Home DIY

thought these took 9 months

@TGR @nefarious

I always work off a rough battery price of £10 per 1ah, so having 2x4ah over 2x2ah is worth about £40 in my mind.

2 of my brothers ( have lots of brothers, between us we have all the brands!) have that kit, its great for the money.

Hah!

THANKS ALL for the advice.

The 4aH batteries was what attracted me initially. Screwfix will be getting a visit soon.

I'm still confused on building regulations, and whether I need to get building regs involved if I want to DIY insulate and plasterboard my attached garage? theres alot of talk about 'conversions' but I'm not sure I want to convert? there will still be a garage door, no new windows or doors and its purpose isnt changing from 'workshop/dumping ground' to any 'living' space.

Contact the local planning office to check?

Pretty sure you're fine to DIY as long as you're not in a listed building or conservation area. If you want to sell it as an extra living room or something you'd need to get them involved.

I bought two of Ebay dewalt snide batteries and they have worked fine, DIY and on the big impact driver for the car

I have these.

Builder mate bought the drill pack as a housewarming present and I picked Up the impact on a really good deal with no case or battery.

I think they're decent and have served very well as DIY.

Edit: actually my drill isn't brushless, so I can imagine this would be better.

Thanks. That’s worth remembering - hopefully not for a while though. 😁

Fair play!

Mine took forever to make.

They're great things though.

A circular saw with a speed square makes square cross-cutting very easy (and means things just fit without adjusting) - the rest I just eye-balled with one battery drill for drilling and another for screwing. Was on a deadline before cake-making!

Appreciate the thorough response, ta.

The alternatives I mentioned are not bodges, they're legitimate and long lasting solutions to the problems of victorian walls. If you never need to employ one or 2 of them you must be working in very well built victorian properties or something much newer.

I'm not meaning the bodges are a bad thing, there's a thread celebrating them on here even. In the past I've packed extra bits of wall plug into slightly crumbly holes, but this would be for 1 of a number of fixing points, the others being solid enough not to cause worry. This time it seems to be all but one of them hence my nervousness.

I'll take a leap of faith and keep everything crossed.

Sometimes the jobs just go from bad to worse. As I've got older I've learnt to take control and work carefully without getting pressured about the time. It's mental when you're working with your household as an audience though.

I suspect that if you are just making it a less awful place to do workshop tinkering or keep a fridge freezer then just insulate away.

Also:

• if you didn't tell them, would they find out?
  
• if done, is it done irrevocably?
  
• do your insurers care?
  
• when you come to sell, would the work significantly contribute to the cost of house, and would the buyer expect BC approval?
  
  

Practically speaking, if its a no to all of the above, not a lot stopping you...

fair point, no’s all around

Your future buyer's solicitor might kick up a fuss though, and if their client is nieve it can cause issues. Worst case scenario you have to buy an insurance policy to smooth things along.

Possibly more suited to the homeowner's thread but...

Exterior power, namely to a shed, it needs to be on its own circuit doesn't it?

Could I potentially get the cable routed to an external junction box on the side of the house until the back garden groundworks are ready?

I'm digging up my garden in various stages, last of which will be the back area for a shed base. I'd like that shed to have power eventually, but it won't exist for many months. The floor under which the first part of the circuit needs to go will be coming up next month, and the ground in between sometime in the middle.

@nefarious you seem to have recent experience in this area?

So my running a 25m extension cable through a load of bushes to my shed isn’t legit?

Well I guess it is, in theory, if it has a plug on one end?

Needs its own circuit, yes. Which is notifiable, so needs to be done by a sparky.

You could route the cable to a junction box, but be aware, the armouring of the cable needs to be earthed, so you need to make sure the outgoing cable from the box has the armouring earthed.
I don't quite get what the advantage of installing the cable to a box is before the ground works are ready. Why not just connect it after the cable has been laid?

Personally I'd just try and lay the cable in a oner. It doesn't need to be connected to anything at either end - just make sure you have enough length for what you need. You could also lay ducting, ready to pull the supply cable through when you're ready.

It's worth noting that you may not need to bury the cable depending on what your garden looks like.

How far is the shed from the house?

It's probably not the safest, especially if you just leave it out there permanently.

RCD protection is fairly crucial, either on the circuit itself, or on the extension cable.

Yeah, that's why I said possibly homeowners thread - I'll not be doing any electrics, but the knowledge seems a bit better on this thread.

It's about 17m. The CU is in the middle of the house. The reason not to route it either through the nearer kitchen or the ground outside is that neither are due to be worked on any time soon; the bathroom floor is due to be ripped up next month, this will give an easy run from the CU to the outside of of the house. My thought was to run this (CU-back wall - ground level) and then, as you say, bury the cable as I get it all dug over the following couple of months (it can poke out above ground for the last 4m until I can get that dug over)

Sound like a sensible plan?

It's worth noting that you may not need to bury the cable depending on what your garden looks like.

What would that look like? It might be possible to hide the cable in/under some fence panels. Is it just a case of using conduit if it's above ground?

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This is what my electrician left for the shed. He said I can just clip it to the fence and run it above ground.

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A sparky will be able to advise for sure btw. And they'll be able to offer a schedule that works best for them - there's loads of options but the sparky will likely have a preference for the order of how the work is done.

If you want to run the cable as the bathroom is coming up, I'd get the spark to install the cable run from the consumer unit (but not connected up), through the bathroom and to the outside of the house and to just leave a coil long enough for your run to the shed, you can they bury it/lay it as you go. Not all sparks will be happy with you laying the cable yourself, so you'll need to speak to them and find an arrangement that works. Running it to a junction box to be connected later will be neater in the meantime, but may be more costly than just leaving a coil hanging where the cable comes out. They may also opt to run normal twin and earth cable to a junction box, and then only run armoured cable from the junction onwards. A lot of the details will pertain to the house, size of cable you need and what the cable run inside looks like, and ultimately the preference of the sparky.

Like SB has pictured, it's fine to just leave a coil of cable at the end. Clipping to fences is tricky - because the structure they're clipped to needs to have a lifespan that's expected to be similar to the cable, IE that the fence won't fall apart while the cable is still installed. SB's fence and posts looks pretty sturdy so the spark was obviously happy to clip the cable directly to that.
Whats the boundary on the top edge of the diagram?

Whats the boundary on the top edge of the diagram?

I very shonky Stone wall, which will be getting re-pointed at some point. There are these metal fence posts along it though which are probably a good candidate to hang conduit from (if that's allowed).

That might make things easier as there's a soil pipe under there somewhere to negotiate.

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