verne

ive not seen foil backed bubble wrap yet. can we have a bit more of a description please? i am surprised that it is breathable. does it have a brand name or just a generic name and where is it available? is it a rigid or semi-rigid sandwich or is it still in roll form?

ta-muchly.

hello. our kitchen is ready for a revamp. our worktops are currently "autumn daisy" formica - the same as little chef used way back. i love the colours of the 50's 60's and 70's which seem to be completely unobtainable now.

it goes against my grain to pay a small fortune for worktops that are not particularly attractive and if i have to have something that is pretending to mimic stone or marble i should save the money and make my own. i read about a chap that cast his worktops in situ from ordinary concrete but i can't remember how he polished and finished them.

any suggestions?

i don't know much about roofs, but i just wanted to advise you about your damp roof timbers. it is when untreated wood becomes damp that it is most vulnerable to attack by woodworm and dry rot so i suggest a regular check on this or treatment when your other problem is sorted...

good idea to sqeeze maximum value from the cost of scaffolding by having any other maintenance work carried out at the same time - gutters, chimneys, modern telly aerial, moss removal and so on. if the chimney is in good order it is an excellent idea to treat it with thompson's water treatment so that it stays that way for many years longer...

i think this depends on what local building regs say and what you feel comfortable doing considering local conditions; water table, dampness, etc.

we moved in to our house in 1975. the house was built (and not very well) in 1864. apart from a small patch of tongue and groove the front room floor was probably original with rough cut and hewn joists and boarding adze shaped on the back.

someone had raised the level of the front garden around 18 inches above natural ground level/floor level and caused dampness in the front wall and this had caused the ends of the floor joists to rot along with some boards (also worm eaten) - hence the patch of tongued boarding. there was no damp course and yet the majority of the floor was still healthy after more than a century.

the surprise is the joists were loose laid on to a bed of sand over earth and rubble. there was no ventilation other than the gaps between the floorboards... i guess those joists had to be treated with something when they were laid but i have never heard of any wood preservatives being used as far back as that.

i imagine that if you used only treated timber and provided as much underfloor ventilation as possible your floor could easily outlast you and your children without taking any other special precautions.

the majority of paints for industry and vehicles have become water based in recent years with traditional finishes becoming more unobtainable all the time. some vehicle manufacturers have been playing with the stuff for years and suffered a lot of problems for their pains. top coat laquer remains isocyanate activated for a tough finish as water based and single pack is still not durable enough. it is all a big nuisance.

it would be interesting to see how a 2 pack painting system would perform as general house paint. vehicle refinishing uses an acid etch primer to improve adhesion which is available as single pack or a two pack. i wonder if such a thing might be useful as part of a wood finishing system???

from time to time in the past i used polyeurethane based paints which were extremely durable and a worthy replacement for lead based stuff but these seem to have passed out of fashion also.

some mahogany veneered tops that had six coats of furniglass semi gloss polyeurethane varnish with wet flatting between coats had a glass like surface that was almost as hard... my local supplier says it is no longer available.

i faced this sort of problem with some expensive wallpaper and also some tiles and it was surprisingly easy to obtain a small quantity of each. same design amd the same reference number, but unfortunately they could only be supplied from a different batch so i had to expect a slight colour variation. as i had been dealing with car paints most of my working life i thought i knew what a "slight colour variation" meant - a shade or two lighter or darker; mostly acceptable and not everyone would notice... the result, when it arrived, was a joke as not only were the colours wildy darker but also the colour density was much greater...

i suggest you not only prepare to be disappointed but you formulate an alternative plan... how about trying to lift sufficient tiles from around the room to fill the gap and then lay a border of contrasting tiles...

i haven't yet had the delights of modern heating/hot water systems. to my inexperienced mind it sounds like a dud valve.

i do have a mate who is a plumber who complains about the unreliability of electric valves, especially in airing cupboards where they apparently get too hot, and the fact that few of his customers like paying the high cost of labour for draining down and replacing the valve so he had recently been stripping and repairing the valves in situ. which saves a lot of time and cuts the cost dramatically...

more than that i cannot tell you.

sometimes you have to ask the right question to get the right answer!

condensation, and especially damp is something to be aware of, especially if the garage walls are not damp-coursed and/or only a single brick thick. as it is a new house it will probably have a damp course. better results will be obtained from a cavity wall and insulation between the boarding and the wall is optional but if it is only a single brick wall insulation should definitely be used.

first, i would suggest treating the outside of the wall(s) with thompsons water treatment and then some drying out time. thompson's allows the wall to breathe and yet it repels rain and spray very effectively...

