verne

that is quite a work top but don't forget to use a chopping board with that eddief - if you want to keep an edge on your knives! most of the stuff i have done has gone hard overnight. sometimes if the cement hasn't been very fresh it has taken a couple or three... a bloke i used to know who was in that trade referred to mortar as either "green", "a bit green" or "not green". there is a colour change that takes place and it is easy to see when it stops being "green" but quite when it becomes load bearing...? for most non-engineering stuff i guess its a matter of experience. my favourite building book was written between the wars... it says a conciensious builder should bare his arm and plunge it into ordinary portland cement dust as far as it will go and not accept delivery of any that does not feel warm... i can't repeat here what my local builder's merchant said when i told him what my book said... it went on to say that mortar keeps increasing in strength for many months! i guess if it looks and feels right and you can lower the top on rather than dragging it into position then you can go ahead when you have the manpower and the energy to chuck nearly a quarter of a ton of concrete around... happy eating.

i think this depends on how damp your cellar is? if you leave some plastic sheet on the brick floor for a few hours does it show signs of moisture? if it does your cellar is damp! some people are very fortunate and have very dry cellars but most are damp to some degree which will vary depending on season and rainfall and how much ventilation there is down there. a waterproof membrane (and insulation is usually waterproof) will deny any rising moisture a path into the porous brick floor where it can evaporate and safely be taken away by the ventilation... instead it will take any other pathway available to it which is likely to be into the cellar walls. in extreme cases it will make the walls sodden and running with water. the walls of my cellar (even with a brick floor) were like that before i made extra ventilation and installed an electric fan which runs all the time. a few years later i can leave tools and stuff down there without too many problems... trouble is being down there is like being outside so a cosy winter retreat it is not!

hiya paul. you posted quite a while ago now, sorry i didn't see it at the time. i was wondering if you had reached any conclusions about your draughty home? from your description it sounds more like you need an expert on the supernatural... it sounds quite an unlikely problem that a draught is coming down the stairs. normal convection would usually send the air the other way. apart from the question of where all that air is coming from, i am wondering where it is going and what is pulling it downstairs? do you have an efficient chimney or something? if the downstairs is sealed up really tight the air to supply a good chimney will have to come from somewhere and a chimney will not be deprived... unless it is fitted with underfloor fireplace ventilation a house with a chimney invariably has a draught somewhere...

i am no gas engineer but to the best of my knowledge a balanced flue gas fire can be fitted anywhere there is a gas supply and an outside wall. the wall is pierced and a terminal is installed at a place where the products of combustion can be dispersed without re-entering the building... so there are regs with distances from external doors, windows, other buildings and so on. then it is a matter of laying something fireproof as a hearth and removing (combustible) wall covering from behind the fire and then just enjoy...

seems you have a couple of problems here. as you have a flue i would question the wisdom of installing a flueless gasfire; usually considered only to be a way to have a gas fire where there is no flue or external wall (where a balanced flue fire would be more suitable)! even though natural gas is a lighter than air gas it is still a hydro carbon fuel in the same way as petrol, diesel, propane and butane...in other words it contains hydrogen and burning it mixed with oxygen will produce H2O (water (vapour)) in copious amounts and ready to condense on any cool surface if it is not extracted by some means... a further problem is the chimney. a certain amoumt of rainwater will always find its way into an uncapped chimney. heat from a coal or wood fire meant this would hardly ever be a problem and the use of a gas fire instead at least provided some assissted ventilation. even an unused fireplace provides some natural ventilation as long as it remains open. to minimise the possible problems of rainwater causing or aggravating damp it is a good idea to fit ventilation caps to the chimney pots of unused chimneys and gas caps to those where a gas fire is fitted. a fireplace should never be totally bricked up or otherwise left without a vent of some sort but it must also be considered that to be an effective part of a ventilation system air must be able to enter the room from elsewhere in order to find its way through the vent and up the chimney by natural convection currents. this is why rooms with a coal fire were often draughty unless fitted with an underfloor vent. even though a flueless gas fire through the action of its catalytic converter does not produce poisonous gases, it does consume oxygen and produce carbon dioxide. the purpose of the vent required by the regs is to replenish the oxygen so the fire can continue to burn for safety reasons only. it is hardly adequate enough to be a useful contribution to proper ventilation enough to combat your problem of damp...

