Home DIY

Cheers. Good advice. I think we're now leaning towards this, or buying a new slim dishwasher (which would require cutting a few cm off the existing, gross, counter). I honestly don't know which is more wasteful.

Any idea what those sinks (and ideally counter space) are called?

Sinks are described as combinations of bowl + drainer. So 1 1/2 bowl + drainer might be what you want. Not sure if this link to search results will work for you.

https://www.google.com/search?
q=1+1%2F2+bowl+%2B+drainer&oq=1+1%2F2+bowl+%2B+drainer&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i22i30l3j0i10i22i30l2j0i22i30l4.4793j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

I reckon a freestanding slimline dishwasher is fine, if you can plumb it in with minimal effort. A more permanent kitchen in the future could use freestanding appliances rather than built-in, if it suits your tastes, or the freestanding dishwasher could be passed on to someone else. I use a slimline in a household of two and it's adequate (a full size would be far too big). So that seems like a less wasteful approach than buying new cheaper base units.

Also you might be able to find it either in here or the home owners thread, but someone did the kitchen mainly with sort of open shelves and free-standing storage.

Could be worth checking out what they did for ideas. Potentially cheaper and a lot less work and effort than installing proper cabinets.

^
I'm planning on doing a similar temporary kitchen and the newer Ikea Enhet range looks like it'd be easily enough put together and then taken apart that I might end up transferring the open/shelving type cabinets to the basement eventually

Ah, nice - thanks everyone. Depending on the width of that sink unit that could be perfect. Back to IKEAs web page!

Edit - ah, just saw it's a hanging unit.

I really like integrated drains on both sides of a single bowl, though I’m a handwasher. We did a really minimal update to our old kitchen with one narrow Ikea unit, some stacked industrial shelving and hanging rails.
I’ll post a pic after work.

why is my combi boiler not giving me any hot water? no water at all from the hot tap. cold water is fine and the heating is fine but not a drop from the hot tap.

it's a valiant ecotec plus 831 and it has never given us any problems before.

I only noticed the problem after spotting that the booiler pressure was very low and then, when I tried to use the filling loop, nothing happened. normally when I open the valves I can hear water rushing in but this time there was silence.

I turned the boiler off and on and the heating fired up which raised the pressure to normal but then I realised that the tap was dry.

Normally there's a diverter valve which switches from supplying the CH to HW and back based on demand. They can fail, there are a lot of other reasons you might be having problems but that is one.

One approach would be to switch of the CH and see if the boiler will start for a HW demand.

If it's still in the manufacturers warranty, Valiant are very good to deal with. It does take time though and it's probably worst at this time of year.

Stuck diverter valve?

You almost certainly shouldn't attempt to fix it yourself.

thanks.

I've tried turning off the heating and then running the hot tap but there's still nothing.

it's quite an old boiler so no warranty unfortunately.

is there any chance I've messed it up by playing with the filling loop valves? when they didn't behave as I expected, I kept trying all sorts of combinations of open/closed. also not 100% sure which way is open and closed (the handles broke ages ago so I have to use spammers) anticlockwise for closed, isn't it?

I don't know your boiler well enough to say how the filler loop taps are set up. On an external filler loop which is usually the older variety it's normally clockwise to close a valve. You are supposed to open both and one of them is a non return valve. There are supposed to be disconnected when not in use (not that they ever are).

It does sound like the diverter valve is stuck. That is mostly a regulated job to fix. Not sure if googling will give you information.

ok, thanks for all the info. i'm not tempted to give it a go myself.

anyone got a recommendation for an engineer near hackney? one that wants to work on Christmas Eve?

if you are in E, N, IG postcodes give John at full flame a ring.
he is the the goto Valiant guy.

edit, just seen the Hackney post. give him a ring as he was recommended on here and sorted my partners boiler out, said it was the best one they ever made and they last a lifetime. £170 and we were back up and running (£5k quote from british gas for a new boiler!)

https://www.full-flame.co.uk/

Trying to work out how I can make myself useful over the next couple of weeks before trades start to appear.

Was thinking about stripping paint off the stairs/bannisters, deep cleaning the window frames, maybe sugar-soaping the walls that don’t need replastering, possibly lifting floorboards downstairs to clean out/check air bricks and the like if I can get my hands on a pallet buster/pry bar… any other low-tech idiot-friendly stuff I’m missing?

Filled up a van with all the left behind furniture* yesterday which makes a big diference

*not the dog

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Merry Christmas anyone else!

Thought I'd help some fam fit a new kitchen. I had 4 days free, and it's almost like for like locations, no walls, floors or ceilings to be done. However we would be good to maybe put a new ring main in, cooker circuit needs upgraded and take all the old cables out
Well. It's the end of day 3 now and im still cutting holes in floors, walls and joists hunting for copper.
Seems every previous spark has just done their bit and then scarpered.

The big rats nest of cables is after I've already pulled 7, defunct sets of ring main and lighting cable out of there (around 12 cables).
Found the lighting circuit in some place the live feed jumping around the ceiling fittings is tiny 0.5 single insulated wire fron the 70s and has dozens of places with bare conductor exposed. So 4th day will be doing that and making sure house doesn't burn down. No point having a nice kitchen if it's ash.

Also found the world's long lost supply of copper heating pipe. That floor is only just getting started, counted 40m of 22mm hot water and heating supply that's capped otf on various places, yet still has water in it. Early attempt at under floor heating? Only a lot of it is between ceiling insulation and a cold flat roof, so only thing is doing is keeping the snow off roof lol, no wonder heating bill for a 2 bed cottage is similar to that of a small country!

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I used John at Full Flame for a diverter valve that needed replacing.

He's often pretty busy though so I'd also try
https://rokas.london/

The guy at full flame is more likely to have the spare part with him though.

Thanks for all the boiler advice and engineer recommendations above and by PM.

I ended up calling round loads of engineers to find someone who was working today and finally got a localish guy called Habib. He managed to fix it in a few minutes because it turned out that I had accidentally closed the valve next to one of the filling loop valves and that was stopping the water flow.

£250 call out charge?

thankfully not as much as that. although enough to make sure I'll be more careful in the future.

I actually did the same as you recently but managed to sort it myself - luck more than knowledge though. Glad you got it sorted.

It’ll need a new diverter valve. Not expensive. Basically a service item.

This. John is great.

Mark Ray at vaillant service is the other go to guy.