bricks are naturally sponge-like and water that is taken in will through capilliary action and gravity moves downwards. where there is no damp course the wall can become damp through rain action but the majority of the water will disperse below ground level.

where there is a damp course water will tend to pool above it and sometimes, such as during prolonged or driving rain, the wall can become quite wet. free movement of air both sides of such a wall will keep it reasonable but covering one side...

i would strongly suggest that all timber is treated with something to prevent both wet and dry rot and woodworm - cuprinol 5 star will do the job.

if there is a damp-proof course make certain that nothing bridges it or otherwise provides a path accross it.

plaster board and insulation could be used but a plasterboard with a high performance insulation+infra red reflector+moisture and vapour barrier is available already bonded together which would make the result altogether more satisfactory...

i suggest you consult your local builders merchant. jackson's, my local merchant has a room full of experts just waiting to advise on such projects as yours. they have been a tremendous help to me in the past and do not charge any extra for this service.

any fans of peter tinniswood or current listeners to bbc7 or older listeners with long memories to other stations will know this quotation from uncle mort...

"diy; whats that all about? why bodge it up yourself when you can have someone in to bodge it professionally?"

i think it has a certain ring to it that could make it stick in the mind for a very, very long time...

I have an old Elu 3 inch belt sander. It is MHB 157/00 and I believe it is a type one. It is in good order except for a small gear in the gearbox has worn teeth. This part is no longer available from the dealer.

If anyone has one for spares that would put this thing back on the road it would be good or maybe someone is looking for spares and wants this one before it goes to the tip which would be a shame...

hello. i have always had a liking for the idea of lime mortar but have never had an oportunity to use it. i googled the subject after reading your post and the first ten references, starting with wikipedia, proved most informative.

most of our builders merchants around here sell bags of lime. i have bought this to use as a lime-wash and i don't remember it as being particularly expensive. i assume this is slaked lime but i don't know what sort of quality it is... i suppose a phone call would clear this up.

incidentally, in the absence of enough horse or cow hair from the local tannery to bind lime render and plaster ground coat there is a company in the group that runs jewsons that produce a curled polypropelene fibre for this purpose. more details than this i cannot remember.

i suppose a length of rope and a scout troop would produce a similar result...

if you paid someone to sort your drains/yard recently and the results are causing this trouble then my opinion is they should rectify it free of charge or for very little...

water cannot be allowed to stand against your house wall and something needs to be done with some urgency... it is difficult to give an opinion without seeing your yard or knowing more about it. could be you need someone experienced to visit you and give a few ideas...

it sounds as though it could be a big job to get it right. maybe an old-fashioned vertical damp proof course would overcome your immediate problem?

the ancient romans thought underfloor heating the pinnacle of luxury and i tend to agree even though my mother claimed it causes chilblains...

as heat rises it makes sense to have the source as low as possible...

now efficient and load bearing insulation is readily available underfloor heating has again become a (fairly efficient) reality and seems to be gaining popularity, not only with quality builds and refurbishments, but also where there is little or no space for conventional radiators or fires...

maintenance problems will be more expensive and inconvenient over the longer term but the main problem whether it is electrically operated or water filled will be the same as with the older electric storage heaters - the output is not instantly controllable; a real disadvantage for around six months of our british climate...

some people have recognised this disadvantage and have elected to keep the conventional heating system and installed a low output electrical underfloor heating element in addition that provides a none chill floor but hardly contributes to the overall heat input for the building...

it is still a good idea to show a lot of indoor timber some cuprinol - or at least some sort of woodworm treatment. a comprehensive treatment is best but to save money and time a splash on the end grains and the backs of skirtings, architraves and other similar timbers can only do good over the long term.

houses are not so well ventilated these days and this can lead to quite a lot of condensation and it is when the moisture content of timber rises just a little that it becomes vulnerable to attack by wood boring beetle or dormant eggs already in the timber can become active and continued climate change might affect all sorts of things in the future...

a great deal of britain is riddled with dry rot below ground and just waiting for a lack of ventilation and an increase in moisture to start growing and feeding near ground level...

it is a good idea also for best results to treat knots with patent knotting or shellac as sap can be exuded for years and years...

any new timber (or timber that is new to your address) that is intended to be worked or shaped that is to be part of a largely unsupported structure or totally unsupported should be stored (flat) for a few weeks in its new environment to normalize and allow the majority of twisting, warping and shrinking to take place before measuring and cutting and machining...

depends on what and where?