just to add to diy guy's comments... a few drops of washing up liquid in the mix works as a poor man's plasticiser. mortar should never be stronger than the substrate you are working with... in other words when movement occurs due to changes in temperature or moisture the mortar should give a bit instead of cracking the brick, tile, etc., or simply becoming detached. 4:1 represents a strong mortar for best brick, again depending what sand is used (using a softer or finer sand tends to produce a stronger mortar but a more pleasing pointing). softer or weaker substrate would need a weaker ratio down to 7:1 for some jobs. it is still important that ordinary portland cement is fairly fresh and in good condition for best results... it is doubly important that mortar is allowed to "cure" rather than just dry out. consider bricks are very absorbant - like sponges - it is not surprising that in the old days brick piles were continuously soaked with a hose prior to being laid during dry spells to prevent this problem. i suspect this is the basis, or the majority of eddief's problem with his weak bonding mortar.

i have a friend with the same trouble. her transformer feeds 4 lamps and was working intermittently for quite some time before it packed up completely. the trouble was the "cheap" 4 way transformer which contained a circuit board more suitable for a cheap radio and not a bit of kit that can get quite warm and in this case carry around 4 amps to each lamp... are you certain this is a false ceiling? not that it would really make much difference... if you really can't fiddle one or more of the lamps down out of its hole then one of those live wire detectors might give you a clue where the "hot spot" is. the bit of kit you use to check a wall for live wires before drilling into it. make a hole in the ceiling near this point to do the work through. the shape of hole is important because a piece of plasterboard bigger than that must go up through it accross its diagonals and then be glued down with some no-nails. another bit of plasterboard is then carefully cut to fit the hole and glued to the previous bit, the gaps are then filled and the whole lot painted to match to complete the repair... alternatively as it is a loo and not a main room, how about cutting a neat hole and fitting a small access hatch in case you need to do further maintenance up there... as i tried to explain before; in order to operate a bulb you will need both volts AND amps. although you have a truck load of volts present there will be a miniscule amount of amps or the bulbs you have would be destroyed. or in other words i suggest you do not pursue that line of thought because it will lead nowhere and waste the time you should be spending doing a proper repair... sorry!

dear yogi, why not take the radiator off altogether and get it out of the way? if your system uses a header tank you can save the fernox solution that drains out and reuse it. pressurized systems are a little bit trickier and it is easier just to top up the additives using a mastic gun thingy with adaptor to fit the bleeder. i have heard people say that upstairs where the pipes emerge straight from the floorboards there is enough give in the pipes to lift the radiator off its brackets and with the unions slackened just enough it can be laid on the floor, the unions re-nipped and access is complete with no mess... i have heard other people claim to have fitted flexible pipes to the radiators for this very purpose... picnic baskets are easier than decorating. best wishes, boo-boo.

my point of view is a bit modern, perhaps too modern to be acceptable by the majority but i think anyone who encourages people to treat living room furniture (or any other furniture) as fashion accessories which must be changed for reasons other than they are completely worn out, should have a week in the town stocks or a flogging... every piece of furniture has a great deal of energy invested in it from manufacture, through wharehousing to distribution! that energy represents CO2 emissions and in the case of plastics, varnishes and paints represent much other pollution! nothing. absolutely nothing should be thrown away until it is totally without use or function! every piece that is saved means another need not be manufactured to replace it! by all means it is acceptable to sell or give away to friends, neighbours or charity but too many people cannot be bothered and just take stuff to their local tip. not a word of encouragement did jazmin2309 say about this... what is wrong with making your decor. suit your furniture? in today's world functionality is much more important than form. people needing furniture should initially seek their rquirements from secondhand or charity shops, recyclers or small ads. after a few small repairs or adjustments most of these items could continue for years and years... this is the only way we will save the planet! i do agree that solid oak coffee tables are good, though solid mahogany is better.

the trouble with many voltage detectors and such like is they detect only voltage and do not draw any apprecible amount of current which renders them useless for many tests. clearly if you really had 110 volts coming down the wires the 12 volt bulbs would immediately be rendered useless. when you test the voltage in your kitchen you are testing without a load applied so in an unregulated supply the voltage will often be considerably higher but should be within tolerance if measured accross the bulb while it is operating. the likelyhood that the transformer is defunct is quite high i should say. the people who fitted the thing in the first place would not have put the ceiling up around the lights so there must be some sort of access to them from the roof space or floorboards upstairs or through the holes the lights now occupy... if all other access is denied then you have to remove the lights and carefully draw them down. one of them will drag the transformer into view and allow replacements to be made. the electrical wholesaler i use says it is best to use one transformer per light these days because experience has taught them cheap multi transformers are rubbish and good ones are stupidly expensive. if your lights are fitted with fire hoods it is another complication to overcome while fiddling about in those little holes. if there are no fire hoods and the lights are in an enclosed space then you should take advice about whether to fit them... i hope this helps you.

