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A more experienced DIYer and family member came over and had a look at my half finished project. He pointed out a mistake I’d made. He’s coming back tomorrow with a “mitre saw” so we can fix it. I will need to Google what type of saw that is. And tidy up my workspace!

So I’m building a cupboard in my converted loft. There is a sloping ceiling coming down on one side of the room, and I’m installing some vertical wooden posts from the sloping ceiling down to the floor, so that I can then hang some cupboard doors from those verticals. Each door will be about 135cm high. I thought this would be a very straightforward task. I ordered some tulipwood posts that were 2.7m long, ready planed and the right dimensions so that all I would have to do was cut them diagonally to match the diagonal of the ceiling slope. Turns out that instead of a perfect 45 degree angle, my ceiling is 46.7 degrees. It also turns out that the walls either side of this cupboard area are not perfectly square. So there has been quite a bit of swearing and trial and error to try and get the angles right, and to try and mitigate the non-squareness of the walls. Also a few trips to screwfix to get things that I didn’t realise I needed until midway through (such as knee pads, plasterboard fixings and a countersink bit). I’ve probably spent 3 x 3hr sessions on this job, and still only finished half of it! Is this complete underestimation of the task normal??? Part of the problem is I am trying to achieve perfection, when it really is not required.

I’m sure you are right, but would be helpful to understand what makes the Geka Plus 4 way better? Is it simply that metal is more durable than plastic? Or is there some other advantage of the one you’ve proposed?

This looks quite good, though wonder if I will have enough water pressure for it:

Looking at the weather for the next 10 days and can’t see any rain. Need to sort my irrigation system out. I didn’t lay an underground sprinkler system prior to laying turf, so I’m limited to a simple hose sprinkler. But my grass area isn’t huge, so two sprinklers is enough. There appear to be a multitude of splitters available: made of brass, plastic, in a simple Y shape, or a sort of T bar looking arrangement. Also wondering about whether I should get a three-way splitter so that I can have a spare outlet for general hosing. What have others implemented, and are you happy?

Yep. Commonly known as a genie lift, although other brands are also available.

Did you ask for alternatives? Otherwise, it’s like calling a car dealership, asking for a car, and being sent one you didn’t want. If you want a BMW you need to ask for one. Otherwise you might get a Dacia. Trying to be more constructive, it’s worth noting that RSJs typically aren’t that expensive. Once you get a new design from a new SE, you might find that the RSj supplier is willing to deliver the new beam and take the old beam away at the same time, and that it won’t cost more than a few hundred pounds for the supplier’s trouble. Find out who the supplier is, call them directly and see if they are amenable to helping you (once you have the spec for the new beam of course).

I would try to do what you can to comply with the request. If you cannot comply by the deadline, explain that you need an extra few days and ask them to delay the decision until you’ve had the opportunity to comply.

We have a Ring video doorbell, and four Alexa devices (an Echo Show, an Echo and an Echo Dot and an Echo Plug). It’s currently set up so that when the ring doorbell button is pressed, each Echo sounds the bell, and the Echo Show displays the video feed from the bell. In theory, this is a very good thing. In practice, there are two issues: 1) the video free on the Echo Show does not display for long enough. We have that Echo va Show by the front door, but if you are on the loft floor, by the time you get downstairs to the front door, the video feed has stopped, so you can’t use it to see who is there. 2) It would be great if the doorbell sound on the Echo Plug only sounded between 7am and 7pm, so that it doesn’t wake the kids. I could put a timer on that plug, but the additional hardware will look quite unsightly, and I was hoping there would be a “smarter” solution can either of these issues be solved? if so, how?

The photo is not the OP’s.

I doubt it. We laid about 9 or 10 tonne bags of top soil/soil improver and watered it thoroughly for the first month. Something went wrong in the second month I guess. I think I let it grow too high.

We had new turf laid about 2 months ago. Lawn is now fairly well established, but this last 3 weeks I didn’t cut it regularly enough and now it’s a bit patchy in places, and I’m other places the bottom of the grass looks a bit brown. Found various products made by Westland which claim to thicken and/or darken the lawn. Branded “aftercut”. Anyone have any experience with these?

Hi, not too happy with my 9 year old plastic Bosch rotary lawnmower. Thinking of upgrading to a cylindrical one, as apparently they “stress” the grass less, but just wondering what other’s experiences are like.

Thanks guys, you’ve saved me a lot of money!

The socket will mainly be used for lawn mower and other tools. I naively assumed that to be safe, I needed RCD protection in case I cut the power cable for the lawn mower. But the house was just rewired from scratch, so does that mean we will have RCD integrated on all power sockets at the consumer unit?

I’m afraid that doesn’t mean much to me. What does the extra pole mean in tens of cost benefit analysis?

So it’s clear that the MK Masterseal has a higher impact resistance rating, but is that worth spending an extra £61.40 for?

Yes, that is how they are meant to work.

My sparky installed an external socket made by British General. It didn’t survive long enough for me to use it. Maybe somebody knocked into it, or maybe the outdoor temperature changes cracked the plastic, but it died. Screwfix refunded me the £9.95 purchase price but have refused to pay towards the electrician’s charges to replace the unit. Lesson learnt: don’t buy cheap! The next cheapest unit (at about £26) is Knightsbridge but I’ve never been happy with any sockets I’ve bought from them. They have all had some aesthetic design flaw or make an annoying noise when in use that just smacks of poor engineering. The next price up (at least in Screwfix’s catalogue) is MK Masterseal. Expensive, about £42! Wondered on people’s thoughts of these brands? was I just unlucky with BG, or is this a genuinely sh*t brand? Thoughts on Knightsbridge and MK?

Thanks, I’ll Google her.

What dimension chain/hole will you use?

We have planned to use chains as a decorative way of transmitting rainwater down from the gutter to the ground (about 2.3m). However, saw this somewhere else, and it failed horribly. Have a look at the video: ec24ac23-1c5c-4276-bd58-f4cf9b0b8650.mp4 Mentioned this to the designer, who said several chains will work better than one, and the trick is to fill the hole with the chains as much as possible. Our hole has a diameter of 52mm, so wondering which chain size to get and how many lengths of chain to try and implement. Anyone have experience of this?

I have an imist system. The unit is bleeping a rather loud intermittent bleep every 20 minutes. I suspect it is some sort of alarm to warn the user that it needs its annual service (which is booked in two weeks) but I don’t know. Does anybody have an imist? I tried locating the manual online, but the imist website is down. We could flick the switch at the main consumer board, but I have a feeling that may shut the water off (there is a priority demand valve that diverts water to only the imist in the event of a power cut - stupid, I know).

Just wondering So I’m exploring the idea of splitting them up into sections. For a 140cm width, will two x 70cm be okay, or am I best to split into three. I’d like the left hand side to have the ability to store records, so I could have two times 35cm wide sections, plus one 70cm section for books. Although storage areas will actually be less than this, as need to allow for the width of the uprights.

With OSB, we were advised by our liquid roof membrane supplier (that was poured onto the osb) to leave a 1mm expansion gap. But maybe plywood is more stable than osb.