traditionally oil based were the paints of choice but that was in the days when they contained copious amounts of lead, cadmium and all sorts of other nasties. nothing could beat the performance of lead primer on any surface as part of a painting system that also used lead loaded undercoats and top coats... no longer commercially available as paint but the ingredients are if you want to mix your own and you can afford to buy in bulk...

there are still some nice bits of exterior woodwork that have stood up to british weather for a century or more only because of lead based paints... of course the timbers were better chosen for the jobs they had to do, plus having straighter grain and fewer knots and other weak spots and tended to be properly seasoned, back then also.

oil based is still the primer of choice for external timber, but only after treating the end grains (at least) with cuprinol or similar and treating any knots with patent knotting or shellac but it will not stand up as well with modern paints as it would have done with lead...

zinc rich primers are available and other metal based primers (red oxide and aluminium); although primarily intended for use on metal i have seen them used as wood primers without ill effect and probably to some good though i cannot comment further until i have lived a bit longer...

the success or otherwise of painting exterior wood often depends on the "painting system". don't think of the primer or the undercoat or the top coat in isolation from each other. they each are part of a painting system and each has its own job to do within that system that complements and enhances the qualities of each other. paint manufacturers go to great lengths to produce their system and you cannot do better than to start by consulting their literature or consulting their technical experts and using their recommended products...

the trade tends to use whatever is cheap and easy to apply...

when acrylic paint (to be used as an outside top coat) first hit our shores it was called ranch paint and probably for obvious reasons... one coat was supposed to be all it took to put a breathable waterproof skin over a fence or an outbuilding where warping of timbers, etc. wasn't a problem and it made it cheap and easy to recoat as often as was needed by unskilled labour...

it has developed much further now and as much of the trade is using acrylic inside as traditional paints, although i never have - yet! i have yet to see a tradesman using it outside even as a primer and i don't think i would even consider it...

the adhesive is generally a latex base which is kept liquid until applied by the addition of water or a solvent (mostly water base for this job). i think the heat you speak of will age the adhesive prematurely but probably be fine till you've sold the flat if it is allowed to dry thoroughly before applying any heat.

proper linoleum is still obtainable but fiercely expensive. cheap imitation lino is the sort of stuff you might put in a pantry or a box room if you are desperate... cushioned vinyl is an insulator so hardly suitable to cover underfloor heating with... solid vinyl would probably do the job for a time but sounds an awful bodge...

how about sprucing up the tiles that you already have? get them steam cleaned, maybe refresh or colour the grout or replace just a couple or three tiles to break up a dated pattern or give a none-pattern some form and colour. how about then giving the whole a couple of coats of a good quality sealer.

hello again.

as usual more information is needed to answer. it depends what paint you want to remove and from what sort of surface?

apart from special paints there are a few different sorts in common use; the types a householder is likely to be using will be water based plastic emulsion or acrylic types or the synthetics - oil based alkyd enamels or varnishes. you might sometimes use a laquer also. the big question is do you wash your brushes in white spirit or water?

standard caustic type paint stripper will sort out most paints that needs white spirit as a solvent and the water based one is less messy (though not much) and more convenient.

water based paints, once cured, generally are considered fairly inert and resistant to most solvents and paint strippers. i have bought paint stripper that was dedicated to removing water based paints, but that was 20 years ago and i haven't seen it on the shelves since then. it will be a case of asking at a good decorators or builder's merchant...

failing that it will be a case of using whatever mechanical means is at your disposal - scraping, rubbing, wire brushes, sand blasting and so on. i use a drill attachment called the rotary stripper that does a good job for anyone with a light touch.

as your wall is coated with emulsion paint the latter situation will apply. not sure why you should need to remove the paint? generally once a wall is painted it stays painted; little apart from sand blasting will produce a clean wall again. if it is rendered or plastered and a clean wall is desired for some reason then knocking as much off as you can and replaster would be the quickest and most satisfactory method... as i said emulsion paint is fairly inert so makes a good base for most other finishes, as long as it is sound and not flakey, and can be used as an isolator between incompatible paint types.

as i said before an mdf pattress is a good way around your trouble; most electrical fittings were fitted to a pattress in the early days of electricity because there was often an inch or two of plaster on the walls and sometimes more on the ceilings to go through in the old houses before a good purchase into the substrate was possible and the electrical fittings did not have holes suitable for huge screws that often needed to be more than a couple of inches long... a piece of wood the approximate shape of the fitting and over-sized and nicely finished was screwed into place with the proper sized screws to give a good purchase and the fitting was in turn screwed to the wood...

