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@Ferdinand how did you get on with this?

Was discussing this with a friend today who is from South Africa. I can understand why this method works there - over thousands of years of evolution, cats have learned that Lions are king. But do cats in the UK have any lineage to cats which lived in countries inhabited by lions? (Revisiting this thread, as 8 months on the llama escaped and we now having problems with poo in the garden again.)

Keep chasing them in writing, email is ideal. Your chasers need to set out precisely what the issues are and give them a reasonable deadline by which to fix them . Normally, 21 days is reasonable, but given you’ve already asked them, a final chance of 14 days would also be reasonable. Explain that if they don’t fix it within 14 days you will be forced to escalate the matter and take legal action against them for breaches of your statutory rights. Whether you actually bother to pursue this in the courts is an altogether different matter, but giving the tradesman the impression that you are willing to take it that far might be all that’s required.

Interesting, I was this week automatically renewed with my existing insurer, Home Protect, underwritten by AXA Insurance, but I still have time to cancel it if I find something cheaper. Last year, the quote for a 5 bed house (buildings and contents) was £444. This is a fairly populated area of London. Not particularly high crime, but London rates of crime. When the renewal came through the price jumped up to £521.50, which I thought was a rip off. So I've just put in all the equivalent details into comparethemarket's search engine, with a £500 excess for buildings and £250 excess for contents and was shocked to learn that the cheapest available on comparethemarket was £760. So I'm wondering if actually the £521.50 is good value. But what bothers me is that my house has a couple of features which I think most insurers would like: we have an imist system on the ground floor and all our ground floor windows are PAS24 certified, and neither my current insurer or the search engine seems to care about. Does anybody know of an insurer that will take such measures into account?

Problem solved by new plug: much easier and quicker than I thought! Having specified the exact locations of the sockets, I thought I was starting to go mad when the previous socket didn’t fit!

Wow @joe90 that beats even Thames Water levels of incompetence, and that’s saying something!

Query which particular type you favoured.

I can do it and have done it before, but not come across a situation where I’m rewiring a Euro plug as a UK one. Also, hasn’t realised this plug was unusually bulky because of the adaptor housing when I first started this post - apologies everyone.

The plot thickens… the reason it is such a bulky plug is that it is actually a European two pin plug that is housed within a three-pin adaptor. Any issue just cutting the European one off and wiring it with a three pin one? Won’t there be a wire missing? Sorry for the stupid questions, electrics really not my forte.

Not possible unfortunately. It’s fixed.

Ok, lots of food for thought here. Thank you.

The socket is cut into a bespoke bookcase. The location of the socket cannot now be changed. So only possibility is to replace the socket and/or drill an additional hole in the back panel of the bookcase for the cable to pass through. I’m keen to understand if I can just drill a hole in the cover plate of the Corston socket.

That’s a good find, but I know this finish and it won’t quite match. can i drill a hole in the brass plate of this: https://www.corston.com/products/13a-fcu-antique-brass-1?variant=39293020602465&currency=GBP&bcndyn=d2lkOjQ4OHxjaWQ6NTY5&gad_id=&utm_campaign=Google_Ads&gclid=Cj0KCQjw5f2lBhCkARIsAHeTvli291xI4X0tP1aXi4NmQFz1_bRZn46A-xtajyTpRXFL-IjQL2_fp08aAp5LEALw_wcB

We have some sockets built into a bookcase to plug some speakers and lamps into. The socket is probably 6mm too low for the plug to fit in comfortably, unless I switch this plug for one that doesn’t have such a large milder plastic mount on it. But it would also give the lamp a bit more visual “breathing space” if I got rid of the plug altogether. I found this online, but not sure how it would be wired up: https://www.corston.com/products/cord-outlet-antique-brass-1?variant=39293021323361&bcndyn=d2lkOjQ4OHxjaWQ6NTY5&gad_id=&utm_campaign=Google_Ads&gclid=Cj0KCQjw5f2lBhCkARIsAHeTvlgOLBlBfvfNNxDi8i6nC7GLxAvARlUbWx_6nTXjavYiyiLPYfy2b0saAsC6EALw_wcB Where would the fuse go? Alternatively, is there another type of socket that can connect directly to the cable, without having an actual plug?

To be clear, the system I recommended by Claber (link above) does not come with a timer, but it does come with a pressure reducing valve, so unless you have lower pressure than 1 bar in the garden, you will consistently get 1 bar of pressure sent to the irrigation system, as that's what Claber's PRV does. The irrigation system is good for a certain number of outlets, i.e. 20. If you were to use more outlets than this, pressure/flow would reduce below what's optimal. As for timer, I am using a cheap one made by screwfix. There are dozens of timers available on the market, including many fancy ones that cost 5 to 8 times what I paid at Screwfix, which i think was about £18 or £19, though I see it's now gone up to £25.

