Ffs, I’m going to take up darts!

[crispy_wafer]

Couldn’t for the life of me get a piece of pipe to hold pressure yesterday, stripped all the fittings off, double checking the pressure tester…

 

now I know why 🤣, bugger!

[marshian]

Ouch what caused that - clearly not a dart?

[Onoff]

This was a genuine near miss when I dropped a flat wood bit:

 

[ProDave]

Better than that, but no photos.

 

Drilling a 16mm hole through a thick stone wall for a cable.  When it broke through on the inside, I cut back a bit of the plasterboard, to find the drill bit had emerged through the wall between two 22mm copper pipes that nobody knew were there.  An inch either way and it would have been a wet problem to fix.

[crispy_wafer]

1 hour ago, marshian said:

Ouch what caused that - clearly not a dart?

Fixing some metal frame ceiling to the other side of the top of this stud wall.

 

 Nearly sorted, just connected to the shower valve now under test before I put the wall board back. thankfully plant room is next door so it was only 2m of pipe to pull/push 

[FuerteStu]

I bullseyed a copper pipe that was less that 5mm deep in the floor screed while fixing a footplate to close up a doorway after joining up shower/toilet separates.

 

Managed to do it at 9pm one night, all hell broke loose, including the stopcock handle breaking off when I tried to isolate. 

 

One thing with renovations, if it can go wrong, it usually will at the worst time possible! 

[crispy_wafer]

5 minutes ago, FuerteStu said:

I bullseyed a copper pipe that was less that 5mm deep in the floor screed while fixing a footplate to close up a doorway after joining up shower/toilet separates.

 

Managed to do it at 9pm one night, all hell broke loose, including the stopcock handle breaking off when I tried to isolate. 

 

One thing with renovations, if it can go wrong, it usually will at the worst time possible! 

Good shot sir

[Onoff]

Posted before but I suspected what I found when I carefully excavated. The previous owner had put a dinner gong directly above the light switch:

 

 

 

[ProDave]

^^^^  Ah yes safe zones.  Everybody know never to drill a hole in a safe zone without checking first.

 

Except the person hanging something on the wall, and then of course they measure meticulously to ensure the thing they are hanging exactly lines up with the centreline of the switch.  

 

BULLSEYE 

[SteamyTea]

Is this New Year confession time.

I drilled though a wall to install a water pipe for a shower, long drill bit.

Went through the wall fine, and then into the 300lt cylinder that was the other side.

Measure twice, drill once.

[Alan Ambrose]

A slightly different co-incidence.
 

Swapped out a dimmer switch for a light. Flipped the breaker, double checked circuit was powered off, swapped dimmer, powered it all up again.

 

No go. In fact after lengthy investigation it turned out all circuits on that entire phase were dead. What? Surely I couldn’t have taken out  the main fuse for that phase? How?

 

Much more investigation. Turns out that at exactly the same time I was swapping the dimmer, a likely lad had put his digger bucket through one of the phases of the underground LV line for the entire street.

[G and J]

2 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

Is this New Year confession time.

I drilled though a wall to install a water pipe for a shower, long drill bit.

Went through the wall fine, and then into the 300lt cylinder that was the other side.

Measure twice, drill once.

 

Oh I like these new year confessions as it makes me feel less uniquely dumb.   No less dumb, mind, but less alone in my folly.

 

I think I’ve done the same damn stupid thing three times.  Carefully put catching bowl under sink trap.  Skilfully dismantled said trap with spilling a drop.  Then thoughtlessly dumped the nasty water from the catching bowl into the above sink.  Sigh.

[crispy_wafer]

4 minutes ago, G and J said:

 

Oh I like these new year confessions as it makes me feel less uniquely dumb.   No less dumb, mind, but less alone in my folly.

 

I think I’ve done the same damn stupid thing three times.  Carefully put catching bowl under sink trap.  Skilfully dismantled said trap with spilling a drop.  Then thoughtlessly dumped the nasty water from the catching bowl into the above sink.  Sigh.

Made me smile, remember similar, albeit I was sat down on the floor hands under the sink and the Mrs helpfully took and emptied said bowl full of mucky water and crud down the sink.  Lots of cursing involved, thankfully I wasn’t head first under the sink.  Still reckon she did it on purpose.

