Home DIY

As far as I got after work / before little ones bedtime.

Conduit clips were a pita so I’m going to use a bit of gripfill to secure the trunking then plaster.

4 Attachments

Nice neat job.

Just one thing that I had pointed out to me many years ago. Rubber grommets in the entry points to the metal backboxes shouldn't be considered optional.

+1 to this, see so many ring main cables where at the absolute least the outer insulation is cut through from being dragged through various backboxes and/or vibration/heat/wear, everything metal should be earthed but a bit of grommet or rub protection here and there works wonders.

Could do something like cut + lay a piece of stainless or polished alloy sheet over it? Or go mid century style with some formica sheet or lino cut to perfection and bonded down onto it?

Your Bifold looks a bit gappy for sure, never fitted one but I would treat it like a window or regular patio doors..... Concrete, brick or timber for it to sit on, a DPC sheet, ideally continuous and extending into either side of the wall so that it ties in with any other DPC or membrane. Ideally it should sit on that super neat, inevitably going to need some kind of sealant, but given its a weighty beast and likely folk are going to stand on the bifolds' threshold and it'll maybe sag over time, you want whatever sealant or gap fill to be strong and not shrink or sag itself.
As I say, never fitted one myself but would assume you'd get the lower seal/ contact patchs pretty damn bang on before bothering tieing it into the building anywhere else, not come back on the last day and bung a few tubes of sealant in there. If there are two pieces of DPC, should be jointed/overlapped by x amount and then taped together with that magic bitumen tape.

Good shout. I don’t believe the original wires have a grommet either…

No doubt it's been discussed previously, but am failing at the search button.
Zinsser mould resistant paint for a new en suite ceiling best option?

Why not if you've had problems with mould before. Better to fix the underlying reasons for the mould though. Also clean the ceiling with bleach if there's any existing mould (not sure how new the en-suite is).

No problems yet, just finally at the stage of painting. So would rather get the right paint up first.

It's not always a requirement for a specialist paint like that. Sometimes it can complicate things unnecessarily. If you have good ventilation there's a good chance the ceiling will never get mouldy. I've painted quite a few en-suite after many years of use that don't need it.

Gonna need a bigger ladder or a platform I think. I'm not convinced it would take the weight of this ladder fully unfolded plus my weight against the tiles.

1 Attachment

Buy a platform. Or borrow one.

You can rent a 6m platform from HSS for like £80 quid for a week. do that.

Yep, I was looking at those. Looks like that's next weekend's job. I got a good proportion of the loose stuff off today at least, filled 1/3 of a bucket.

Everyone appears to be keeping busy! I’ve finally gotten round to updating our laundry room, meaning a bit of everything- electricity, plumbing and carpentry. Tore out all the old stuff and installed shut off valves for incoming water. Rerouted some pipes.

2 Attachments

Discovered I had three phases in the nearest junction box. Took a few minutes to figure out what was what, which fuses were involved etc. Used one phase each for washer and dryer, the third was already connected to a wall socket so left that.

2 Attachments

Worktop supported by a few gigantic brackets, using ikea’s cheapest sink and a tap I found at half price somewhere while buying other crap

3 Attachments

Interesting. Having two phases in the same place in a domestic setting is a big no no in the UK.

Well whaddayaknow. How do you guys power hobs and ovens etc? I went over this stuff with my electrician neighbour btw, just to be safe.

Got the tap and basin fitted, and managed to build a tree out of thin plastic drain pipes. It’s only a laundry room ffs and no one will ever see any of this. Think I might get this finished by tomorrow!

2 Attachments

My hob has its own circuit with its own sort of small consumer unit with RCD.

Ok. We’ve a RCD for the whole house in the big consumer unit where all the fuses are.

Counting this as a success. Replaced shed guttering which just dumped water into the lane behind the garden with guttering across both sides, water butt and overflow into our little pond via a buried hosepipe.

Just worked out that to fill it from the tap would cost about 50p so assuming we empty it 5 times a year watering the garden (we also have two others) it'll pay for itself in 50 years.

1 Attachment

Big cables. 10mm twin and earth will carry 64 amps if clipped direct (not surrounded by insulation etc), which is 14kw at 230v. Plenty for a big shower etc.
I’m not sure where you are or what the nominal voltage is, but the issue is that if you get a shock between phases, you could get 400v through you, and that would be bad.

Aren't those open waste pipes going to smell, in the absence of any p-bends or flap valves?

Good question. They all go into a copper pipe which goes under the tiles and empties into a floor drain which has a water trap (if that’s what it’s called).