Rich

Hi Karen Depending on where you live, you should be able to find a plumber pretty quickly if you use "ratedpeople.com" I posted a job on there last week to have a new boiler installed and had 3 plumbers calling me the very next day, but the quotes given can vary a LOT, so I'd advise, post your job on there, then get at least 3 tradesmen in to quote for the job and get a breakdown of their quotes. Dont just accept their "off the top of my head" prices, get the full breakdown on how much is parts, what parts supplied and how much is labour, and how long the job should take. It also depends on what type and make/model of shower you go for. I would seriously, very highly recommend Bristan for a bathroom fixtures, they provide a 5 year warrantee, and if your stuff breaks, they will come and repair it for free. My shower is only 2 yrs old, and the main thermostat inside has broken, leaving me with only cold water so I posted the job on rated tradesmen and 3 plumbers all said it was the same thing, so I called bristan and they said "No problem, will send out the parts today and one of our fitters will call you shortly to book an appontment to install the parts".... 10 minutes later, Bristan engineer calls and says he can pop-round in 3 days time to repair the shower! Fantastic service so far, so now we wait until wednesday to see if they keep their promise, but I see no reason why not. Bristan where really highly recommended by the plumber that did our bathroom, and our local plumbing supplies store gave us 30% off the retail/catalog prices, which some plumbers dont tell you about, as they then make 30% on your shower if you let them buy it for you, thus you will want the receipt directly from the plumbing supplies store and NOT the plumber.

Hey Verne Your not dreaming, dont worry. Today though, typically, the grey stuff is the base coat so to speak, and what goes onto raw walls as a lining to smooth them out before applying the thinner top (pink) stuff. I'm certainly no plasterer at all, far from it, as like you, I love to procrastinate and fear breaking out in a sweat will kill me!!! but I've got stuck in when having my own place replastered by the experts.. Plastering my own place is one thing I'd never try as I know the mr's would never let me forget every lump and bump, and I'd also just get annoyed looking at a horrible finish every day...

Welcome Ian.. Why not show us some of your work, do you have pictures you can upload & attach to your posts? Maybe you could upload a gallery of your work in the actual site gallery itself..

What "homelight" isnt telling you is that he works for a search engine marketing company, and has never bought anything from this store in his entire life. (A pretty rubbish one too if he thinks spamming is the way to go) I know this because the website owner confirmed it. Purelighting are actually one of the worst I've seen and spoken to. There overly expensive by a long way, and when I called them to ask them to stop spamming our website I was pretty much told to go F*** myself, followed by a hail of further abuse. But, I must add, it did take over 15 attempts over an entire day at calling them because they just have one of those horrible answering machines running 24/7, so its pretty pointless having the 0800 customer services phone number on the website because its the same guy that runs the shop that answers that phone (Or doesnt should we say) Are these really the kind of people anybody wants to do business with? I'd hate to see what they do to unhappy customers or should you ever have a problem that needs resolving!!!

Hi Polly This can depend on your preference, because in any "wet rooms" ideally you would want to use "Marine grade plywood" which wont fall to bits if it gets wet like regular plywood does. Normal plywood, when it gets wet, it distorts, swells up and generally lose's its shape, so "could" affect your floor if the grouting isnt totally watertight and perfect, right up to the walls. Marine grade plywood doesnt do this, but it is about twice the price of normal plywood. You can of course just tile straight onto your exisiting plywood floor without any problems, just so long as its done really well and is watertight. I tiled straight onto normal plywood flooring in my bathroom, but one big thing I REALLY regret is not installing underfloor heating in the bathroom.. I'd never do a tiled floor again without underfloor heating, its fairly cheap too, but soooo nice, and soo much cheaper than central heating at around 2pence p/hour to run. Seriously regret not putting it everywhere in our house and scrapping all the radiators and pipe work..

Thanks for the warning Claire, who was the company that did your conservatory? Were you happy with it? Did they give you any problems or did it go smoothly? Instead of just hitting us with a URL for a totally different company for something else, why not actually share a bit more about your consevatory rather than appearing as being here just to hit the planners URL on us?

Have you tried actually contacting any scaffolding companies to ask for old boards they no longer want? They might even rent you some, or give you a few to use for a few months if you ask them nicely enough. There really is no rush for concrete in this weather too, give yourself plenty of time to get it done right..

