Home DIY

Does this help?

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I'll second dibs it (assuming @hugo7 has first dibs)

Borehamwood. Sorry rereading my post it made it sound like I wanted you to drop it off to me!

I had a look at the route and I can't think of anyone, or anything, I could tie it in with. I'm doing full time childcare until at least Jan so can't meet in London after work anymore either.

@Bobbo - all yours.

Thanks for the measurements 👍 Going to have a space behind the draws under my bench and trying to work out how to neatly and usefully use the space.

Decent wheels and axle and that ^ might even be tow able.

Looks like yours @Bobbo!

Great. PM incoming.

In an attempt to make-less-terrible the not-official loft conversion, I want to put some new, separate joists in, running parallel between the existing ceiling joists. The rear of the room I can run these straight off the wallplate and a central, solid wall. At the front, I have a slight problem where the wallplate sits higher than the central wall (3 courses of brick).

Rather than cutting pockets for the joists and without enough courses to use masonry hangers, I'm left looking at long leg hangers e.g.:

I should be able to achieve at least the minimum nailing on the wall plate, but have run into another problem. The wall plate is not flush with the brickwork. The bricks below sit ~12mm proud of the plate. I am assuming bending hangers is a no-no, and likely to mean poor contact with the joist. Are there any obvious reasons I shouldn't build out the wall plate with timber so it's flush to the brick work for the hangers?

Disclaimer: I have no idea about electrics so might not use correct terminology.

Anyone got experience of fishing a cable from a light fitting to a switch (light on ceiling obvs and switch on wall, wall has cavity insulation). Our electrician is saying we don't have a neutral feed to enable an external security light to be hooked up. It used to work but with an extension being built someone has fucked around with electrics and it means we need to get a neutral feed.

The cable is obviously running from the light in the ceiling to the socket so it could be pulled through but I am sure there must be a better way to do this. Any ideas?

Unless you want to decorate I'd re-evaluate how badly you want an exterior light or get a solar powered thing.

Pretty much what the electrician said. Urgh.

An exterior light would be hugely beneficial otherwise I can't see the bins and getting into the door is a bit of a shambles as its down a very dark driveway.

Maybe battery powered or solar is the way to go. I just would rather a properly installed one.

Thanks - ended up just following the instructions. The foam strips seam to have softened into some sort of sticky strip, so that and the weight of the hob are holding it in place pretty firmly.

It’s tricky to assess a solution without seeing it tbh. There’s ways of doing it, but I imagine they’ll either be very faffy (rodding and fishing cables) or very messy (chasing out the walls).

If you do I've found Mr beams products decent.

Any suggestions for neatly levelling up two chest of drawers? A bit of wood cut and stained to match the leg would be neatest. Any other suggestions?

@Nef here’s the situation.

The switch by the world smallest door controls the kitchen lights (2 pendants) and used to turn on an outside light but has since been rendered useless due to no neutral being available.

Sparky says the only way is to get a neutral from that light.

There is a 50mm void above the gyproc and battens but presumably the cables run through a channel up there.

The main issue is that wall is packed with Celotex type insulation so getting anything down there would be a massive faff.

I’m fine with the faffing if it’s possible. But I can’t go chasing into walls as we’ve just finished the kitchen and I’ll get into the troubles.

Planning to rip up a tiled splashback in our kitchen -what is my best bet to DIY a repair to the surface? Scrape > sand > fill (with what?) PVA then fill with something? And presumably it's viable to just do smaller areas without needing the whole wall (which is by and large otherwise OK).

The easier way to describe what you have running from the socket to the switch is a 'switch line' the connections in the ceiling are the 'lighting loop'. Your switch has no neutral because the switch only need to connect and break the live (or 'line') for it to turn the light on and off.

It's a common problem to encounter when fitting exterior lights. I've been thinking a more modern solution than pulling a cable would be to use the switch line as a normal cable and switch the light by using a wifi switch. This would give you power at the switch to run to an exterior light. Might be tricky to get the combination of exterior light switch and wifi sender on the same switch plate but it seems like it should work in principal.

When I've had to fix the problem I've dealt with all the decorating etc. It's usually worse thinking about it than doing it. In fact it's easier if it's recent because the paint won't be faded.

That's the way I've done it with one of our cabinets.

Are there no kitchen sockets you could run a switched spur off, or is that not up to regs?

So, if the void has solid insulation that could make it impossible to rod it unless there’s a consistent gap all the way across.

https://www.toolstation.com/super-rod-starter-kit/p75626

That’s the kind of thing you need. Which admittedly is expensive. It’s also fiddly. They do their job very well, but there’s a bit of a knack to it. It’s also hard to drop £50 on a “give it a shot” tool. And that only gets you along the ceiling. If you can extent your “loop” (the live, neutral and earth that feeds all lighting on the circuit) to the wall, you could then drill through the wall to get a feed to the outside, and have an unswitched light (something on a timer/daylight or motion sensor), or use a smart bulb and a wireless switch.

What does it look like on the outside?

Either way, by this description you probably get the drift that it’s unlikely to be straightforward.

Edit: @Airhead has made less of a meal explaining it.

A fairly good way to do that is straight through the wall to an outdoor socket, then plug the light in. You can have a radio controlled socket. Means you can have party lights too. A lot depends on the location of the socket an exterior access though.

That’s a point, there’s a spur for the extraction fan, which you could run another spur off.

Yeah he did mention the extraction fan but he was still muttering about chasing into the wall even with that.

Wish I new more about this stuff!

@nef when you say “drill through the wall to get a feed to the outside” - is that not solved already as there is a light there that used to function fine until a builder fucked with the electrics?

The spark we used just wants a neutral which I assume was there but has since been used for lighting related to out extension...

Got an Error E-19 code on my neff dishwasher. Having looked at what this is on the web and YouTube , seems just to be replacing a drain valve. Looks like something I could do but also something that could go wrong/can’t be arsed to do. Booked in for a neff engineer at £109 call out plus bits. The replacement valve is about £26ish.

Anyone done this? Is this something I should just attempt or just pay up ?

Neff same as Bosch or Siemens of anyone has done this