Home DIY

Ok, good info, will investigate further, thanks.

Thanks all for the advice. I raised the insurance route option with my dad, but he doesn't want to. There seems to be a national shortage of dehumidifiers to buy or hire (I imagine there are burst pipes and similar minor disasters on every other street) and then I ballsed up going to collect the one I'd located (failure to charge car battery, but I'd wrongly thought they were open tomorrow morning otherwise I'd have got a taxi). So, earliest to hire is now 3rd Jan by which time I'll be back in london and back at work and I'm not sure about my dad dealing with hire shop and the weight of the thing etc (he's pretty elderly) but it is what it is.

Make sure you see before you buy. Most of the coloured stuff is only coloured one side then is the bare material the other. Sometimes it’s grey, sometimes off-white.

^this is true - the anthracite stuff i got is white on the back

Moved into a new build flat in November and just realised that in the bathroom there’s a heated towel rail above the bath, facing the shower. I can’t remember if I’ve ever seen an installation like this, and it makes me a little uncomfortable that water from the shower can hit the electric controls. Is this okay, or a death trap?

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Looks dodgy as fuck. We have the same thermostat/heating element on ours but it's not above the bath.
Googling similar devices it appears to only be IP44 rated.
One for an electrician to comment on.

IP44 is ok for a towel rail in zone 1.

Good to know (in case you can't tell, I'm no electrician).
Noticed our heating control would power off if you nudged the cable. Opened it up to discover the neutral was just gently resting against the screw terminal. Must've been like that for around 7 years.

ip44 is splashing water but the shower hose can reach it and easily create jetted water which is ip45 or 46(powerfully jetted water)
personally i wouldn't want it there in my bathroom unless it had a higher ip rating than 44.

It was actually to use as concrete shuttering, but I think I'm going to go down the 'windrow bedding' route, i.e set my edgings on some dry-ish concrete, so no shuttering required.

My big plan for this year is to tear down and rebuild my shed/workshop that's stood for about ten years as the damp problem is getting serious.. Does anyone have any recommendations for software that might be good for planning a build? Currently limited to an iPad pro.

Obligatory picture of old shed attached..

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I've done all of my planning on sketchup - they have an online version.

Looks bad to me. Not sure on the exact legitimacy of it, but doesn't seem right in my book. A regular heating powered towel rail fair enough, but not electric or boosted*

*Electric showers and downlights are OK so long as the correct type in the correct zone and fitted properly.

I'm painting and tarting up a slightly tatty chest of drawers. What is the best way to deal with the raises in the mdf from where the laminate has chipped?

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This seems to be a three way valve. The box itself is moving an making knocking sound. The heating is on but the radiators are cool.

I've moved the switch underneath a bit and it seems to have stopped moving.

What is this mysteriousness?

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Do you have a hot water tank? If so it’s probably the valve that decides if hot water goes to central heating or to water. Believe they can be set manually using the lever.

Yes, there's a HWT. I'm gonna move the lever once mini moocher is out the shower

Do you know what the timing is for the hot water? It might be that it’s in the window for filling the tank. Check the controller settings. Typically you only need an hour or so for it to be heated.

It's not that easy. I use a rotary sander work up through grits 80 -> 400. Roll on primer to seal it and stop it absorbing different amounts than the surrounding. Once you can build some primer on it you can undercoat and build on that.

I've tried in the past with filler etc but it'd very difficult to conceal.

Cheers, had a go and it looks like it'll do the trick. Does anyone have any experience avoiding a damp shed? Current on is wooden sitting on a few blocks, frame surrounded by a weatherproof membrane but it's still gotten pretty bad after a decade.. Plan for the new one is to pour a concrete base and run a course of bricks, on which the new wooden frame will sit. Should I have ventilation top and bottom? Is insulating it going to make a difference?

Cheers

Out of curiosity, is a random orbital sander one of those things that's much much better to have cordless? Or is it not that big a deal?

It's a 3 port valve for a Y-plan system.
The metal box contains a motor which turns a valve inside the pipework joint.

They can fail and you can remove the metal box by loosening a single screw. Be aware it's mains voltages running through that cable so power down the boiler before doing anything with it.
You can also replace just the motor if it's burnt out.
There are quite a few screws but most of them you don't need to touch - the motor is only fixed by one iirc.
Hopefully it doesn't need replacing - they're more expensive than you'd wish.

The metal lever probably won't visibly move. You can move it by hand to the 'open' position and latch it there by hooking it over the little metal tab. There will be some resistance as you need to spin the gearbox. Usually you need to do this if you want to drain the system.

If there's no resistance to moving the lever, the motor is probably activated and the valve is open.

Engaging the hot water heating or the central heating should cause the motor to activate (you'll likely hear a relay click in the heating controller, the motor whirr, then a click as an arm makes contact with a microswitch to tell the system the valve is now open and it can turn on the pump and fire up the boiler.

Yeah. It’s a motorised valve. When activated it should click and whirr and the lever should slide along.

It’s probably broken. They break.

I have wired, I don't really understand the current obsession for cordless everything.

I see there are some practical aspects and some tools it's great.