this system still has a place in the scheme of things, especially when fixings have to be made in old houses. the alternative is to fix mounting blocks in the cavity of your ceiling or re-site the light so it can be screwed to a joist and repair the crumbling hole left behind.

not just smartlady then but a determined one too! most people with an interest usually start mucking about with low voltage stuff - batteries and bulbs and stuff at school and fixing torches and pushbike lights and work up to mains voltages as they become more familiar with the techniques and equipment.

one of the best bits of kit you can have to start with is a mains tester screwdriver... it will indicate the live wire with a single connection... just touch the blade of the screwdriver to each wire in turn while keeping your thumb over the other end.

for the job you want to do, you will probably not need the voltage tester function of your new bit of kit. most of these sort of things; whether an old fashioned multi-meter, a digital meter, or an led bar display will have a resistance or continuity function (or both) operated by its own internal battery and it is this that you will be using. some time with the instructions is recommended and some time practicing...

you first need to forget the individual wires and identify the pairs or numbers of cables you have... switch the power off... pull the wires / cables down through the hole in the ceiling. if you can see where the wires were before the fitting fell off you can put them back - generally all the red wires will be connected together; usually three; one live in, one live to the next light and one to the switch for this light.

generally all the blacks will be connected together (except one); usually two; one neutral in, one neutral to the next light and it is to these that the blue wire of your light fitting will be connected to.

that should leave one black wire which will be live only when the lightswitch is on and it is this that connects to the brown wire of your light fitting.

if you are not absolutely certain where the wires went you need to seperate them and start from scratch and identify the job that each pair (cable) of wires does. using your new meter / tester on its resistance range find the pair that goes to the light switch... almost no resistance with lightswitch on and open circuit with lightswitch off is what you are looking for. when you have found this cable i suggest you mark it with tape.

you can proceed with further tests and identify the cable(s) going to the next light by repeating the test on the remaining cables and running around the house until you find a switch that causes some sort of resistance reading on your gadget.

the remaining pair of wires must (by elimination) be the supply live and neutral. this fact can be verified if required by making safe and switching the power on and then testing with your new gadget (on the correct range or you will break it) or simply with the mains tester screwdriver.

connecting up and testing the light should now be fairly straightforward.

next a word about safety. if there are other people in the house make sure they know what you are doing and why the power is off. draw the fuse if you can or tape over the main switch. always have an assistant watching you while you are testing with the power on and make sure he or she knows where the phone and the main switch is and that they can RUN!

identifying the switch pair is the important task here. once that is done the remainder is fairly intuitive... happy wiring!

i am looking forward to your next installment eddie. your photo takes me back as it is reminicent of the bus shelter in my home village - different size of course!

a firm of roofers i do work for do not tackle flat roofs. they say it is specialist work and attracts more bodgers than average... i have had to do some flat roofing repairs myself as a "temporary measure".

it seems to me the biggest problem with flat roofs is the under-boarding which never seems strong enough and allows movememnt, if not at first, certainly as the roof ages... people seem to equate flat roofs with cheap and consequently the budget is never big enough from construction onwards...

i have seen some very nice flat roofs of the bitumen felt type which must have been around half an inch thick with three or four layers of different types of felt and then gravel on top to keep the sun off... beautiful detail too - these people must have trained first as dressmakers and then as leadworkers before they started roofing...

question is; surely a roof like that is very nearly as heavy as some of the other traditional roofing methods?

shingles are not used much in this country but would offer sarah cat a lightweight alternative with the added advantage of easier and cheaper repairs and the possibility of treating to make them more fire resistant.

in addition, the use of shingles would be friendlier to the planet as long as they are sourced from properly managed forests.

hi smart lady, what a disaster! if you have no way of testing the wires yourself it is not going to be wise to try and do the job yourself - you wouldn't want to get this sort of job wrong, especially if you don't know much about electricity. forgive me, but if you had the first idea about it you would at least possess a means of finding a live wire...

i suggest you first think about why the fitting came down in the first place and why when it came down it managed to tear the wires out of the terminal block. obviously the fitting wasn't secure and unless the fitting is very heavy the wiring wasn't securely fitted into the terminals. when it is refitted it would be a good idea if this is sorted at the same time so it doesn't happen again.

it is usually considered best practice to ensure at least one mounting screw goes through the ceiling and into a joist in order to make a bullet proof fixing, unfortunately this does not always coincide with the desired position of the light. in this case other methods must be found to provide a firm fixing... wooden blocks in the cavity or large sheet steel washers. this can mean a visit to the roof space or lifting a floorboard in the room above.