Hi Ellie Indeed, if in doubt, call a pro out.. But its still worth just giving the actual light fitting a nudge too, see if it comes back on. At least then you know its going to just be a loose connection. 12v transferomers are actually extremely easy to change if it is that, but obviously before venturing into any space like the loft to look at wires, the lighting circuit should be switched off at your consumer unit (Fuse box) Let us know how you get on with it too, its hard to find honest tradesmen these days.

Hi Miranda You might want to start by contacting a french polisher. While it possibly sounds a little "over the top", french polishers are pretty much master craftsmen in perfecting polished finishes and restoring things like this. Where abouts in the UK are you as a friend of mine is a french polisher and used to work for a piano maker for many years.

Hi Ellie Welcome to The DIY forums.. Have you checked the electrical connections to the light fitting if your able to do that yourself? I had the same thing in my bathroom with the 4 halogen GU10 spotlights in there, 1 went out, and as I reached up to change the bulb, it came back on, so I had to get up in the loft and re-secure the wiring as it was just a loose wire. Now its fine and hasnt gone off ever since. I'd say, switch your lights on, then if you can reach, just see if you can move/nudge the light fitting to see if it comes back on. If it does, you have a loose wire, if it doesnt, then a wire may have come out of the fitting completely. If none of that works, then the 12v transformer might be knackered and need changing, which is fairly easy to do if the light fitting and transformer come out of the ceiling easily? Either way, its a fairly easy fix, as you know your other lights in the bathroom are all working. Are you in a house or a flat? Bathroom upstairs under the loft at all?

Hiya Jon, welcome to the website

Hiya Christof Given the time of year, you would be best holding off on laying the concrete until the weather warms up, to be sure of setting/drying times, and that it will set properly, but do double check with your concrete supplier on recommended temperature usage. As for setting the scaffolding planks down as a floor base for the new cabin, it would be best to stick them down with a non-flexible adhesive if possible as you wouldnt want your flooring to wobble if you had any heavy shelving in there. It depends on what you will be putting into the cabin too. If its just going to be a toolshed full of loaded shelves, then I wouldnt even bother with the scaffolding boards, but if its going to be a cozy space that needs as much insulation as possible, then how about screwing the boards onto pallets to raise them up off the floor and keep the cold off nicely? You could then use an adhesive to glue the pallets down to the floor giving you not only a space under the floor for any wiring or to hide the gold bullion, but also insulation space. Grab a few rolls of space blanket from B&Q for a tenner each and it should be fairly cozy. As long as your initial concrete base is off-level slightly to allow rain water to run off, away from the cabin, and its high enough above ground level to avoid any damp then all should be great...

If you get the right pair of tweasers that will attract the magnet, then yes, stick the magnet to one end of the tweasers and you "should" be able to get them into the lock and pry out the broken key. If you get some cheap nasty tweasers, they will just be chrome plated or something else just as rubbish and the magnet wont even stick to them.

Hiya So, posting 3 messages, all the same, all linking to topps tiles has nothing to do with the fact you built their website for them, and are just now out to spam the crap out of forums using your business username? Too much of a coincidence quite frankly. I think I'll give them a call tomorrow and put in a complaint about your "spammy" marketing that you have no doubt sold them on.

Hey Pitza Sounds like you might possibly be living in a hard water area? Its highly possible that hard water is causing limescale around the shower head only, do you have scale around any other taps in your home or around the edge of the toilet bowl for example? If you want to de-scale it, take the head off and soak it in white vinegar overnight and you should find it sparkling the next morning.

Hey Mike I've merged your thread with an existing one on this product. Some have heard of it, but this stuff doesnt actually claim to prevent heat loss completely, only to reduce it. It would be good to find out if anybody has tried it and get some opions though, but it would be hard to measure its results or possibly even feel its effects in the average family home as there are many other factors that can also affect insulation like ceilings, windows, doors etc.. Would be a shame to paint your house with this stuff only to find the loft is not insulated, ceilings not insulated and drafty doors and windows!!!

Hiya Patrick How about showing us a photo? This website might help you to identify what it is: http://www.lichens.lastdragon.org/ Once you have identified it, then you will know what to look for.

Hi Patrick Thanks for the intro to your own website, but this is the "Intro for members" section, so maybe you could tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do before offering up links to your own website? No offence mate but nobody knows you, and you want them to register and provide their email address on your website...

Fantastic, thanks for letting us know, hope you will share a picture of the finished job when its done?

