Home DIY

Also, does anyone know anything about macerators? Need one for the toilet in an en-suite in a loft conversion.

I've heard of saniflo, anything else to consider? Any reason to go for a pricey model? The run isn't particularly long and is horizontal/downwards. How noisy are they?

And recommendations for where to buy an en-suite suite from, decent quality but not break the bank. Is Bathstore OK? Any other suggestions? Needs to be fairly swift delivery (3 days or whatever)

I imagine price and noise are not mutually exclusive. I used to stay over at a mate's parents' who had one (not sure what model), but flushing during the night was verboten such was the wall shuddering howl of the thing.

I want to replace a section of bathroom tiles.

The previous owner fitted some shit cup/toothbrush holders and a glass shelf etc which are all falling apart, so when I remove them there will be holes in the ties. Mrs Dos has located some "instafriendly" Moroccan cement tiles which I have received samples of. The only issue is that they are 16mm deep rather than 12mm deep. Is it mental to try and shave a few mm of the wall so they are flush?

Sounds like it's Mrs Dos' problem.

Yep, that is a concern. Most don't appear to have decibel rating, just say Super quiet, honest.

Go to a couple of showrooms and take a test dump.

Or just read reviews, your choice....

But ultimately, the more frozen the sausage, the noisier the macerator.

I've got a couple at the clinics I look after. Expensive medical versions and they aren't at all quiet I'm afraid. After all they have to chew up what ever goes down the pan and pump it away.

Right. Need quick advice ... I’ve just got home on the 7th day of our bathroom renovation. The plumber who we’ve been fairly happy with so far has started tiling and, to my eye, it looks a state.

There is a 1-1.5cm gap between tiles and trim as he’s hit the window line which I think he expects to fill (because he started the brick pattern at the wall not the window?). He’s also used a 9mm trim with 7mm tiles which has left an overhang of trim and he hasn’t mitred the rounded trim at internal corners so it meets in a really ugly way.

Am I right to be preparing to get angry and force him to redo it? It’s the first wall of tiling but it looks a mess.

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Looks like he overheard a bloke in the pub telling a mate about watching somebody tiling,
and thought,
'I can do that!'.
Rest of the bathroom complete?
If yes, pay him off, minus the cost of the wasted tiles/adhesive/trim
and employ a Tiler.

That is a bit shitty.. not quite sure of.a solution at this stage, other then to remove them and do it properly, are the tiles staggered pattern? You might be able to use slightly bigger spacer on the window rows to get The tiles closer. I have used this solution when tiles are slightly irregular sizing (esp glass). You'd be hard pressed to notice the difference in spacing.
If they are already fixed and your using white grouting I would just suck it and negotiate a discount for poor workmanship.

More plumbing problems, let's see if anyone can crack this puzzle.

The hot water tap in my kitchen sink doesn't work; when you open the tap, nothing happens initially. If you leave it open for a few minutes, it will eventually start to drip/trickle. Meanwhile the cold works fine.

The interesting thing is that if I open the kitchen hot tap and then open a hot tap in the bathroom (bath or sink), water will start to flow in the kitchen. If I then turn off the bathroom tap again, the flow out of the kitchen sink will increase slightly. So my method for washing up was to open the kitchen tap, and then go and open a tap in the bathroom all the way and close it again, by which point there would be enough hot water flowing to do the washing up or whatever.

However, I was bleeding the radiators the other week which dropped the pressure in the hot water loop thing down to 1 bar, and so when I filled that back up to 2 bar, the flow in the kitchen tap was reduced so much that it's now unable to trigger the boiler/hot water. So I get a trickle of cold water instead.

If I want to do washing up I now have to either leave the hot tap in the bathroom running and fill the sink with a trickle of hot water, or boil the kettle twice and top it up with cold.

I am renting so if it's anything that I can't fix by prodding at taps/valves then I'll get the landlord to send the plumber round. But if it's only a 30 minute job I'm happy to do it myself so I can learn how to do it myself in case I need to in the future.

Anyone have any ideas what the problem might be? Hot water gremlin somewhere under the floorboards perhaps?

Tiling looks shit. Makes me question what his plumbing skills are like.

When you turn the bathroom tap on the kitchen tap goes to a normal rate?

No, it's still pretty low-flow. But yeah, the kitchen tap only starts running if I run the bathroom tap at the same time. Seems a bit mental, that's why I reckon it's a gremlin

Ive got a turbo flush macer8tor in our ensuite. it is quite powerful. crucially it doesn't go off every single time you flush it (once every other flush I think). It isn't particularly noisy but you wouldn't want it going off at 2am put it that way.

the more expensive ones you can get the parts for - the cheaper 100 quid ebay ones might be a struggle. are you also going to be running the sink or a shower into it? if so then you really will need to find a quiet one otherwise it'll be pumping out all the time - so have a think about that too.

Got him to rip it off. His tiler is coming today. Apparently he wanted to ‘get a head start’ as the sparky couldn’t come in yesterday but admitted he’s not great. In my mind he has one life left.

Can anyone give me a ballpark for a day rate for joinery? Somewhere between skilled and handyman. It's for modifying some existing plywood desks / shelves. Feel free to PM me if preferred. Just trying to get a feel for whether the work is affordable.

The mods are very simple.

Sounds as though you have an airlock.
Is your hot water from a cylinder rather than a combo boiler?
Have you had plumbing work done/pipes drained? How long has it been going on?
Sometimes you can clear the airlock by covering the end of the kitchen mixer tap and turning on the hot and cold - thus forces cold water at mains pressure back up the hot wTer pipes and eventually forces the air out into the cylinder.

If you have a combi and no cylinder I'm stumped.

Doesn't sound as though you need a joiner but (just) a Chippy.
Between £150 and £200 for someone with their own tools and transport who knows what they're doing.

(I used to do this shit)

No, it's a combi boiler. It's been doing this for a while, but like I said there was plenty of flow before as long I turned the bathroom tap on at the same time. It's become especially bad this week after I topped up the pressure in the boiler though.

Also the boiler's about a meter from the kitchen sink which you'd think would mean there'd be enough pressure!

Hopefully you've saved the tiles. Good luck. Ripping them off was the best solution tbh

Weird.
As the hot water from a combi is also under mains pressure it should just flow at the incoming rate.

I'm guessing it's a boiler issue.

Caveat; I'm a (ex) plumber not a heating engineer

Sounds like I better get the landlord to send someone around then. Cheers

Sometimes you can clear the airlock by covering the end of the kitchen mixer tap

Ugh - I'd almost forgotten the useless plumbing I had at a place i used to live - I ended up during rigging a pipe (with an oldmpiece of hose, some spare copper tubes and some compression joints) joining the hot & cold pipes that I could swap out with the flexi hoses and clear the airlock in the hot water system every time it went wrong.