SimonD

The leak is on the return connection of your central heating. This fitting is the isolator and boiler drain down point. To isolate this you turn the valve which sticks out the bottom of the connection. You also need to isolate the flow side. You then need to depressurise the boiler, drain it down and then probably just replace the fibre washer. However, even though this connection is outside the boiler, it is part of it and there's no telling if there's more of a problem inside. Get a gas safe registered person in to have a look and repair it as they may have to order more parts too. It's not unknown for those valves to need replacing entirely every so often.

Is that a drywall specific shadow gap bead or a plastet skim one? Ive come across the Trim-tex stuff when considering finishes earlier in out build. Apparently made specifically for drywall. https://www.profilestore.co.uk/c/drywall-bead/trim-tex/shadow-gap-beads

Yes, indeed. I've only ever managed bits of all those, maybe that's my problem...

Quite difficult to tell not standing infront of the boiler, but has anyone checked the condensate trap and drain? You can get a very similar sound on ignition if it's blocked and there's condensate backed up into the hex. You probably also mean mBar rather than mV. If gas pressure is too high you will see larger flames on a hob - how much larger at 27-28mBar is the question. Water gauges are about as accurate as you can get as long as there isn't a kink of obstruction on the gauge/hoses. A digital gauge is very accurate too as long as it has been calibrated as it should be annually. I use a digital gauge all the time and it's spot on, and the Network provider has never questioned my measurement when I call for a replacement regulator because of either low or high supply pressure. What were the measurements after replacing the regulator? As that should have been tested given the questions.

So yesterday I had a busy day dot and dabbing and thanks to the guy on On the Trowel Youtube channe, I skimmed my first ever walls as I need to get this room finished in the next week or so to give my younger son a bedroom - it was supposed to be in September. The wall was straight, plumb and the plastering was not a halloween horror show - just a few minor imperfections. I'm most pleased about the clean top corner to the primed ceiling:

I'm the east side, but Salisbury is still about 1.5 hours away. Thanks for the offer though, I'll check out my local suggestions and then ping you a message if needed!

Ah yes, thanks. I've investigated only to find that this appears to be the case. Where two cracks they're along the lines of a cut down board that only spans 600mm so it's only on two half studs. No wonder it's cracked around the joints. Now I have to figure out what to do about it. Just fixing the cracks is going to do the job really. Do I take the drastic action to cut this out, make a bigger whole and reboard to span several studs? It's a big wall 3.1m high by 7.4m long so not really practical to do the whole thing. Studding is pretty spot on as I did all that myself and its been in a long time so perfectly acclimatised to the house now. Yes, the third crack is at a joint that has missed the stud - thankfully one side of the wall is open so I can fix this easily!

Further to my earlier post I'm trying to understand why I've experienced cracking in the skim on new plasterboard on stud walls. I've had a look and it appears that skrim tape has been used at these joints. Can someone shed some light on other reasons this might happen? And is it fairly common for cracks to appear in new plasterwork as snagging?

Should have done a smaller project first! This too. That would have been ideal for where we are. I would also have appreciated finding BH a bit earlier, as that could have saved me a whole load of headaches. It didn't find this place until I was ordering my windows!

Thanks both. I might tap you for those details to see if they'll travel to me. I'm just the other side of Bath so some won't travel to me from Bristol as it can be a right PITA. A customer of mine has suggested I contact a friend of theirs who knows a few of the right people in the area so I'll try that first.

Yes 🙁

I'm not sure, it looks like there is skrim as I can just see a bit of it where it's been finished poorly at the bottom. If it is skrimmed, what else would cause the cracking?

Yeah, you're right. He did a couple of walls when I was there which seemed fine and I've clearly made the mistake of thinking I could then leave him to it. Clearly not, but it's a lesson in staying there to supervise all the time. Thanks, but I'm about double that time if not more! I'll go on another search.

