Home DIY

Canny say the same, we've fitted a few hundred showers over the years and they've always been dead on. Personally wouldnt even look at them for taps.

I would be looking at just removing any render and cement mortar between the brick/rubble and repoint in with lime mortar at a radio of 5 sand: 2 NHL2.5. possibly color match it if you CBA but not all dyes work with lime. The water is always going to get in if it's below the DPC so it'll blow off anything non breathable as you've found (also kill of all the plants first obvs). The tricky bit is mixing. It can be done by hand, but keep going longer than you think and don't add to much water at once. The mix should look quite dry at first but will get more plastic the more you work it. Rake out the joints to about 25mm before hand with a range of small cold chisels like these and then press in the new mortar with something like these or these. Wait a few hours, brush the loose bits off once it's gone off a bit

Oops, that was meant to be @lemonade

Is there anything I'm missing in terms of flooring?

Have posted here before but finally getting around to starting.

We have a kitchen which appears to have been extended presumably 50-100 years ago. It's a house built into a hill so the first half (older half) is rickety wooden floorboards with a cavity beneath. The second half (closer to the hill) is a gloss painted wonky concrete abomination. I'd like it all to be flat and smooth and easy to clean on the new kitchen. Want to resurface the entire floor including under the ripped out units. Problem being the concrete is 2 or 3 or more inches higher than the wood. The wood ends in a step through a door down to a hallway.

This is not a forever house but I'd like it to be worthwhile for the next few years. So although I don't want to invest too much (in digging out the concrete and resurfacing the whole floor to be a single height from front of house to back, which would be the dream) I want it to be tolerable and not be constantly annoyed by it.

My options as I see them:

1. Ply/other fill to raise the step into the hallway by a few inches, screed, karndean. (Rough cost of this per square meter assuming I'm too incompetent to do the screed myself?Reader, I am.)

2. Ply/other fill but not to raise the height of the step, just even out so it's not a sudden drop halfway through the room, then a big single sheet of highest quality vinyl I can find. Rough cost on this?

Other?

I want something VERY easy to clean. We have a four year old and I'm a pig. Ideally not slippy and not going to peel up at any edges/corners. Relatively durable so it's not going to scratch etc.

So, think I've found the culprit of our damp patch indoors..

The patch lines up perfectly with the position of the gas meter outside, after it rains it gets worse inside

I reckon the gas meter is trapping water behind it at the bottom, saturating the rendering and coming through inside.

Whats the solution here? Silicone the gap between the gas meter and the wall? I might bodge a water proof cover to stop rain going down the back of the gas meter to test, but I have a feeling water will naturally condense behind it too..

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Silicone as a temporary bodge*.

Longer-term: strip back the render and see what's happening behind it. Cement** render shouldn't be letting water through, even if it's trapped against it, unless it's cracked / breached.

* So good for 10+ years, if you're anything like me...
** if it is cement

I'm going to double check that patch dries out outside when not raining, if it's constantly wet then it must be something else, hopefully silicone solves it.

We also have another damp patch on the opposite wall which we think lines up with the neighbours chimney (interior wall), probably not capped properly/at all, as again it always gets worse when it rains.

I can't quite tell from the photo but is the render around the meter box rather than the meter box on top? If it is I'd have thought taking it off, fresh render and a new box fixed to the surface would help.

With the silicon thing don't put any at the bottom so the water that gets in has somewhere to drain and perhaps chip off a bit
of render at the bottom so the meter box has a big gap to encourage drips?

no, the box is on top of the render

Yeah wasn't going to put any on the bottom, for now if gaffed an empty bag of compost above it, sloping downwards/away from wall (A+ bodge). Currently the box also slopes towards the house so any water landing on it naturally goes behind.

I need a new combi drill/driver. Current one is a Bosch 14,4 with a knackered Nicd battery. Looking at 18v stuff.

In terms of buy it for life, is it total overkill to go Makita brushless, Milwaukee M18 or Bosh pro?

Would like to keep it close to £200.

Out of interest, do you use it a lot? Like a few days a week recharging daily. I'm asking because I've got some batteries that start working well enough when they are getting discharged and charged regularly but when they sit around for a few weeks/months the battery performance is terrible to begin with.

Mostly sits around doing nothing but not enough capacity to finish a small job or enough torque to really drill into anything harder than a spalled brick.

The 18v stuff seems perfect but would probably get a lower capacity battery as it gets crazy expensive with the bigger packs.

DeWalt?

https://www.screwfix.com/p/dewalt-dck2060m2t-sfgb-18v-4-0ah-li-ion-xr-brushless-cordless-twin-pack/362JT?kpid=KINASEKPID&cm_mmc=GoogleLocal-_-Datafeed-_-Tools&ds_kid=43700063007966480&ds_rl=1245250&ds_rl=1249478&ds_rl=1245250&ds_rl=1249478&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI1Yz9t_-P8gIVQdPtCh3YFAJoEAAYASAAEgJGh_D_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

That's exactly the same symptoms as mine unless they are in every day use. I guess it means they are end of life but they work fine once they've been through a few charge cycles.

I’d aim for something that isn’t NiCad - Milwaukee m18 stuff is lith ion and isn’t too spendy…

Another weekend spent undoing the previous owner(s) general fuckery. Removed a whole bunch of unnecessary pipes and did my best to firm up the floor with the over-enthusiastic notching. Still more a but more work to be done under there, but that's going to have to wait there's somewhere top put the futon.

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Coincidentally this came up this morning on offer -

https://www.screwfix.com/p/dewalt-dcd778m2t-sfgb-18v-4-0ah-li-ion-xr-brushless-cordless-combi-drill/979hf?mi_u=COM_2734059304&mi_brand=SCREWFIX&utm_campaign=E21W27AX3_NoName&utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Hero1&utm_term=Hero1

I have a Milwaukee 18v hammer drill and driver. Five years old and still good. Big fan of Milwaukee.
I like a 3.0 battery, the bigger ones get heavy if you are working steady.

The difference between NiCad and LiIon is night and day. I don’t think there’s much in it between DeWalt and Milwaukee, but I have been impressed with the performance from the Milwaukee kit with the smaller M12 batteries, which are both cheaper and lighter.

Got the M18 multi-tool coming in the post. Much excite.

Thank you for this!

DeWalt parent company is absolute shit re corporate citizenship. They’ve bought up and closed a few small companies in Canada. Basically buying the brand name, then shutting down the factory and selling generic crap from overseas with the brand name on it.
There was a company in Smith Falls making really nice tool cabinets. Small town, good employer, excellent product. Stanley bought them and closed them for no clear reason.

Normal practice

Best way to sure up this? Not my nails, but has been overlooked when the roof was redone.

First thought was to scab a length of 18mm ply onto it butted up against the ridge? Insulate and ignore is another option...

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Maybe a chunk of 4x4 and some big timber screws?

Milwaukee have a certain primal advantage. Given the choice between a red toy drill and a yellow toy drill, I know which one child me would have chosen.