Home DIY

I’m just looking at an old Tasman Caroma toilet that leaks into the bowl and a Chicago 430 kitchen faucet that’s dripping.
Sigh

The Barbican was a bit like that when I worked on a flat there. A special plumbers merchant round the corner could have anything made or source the really unusual parts. That was about 20years ago too.

Oh yeah, where are you?
Does the pan seat on one of those mad wax rings?
😳😂

The Barbican

I love those flats.
Royal Doulton (Edit: it’s Twyfords and you can still buy them but I think they’re NOS) still make those weird but excellent vertical basins.
😂

I got lost leaving a flat there in the early hours very much the worse for wear with (now ex) Mrs. Bird, we literally wandered around trying to find a way out for a lifetime until we heard footsteps and ran to them in desperation.

I’m in Canada, by pan you mean the base of the bowl? I didn’t install the toilet so not sure, but it’s a bitch trying to source old Tasman parts. Local rep says new toilet time! For a fucking leak into the bowl!

This is the 3rd faucet we’ve gotten on warranty from Chicago (buy murican, buy quality). I’m now looking at you, Lagan Single Lever for $20.

by pan you mean the base of the bowl?

Yup, the whole lower porcelain bit is called a pan here.
I’m not au fait with Canadian plumbing so I don’t know, but US toilets’ wastes go down through the floor, the soil pipe comes up flush (har har) and this wax ring goes on it that the porcelain sits on top of. It’s a weird and ancient system that continues probably because it just works, and it’s dead cheap.

In California the local building code decreed that waste pipes must all be copper or cast iron.
The cast iron joints were simple sockets you had to pack with oakum (like hemp string) then seal with molten lead.
Now that’s how the local union keeps plumbers in business and stop DIY!
Didn’t stop me having a crack at it though.
🙂

Yeah our standard is a wax ring too. The lead in our plumbing system was completely replaced when we bought the house in ‘91, except for that spot that you describe… Later on when we got a new (ABS) waste pipe installed that bit was removed as well.

It’s called the narrow blade adapter I think. There’s another adapter specifically for mortise chisels; it’s not that one.

pipes must all be copper or cast iron.
The cast iron joints were simple sockets you had to pack with oakum (like hemp string) then seal with molten lead.

Seems perfectly reasonable

If you are building a steamship

Looks like a v-ring or v-seal. Same as what's used in hydraulic brake pistons. https://www.globaloring.com/v-rings/

Mind you that was 20 years ago, and things were very different then

Niche Pulp reference?

The whole place is like some dystopian novel. I had 3 men turn up at the front door one day to let me know the immersion tank was overheating!

Still have a lampshade from there which I think is original.

Niche Pulp reference?

Spotted.
Not so niche for people my age.

The whole place is like some dystopian novel.

Being lost started off as amusing, especially as we realised we’d escaped a probable MMMF situation, then we got irritated, the high wore off and we started getting a bit concerned.
There’s a lot to love in the Barbican but it was never user friendly.

Or cosplaying a steampunk toilet.

Cheers.

I had wondered about that, but assumed the o-rings would work. I tried to breath a bit of life back in with some red rubber grease, but it's too perished. As an interim I ordered one of those grim universal plugs.

The one advantage is that it's a covert way of bring bath time to close without fighting over pushing the bath plug in/out.

@chiroshi - that looks exactly the thing. Thanks.

It always reminds me of the film Logan’s Run when I’m in there. What the future looked like 50 years ago.

Talking of serviceability and obsolescence; It’s great that you can buy spares for a design Duravit haven’t sold for about 15 years.
But a hundred and twenty five fucking quid for a bog seat‽

I should have just bought a new bog.

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I'm ashamed to admit that I missed it

It's weird because it has the roots in Corbusier but was built at the height of the powers of unions and was nearly never built. Every piece of timber I pulled out of there was marked with a union stamp to show it's suitability. It was all pretty good quality too.

I need to buy some new door catches but I'm struggling with terminology and where to buy them. In particular the size of the cross, the length back to where the bar goes through and the size of the hole for the bar (I'm replacing one as the bar is about 5mm and the hole is about 8mm, whoever fitted it had packed the gap with wood which obviously ended with someone being locked in the toilet).

Screwfix, etc have loads but with minimal dimensions. Any suggestions on where to look with more detail?

One of these things

Does anyone know the name of this type of security bolt? And does anyone know where I might find a key for it? It's for the lights in our Glasgow tenement close.

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They’re called Tubular latches and the dimension you need is the backset - the distance from the faceplate to the centre of the spindle hole.
The spindle hole will be 8mm although there are still imperial sized ones around (shudder) which are half a mm smaller.
Window locks use a smaller size again 6mm (?).

The distance from the face plate to center of the square hole is called the backset. I just bought a replacement latch which was described as a tubular latch, it came from Union and they have 3 different backset lengths.

The square bar normally comes with the handles.

Try Ironmongery direct or searching for tubular latch. If you post a picture with a tape measure held up from face plate to back of the lock I'm sure the hive mind could approximate the backset value.