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Ripping it all out and starting again is not going to happen. skirting and ceiling coving remaining in place and electrics not an issue. So if I were to skim on top of the plaster which option would anyone go for?

Walls have been stripped of wallpaper back to original plaster (lime I presume?). Assuming it is still sound what would people recommend for skimming onto it? 1. bluegrit 2. PVA till tacky (with one coat before?) 3. pink SBR wait till fully dry Got a whole house to do so quite like the idea of something you can get on and leave to dry cheers

Madness! Do what you are planning to do. (not based on any real knowledge of building regs on this but it was fine for us)

I need to plaster a wall where the most recent skim wasn’t well bonded. I've scraped all the skim off the wall now and wondering best way to re plaster it. The green section you can see in the picture is old wallpaper - very thin and well bonded to the wall (no flaking/weak spots) and would be very tricky to get off. two questions. 1. do we think it should be ok to apply a couple coats 1/3 pva/water and then skim over? Or would I be better off using some blue grit? 2. In taking off the failed skim I have made a couple of small patches that have gone back to the blocks and need filling - what would be the best option for filling them to allow skimming after no more than 24 hours (don’t particularly want to buy a whole bag of bonding for such a small amount)

Yes indeed. thanks very much for your help - next time I’m in Wales I’ll buy you a few pints!

Yes definitely a little action there. also did a magnet check on this T with no sticking to the pipe. is this likely the T section you said can cause problems (it’s just by the hot water tank)?

So………. i managed to find this little beauty! Im wondering if that is an auto vent (that maybe ceased on the auto bit). opened it and there was gurgling and eventually water came out. fired up the boiler and it got going, much gurgling, but didn’t stop straight away like it had. But would go into anti cycling mode, but not turn off and get going again after it had cooled down again. Eventually some low heat to radiators, but not smooth. went up to the vent again to open and see if it would let air out (a little came out). trying hot water now and it is consistently working at a high temperature so that’s good! if I continue to struggle to get the hot water working properly am I right to think that going back to open the vent is a good idea to try and get rid of any more air? and is it likely an auto vent that has ceased to auto vent and that I could replace it with a functioning auto vent?

The pump is in the hot water cupboard upstairs and I’m pretty sure it is higher than the bleed point on the rads.

Clicked the button on the wilo. It made some different sounds for the duration (the display said it was doing the auto bleed). Eventually I stopped it after 15 minutes. Did it a couple times. no automatic air vents on the system as far as I know

One more question for anyone. when you bleed a non automatic pump you do it until you get water coming through. when I used the auto bleed function on the wilo I didn’t at any point have water come out and the bleeding then stop. Should there be water coming out at the point it successfully bleeds all the air out ?

Thanks for the replies Nick. so you don’t think there is anything obviously structurally wrong with the pipe work?

There is very little pipe work to see. Gas enters from the bottoms and flow and return on top.

Do you mean a drain point on a low radiator?

Boiler probably replaced 10 years ago, old leaky rads replaced for new less than two years ago, no real issue since last week

1.Yes I did open them. 2. auto bleed button pressed and on for a while 3. Well, I’m not sure how to answer that so I guess no. I didn’t test that when I had the pump off, maybe I should have. But the isolators seemed to twist shut and open nicely.

Glad my pump woes are generating such a lively conversation! good news - managed to swap over the pump fine. No leaky isolators, all went well. Thanks chaps. bad news - similar problem, boiler fires up on demand and quickly gets too hot on flow pipe and my boiler (Vailant ecotec plus 415) comes up with F72 error (flow and/or return NTC fault). Ran the auto bleed function on the WILO for 15 minutes, tried with the circuit isolators (silver boxes - don’t know actual name!) manually opened, same result. Pump seems to be running fine just no flow from the boiler. Spoke to Vailant and their technical support said the F72 error meant the problem was external to the boiler. Spoke to plumber (too busy to come out but happy to do a video call while I was trying to get it working) and he said most likely an airlock or maybe sludge build up (though most of the rads were changed a few years back). Spoke to the gas safety check people (who came on Monday for the yearly checkup and reckoned it was most likely the pump) and they have suggested draining, changing a bit of pipe work (more below), filling with cleaner and circulating for a couple days, drain again and fill with inhibitor. the pipe work that they thought needed changing I presume is the ‘u’ section you can just make out in the pics (close up on second pic) on the return pipe work next to the boiler. He reckoned that was an airlock liability and I presume the plan would be to run a ‘t’ straight across to the main return pipe from the down pipe and getting rid of the ‘u’ does that sound like a reasonable plan? Pics in next post

Just seen this. Ok I will do. Does that still influence whether the boiler will work for the heating if there is no call for hot water?

Thanks for the quick response Nick. I’m not a plumbing expert but I think it’s a gravity system! The boiler does heating and feeds the hot water tank and there are a couple of tanks in the loft. im a bit worried about how well the isolators will work as I know there’s already an old isolator in the hot water cupboard that doesn’t turn! So im a little reluctant to have a go myself in case I can’t get the new one to fit properly. But it would be cheaper than getting someone in to do it!

Can anyone recommend a suitable pump replacement for this one? well, I’m assuming it’s the pump as the boiler is working but the heat never gets far from the boiler at all and the pump is making non standard noises!

Not sure my view will be the most popular here but I’m not convinced any SE will provide any useful input that can replace common sense. It doesn’t look too bad to me and it seems that were it actually be continuing to move apart that you would know about it. If the area with the major crack were repointed properly I think it would not be especially obvious that there had been movement. If it were mine I were I would just get some heavy duty ties embedded in the wall and make good. If you wanted to go a bit further you could also take out some stone and fit a large precast concrete lintel into the wall to help join each side of the crack. just my 2 cents!

Don’t much about fan coil units and ashp. my first thought is 16kw sounds way too big if you are already doing a full thermal/air tightness upgrade. how large is the property?

It’s a pretty big lintel for a small fireplace. It’s a bit weird to see that crack - is there more up above in the brickwork (can’t see any from the photo)? Doesn’t appear to be any deflection in the lintel. My instinct is that it should be fine. but it isn’t too big a job to replace since you are back to brick at the moment.

I think you have to be careful with old solid walls that you don’t risk interstitial condensation if you use too much insulation. I generally just used 80mm boards with normal lime render for the finish and levelling coats. Didn’t have any problems with building control but then I was going over building control specs for roof and under floor insulation as well.