ProDave

@AnonymousBosch needs to come and describe in all the detail how he came to be missing a couple of digits.

Re blood under thumbnails. Years ago on a Sunday I was doing some fencing and hit my thumb very hard with a hammer. It came up with a lovely blood blister under the nail and throbbed like mad. Next morning at work, I went straight to see the nurse, a perk of working somewhere with a pretty good medical facility, no waiting hours in A&E. She punctured the nail to let the blood out and the throbbing stopped immediately. True to her prediction I did loose the nail and a new one grew back in it's place.

It's not all bad here either. At the local music festival several years ago when my daughter was just a toddler, we had a backpack with the camera, video camera and SWMBO's phone in it. At some point it fell off the buggy. While we were frantically looking for it, my phone rang. The finder had been going through all the numbers in the phones address book trying to find the owner of the phone and the backpack and we met up and they gave it back to us, all completely intact. I gave them a cash gift to reward their honesty. That would not be so easy now with a modern smart phone locked to the owners fingerprint.

Just a thought. Everyone seems to be using 2 willis heaters. Our worst case heat load when -10 outside and +20 inside is just a little over 2kW so if I were doing this, I am sure just one heater would be plenty.

My prefered method is a 2 gang switch, one for the light and one for the fan. Then it becomes a whole lot simpler. And when you go for a night pee, you don't have to turn the fan on.

For all the gardening stuff, mowers, strimmers, shovels and spades etc I built this:

I asked earlier if you have a multimeter? If you do, follow the cable coming out of the valve head it will go to a junction box or a wiring centre. Measure with the multimeter set to ac volts between the brown and the blue core. If there is no voltage, it is a control fault. If there is 240V there and the valve is not opening then the motor has gone and you need to replace the valve head.

There is an old derelict log cabin building at the top of our road, a former pub. Not long after it was built in the 70's , the roof, complete with the top 7 rows of logs from the walls blew off. IT was rebuilt with even longer tie down straps.

Another gem I spotted at Christmas Fine if you have a 110V razor and you never want to remove the shaver socket for any reason.

I have had my self build insurance running for 4 years now, renewing for just a small increase, just over £500 last year. Due again in May but hoping to try and move ordinary insurance this time.

Right, I am back from my further diagnosis visit. I took the bottom adjusting knob assembly off. With that off, if I open the return service valve, water pours out. If I open the flow service valve, water just trickles out. To confirm it is not the actual flow pipe from the boiler blocked, I cracked open the nut on the output of the flow isolator and water poured out of that. So that seems to confirm it is not accepting hot water flow in even when stone cold. I could feel the cartridge but it's close to the floor and I could not see in and it was not inclined just to drop out so I aborted that. I can't remove the complete assembly and leave it, as annoyingly one of the service valves does not shut off completely so would leave a drip drip drip with nothing to plug the holes left by the blending valve. Off to order the replacement. Oh and Continental just replied. they no longer do that manifold, they can't supply spares, they suggest a new front end to the manifold with a different mixer and all the changes to the pipework to go with that. No thank you.

Yes, as you would a caravan chassis.

Definitely treat the container under the caravan regs which basically means it must have a TT earth and an RCD. Your site sockets should already be on a TT earth, but check. Fit a mini CU inside the container with a 30mA rcd

Thasnks. I am going back there shortly so that will be my first line of attack.

Try this link https://www.mepstock.co.uk/plumbing-supplies/polyplumb-pipes-and-fittings/polypipe-28mm-manifold-control-mixing-valve I have found the same valve in 4 places so far. These are the cheapest and the only ones offering free postage as well. The shopping cart had screwed up for me as well. I would love to speak to the web designer and ask him what was the logic in deciding to empty the cart if you have not bought the item in a few hours? They obviously don't understand consumer behaviour. The only way to find out the postage is put it in your cart, then you go and look for alternative suppliers before making up your mind, It needs to stay there until you buy it or delete it.

I was hoping for a positive diagnosis so I could order a part, then go and fit it. I still don't have that confidence to make that decision. So I think tomorrow I am going to go and do a partial drain down, and remove the blending valve. That comes with additional complications as I then have to disconnect power from the manifold control box so I can then leave the system partly drained down and in a state that the rest of the heating can be operated.

Just a thought. Could that have been WWII bomb damage, and the left hand part of the building as viewed was rebuilt, with different bricks. If so it might have been a poor job hence the unusual coursing, but if it has stood since then it can't be all bad, I wonder if there are any records that might tell the story?

I have yet to find an mdpe to copper fitting that I have any confidence it. I much prefer MDPE to (male or female your choice) BSP and then BSP to your chosen pipe type.

Yes, and running the adjusting knob from end to end.

I now have a part number and a cheaper price for this blending valve https://www.mepstock.co.uk/temp-cart.php But before I part with some hard earned cash, would really appreciate a second opinion if this is the likely fault?

Nice find finding electric awnings to fit yourself. When we built the last house, 15 years ago, I could not find anyone selling an electric one to install yourself, just companies wanting to fit them for you. It struck me a bit like the stair lift market, tightly sewn up. So then we opted for a purely manual one. By the time we left the fabric was getting pretty tatty, particularly the last lap on the roll that remains always exposed. If fitting one again I would want a full cassette where no fabric shows when retracted. They put a lot of load on the wall, so really only suitable for brick or block walls. I would not want to try fitting one to our wood fibre walls, or a rendered ICF wall for example.

Hi and welcome. I originate from Oxfordshire so know the area well. Best of luck.

That whole left hand wing looks to have been rebuilt. Was that rebuilding what was there previously, or a completely new extension? I would have asked more questions at time of purchase.

+1 to above. Perhaps get a certificate of lawful development for what's there first. Then apply for planning permission to rebuild them where they are, or in a different place if you wish. Fall back is just repair like for like what is there.

This is now a completed project. I formatted the HDD as NTFS even though several people said a BT hub will only work with FAT32. Well it does work with NTFS thankfully. I had some fun and games getting W10 to see the network disk. Just like on Zorin you cannot browse the network to find it. Thanks to people who have trodden this path before and posted their findings on line, with W10 you first have to drill down into some windows settings and turn on SMB1.0/CIFS Client support. then you have to map a network drive and manually enter the address \\192.168.1.254\usb1 So all working and I have all my files accessible from any computer now.