Hiya Bernard Are your local tile centre able to provide you with the actual supplier/manufacturers details as you can sometimes find that if you were to contact the manufacturer, they might have some you can have (As long as their not a million miles away) I've attached your picture for you but it was too big so I edited the size of it to under 300kb file size...

Hi there Ideally, when cleaning a computer, its best to remove as little as possible, but it depends on your own level of knowledge too. If your not comfortable with taking parts out such as drives, graphics cards, then you can open it up by taking the side off, or removing any lids/covers (Dependant on the computer type) and go over all the internal items with a can of compressed air and a very soft brush. I use one of my wife's big makeup brushes to get into crevices and brush out the CPU heatsinks, fans, intakes and generally clean the system board too, then once all the dust has been swept off its surfaces, give it a good blow out with a can of air when the dust has been loosened which is normally sufficient for my own computer. A few basic pointers: Dont wear any watches or bracelets when doing this. Avoid nylon clothing that builds up static. Dont put the computer down on a carpet when cleaning itTo help keep it cleaner, its worth trying to keepthe computer well up off the floor too in normal daily use as most have air intakes on the front which will just suck up dust and dirt at floor level leaving you with a computer that would need cleaning VERY regularly and it can soon become a "chore to hate" and more importantly, shorten your computers lifespan if its spending most of its time dirty as things run a lot hotter, so computer performance is also affected. Do you have a picture of your computer and its surroundings?

Hey Matey Welcome to The DIY Forum, feel free to pick brains, ask silly questions, show us photo's or even just have meaningless banter. But do keep those links out of your signature, specially on your first post otherwise people think your here just to link drop/spam.

Whis is why I'm glad you joined Hey, were not all perfect, and lookig back, I do believe I missed the "Solid" part and just read "oak flooring" I myself laid Engineered oak flooring which lock's together and is actually designed to be a floating floor and was laid on newly laid plywood flooring over 18 months ago, and its still as good as new... Indeed, ambient temperatures should always be kept stable, but underlay (A damn good quality one, not that cheap foam crap found in homebase/B&Q) will actually help. Not really, its fairly boring, the floor looks exactly as it did 18 months and is still in great shape, and will be for many many years to come. The underlay I used is fixed down to the plywood, and the ply backing on the engineered planks actually grip the underlay, so although the flooring isnt physically fixed to anything, it doesnt move around at all. If I still live here in another 18 months, I'll be happy to report back on how its doing, but having seen another install of the same product, done 5+ years ago, I know what it will look like.. Thanks for the good info to Rowntree too

Hiya Rowntree Sticking wood to concrete with any adhesive is always going to be a bad idea because wood needs to breath and it moves (Expension/contraction) which you really dont want if you stick it down because if the adhesive wont give, then the wood will. The best thing to do with any wooden floor is either nail/screw it down, or leave it as a floating floor using a top quality underlay. I've laid Oak flooring in my place and the underlay I used is absolutely fantastic, I got it from wood4floors.co.uk and its 4mm thick, silver lining on the back of it and insulates both temperature and noise (28db) So something like that would be far better as you can then also ensure that you keep the oak flooring at a reasonable tempurature with less variation to distort it, but ensure you leave at least a 8-12mm gap around the edges of the walls so that the entire floor can expand/contract without forcing itself up off the floor... Why not show us a picture of the area your planning to work on?

So, the story continues... Since the sales pitch, ADT were VERY pronto in carrying out the install (Less than 1 week) and the installer guy turned up nice and early as promised. However, being pre-informed of our oak flooring, and the requirement for dust-sheets and over-shoes, he turned up non the wiser to this with no dust sheets and no over shoes When questioned about this, he didnt know anything about it Anyway, I let him get on with the install and left him to it (Along with a cuppa to get him started) Upon installing the shock sensor to our kitchen window, I did tell the guy to go VERY easy on the window frame so as not to go right through the frame, but alas, he was far too heavy on the drill, and sure enough, he went right through the window frame to the outside ............... Later that day, job finished... All installed, we then had a ton of foms, and police info to fill in etc etc, and after some detailed instruction on how the alarm system works, off he went. So, I go round and check out what he has been doing, only to find that everywhere the guy had drilled holes in the walls, he didnt even bother to clean up, he just left all the piles of dirt from the drilling exactly where it all fell. He didnt ask for anything to clean it up with and I had made the assumption that he would clean up as he said he would... Well, needless to say, I gave the sales guy a ring to let him know and left it with him to get back to me... More later...