[marshian]

1 hour ago, G and J said:

 

I think I’ve done the same damn stupid thing three times.  Carefully put catching bowl under sink trap.  Skilfully dismantled said trap with spilling a drop.  Then thoughtlessly dumped the nasty water from the catching bowl into the above sink.  Sigh

I can go one better (or worse depending on viewpoint)

 

Utility room sink waste was slow to drain - not unusual as Mrs Alien has a small tendency to slightly overdose on the washing powder so over a period of time it tends to clog up the drain so a strip down and clean out was required
 

Having learnt from previous occasions the last time I rebuilt the section I put a couple of strategic compression joints in what is mainly all solvent welds.

 

sections removed and then rodded/scraped/chiselled out and rinsed thro in the sink.

 

The plan was drop all the muck and water into a bucket under the sink……

 

Off course only a complete idiot would pull the plug out without having placed a bucket in the cupboard under the sink…….

 

oh how I laughed!!!!!

[Andehh]

Using a multi cutter to channel out plasterboard, and went straight through a plastic water feed. Got a face full of water and a huge scramble dumping the sink cupboard across the floor getting to the stop cock!

 

Then a frantic drive to screwfix to buy everything to resolve before the wife came home. 

[marshian]

I'm pretty OCD when it comes to pipework/wiring now - If I've had a floor up I normally take a photo of pipework/wiring while the floor is up

 

Then I'll mark out the "unsafe" zones with permanent marker on the floor - the photo is especially useful if you then go and tile the floor and cover the "unsafe" zone markings (Always handy to be able to refer to it if you ever need to put a fixing in)

 

Of course I haven't always done the above - I don't have a picture of the master bedroom floor before it went down - when it was laid I also didn't mark the floor for any pipework or wiring.

 

There is one section that always has a little creak - wakes up Mrs Alien if I've come in late having had a few beers

 

She wanted new carpet so we ordered carpet and arranged for a fitter - day before we emptied all the furniture, cut up and removed all the old carpet and underlay - the morning of the carpet fitting I walked on the creaky bit and it reminded me to throw another screw or two at it - as I looked at the floor it was bloody obvious I'd missed two screws out

 

Creaky floor resolved - new carpet and underlay laid

 

OK you all know what happened next.......... well not actually next as water takes a little while to escape if you've put a self cutting screw thro a copper heating pipe and plasterboard is pretty good at holding water - screws that held it to the ceiling joist not so much

[Spinny]

Not a confession, but ... Builder sent his chippy to site with some youngster in tow (doubtless very cheap labour for the builder). Chippy sets the youngster up to put some battens on the wall - simple enough. Youngster proceeds to drill all the way through the concrete block wall and out the other side. Which I discover some days later when wondering why bits of new plaster have fallen off the wall on the other side. Multiple holes right through the wall coming within mm of drilling straight into the back of the new £2k boiler wall mounted by the plumber days before and the cylinder expansion tank.

[Onoff]

Many years ago as a lift engineer's mate. Went to a site to help out. Governor was spitting feathers and everyone was coming in for it. One of the not so bright labourers had been tasked with opening out some holes in a load of plates. He'd made himself a "bench" by stacking a couple of cable drums on top of each other. Unfortunately these were full rolls of the specially ordered flat form cable...

 

[ProDave]

Okay 1 more.

 

First self build, over 20 years ago now.  Originally planned a square shower tray.  UFH pipes laid out to suit that.  Floor marked with big marker pen showing where every single pipe was.

 

Changed plans.  Decided on rectangular shower.  Waste in a different place.  Cutting the hole for the waste, a fountain of water started to come from under the floor.  Yep I had failed to see my own markings and cut right through an UFH pipe.

[Nickfromwales]

22 hours ago, FuerteStu said:

I bullseyed a copper pipe that was less that 5mm deep in the floor screed while fixing a footplate to close up a doorway after joining up shower/toilet separates.

 

Managed to do it at 9pm one night, all hell broke loose, including the stopcock handle breaking off when I tried to isolate. 

 

One thing with renovations, if it can go wrong, it usually will at the worst time possible! 

The quick fix here is to grab the screw and put it back in. Slows the flow, or if you’re gentle can actually nearly stop it altogether.

 

13 hours ago, Andehh said:

Using a multi cutter to channel out plasterboard, and went straight through a plastic water feed. Got a face full of water and a huge scramble dumping the sink cupboard across the floor getting to the stop cock!

 

Then a frantic drive to screwfix to buy everything to resolve before the wife came home. 

Just looking for a chicken emoji lol.