Home DIY

My son has just splashed a load of water out of the bath and it's coming through a light fitting below in the kitchen. Anything I need to do apart from disposing of faulty son? Currently a dehumidifier is running in the kitchen. Dripping has stopped. Lights work. Currently switched off. Downstairs lights on a separate circuit so I have disconnected.

The light is allegedly ok for watery areas and has only recently been wired in.

(Ip65 resistant rather than proof etc)

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Just let it dry out and paint with stain seal/emulsion if it leaves a tide mark. IP65 is pretty strongly waterproof in these conditions. i.e. it's not submerged or subject to strong jets of water.

we can open from inside, for some reason depressing the handle that side frees the latch that is getting stuck somehow.

It looks like a yale G2000 locking mechanism with lever and movable pad handles.

Your inside handle will be working the upper spindle in the gearbox . 92mm above the cylinder (PZ92), which throws and releases the locking points and also pulls back the latch.

You have offset handles where the outside handle is 62mm above the cylinder (PZ62)works the lower spindle, which only throws and releases the locking points.

Turning the key, should pull back the latch(snib) and something has worn or getting jammed before the key goes far enough.
Replace the gearbox,

Replace the handles with PZ92 lever/lever on a straight through spindle would work, but that will mean anyone can open the door from outside if it's unlocked. *And something in the gearbox isnt happy, so maybe asking for a lockout in the future.

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that’s absolutely fantastic - thank you very much!

I need to fit a shelf spanning just over 1m between two Billy bookcases. Multitude of reasons mean I cannot fix into the wall behind it, just into the ends through the side of the Billy bookcase.

18mm spruce board, 280mm deep, 1m long. Sagulator reckons less than 1mm sag even overloaded at 80lbs (read somewhere else that books are ~20lbs per foot).

I was thinking of going through the sides of the billies into the end grain of the shelf with fairly beefy screws. Countersunk into the Billies slightly and the existing shelves in those would then cover the screw heads. Decent sized pilot holes into the shelf as the screws would then act more like dowels than screws to minimise the chance of splitting the board. Thinking 3, maybe four, per side.

Ms_com (it's over her office desk) doesn't want any visible fixings or brackets. Only just about got away with a bracket for the one above as because it's on the end wall of the eaves room, the Billy on the left is too low so the upper shelf goes from the right Billy to the sloped ceiling (the books on the lower shelf will also hide the sins of the one above). But the lower shelf she wants as clean as possible.

The reason I think it's doable, is at our old flat, we have shelves put into alcoves which were only held at the ends by there being some studs (threaded bar sunk into holes in the side walls of the alcoves) that slotted into routed slots in the ends of pine boards. Those boards were thicker, but spanned a much longer distance. Zero issues there even with some of our heaviest tomes crammed into the upper shelves. I thought about similar for this job, but the 18mm board means I'd have to rout a thinner slot. And I'm lazy.

Also, needs to be 18mm board as that matches the thickness of the Billy shelves.

Impressive CAD drawing

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Have you tried putting him in rice for a bit?

Not brackets, but battens?

Screws aren't great at sheer forces (according to something I read once and took as gospel).

Ply battens on either end would do the job, and one across the back would give you way more weight bearing capability.

Or even fixing blocks?

Battens or fixing blocks would be classed as visible, according to the design committee.

Screws aren't great at sheer forces

This is true, compare to nails in construction. But as I'm using 6 (maybe 8), even the cheap ass screws I have would have a shear strength greater than 14lbs (given the overloaded 80lbs value above - a #10 SPAX screw has a shear strength of 545 lbs). Given the restricted height towards one end of the shelf, it won't be fully loaded with Encyclopedia Brittanica.

I think I'm sold on the screw method, unless something else I haven't considered comes up.

something else I haven't considered comes up.

I have a feeling that you're not really participating fully in the spirit of this thread.

Buy a Festool Domino, and do it properly with biscuits and whatnot.

You will obviously need a dust extraction system too.

the design committee.

I hear you - my six year old often has unreasonable expectations too.

I bought 600mm wide board, ripped it into 280mm boards with the track saw, sprayed a coat of primer to seal then rolled a coat of eggshell so the green paint going on top has more of a chance of matching the other painted/soon to be painted Billie's that started out white. Did the same for the bracket that will be used for the top shelf. Will cut it to length using the M18 Fuel circ saw, if that's any consolation. Or my new Ryoba.

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Given that a normal Billy shelf just has 4 little plugs to support them and can hold plenty of weight then are you not going with a bit of overkill here.

Something like this is rated for 150kg with 4 of them
https://www.hafele.co.uk/en/product/shelf-support-plug-in-with-thread-for-5-mm-hole-for-wooden-shelves/P-00861956/

"Can you not just (insert physics defying suggestion here)?"

Shelf pins were another suggestion. Again, they would be visible from underneath...

Ah, that is very strict criteria.

Use these https://www.hafele.co.uk/en/product/shelf-support-plug-in-for-wooden-shelves-and-7-mm-holes-or-for-use-with-socket-spoon-shaped/P-00861945
make a recess in the shelf for them and (if really picky) fill and paint over?

Floating shelf it is then.

I mean - literally floating. Fuckn magnets, man. Supercooled fuckn magnets.

I left him in the airing cupboard overnight but don't have much hope.

Seems like you're doing the best you can within the specification of the 'design' committee.

In situations like this I quite often find long delays can occur in the build process with the manufacturing committee looks into mechanical specifications and safety considerations and occasionally that causes the 'designers' to change their specification as they realise 4 metal shelf pins will become invisible after 5 mins of being installed.

That is a very good suggestion. Now to weigh up whether the fill and paint job would be invisible enough to warrant that method versus the totally invisible screw method. I could just even use fully round shelf pins and nip out the recesses with the router. I like the idea of having ~13mm of material above the pin (given a 5mm pin needing only a 5mm recess in the 18mm board) instead of middling a screw into the board and having 7mm ((18/2)-(4/2) for a 4mm pilot hole).

Has to work, especially with some of the rare earth metals that likely live in the paint in this place.

I may even just half recess them (5mm pins with a 2.5mm recess), so that there's even more meat above them, they don't stick out like a sore thumb and there is something for the shelf to "index" on so she doesn't pull it down on top of herself.