Home DIY

Just use the app, order on there and it's ready to collect by the time you get to the counter, grandad.

Plus, receipts are in the app for when whatever cheap shite you (I) have bought breaks within the 12 months.

Oooh plumbing talk. I need to get this vanity unit out before I can replace the flooring (the usual fascination with carpeted cloakrooms...)

I figured I need to cut through the yellow dotted lines (if there's no other way of removing that back board separately... there doesn't seem one so far) but what about the drain pipe? Do I just cut the pipe (say, in the "???" marked section) as well, to join later with some kind of joiner piece (with glue or whatever)? First time doing that, although last month I took a whole WC out in the upstairs bathroom, for the same flooring reason (it had 3 separate vinyl layers on top of each other... better in theory but was actually worse to "demo")

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Back to the shelving debacle. Cut the straight/long one to length no bother. The upper one meets the sloped ceiling at one end. Needed a 58 degree angle and my circ saw only goes to 50. Plus there are compound angles and a bit of a belly/curve to the ceiling. Worked out a method of basically power carving with the circular saw, (tilting the base plate off the board and leading in with the front of the blade) which was janky as fuck, and ended up getting a "good enough" scribe on it. Pins should hopefully arrive today.

Just about every 'trade' centre I've ever used (except buildbase/just changed its name) even with a reasonable spend account I've been running for over 10 years give mental pricing on just about anything except basic building materials.
Last week needed some Hep20 15mm inserts, TS + SCFX were about £20 for a pack of 50 inc vat, often cheaper than that, but thats the rrp basically.
Jewson wanted £48 inc vat and thats 'with the trade discount mate'. Its like over double the retail of the item, and thats on account with £25-50k PA spend on it with Jewson alone.

In Glasgow at least we've got a heating parts centre called 'Mr Central Heating', who are pretty sound, you can go in as a tradee or as a walk off the street customer, receive sensible non thumb man'splained advise, receive sensible pricing that doesn't make you have to come up with an excuse why you aren't buying it from them, and they usually have it in stock or within a few days.
More places like that would be great as often you go into somewhere like howden's and ask for 'kitchen kick panel', and they'll look at you like you just crapped in their tea, because everyone's supposed to know in howden's its called 'lower vanity cover 2a' or some such term.

Probably solvent welded pipe, so they would have had that 32mm white waste coming up from the floor or out of the wall hidden below that shelf, then glued it in place once unit was sat down.
Empty trap out etc before you move it.
If your putting it back, would get a 32mm straight coupler (compression if you don't have a pot of floplast glue), then cut that waste about a third up from the bottom of the shelf. Then lift off entire unit. For putting it back, cut out however many cm of pipe is requiered by the straight coupler and then compress back together, simples*

*Not a plumber.

Those chipboard vanity units, back panel will be held by 4 screw cam locks on the back surface that you can't get to. The whole unit either sits on teh floor and screwed back to wall, or hangs off some sturdy metal plates up at the top/back.

Pins work a treat. Bracket for the upper shelf was allowed as it will be hidden by the books below. The myriad of all other angles and the crap photo make it look wonky (even looks wonky in person), but everything measures level.

Still to be sanded and painted to match the desk and the right hand Billy.

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Still to be sanded and painted to match the desk and the right hand Billy.

End procrastination now!

The job's been handed back to the design committee.

It's their fucking desk space in the first place! Fuck working in the eaves for longer than you have to. I've already filled and painted all the nail pops and cracks from having the roof and veluxes (veli?) replaced when they insisted they would do it..... two years ago.

Will give them six months to paint the woodwork in that room and hang some wallpaper. Then inevitably go back in and do it myself so I can get the floor sanded.

Thanks, will do, been procrastinating for a few months now. The OD of that white stuff seems to measure 36mm btw. Maybe 32mm is the reference to the inner diameter, or maybe I need another size of coupler.

(edit: yeah, plumbing forums say it's the bore size... will try with 32mm first, if not, it's 40mm + bunch of sealant everywhere)

The whole unit either sits on teh floor and screwed back to wall, or hangs off some sturdy metal plates up at the top/back.

Yes it's screwed to the back wall.

Tell them to tidy the desk while they're at it

(looks embarrassingly at own desk)

I'd prefer to live to at least see the rugby on Saturday.

veli?

Veluces.

I have one of these (I think) that is leaking from the pin at the top. Both myself and a gas engineer have tightened it but still leaking. I swapped the actual white bit for a tado one when it was fitted (by a plumber) about 2 years ago.

Can anyone point me in the direction of a decent replacement? I don't need the white head or the lockshield, just the actual valve. I want to buy a few so a can put the 'old' thermostatic valves (replaced with Tado) onto the hall radiators which are currently just on/off.

I would also like to swap at least one existing valve for one that points horizontally away from the radiator, rather than vertically. The Tado/rad combination means that the heat sensor decided it's 25deg because it's right next to the rad. Is this a waste of time?

Wickes locshield valves do the job, cost only a few quid, and are the right size for tado trvs.

Have you tried the temperature offset in the settings of the trv?

Not if you cant find it on the site or app.

I dont think Mr central heating are as cheap as they use to be, infact its not a lot of the time on boilers best way we find is to buy a few boilers from different independents but joe blogs isn't gonna do that.

Thanks, any chance of a link. I’m looking at lots of things that look really similar!

I’ve set the offset, but it doesn’t really work for me for two reasons.
A) my partner thinks the room is @ 16deg when it’s not and puts the heating on for no reason.
B) when the rad is off, Tado thinks it’s 3deg colder than it actually is because the thermometer is reading actual room temp, then subtracting 3. When the rad is on, Tado ‘thinks’ it’s 22deg in the room while reading 25 then subtracting 3. But the far side of the room is barely 20.

A separate stat in each room would be best but ££££. I would just like it a bit more true to life, rather than an expensive on off switch.

a link

To be honest, I just walked in, with a tape measure, and opened a pack or two.

I'll have a look online though.

Your setup sounds a bit odd - tado needs all rads controlled, or it doesn't really work.

Your setup sounds a bit odd - tado needs all rads controlled, or it doesn't really work.

Not unless I’m very much mistaken. Set up with communication from Tado. Works fine for me, just that some rads (hallways/bathroom) come on when any other room comes on. In general I’m happy with that, but would prefer them to be limited by a thermostatic valve so they don’t just blast the whole time. Bathroom has a basic trv and it never seems overly hot or cold.

Edit - if you do find a link, that would be great. It’s a minefield and a long trip to a Wickes so want to know they have it.

Not unless I’m very much mistaken. Set up with communication from Tado.

Fair enough!
This one looks about right:
https://www.wickes.co.uk/Primaflow-15mm-Thermostatic-Radiator-Valve-Lockshield---White/p/420018

(The bathroom one might be on the hot water circuit - i know ours are)

Thanks!

Your bathroom rad is part of your DHW supply? That’s sounds very weird and gross.

I'm not entirely sure to be honest.

The come on when the HW comes on, and not when the boiler is firing for heating.

So not part of the supply circuit, but part if the control circuit.

They also have wires going into them, but I am fucked if I know where those go from / too.

Do you have a hot water tank? My parents house has the bathroom radiator on the same loop as the boiler and hot water tank while all the other radiators in the house are on the central heating loop.