Rich

Hi Adrian From my experience with motors, and funny whiny noises right before they pack-up, it "sounds" like it could possibly be your motor that has given up the ghost, or, if it has and plastic cogs inside, then possibly when of those may have stripped itself of its gears... Does the motor make any noises now at all, as in, does it sound like its trying to now do something but cant, or is it totally dead, silent, no response to anything?

Hiya BGA, love the choice of username, I guess your describing yourself in the D.I.Y sense huh? Welcome to the DIY forums, great to have you onboard, why not spill the beans on your D.I.Y accomplishments to date?

Hiya Alfee I'd suggest the very best place to ask is the place you bought the curtain from, they will know and should be able to recommend a suitable curtain pole to hold it... Might also help to know the total weight of the curtain so that you can have some sort of idea if your curtain pole can support that weight, spread across the length of the pole too. Give that a bash and let us know how you get on :-)

Julio, your best bet is to check with your home insurance company, what minimum standard is required. Ignore those peice of **** locks on their homepage, those wont be covered under UK home insurance, I know because I've tried them myself, the "Euro locks" or anything similar will not be insurable. Why would you even ask about a small company, so far away from yourself? Especially that they have only been online less than 12 months, and have no listings about them at all... I'd highly avoid and stick with a local locksmith, reputable and easy to find if I were you, then call trading standards and ask them if there have been any reports or complaints about your local locksmith, and maybe even call any associations they are members of and ask the same thing. If all clear, then consider them carefully, and check prices they quote you with at least 2 other locksmiths first. (Get 3 quotes) and ask to see what the good quality locks look/feel like to get familiar with what you should be having installed or be buying.

?? Are you seriously asking people who cant see your house, or its surroundings, for help choosing a colour?

Well, I'm a trained slater/tiler, and I can tell you, plastic sheeting was never ever part of my training 15yrs ago, it was roofing felt, and thats it... Sometimes nothing on the odd occassion we did film set roofs at the film studios... You should be able to punch some holes in the plastic, or, apply a neat square of duck tape to the plastic first, then cut out a smaller square from the middle of that, thus the tape will prevent the plastic sheeting from splitting and fraying, thus no mess, then you can run a strip of duck tape around the cut once done, so its a sealed opening, that will allow more ventilation, but normally, any build up of moisture is due to 2 different temperatures meeting in an unventilated location.

Hi Scott Do you have any ventilation in your loft at all? Sounds and looks like there isnt any air moving around in your loft what-so-ever? You definately shouldnt have plastic sheet under the tiles, thats a huge no-no, its not breathable like roofing felt is...

Hi James Always go by what your local council tell you, as planning rules are different from one council to the next mate. What works in one borough wont work in another sadly... You will need a level of skill to build a conservatory yourself, and a LOT of muscle or help, especially at the foundations stage. If you have any drains running across your garden (As most do) then they need relocating, as you dont want a sewage drain in your house, and you cant just build over it... You might also find too that depending on the ground your building on, your foundations "could" require up to 1 metre or more of depth... Given the amount of money involved, and what can go wrong, its worth considering getting the foundations done properly, by an expert I'd say... At least then if you mess up the brickwork, you can re-do that, whereas if you mess up the foundations, thats a whole new mess you wont wanna re-visit...

Hi Richy Welcome to The DIY Forum... Definately dont stuff it with insulation, if there is moisture there already, then your basically just going to add a sponge to hold it all, and when sponges get wet, they get heavy. What is to stop you simply taking the suspended ceiling down permanently and not having all that extra bother on your hands and damp above the ceiling?

Hiya Mickey Welcome to The DIY forum... Forgive me if this sounds silly but you have selected in your profile that your a trade bricky, so how come a trade bricky is asking a question like this? You would surely know how much sand you need to lay 100 bricks? A pro bricky could lay up to 1000 on a good day, so 100 would be "Hardly worth wetting your trowel for" surely?

No, I dont really know enough about that world to know which products are good or bad, but I just went into my local trade supplier and asked him whats the best stuff to use, and took his advice.

Hey Peak Whats the ventilation and heating like in the property as a whole? Dry-lining the walls will definately not solve any damp, that will only hide it and prevent it drying out. I wouldnt use Dulux though, Sandtex seems like much better quality, I tried both on my place and even a local pro-decorator recommended Sandtex over Dulux for quality.

Hiya Peak Depending on the surface of the render, I'd use a wire brush over the entire wall (Get a big one) and get off every last inch of flaky paint first, then wash it down thoroughly with sugar soap, then treat the entire wall to something called "Stabilising solution" which you can find in most decent decorating supply stores. It goes on like water but looks like really dark apple juice, and is just as sticky too on everything you spill it on. Brush it on in good doses as you will really want it to soak in as much as possible, hence cleaning the render first to ensure the stabilising solution can soak in and nothing is on the walls preventing it being absorbed. Leave it for 16/24 hours to dry or whatever the directions state and once dry, it should have an almost shiny glaze to it, and you can then paint straight onto it with the knowledge that the surface is now good to paint on. Make sure you cover up EVERYTHING that you dont want covered in sticky brown stuff though, if it gets onto window frames its a nightmare to get it off from double glazing and/or painted surfaces.. a 5ltr tin will do a 2bed semi front and side only, so if its totally detached 2 house for example, get 15 litres and put it on good and heavy, you can really go for it with this stuff, even do sensitive areas twice, like around window frames and door frames... Its so runny it soaks into everything.

Have you tried ebay? You could put the house up for sale and set a non-refundable deposit only auction of say £500. There seem to be a fair number of people selling properties on ebay where you can either set it as a classified advert, or make it clear that the auction or fixed price is a deposit only.

