Home DIY

New tap? It's the suggested way for a reason

Tried that. Slightly too big

But it’s so simple to replace the cartridge. And not £175

Take the copper clip off

Guess you need a deep thin wall socket. Of course remove the circlip as @bluehuw has already mentioned.

Grind the outside down? Either properly or bolt the socket onto a drill, spin it up and carefully hold a file against it for aaaages until it’s skinny!

I’ve tried pulling that out. It will not budge

This is how they're built, it may help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3GyW43sTjE

3:45 into the video:

"now this is a dilemma, you can buy kits for these and i have looked everywhere and I mean everywhere and the only thing we're going to do with this is I think we're going to have to buy new taps because this is quite old ..."

There are lots of different approaches, levering or tapping the loose ends apart. Maybe a box spanner would work on that nut.

As others have said though, good luck finding a ceramic cartridge that fits. I know some guys carry a set of them and there's a plumbers merchant near me that has a lot of different ones. Occasionally I've had some success but usually with shower mixers not taps.

I bought two extra of the no-brand £20 shower mixer buried in our wall. They’ll live in the loft for donor parts.

Sounds quite Silence of the Lambs actually.

I think the shower mixers might be more regular because they're not so likely to be forced to be a certain shape by the design of the body.

I want to add 2 wall mounted Flos Mini Glo-Ball wall lights on either side of a mirror above our sink.
Is it possible to wire them directly from this pull cord light switch as I think I can get a cable from there to where I want the lights?

We had a bathroom extractor fitted a few years back which involved holes in the ceiling so I asked the builder to run a cable to the general area, just in case I wanted to do this in the future. A calamitous attempt yesterday to find the cable yesterday failed, although I did find a crap load of rubble that came out of a tiny hole and the sink unit came off the wall for good measure.

The switch controls 3 x GU10 spots and the extractor. The extractor has a separate isolator outside the bathroom.

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What you have in your hand is a switch line. It's just a live cable that will connect to a 3 plate arrangement near one of the spots. So no neutral. You are going to need a neutral and live so you'll need to take a feed off your lighting loop. You can then use the switched live out at the 3 plate to switch them on and off. You might need the earth at the wall lights too.

Google 3 plate wiring. Your setup might not be wired to a physical 3 plate but will likely have the same connections.

How's it working out? Got that new tap yet? 🙂

Thanks, I suspected it wouldn't be that simple.
I've checked the nearest two spots and they each just have a cable going in, not another coming back out to the the next spot as most online examples show.

Would I be fine to run a cable back out of one of these to the new fitting?

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Yes, but possibly easier to join this wire to your new cable with wago and run a short piece to this light. It would be easier to do and there's less cable pulling on the light fitting.

The other lights might be joined that way.

Looks like you have 4 core cable there. Normally associated with 2 way switching.

I’ve been building up an old external windowsil with Toupret masonry filler, using a questionable cake-icing type method, and naturally the results and very pretty.

Can I ‘dilute’ the mix with a bit more water to make it runnier without compromising it’s strength? Will it just take a bit more time to cure?

Planning on getting some melamine board to make some rudimentary formwork.

Here’s a before; current; and what had been growing in the middle (judging by the top inch or so that crumbled off it’s previously been ‘repaired’ with sand-cement, without grano)

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Can I ‘dilute’ the mix

I mean I don't know if you should or by how much you are talking about, but this is basically what I did.

I used those little plastic fibre things to bulk out the mix for filling and forming missing bits, block sanded back, filled, block sanded, then made a runny mix which I skimmed, block sanded, skimmed, block sanded, etc.

I also bought a multipack of trowl things from Screwfix and used a mix to get the neatest finish I could.

Electrician moved a light for us. Old ceiling rose hole will be covered over. The wagos on the end of the old wires suggests they're still live, in which case they should be in a box right?

Probably easier to sort myself rather than trying to get him back. Does mean finding them under the insulation.

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Are you building over a rotten wooden sill here?!

Believe it or not, it's sandstone (i think - house is c.120 years old) - defo not wood..!

Hacked it all back to solid substrate before giving the first couple of layers of the repair mortar stuff.

It was in such a mess due to a leak in the old gutters directly above, and a crazy amount of buddleia all around the back of the house

Did you use any consolidant / hardener on it?

Nice. I have rotten wood EVERYWHERE at the moment, so it's probably just my eyes...

There have been a lot of 'looks like driftwood' comments from folks tbh - so not surprised!

Lunn's always used to be a good place to look for ceramic tap and mixer cartridges.

( And here's one at £175 - well, £174.60 - for a B&Q tap no less)