The plasterer did it with one other person helping him, but mainly him. They work together and the other person was also boarding up the stud walls which the plasterer then skimmed. I've now found a number of cracks on the skimmed stud walls too. This is a picture of one wall. I can run my hand across the surface and feel the texture shown by the photo. Below are photos showing the undulation of the walls. I already spray painted one of the boy's rooms where quite a bit of the uneven surface and roughness showed up when painted and the undulation of the dot and dab walls showed up when fitting the coving. Generally finish is pretty poor in corners and around door frame etc. with loads of snots I'll have to remove to fit the skirting plumb: Dot and dab waves: High spot: Timeline 1.mp4 And now cracks in stud walls:

TLDR; what should a good skim finish look and feel like? Story below: So, sadly the plasterer recommended to me has turned out to be a liability. Had him in to do some work in the house and while my wife was there, I stupidly allowed the work to go ahead while I was away as my wife was in a hurry to get it done. I returned home to find the wonkiest poorly finished reveals ever, which they came to remove and then re-finish. However, in another room, as I was priming the plaster for painting I found a vertical crack on one of the dot & dab walls. Plasterer suggested drilling and filling behind the crack with foam and he would come a re-scim the wall to make good. I then inspected the work in more detail only to find loads of flex at the bottom of the board. Alarm bells started ringing so I remove the dot & dab from the wall to find that there were no beads along the long of short edges of the boards and the crack was down to movement along the long edge - in some places the dabs were as far as 400mm apart with the join in the middle of this gap. I've also found that another dot & dab wall is out of plumb and wavy along the length of the wall, so no straight edge used there. I've painted one room to find the plaster finish in there to be below par and plaster mess left everywhere so this guy isn't coming back to do anything else. I'm looking at the other areas he's skimmed and wondering what I should be seeing to determine the quality of finish. Rubbing my hands on the wall there are quite a lot of areas where the plaster feels like rough sandpaper. I can unfortunately also feel quite a lot of undulation of the plaster and there are some obvious full height lines of high spots at a few of the joins. So in short, what is considered a good enough skim finish in the trade please?

I'm not quite sure how I did it either. I'm sure there's a repayment lined up somewhere! My oldest son loves the mountains, so we're off to the wilderness of northern Sweden for a while, then mainly to Austria to explore there for the climbing, but as we're meandering, we'll be visiting France, Switzerland and Germany, possible nip over the Norway from Sweden too. Desparately need to finish packing, meanwhile I've got some backboxes and 1st fix cabling to do to that the bloody electricians 'forgot' so the plasterer can come in to finish boarding up and plaster a few rooms while I'm away - hard work this malarky

I think you're working too hard. I'm now off to take my son around Europe for 2 months. My wife's not too pleased as she's got to stay home and work coz she's an employee.....

It's possible. I was insured through Towergate for 2 years and now through Howden Insurance.

Make the stud wall on the floor without fixing the osb. Then lift in place. All you need to start are some braces to keep the wall upright. Then once upright can you brace for square, straight and plumb. My advice is build the whole stud wall structure without the osb, that way it's easy to attach temp bracing and only once all sections are in place can you take the brace off. Start like this: To this: To this: To this: Then osb. All one man job (with 16 year old nephew to help get the glulams from the driveway... 😉 Then use nails for the stud walls.

No, they work 😉, with just plain old plasterboardand even better double plaster board and even on internal timber cladding. You just need to have a decent cavity behind the plasterboard to get the fixings in. This is partly why to toggle clamps are great as they need less room behind the plasterboard but also you can remove the screw, or bolt (because they come in different thread sizes) and the fixing stays in place.

I don't trust those. These are much, much better: https://www.tcfixings.co.uk/category/toggler-snaptoggle-plasterboard-anchors/1001 which I use to fix radiators to plasterboard. Or, I use these to fix towel rads to plasterboard (because they get pulled about with towels etc. which are solid as: https://www.geefix.com/

My wife is constantly asking for a worktop that actually stands up to use and abuse without staining and deterioration and looks nice - noen of the ones we've had so far stand up to her test. I keep on telling her that the only way to got is stainless steel (barring a bit of scratching over time which I think is just natural patina). One, day I'll get my way, I'm sure. I miss stainless worktops. In the last place I did get some stainless faced drawer fronts that were really nice with oak.

You highlight the biggest problem with combi boilers - and long runs from the combi. I always ask my customers who are considering a combi whether their use of water involves frequent small draw offs and in those cases, it's always more efficient to have a cylinder, or some kind of small hot water storage. Some combis with preheat help, but not by much.

Do we need a pronoun signature, I wonder? If we did, mine would definitely be 'it' 😉 I'll go back to my cave so as not to cause further offense.

This is a ridiculous idea, don't even go down that route. It's never as simple as people think to 'just' run a new gas pipe and then re-plumb the system for the 2 boilers.