Hiya EPDM Good to have you here and I'm sure we all look forward to hearing more from you soon :-)

Hey Brian Welcome to The DIY Forum, good to have you here and see somebody who isnt just here for the sole purpose of plugging/spamming. Look forward to hearing more from you some time :-)

Hey Crafty I'm afraid there truly is only 1 thing you can do here, if you want to avoid more problems later, and thats to pull off any surrounding tiles that are lose enough to come off in your hand. Given that you now have a hole in the wall, you should be able to feel the condition of the plasterboard behind the tiles, but its highly likely that moisture from the leak will have weakened any surrounding tiles, so its would be wise to take of at least 1 tile surrounding the hole. If the plasterboard around this hole is sound and as new, then you can screw in place a few battens behind the hole, putting screws through the surrounding platerboard each side of the hole (Hence why you take off the tiles) which then leaves you with several battens going across the back of the hole, for you to fix a new peice of plasterboard to. Once trick here is, do NOT cut an exact fitting peice of plasterboard.... What you do is, cut out a peice of plasterboard that is at least 10cm bigger than the hole, all the way round, then measure out your exact fitting peice in the middle, and ONLY score the plasterboard enough to snap it in 1 direction, leaving the side that you will stick the tiles to, attached to the centre peice of board. So lets say your hole is 20 wide by 20cm high, you cut a peice of plasterboard 40cm x 40cm whcih gives you 10cm all the way round, and you can then score out your 20cm x 20cm section in the middle, and once you break/snap the plasterboard on the back of it, remove the actual plaster from the 10cm edges, all the way round so you have a perfect fitting 20cm x 20cm peice, with 10cm of paper attached to it all the way round. Now, when you screw on this peice of plasterboard, you can use plasterboard joint filler all round the edge of the hole, and spread it out 10cm around the edge of the hole, and when you then screw in your newly made repair peice, work from the centre outwards to stick the paper edges down onto the surrounding filler to provide a good strong seal that overlaps all the surrounding board by 10cm. Feel free to make the edges as big as you like, but I wouldnt do less than 10cm/100mm I found this to be a common way to repair holes in walls when i lived in Florida as all their places are made from wood and "drywall", its quick to do and gives a strong finish. You might then want to cover all exposed area's with a good quality tile adhesive, just a thin film of it all over the entire lot, then do your normal tile adhesive application before re-applying your fallen tile.

No prob's, if its an upstairs shower, like in a loft conversion then it could just need a pump to boost the pressure, but if its downstairs, then something else must be causing the pressure problem, possibly even "crud" in the pipe joins/bends or limescale if you live in a hard water area. I had awful pressure in my house, but discovered it was the incoming mains pipe under our living room floor, which was made of lead and had folded down onto itself under its own weight causing a kink in the pipe... Tore it all out and laid new PVC pipe all the way out to the street and now the pressure will take your ruddy hand off if you get too close! Boiler is also working a lot better since too although I dont know why because the heating is sealed, so I'm lost on that one...

Hey Drew It works in conjunction with pressure, so if you have low pressure, then even a 2kw or 3kw shower will be perfect because it can still heat the water as fast as it goes through the heater. a 10kw shower would be a tital waste because all you will end up with is steam, but still travelling at a snails pace. The "power" rating is purely just that alone, "power" (Electric) in the same way an electric heater can be advertised as a 2Kw or 3Kw to give you an idea of how much heat it "potentially" can put out if needed. Sounds like you first need a plumber to sort out your pressure. A 7kw electric shower is seriously powerful already, are you looking to use the shower to peel a layer of skin with each shower? Some sort of new treatment program?

Right, yesturday, the ADT engineer came back to fit the rest of the equipment he didnt have the first time round, was done fairly quickly, but obviously cant finish the job, yet again because the phone line still doesnt work, so what the hell was the point in coming at all? As he was the only person at ADT that I can actually see, I gace him a copy of the critical parts of the Virgin telephone bill and asked him if he could get it to his boss "TODAY" but sadly I got "I wont be seeing him until tomorrow" I asked him to then telephone his boss asap so I could email the entire bill to him immediately, but you guessed it, that also didnt happen. Finally today, the Area Manager calls me and tells me he is going to sort it out, and can get a cheque to me sometime this week.. Well, sorry but your system knocked out my phone/TV/Broadband line pretty damn quickly, and thats how I'd like it restored, PDQ! So, after some deliberation, Bob has agreed to send a cheque directly to Virgin, so at least were FINALLY getting somewhere, just a shambles its taken this long to get there. Why the hell do people still use cheques! Whats up with paying by card, get it paid and done!

ok, so on Monday 1st, Virgin sent me this email back, in response to this thread here:

Here I am almost 3 years later, So, yet again more problems... I've just had my third alarm system installed, purely because the 2nd replacement was a bag-o-bones So now, they installed the 3rd alarm on the 18th, couldnt finish it because they didnt have all the parts, and whatever the engineer did on the install, it totally screwed up because for 3 days straight it was dialing 0870 numbers, every 60 seconds... I had to call them back in again on the Saturday to disable its dialing function because my phone line was un-usable from Thursday right through to Saturday. Now, if the engineer wasnt in such a rush to go, when he installed it, he would have stuck around to make sure it was working correctly, but as he demonstrated, thats asking too much... So the new alarm, once disconnected, has run up a

Yes, absolutely.... 18 Months ago, my alarm system was getting so bad, they took it out and replaced it with a much lesser model, despite the fact that I had paid over

Heres another incompetence... I just called Virgin 10 minutes ago to be told my bill was raised on the 26th, so I "could have" been sent it 4 days ago when I had asked for it (For the umpteenth time) I've honestly never come across such gross, widely syncronised bull**** incompetence.. I'm amazed how they can stay in business...