i agree. there is something iffy about it! certainly the lead work is hardly as decorative as it should be considering where it is and i assume that is green mineral felt up the wall where it is going to be highly vulnerable to scuffing and wear... and posible tearing if it is too tight and any give in the roof... i agree with diy guy about the dent in the floor - it should not be there and the drain off doesnt look big enough unless there is another the other side? it would be nice to know what preparatory work they did - if any. most jobs are ok if the price is right and if this was the lowest quote you have probably got the job that matches the price though if that builder was capable of a better job he probably wouldnt have been the cheapest - if you see what i mean? considering the stonework and the clear quality of the house i think the job required someone with a wider experience than an ordinary builder in order to get the job done to a suitable finish. i think the result should have something of the look of a church roof and an air of permanence, though this would probably cost more. possibly you didnt do a lot of research before engaging your builder?

flooring was where i had a bit of luck. local air training corps hut had some alterations and there was a skip full of offcuts of external cladding. looks like a patchwork quilt but came ready treated. am hopeless with names - can hardly remember my own - wood was ????? - smelly wood used in wardrobes cos moths dont like it. lovely stuff; strong and as light as a feather! i had been collecting odds and sods of floorboarding and miscellaneous timber for the project for a long time; partly because i am always on a tight budget and partly because i hate the waste our uncivilisation generates, but mainly due to the design of our roof and upstairs rooms i felt unhappy about adding the dead weight of composition board. our top bedrooms intrude into the roof space which means the ceiling joists do not rest on the outer walls but are nailed/intersect with the rafters. quite a job i had wriggling into the gap to screw the ends of my new timbers to the rafters... i will no doubt find a use for my collection of odds and sods...

if all you want to do is create some extra storage space rather than make an extra room it would be wise to take a pinch of salt with what some of the professionals say. i have found a fashionable school of thought that says no to boarding loft space and no to calling it an attic where things are stored. clearly a sensible approach must be made, especially if you live in a modernish house that is roofed with trusses. an older house with proper rafters and purlins is a different matter. my house has almost four well grown trees as purlins as well as good sized rafters so i felt confident fitting ceiling ties from every rafter to every joist in order to provide extra strength as well as glueing and screwing 3 by 2's on top of the existing joists. i did this mainly to provide room under the floor boards for 6 inches of insulation. the ceilings under have been overboarded with an extra 2 inch of insulation and the areas of the loft that are not floorboarded i have further doubled the insulation thickness. i also avoided using mdf and chipboard for the floor because they are as heavy as lead... i think your biggest challenge will be finding enough room under any flooring you lay for the 10 inch or so of insulation that is currently recommended but using a semi rigid insulation it is permissible to place these on your floorboards under your stored items to make up the required thickness. before you lay your insulation i suggest treating all the timberwork (old and new) with a good woodworm treatment. the new water based products are not as expensive or as smelly as the solvent ones of the past. incidentally, thinking about the coming of digital television, the loft is a good place to have the tv aerial cable routed into from the roof, because the 4 or 6 way signal amplifier works so much better when the input lead is as short as possible.

just a matter of interest... my local electrical supplier told me the fashion for using 4 or 6 way transformers has passed because respectable quality ones are an horrendous price and all the others are rubbish so now it is one transformer per light. i must say that it seems more economic that way but what about running costs? with a fair percentage of the power used being turned into heat by the transformer itself does a 4 way transformer produce four times the heat of a single? any boffins out there?

looking online can give the rear end a lot of exercise but often the results are confusing and confounding because with something like this it is a case of asking the right question before you can get the right answer which means you pretty well need to be able to answer your own question. make friends with your local electrical trade suppliers and bounce (sensible and daft) questions off these usually excellent people first and not only often get right answers but also avoid developing a typist's bum!

i have one of those and i have done the same as you and fitted a 6v 25 watt bulb instead of the 50 watt one supplied. the bulbs should be available as a spare part from the torch supplier; people like sealey or draper tools. mine has a lead acid battery fitted. most of these torches are made in the far east and have been without a charge for so long that the battery is virtually useless by the time they are retailed here; part of the reason why they are much cheaper than they should be. i buy my replacement batteries for this sort thing from my local tyre and battery supplier and so far haven't had to pay more than £6 plus vat. Like a car headlight; while the live wire from the switch is fitted directly to the bulb the negative wire is fitted to the bulbholder and so the bulb, the holder. the fitting and all the connections must be clean and in good condition for the torch to work. doubly so with such a low voltage.