a trick i have used a few times is to produce a large pattress from mdf in the old fashioned manner to suit the size and shape of the light fitting and provide it with a fancy moulded edge and then using no-nails adhesive and whatever screws i can to fix it to the ceiling and then in due course the light fitting can be mounted to this.

the wiring is really a job for a sparky... in the old days much use was made of junction boxes with the result that few light fittings had more than two wires to them (often plus an earth wire). in order to improve accessibility, save cost and reduce the number of connections (which in theory improves reliability) modern thinking brought the wires that would have been in the junction box to the light fitting directly. the light fitting manufacturers provided an extra few terminals and the junction box was no longer needed...

if you can visualize a cable leaving your consumer unit and visiting each light fitting in turn... you will see there must be a pair of wires (a cable) supplying the current to your light fitting and another pair leaving it which is taking the current to the next light in the daisy chain. sometimes there will be another pair providing a spur to another light if it is more convenient that way. so ignoring any earth wires there will be at least two pairs present (often more) just associated with supplying the current. next there is the switch wiring. for ordinary one way switching another pair is required and more for multiple switching... and then there will be the wires to the bulb itself which will usually amount to just another pair.

you will see that as you cannot test for voltage / current you really should not proceed further. unless you have a tremendous amount of luck it could all go horribly wrong...

thank you for your compliment johnjo. true i would rather do someone a good turn than a bad one. call it ethical behaviour or whatever... my parents brought me up like this. they believed it was an essential part of being "English" and working class... oh, the beauty of innocence!

i rather thought your problem was something like your electrician found; i think i said so in one of my earlier posts. as i said, if the job wasn't very old you should have dragged the first electrician back to do a free repair!

now it is working you can extend the installation and fit additional switches at your lesiure. all the best...

hi eddie, your first effort looks fairly straight at least. i think the word that best describes it is "rustic" and there is nothing wrong with that in a lot of gardens and as it matures and grows the odd bit of moss and other verdigri and becomes a little sooty and fireworn it will start to disappear into the scenery. true, the lack of good pointing will make weather damage more likely...

around 35 years ago i was lucky to be able to learn a little about this sort of thing from a local stonemason under a labour exchange scheme where people with no money swopped skills... my brother-in-law is a good all-rounder in the building trade, though has little patience with diyer's like me and my father was a good practical man who never allowed a lack of knowledge hold him back; he read and asked questions and puzzled things out to suit his needs. it helps when you enjoy a hobby like this but good diy usually begins with necessity.

like a child learning to eat - small tools are mastered more easily at first and i suggest you use only a sizeable pointing trowel for jobs like this. available in a variety of sizes from the tiny decorator's trowel to ginormous and comes with a choice of radiused tip or pointed. i favour the pointed tip because i favour the less decorative weatherpointing as it sheds water a bit more efficiently.

am not sure where diy guy hails from but around here muck comes from stables and mortar is called either mortar or compo. incidentally, there is something on the market called "bricky's mate" or some similar name which is intended to help diyer's produce consistent brickwork...

enjoy yourself and if all else fails my stonemason friend had a couple of dodges to help new work blend with old quickly - painting with sour milk encourages the growth of verdigri and for a really quick fix water down a nice fresh cowpat and slosh it around...

sorry i didn't see your further question til just now johnjo. i guess you have probably got sorted by now...

the wiring you described is unlikely to be a series circuit but a sort of daisy chain where both live and neutral wires (together in a common cable) pass through each light fitting in turn, supplying power to each in turn. this is called a parallel circuit and failure of a single light fitting should not affect the others as long as the wiring and supply remains good.

fitting a switch of your choice next to each light should not represent much of a problem. it might be possible to fit the switch actually to the fitting if there is room in the casing or that fitting might be offered by the supplier with the switched option so it might be possible to upgrade your fittings...

alternatively there should be room to include a single section of insulated chocolate block type terminal strip inside the casing of your existing lamp (if there is not a spare terminal included for this purpose) and access for another cable to the switch. using a separate junction box would not be a very satisfactory way to accomplish the object...

after switching off and making safe, expose the innards of the light fitting. you should see a cable entering and a cable leaving which are connected together at the terminals of the lamp. install the cable that is to go to your switch, release the two existing red wires from their terminal and install them and the red wire of your switch cable into the additional (or chocolate block) terminal which is connecting the three together. fit the black wire of the swich cable to the now vacant live terminal of the light fitting and after double checking for safety and security of the new work the fitting can be closed and the switch fitted and the job is done...

the final fitting in the daisy chain will probably have only a single cable.

if you haven't got sorted already i hope this helps you...