Home DIY

Got another edition of Jack’s Questions for the Hive Mind:

I have a gutter downpipe with a steel bottom section of about 2m. It was packed full with plant shit (new house, not my fault). I have chopped it off just above where it is concreted into the side passage floor, and pulled out as much Ultimate Compost as possible.

I had hoped it might then drain properly, toward a soak away. There’s another downpipe right next to it with no apparent problems.

It did drain, but I found a load of old ironwork in there. Upon pulling it out, it looks like the pipe empties into the depths of hell or potentially my foundations.

So my question is, does anyone know about soakaways? How far below ground would the elbow usually be?

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If you see my previous posts, I too have a downpipe drain that goes nowhere. Will be deleting it soon. Emptying into the ground right next to the house with no proper soak away es no bueno.

I’d kind of assumed it originally went into a soakaway, even if now it’s all collapsed under ground.

Temporarily at least, I’ll just put a foot on the new pvc downpipe and it can go onto the concrete side passage and flow onto the lawn. Eventually I’ll unconcrete the side passage and maybe that will mean I find out whether it does go to a soakaway after all

Patio layers of the forum - what grout/mortar/whatever are you putting between your slabs?

I've just finished laying the below slim patio to save stepping out straight onto grass & was just going to brush some sand into the cracks but apparently something better is required but I'm unsure what that is?

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I mixed sand with some mortar and it so far good after 4 or 5 years, occasionally pull out moss or other plants which seem to need absolutely nothing to grow.

We used this

https://www.protilertools.co.uk/product/ultra-scape-flowpoint-fine-flowable-rapid-setting-external-grout-20kg-natural-grey?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIyqyy9p73_gIVCO_tCh2oYgLDEAQYBSABEgLe_PD_BwE

Thanks @Madhias & @Polygon - will check those out and have a crack next weekend!

I have wobbly alcoves. The wobbles appear to be from where there were shelves in them built in in the past and then they were badly ripped out and sloppily poly'd over. I'm going to be fitting some wardrobes into them. What is my best bet for hacking it back and covering in a way that won't present problems when the wardrobe goes next to it? I'm presuming there should be some kind of void between the wardrobe and walls?

Example. One alcove measures:

Back:
top 0964
middle 0958
low 0938
skirting 0899

front:
top 0965
middle 0963
low 0963
skirting 0926

Height is 2623 / 2619

Our woodwork is awful anyway so I could rip all the skirting out in the room and install fresh, up to where the cupboard will end? But then even without the skirting there's still nearly 4cm of variation front to back at some stages up and down the alcove. Do I just suck it up and measure from the smallest point to save mess and hacking, then use a metric fuck ton of toupret? What else could I do to fill the wonky gap? Can't picture how to connect a scribed offcut to a wall or a cupboard without having unsightly screws inside the cupboard.

You can scribe it tight enough that mastic will hold it in place in some cases.

Always best to build the biggest regular shaped box you can fit upright in the alcove and scribe to the walls.

I might have posted about this before, but need to do something about a gutter issue on our garage before the summer's out.

Basically we have water coming into the garage when the rain is heavy and causing mould. Long term I'm concerned it'll cause structural issues too.

The problem seems to be that the gutter running the length of the garage isn't big enough to handle the volume of water when it rains heavily and isn't on a steep enough angle to force the water into the down pipe at the door end of the structure. It's a double length garage about 12 metres in length, so that's a lot of water building up. Lastly, as one of the pictures shows, the gutter fills with crap really easily which doesn't help.

I'd love to find a DIYable solution to this rather than pay someone to fix it, mainly because there a good chance we'll end up pulling this garage down in the next 2-3 years to build an office. Any thoughts gratefully received.

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Thanks, as ever. That's roughly the plan in my head.

Had originally planned to go with a local fitter which would make life easier but it seems like he's tied to a particular supplier and won't do colours we want without a massive increase in cost and a bodged way of doing it (sticking laminate to furniture board so you'd see the original colour underneath it when open, at a charge of £450 per cupboard - which seems like the kind of price someone gives when they can't be bothered with the job). At which point it's cheaper to go wild on Fittingly/similar and get everything exactly to fancy spec which may or may not make up for poor installation. How hard can it be amirite @stevo_com ?

You might want to consider a deep flow gutter, that would require removing the existing and inserting the new (deeper) one and then adjust the pitch to encourage fast drainage into the down pipe. Hard to tell if thats possible from the pictures.

Maximum bodge/on the cheap if access is possible you could try and build up the height of the existing guttering with flash banding and some good quality sealant to try and stop the water getting into the structure below.

To stop the leaves etc you can get this brush strips called hedgehogs which will stop leaves getting into the gutter and blocking.

Thanks for this. I think replacing with deep flow guttering makes most sense. I’ll get up there again later today to try to work out what I can do to increase the pitch too

Could put some netting over it to prevent leaves from getting in to it.

Seems like a fairly non standard approach which might limit your options for improvement though.

Could put some netting over it to prevent leaves from getting in to it

Yep, that’s my plan rather than the hedgehogs. I’ve not heard great things about them

Seems like a fairly non standard approach which might limit your options for improvement though

You mean the whole guttering setup as it stands?

2cm gap + expanding foam.

You're a 2cm gap and expanding foam.

You mean the whole guttering setup as it stands?

Yeah. It's effectively integrated into the middle of a makeshift unequal butterfly roof?

Can you get at from below, inside the structure?

Could put some netting over it to prevent leaves from getting in to it.

Looks like all those leaves are already doing a pretty good job of stopping leaves getting in

After a debacle involving some cowboy fitters and a big extra outlay on our part, I'm selling some pretty much pristine rolls of Colour Flooring Company Citron Vinyl, in the following approximate sizes:

200cm x 90cm
100cm x 100cm
250cm x 170cm

I'd like to shift this all as a lot, and we're asking for £120. There's approx 6sqm there and it retails at £32/sqm: https://www.colourflooring.co.uk/collections/vinyl-flooring/products/lemon-vinyl-flooring-1.

I'm based in Glasgow but postage can be arranged at cost. HMU if you want a pengy yellow floor.

Laminates are really expensive, even the bare sheets. Then it's time consuming applying them. £450 does seem high but it might depend on how he has to approach it.

Fittingly or similar do seem like a sweet spot at the moment.

Anyone built a home electric sauna?

No, but was on my list until prices of wood went up. Was going to be an outdoor job though in a shed rather than inside. I seem to remember people selling second hand whole sauna's on ebay/fb marketplace for not too much

Yeah I've seen some second hand ones for sensible cost, but the basement I want to put it in is odd shaped so building something is easier.
Did you see a guide? I wonder what I need to do re insulation etc.
Wonder if I could just clad and build internal wall and call it done.