Having removed the chimney breast, what is holding up your chimney? Also, is it a shared chimney, shared with an adjoining house, or is it solely yours?

This has not been my experience with the Claber system. In fact, quite the opposite. They use Push fit pipes, like most systems, but I actually find it quite stiff to put on. Doable with no tools required, but some hand strength. Once on, so difficult to get off that is easier to sacrifice a cm or so if pipe and cut the fitting off.

The Claber product I recommended in the previous post comes with a pressure reducing valve that you install as part of the kit, so this problem doesn’t occur. What I like in particular about the Claber system is that the pipes are tiny, only 5mm or 6mm thick, so very easy to hide.

@Jeremy Harris recommended a drip feed product made by Claber for irrigation of everything, except grass. On his recommendation, I bought this one and I’ve been very happy with it. Easy to install, and easy to “edit” it when you be plant anything new, or move stuff around. Only needs 1 bar of pressure. Doesn’t come with a Timer, but I got a cheap one from Screwfix made by Titan which is perfect. For the grass, you just rig a sprinkler up to a different timer (I have two of the ones from Screwfix, I think they were 18 quid each). Then you set the timers up to run at different times so they don’t compete with each other for flow/pressure.

I could, but the front door is made of steel and glass, mostly steel, and the Ubiquiti Dream Router is already relatively close to the front door (albeit in the adjacent room) so I was surprised how bad Ring’s signal is. But maybe this is something worth trying, as actually the location of my UDR makes the line of sight to the Ring doorbell really full of brick (and steel), so that isn’t the AP that the doorbell connects to - it prefers one on the first floor. I will experiment with one of the existing APs that I have. But this is unlikely to provide a decent signal to the other device, which is the camera for the side alley. The problem is that my ground floor walls, are double brick, with an aluminium wrapped insulation on the outside, and a grid of steel rods to hold up a membrane and void on the inside, a structure Michael Faraday would have been proud of.

So just going back to the drawing board on this one, because the reality is that PoE is always going to be better than wifi. With the doorbell, we can rig this for PoE. There are a few compromises, but we can do that. For the camera, we could also do PoE, but only if I use a Powerline adaptor to send the internet through our electrical circuit. I have just tested this at the power point on the inside of the house which is nearest the point outside of the house where I would install the IP camera, and even with the kids streaming Netflix HD, I'm still getting 72Mbps download / 61 Mbps upload and latency of 15ms unloaded / 39 ms loaded through the powerline. That is much slower than our stupidly fast connection on standard CAT6 cables, but clearly plenty fast enough for an IP camera. So the questions I have are: 1) Will a powerline adaptor send power as well as internet through it? Googling this it seems the answer is "it depends" but it wasn't clear to me on what it depends. Perhaps the model. I have a TPLink AV600 powerline adaptor, and with the brand new electrical wiring in the house, it's giving us a great "ethernet" connection. If not, is it just a case of using an injector alongside the powerline? 2) How hard is it to drill through an external wall? It's a solid brick wall with about 50mm of insulation and then silicone based render on the outside. There is a breathable membrane on the inside as well as a void, both of which were installed to deal with a historic damp problem (1930s house) but the damp was fairly low level, and this hole will be almost 10 feet from the ground, so I'm not too worried about penetrating the membrane. Will i need to waterproof the hole?

How would that impact its WiFi signal?

What do you see as the added advantage of CAT 6A over CAT 6 for this particular use? I ask because when I googled this previously, I found the main difference came to this: “Cable requirements are often dictated by the equipment that is currently installed, or will be installed in the near future. 99% of all network equipment will support Ethernet data cable speeds of 10 Mbp/s to 1 Gbp/s (1000 Mbp/s). Take stock of your current equipment. Does any of your equipment require or even support 10 Gbp/s (10,000 Mbp/s)? Do you have plans to upgrade your equipment to support this higher speed? If the answer is “yes”, then you should use Cat6A cabling. Most of the time, however, the answer is “no”. In this case, Cat6A speed cable will not benefit you in any way, but it will certainly cost more.” So I’m not sure of the justification for spending more for this requirement.

Shall I make my “you need to get a good divorce lawyer on retainer” joke again, or is it getting tired?

Ok, good to know, but I’ve bought the AP already and unlikely to be able to return it, although the vendor did state that it would be fine for outdoor use. I will call them on Monday to try and return it. The alternative would be to build a cover for it. I had planned to install it on a fence, in a fairly well sheltered spot, but it is uncovered. How much of a cover would this need? Its projection from the fence would only be 35mm, not sure that includes the mount. Say the mount might take it up to 45mm or 50mm at the very max. Would a small roof that projected from the fence by 90mm be sufficient?