Recent content by ian33a

I have nothing against EV's and appreciate that they suit many people's lifestyles and tax requirement. My wife and I live in the countryside and both outright own quite decent ICE cars. Gone are the days of changing cars every few years just because the neighbours have and because we also...

I'd never considered that - what an incredibly sensible idea - it's a right faff getting things started single handed otherwise.

I bought one of these https://www.laddersandscaffoldtowers.co.uk/acatalog/Quick-Erect-Trade-Scaffold-Towers.html I have the 7.2 m safe working height one together with stabilisers as I need a long reach for one side of our house. It's not cheap but, so far, it has been utterly brilliant. It...

Being out in the country, we don't have access to fibre and the copper line was stated as giving 17MB/s max. We went with 4g and an antenna. This gave us 44 on a good day. The house sprawls a bit and has thick walls. We have a mesh network and as the broadband signal relays its way around the...

Not that we have ever noticed, no.

We have the same machine as you Niall and it's somewhere between six and twelve months old. Before this we had a Miele. The Miele needed to be replaced as the drum spider corroded and it wasn't worth repairing. Both machines have sat on a tiled floor, we think on a concrete sub base with...

I'm on my second compressor. The first one died after 10 years because I forgot to check the oil level. Had I done so I suspect it would have out lived me. This is what I have now : ABAC L30P Monte Carlo (D4) Direct Drive 3 HP 50 Litre Air Compressor (10 CFM) It's a noisy beast but I don't...

SW England - A room refurbishment which will be replastered and new ceiling, not far from the consumer unit - 10 dimmable and adjustable LED downlights, 7 double 13A sockets, a couple of switchable 5A lighting points and certification - just over two grand with VAT. I was suprised at the...

We had a similar problem in our last house - a double garage and utility room on the ground floor and our bedroom and ensuite on the floor above. The bedroom was OK but the ensuite was constantly cold in the winter. We had the ensuite redone and I got the installers to rip up the floor and put...

uPVC installations are loose and floppy - the only structurally strong and square bit is the glass. If the void is square, the frame work can be installed in the void, packed with frame packers as required and then locked into place with heavy duty frame bolts. Then the glass can be installed...

I think that the spending squeeze will last a fairly long time and hasn't bitten as hard ro as quickly as the Government hoped it would. It may well take between two and five years for existing cheap fixed rate mortgages to expire and borrowers will be forced to accept whatever rate is on offer...

We had a similar problem: Our house has two en-suites. One had not been used for some time. We started to get sewage smells. I went around the twist trying to get rid of the smell. In the end I gave in and paid a plumber to come out. After about five minutes he looked in the shower tray and...

We are somewhat similar : Our main reception rooms have no heating aside from wood burners. We have a small area of woodland on our property. All of our wood for the burners comes from our land. So far we have been using logs which the previous owner had cut and left stacked. I've built a...

Although not true for absolutely everything (global food being an example), desire drives up prices : if consumers chose to not buy because of price, suppliers would need to soften prices to sell and prices would drop. The problem is that consumerism drives demand and while people have spare...

I've had a mechanical watches for a lot of years and I wear it day in and day out. Aside from a service every now and again, it has behaved beautifully - and it gets plenty of abuse. The repair cost isn't out of line with top brands who have service centres in the UK. Being repaired back in...