if your cellar is like mine then damp is a problem. i have to be careful to only use well greased brass or stainless screws and put a membrane between the wall and whatever i am fixing. things last longer that way. i spent time improving the ventilation and have a small extractor fan running most of the time which has helped a great deal. i can't imagine anyone using a series lighting circuit on anything but a christmas tree so as all your lights have gone out it is likely to be a problem with the supply... a dud switch, an overtitghtened terminal screw causing a broken wire, or a loose scew causing a disconncted wire. if your installation is less than a year old you should get your electrician to sort it free. if proper moisture resistant fittings are used there should be no reason why you can't have a switch next to each light if you want one (used to be a very common system in large premises) if you also can isolate the circuit above ground. extending your system should be quite straightforward... another low energy fitting such as you already have won't overload the circuit but switching in pairs from your hallway represents more of a rewire of the system.

i contacted British Gypsum recently but had the bad luck to have to speak to a bloke who had only been there a few years so would not comment about what was available 35 years ago. he did say that whether finishing plaster is currently pink or grey depends on what area you happen to live in.

i think this depends on all sorts of things. in theory you will probably be ok but if you have only one ring circuit... if there is already a big load within the house... if your blow heater is a full 3kw type... if your light is a bit more than a small reading lamp... if your consumer unit uses fuses instead of mcb's... if the heater is going to be used extensively when you escape into your conservatory while the rest of the family is still doing its thing inside... i suggest you think about these things and proceed carefully. a 3kw heater imposes a heavy load on ordinary economy wiring on its own so these things need to be considered. during cold weather when it is run almost continuously considerable heating of the plug and local wiring is likely to take place which is bound to cause trouble in the long term. hard wiring into a spur unit would help a bit.

a wise old chap once gave me a piece of advice that has served me well through my working life and many diy projects... "if it looks right - then it is right!" of course you have to know what it should look like first at each stage of the repair, installation or construction and then it is just a matter of "monkey see; monkey do" until sufficient successful projects have been completed and mistakes made and rectified gives a person enough accumulated knowledge and imagination to be able to make a good job of designing and completing projects that do not visibly sag... being amed with all this knowledge and experience does have one small drawback - it does lead to a tendency of overkill!

I can cope with most of the DIY tasks that come my way with the certainty of a reasonable outcome. Plastering is not one of my skills. This is mainly because of the speed that is required (being a bloke who doesn't like to sweat) and the older the plaster is the more speed needed. Of course the lumpy result can be sanded to a fine finish... About 30 years ago when I collected plaster from my local builder's merchant I was asked whether I wanted pink or grey??? Pardon??? Pink is for plaster board and grey is for everything else he said. Thistle Grey Plaster was brilliant!!! Loads of time gave a great finish and the remainder didn't seem to age much in the bag. Everytime I ask for it since is met with flat denials that it ever existed. Did I dream that bag of plaster? Help anyone?

how many transformers now? a spot welder is sometimes called a resistance welder. put a resistance into a circuit and pass a current through it and it will get hot. that is the principle employed with spot welding. a couple of bits of sheet metal can hardly be called a resistance by any stretch of the imagination, but that is what they are - or at least with the aid of the points on the electrodes this is the highest resistance in this particular circuit even though it will measure only a small fraction of an ohm. this is a clue to the sort of transformer that must be employed... the transformer must be able to supply more current than will flow through that resistance in order to create enough heat to complete the weld. ohm's law states that at one volt a current of one amp will flow through a resistance of one ohm which means a current of one thousand amps will flow through a resistance of one thousandth of an ohm at one volt... i don't know the exact figures but a spot welding transformer supplies a truck load of amps at a very low voltage. i hope this helps even though you have probably found this out for yourself by now.

i have bought an old planer/thicknesser. it is not a precision workshop tool but the price was right and it suits me. the internet seems unhelpfull in my search for information about this bit of (early far eastern?) machinery so i now turn to all the greybeards out there for help. it is a substantial all steel construction and labelled thus : - WIN - 7000 WORLD SUNSHINE ENTERPRISES. SUMMIT MACHINERY MNFRG. CO. it is still in original finish of racing car red and i guess that it is 25 to 40 years old. any help or information about the company that produced it or who supplied them here. who or what is or was the world sunshine enterprises? i find it difficult to believe the internet doesnt know anything about a title as grand as that unless virgin media have edited them out (not the first time i have wondered about this). anyone?

its a great pity. i like 1960's stuff. looks like doors were faced with plastic laminate. usually these should be considered an assembly with the facing outside and to prevent the door from warping a similar laminate, usually in a neutral colour, was bonded to the inside and the edges finished with a propriety extrusion to discourage moisture. without the outer covering doors are likely to warp unless some luck is present... there is a number of ways to seal chipboard. making it smooth is the hard bit... pva solutions. thinned paint or varnish. ready made floor sealers... for smoothing; fine surface fillers are good, or plaster of paris with a little pva. if it was my job i would take those doors down to my local car painter and have a couple of coats of high build primer sprayed on them...