for them is purly because I have always managed to twist a mate's arm who usually works in North London at the 11th hour.

Dodgy builder fun.

So after having the electrics done on the house the electrican/builder sent someone round to do the sign off for the electrical safety certificate. He said it would then turn up in the post a few months later.

It hasn't arrived.

He hasn't answered his phone or emails for the last 6 months after promising he'd come back after Christmas to get it sorted and fix some buzzing lights and dimmers that aren't working properly.

I'm reading horror stories of £5000 fines from the council for non compliance to building regs. Any ideas? Threaten to get in touch with a solicitor unless he gets it sorted pronto?

In more positive news painting and decorating is mostly done and the place is feeling properly like home. Especially now we've got round to putting up most of our pictures and artwork!

Time to renew our gas/elec... Greenstar (current supplier £50p/m) have offered a fixed 12 month one at £630-ish per year.

Ah, we've got an Ideal.. cheers

Gardeners/landscapers SE London?

Best thing to do is to take your usage (kWh is best, £ is possible) and current tariff details and plug it into here. They'll tell you the best they can find (and they have a huge range), as well as emailing if something better comes along in future. They occasionally have specially brokered deals which are excellent (I have a 1y fix with British Gas for an annual cost significantly below the best of the rest). And it's free.

You might need to find another electrician to do the certificate. Shouldn't cost too much.

It's kind of the principal of the thing. I just want the guy who I've paid to do the job to do the bloody job. Don't think they should be allowed to get away with it. Probably better for my mental health if not my back balance to just get someone else to finish it

So after 2 months we almost have the bathroom finished - only kitchen/diner left to go!

Pictures to follow!

Any recommendations for a carpenter around north/west london?
My mum has this cupboard built in to an alcove that she wants re-done with floor-to-ceiling doors, roughly 1.5 x 3m...

She was quoted c.£1000 for it which seems steep... Doesn't need to be super fancy but for doors that size, it would probably have to be thin plywood reenforced with some frame which could be £££. MDF would be way too heavy for the hinges and would warp like mad.

It's currently done with slats with barn-door hinges... She just want's something low-profile that blends in to the wall.

Gary works all around London I am pretty sure. Last I heard from him was about 3 years ago when he 1st started working for himself rather his brother, all the better! He is good, careful and clean. Give him a shout. Word of warning, he can be shit to chase up with qoute, but once things are confirmed, he is solid.

07548 278881

Excellent. Will pass on his details.

I'd like to replace the standard hanging light fitting in my bathroom with so flush mounted led spotlights. Is this something that can be done DIY or do i need to employ an electrician?

You could do it yourself but you need to consider the roof space and the temperature these lights get to. Also, you'll have to install a transformer as the normal lighting ring voltage will cause LED bulbs to flicker or die.

Depending on your skill level, you might just want to get someone in.

Didn't someone mention a while ago that we should start a list of good handymen, electricians, plumbers, carpenters etc etc. Does it exist already? Shall we do it? I think it's a good idea...

Go for it. Should probably keep it neat and just quote and add. Categorise by N/S/E/W and trade?

You need to know enough about it to do it safely and ideally test your work as you go along to ensure everything wired up correctly. If your current light is a 3 plate fitting and you understand how a 3 plate works then you should be able to carry out the work without breaking any rules. Just make sure you use the correct IP rating for the lights which varies depending on how close they are to the bath.

In practice it's a fairly advanced diy project but the regulations wouldn't prevent you from carrying it out as long as you follow the code for safe electrical work.

At the moment the most popular downlighters are mains powered GU10 leds and the easiest dimmer to fit is varilight v-pro. The v-pro has several modes and you can adjust the low and high point. You can buy them as a separate module and retro fit them in your existing dimmer switches to save a little money.

You also need to check the height of the ceiling space as there is no real standard size for downlighters. Downlight.co.uk is a good source for quality units, avoid B&Q etc they will just make your job harder.

True.

I was basing my post on the horror of the job some bloke did in my parents bathroom. MR16 with an overloaded converter leading to flickering and dead bulbs.

Garden leccy.

I have an existing outside double plug with its own rcd on the consumer unit.
I want to run a low power circuit down the garden to power lighting and provide power to a small summer office.

Can I just spur off the existing plug and run an armoured cable along the fence or would this require an electrician?
If the above is a no no, what about putting a plug on the end of the cable so it is essentially an extension lead made of armoured cable running along the fence?

Is there any advantage in using 2.5mm core when 1.5mm looks to provide more than enough amps for the expected load?

If he was able to sign it off (I.e. it passed the tests) you should be able to find out from the organisation he is registered with where the certificate is. Could only be one of a few organisations Stroma, NIC EIC, Napit are the biggest. He should have sent his test results to them and then they pass them onto the council. If he was signing off someone else's work then that limits the organisations he could have been with as 3rd party sign off is a fairly new allowance and some of the registered bodies don't allow their people to do it.

It does sound a bit dodgy, maybe he couldn't pass it as it sounds like you have some other (simple) issues. Like dimmers not properly rated for the lights they are powering.

List like this?

https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/291015/#comment13145697

You can do it with an extension plugged into the socket as you've described, it doesn't actually matter what the extension cable is according to the regs as you are plugged into a 13amp max socket. If you add it as a spur then it falls under part p because it's fixed wiring in the garden, so the council should be notified. Sensible to do it in armoured cable and for the extra money 2.5 would be a common sense approach, a jobsworth would point out that someone might want to run a heater or kettle etc. in the office in the future. A pragmatist would wire it up as a spur in 2.5 armoured and ir test it, check that the breaker is sufficient for the earth fault loop, test the rcd and as it's all in your own home, fuck the police.

Your problem with wiring it as an extension cable in armoured is the steel armouring should be earthed and you can't terminate that in a normal plug, you might be better off with a NYY-J cable if you can get away without mechanical protection (even that could be a struggle to terminate in a plug socket because of the outer sheath size), but you should do your own research on the specification for the cable :)

Perfect.