Home DIY

@cjr FWIW, I'm increasingly thinking that if I can pick up the required bits fairly affordably I might use my friendly/good value plumber/heating engineer to do a zone for each floor, then add in TRVs later if needed. It will cost more than Tado but I'm very sensitive to noise so don't think I could cope with a TRV in our bedroom.

Will have to pray for a sale on Nest thermostats. Friendly plumber's mate who did our gas certificate recently was saying he reckons Hive is better but so ugly...

has anyone DIY'd their own desktop lino before? I'm getting ahead of myself here (just putting some shelves up would be a great move) but thinking it would be nice thing to do.

I double side taped it to an old painted wood table we had. Worked perfectly. Use the thinnest tape you can find though as it’ll show through, or “telegraph” in trade speak, eventually.

I get a friend with a vacuum press to do all my desktop lamination now.

They look incredible, so much light

My new house has 4 of these bunches of wires sunk in the wall, which used to be for wall mounted lamps. I don’t want to fit one. How should I correctly terminate these so I can fill and paint the holes?

1 Attachment

Are they still live? If they’re on their own switch, you might be able to disconnect at the switch*, and just trim them short and fill over them. Pretty common for old houses to have old fed bales still buried in the walls.

• you’ll need some method of checking if the cables are live or dead before doing anything. You don’t want to switch the power off and chop them, only to find out they’re still live when you put the power back on.
  

1) 7am 20 deg c

2) 8am 15 deg c

So the boiler will only top up the heating to maintain 15 degrees after 8am until the next command in the evening.

My thermostat isn't a Honeywell but this is how it works. Seems logical so I'd assume the Honeywell is the same.

Looking to get some ladders so that I can clean the gutters - anything I should be looking out for? Reccos etc

We moved into this house in 2011. Today I swapped the wall lights for ones I don't hate.

My wall lights are all fed from a junction box in the ceiling above (accessible by taking up the floorboards in the room above). In my house that would be the right place to disconnect them. Good luck hunting...

Cheers, that was the logical sequence, but YouTube videos seem to be amazingly unhelpful.

Confusingly tho, with that program set, and the room temp above 15 degrees, it still shows the flame icon to indicate boiler on. The boiler itself doesn’t sound like it’s fired up tho.

I’ve always got on well with Zarges and Tubesca, my main thing is that ladders are fucking expensive, and you tend to notice why the cheaper ladders cost less!

I've got a pretty heavy aluminium 3 part ladder but I don't go above gutters. I used to paint whole exteriors with them but scaffolding became the norm.

They take some handling, you don't want to drop one on a car. Lighter ones have a lot of spring in them and some people are fine about that. It can be fine once you trust and know it. If you are only using them a couple of times a year and you can count on some help to lift and carry them then I'd pick a stiffer set, 3 piece should get you above the gutter. You can use a standoff to help get over the gutter, a lot of people are happy to rest the ladder on the gutter.

Try to make sure someone is footing it and think about how even the ground is, tall ones are horrible if they're not firmly planted.

ugh. Might just hide them behind bookcases...

Thanks, I do have a load of tape so that's good to know... I was thinking of either PVA or copydex, and contemplating a very low temp iron... maybe asking for trouble there.

PVA is ideal but you’d need some kind of press. If you’re doing it by hand then I guess contact adhesive and a hard rubber roller. Really though ultra thin acrylic adhesive tape will be fine. All around the edge and some across the middle.

I have small rollers for lino printing - or a big rolling pin?!

Brushless imapct driver: worth the 60% uplift in price for occasional DIY use? My gut says probably not.

Got the exact models?

https://www.ffx.co.uk/product/Get/Dewalt-Dcf815N-5035048381465-12V-Xr-Impact-Driver-Bare-Unit

or

https://www.ffx.co.uk/product/Get/Dewalt-Dcf787N-7426827314992-18V-Xr-Brushless-Impact-Driver-Bare-Unit

I already have the drill and SDS so 2 or 3 18v batteries

The top one is 12V.
I hope never to buy a brushed diy tool again.

Yea that’s the idea.

I’d 100% go with tape though. Contact adhesive is gnarly, unforgiving and will melt your brain.

Jaysus, you're right, I didn't sleep well last night.

^ No Value judgement made.
All the suppliers have too many models,
and,
resellers just offer resorting by price not function.

Looking forward to a chance to use my Ryobi 18V brushless strimmer this year.

Have to be very careful using it, or i'm very clumsy. It can wipe out a screw and hole in minutes. I use my drill driver for general screwing and the impact for in to concrete or walls.

Thanks for the warning, I have been known to be a bit cack handed so I'll proceed with care.