First-time house renovation

dave82_2

stolt wrote:

three week holiday in the caribbean!!:)

latecomer wrote: »

Get yourself/OH pregnant - worked for us.....kinda

Both good suggestions that sound expensive!

Any free alternatives LOL

andrew-b

Latecomer :rotfl:...sort of working ...though just makes you more frantic to get things done then even more frustrating when you can't get them done for whatever reason! I find if i start thinking about what i've got to do it all seems too much and i end up doing nothing!

Think small to get back on with things...i'm trying to do at least one job per day...yesterday i hung a picture and that was about it (though that was problematic with our really hard plaster ..ended up drilling picture hook to make a bigger hole and rawlplug and screw..only to then find the loop to hang the frame wasn't central so the picture was crooked! Argh!)...though i did a fair bit of cleaning and cleared the washing-up backlog too.

Sunday, wife managed to get home late morning and she went straight to bed full of throat infection/cold thing..which i've now got. She was supposed to work Sunday, monday and tuesday but taken them all off sick. Trouble is most of the normal medicines she can't take being 6 months pregnant so probably going to take her longer to get over it.

Last night had some another 2-3 inches of snow in not very long. It took out the satellite signal so went down the garden about 10pm at night to clear the satellite dish/LNB - glad i mounted it down the garden and not on the chimney now!

As a house full of germbags spent most of the morning in bed. Snow is thawing here so hoping it's clear by tomorrow as wife has a midwife appointment..she really have to go else we might miss out on Health in Pregnancy grant which is being abolished next year.

aliasojo

You know how sometimes it's your turn for a good run of luck and sometimes it's just your turn for the bad? Well if anyone out there has the ability to flick a wee switch somewhere and turn my bad luck off right about now, I'd be mightily grateful.

Plumber is coming this am to put the downstairs loo and basin in. I'd found a good (imo) price for a Tavistock Kobe set which included cistern, seat etc AND I had a discount code for the site in question so all was good.

I've just unpacked it all in readiness for the plumber arriving and realised the slimline wc unit wont go backto the wall because the soil pipe is sited too far into the room. The pipe cant be moved now (new floor, new expensive vinyl, soil pipe is practically welded in place and sealed around it to within an inch of it's life to make sure there were no draughts coming up there). The unit cant really be butchered because the front plinth bit holds the sides together.

Never again. Caravan for me next time.

latecomer

Is it plastic? Can you cut it back and use a flexi?

Failing that can you not build a small box to bridge the gap?

Our kitchen tap is frozen again this morning but at leastI think I know why. There is an air brick under the kitchen window which is in line with where the cold pipe goes through the floor. So I suspect there isn't any lagging on the pipes either. I covered the air brick with a couple of bits of wood to see if that solved the problem but obviously didn't although it must have helped as it was still running at 12:30am. I'm going to try cutting round the pipes and sliding down some lagging but I suspect I'm going to have to lift the floor and cut the chipboard. Will be asking MIL to bring circular saw when she comes for christmas.

andrew-b

Aliasojo, don't use a flexi for the pan connector i used one on our toilet pan. The first day of use it blocked so i replaced with rigid pan connector. The flexi distorted and kinked back on itself i think restricting the internal diameter.
This is exactly why i built my own toilet unit with a BTW pan because the soil pipe came up out of the floor too far out into the room. In hindsight i would have bought a standard WC/cistern and just built a false wall behind it for an easy life! The false wall is probably your best bet with a shelf on top. My parents cloakroom has a false wall behind the toilet to get around the same prob..they are about to redo it so was discussing same issue with my Dad. There's is wallpapered to match rest of room with a stained wood shelf.

latecomer

We've got a flexi on ours and its absolutely fine but then if its going to kink or be compressed like Andy's then its of no use.

andrew-b

So long as the rats don't come up the sewer and eat their way through it! And in my mind better to have a smooth pipe internally than one with ridges for muck to gather. I think on ours the soil pipe isnt quite vertical so angle between connector on pan and soil pipe was like 87degrees or something. 90degree pan connector worked by being angled slightly into the soil pipe as you have a bit of play usually. I suspect the flexi pipe i used was too long . To get the WC pan nearer the wall is going to mean an even more acute angle....assuming the pan itself isnt then too tight to the soil pipe. Either way removing/fitting pan connectors is about the yukiest diy job ever!

latecomer

andrew-b wrote: »

Either way removing/fitting pan connectors is about the yukiest diy job ever!

Yup and I did it while lying under the floor on my back. Mind you I think that kept me away from the worst of the smells

aliasojo

Well plumber seems to have dealt with the problem. Unit was cut and re-inforced elsewhere and I have no idea whether he used a flexi or solid connector. I'm now at the stage where I dont really care and unusually for me, I have no desire to ask or check over what he did. As long as it doesn't leak or fall to bits, it's A - ok as far as I'm concerned today. I might become fond of the 'head in the sand' approach, it's peaceful.

latecomer

Result!

I hope you dont suffer from the "need to know" syndrom which affects me somethings usually about 4am when I'm thinking about somethign that someone else did but I dont know the details of