The Lemon Fool

As we work our way through the new house (with bits dating back 250 years) we are coming across some interesting 'repairs'.

The loose floorboard in the bedroom was a good one - rolled back the carpet to find a couple of boards not screwed down and no underlay on them. Lifting them reveled the heating pipes were not nothed deep enough in the joists, so rather than chisel down the notches slightly they just rested the boards on the pipes and then removed the underlay to make the carpet look level. They have done this in several places in the house.

The heating was "kettling" so I decided to drain it and clean it. Except there is no drain anywhere. It appears there is one to the outside behind the boiler, except it is now under the patio. As all the downstairs rads are fed by microbore in the wall (a mix of plastic and copper) I spect a couple of says raining each rad and fitting a drain tail on each 'leg'. Of course draining it meant stopping it filling, and as the header tank is wedged (literally, with wedges) in the eaves I turned off the water and fitted an isolator on the fill to the header and replaced the smapped one on the drop from the header tank.

MrsF wants a shelf in the understairs cupboard so she can hide the boxes of old crap [1] we'd ignored in the same place in the old house for 15 years. There were a lot of cracks in the corner and the wall moved, as the stud wall was only fixed at one end! Solved by a couple of L-brackets which I half sunk into the skim.
Lifting the carpet in this 130 x 70 cm space revealed the gripper was unsurprisingly glued to the old tiles, or at least used to be. However the gripper is in 22 pieces between 4 and 10 inches long. The coat hooks I removed to paint around were held on with 4 inch screws which look like they go directly into the brickwork. The initial hole is about 15mm across but tapers into the brickwork. Same for the ones protruding from the skirting which explains why they weren't tight.

It has been beautifully wallpapered with blown vimura, although why they didn't remove any of the smoke alarms (battery ones so not a difficult task) is beyond me. Still, the replacement hides the hole in the paper.

They had however had a brilliant water filter installed, quite a posh one with a byoass and it's own cutoff. This was useful as it has ben fitted on the rising main into the house BEFORE the stopcock. Still it is nice to know Im showering in dechlorinated water and at least the newly refilled heating system won't get limescale.

Still, it keeps me busy - I might investigate why the downstairs loo cistern is fed from the pumped shower supply later, the basin in the same room is gravity fed.

Paul

[1] Not her exact words.

DrFfybes wrote:....the heating pipes were not nothed deep enough in the joists....

Oh what a lot of fun.
And I bet the pipes weren't insulated. There is a prevalent myth that pipes in the house need no insulation.

All in all makes one wonder what would have transpired if the average know-nothing had bought the house.

V8

88V8 wrote:

DrFfybes wrote:....the heating pipes were not nothed deep enough in the joists....

Oh what a lot of fun.
And I bet the pipes weren't insulated. There is a prevalent myth that pipes in the house need no insulation.

All in all makes one wonder what would have transpired if the average know-nothing had bought the house.

V8

Yes, as I point out to plumbers, "I want all the heat for myself, and not for the mice".

regards, dspp

88V8 wrote:

DrFfybes wrote:....the heating pipes were not nothed deep enough in the joists....

Oh what a lot of fun.
And I bet the pipes weren't insulated. There is a prevalent myth that pipes in the house need no insulation.

All in all makes one wonder what would have transpired if the average know-nothing had bought the house.

V8

Look no further than the bodge job I'm in.

88V8 wrote:

DrFfybes wrote:....the heating pipes were not nothed deep enough in the joists....

Oh what a lot of fun.
And I bet the pipes weren't insulated. There is a prevalent myth that pipes in the house need no insulation.

All in all makes one wonder what would have transpired if the average know-nothing had bought the house.

V8

It is under the upstairs floor, so not a total loss of heat. I did put some pipe wrap on the bits I found but only had a small piece. The loft pipes aren't very insulated (neither is the loft).

I think it had been like this for years - the previous owners just seemed oblivious to the potential problems and poor workmanship in the place. One internal wall had blistering paint. It was an old outside wall before the house was extended and has no damp course. It had gypsum plaster applied, then some waterproofer, then several coats of paint (which peeled off easily). I chipped off plaster up to the dry level and I'm leaving it to dry and have some lime plaster and clay paint to go over it. Pretty much anywhere where the plaster has been painted it peels off as it was probably never given a mist coat, just straight on with vinyl mid-sheen.

The concrete garage floor (double garage built in 2005 and had an oak tree with a branch resting on the roof when we moved in) goes up about 2 inches in the corners and was 'levelled' with a plasterer's float as you can see the trail marks. I'm pretty sure there are better tools for that job.

As for the wood screws holding the socket on in the hall, I'm saving investigating that for a special occasion.

The survey report was 65 pages long, mainly minor things like wrong sort of mortar, missing lintel, misaligned gutters, wrong/no/poor insulation, downpipes missing or going into gulleys filled with moss, etc etc. I suspect another 5-10 year and it would have had serious issues.

Paul

DrFfybes wrote:The survey report was 65 pages long, mainly minor things like wrong sort of mortar, missing lintel, misaligned gutters, wrong/no/poor insulation, downpipes missing or going into gulleys filled with moss, etc etc.

But you bought it. Is your middle name Masochist?

V8

DrFfybes wrote:The survey report was 65 pages long, mainly minor things like wrong sort of mortar, missing lintel, misaligned gutters, wrong/no/poor insulation, downpipes missing or going into gulleys filled with moss, etc etc. I suspect another 5-10 year and it would have had serious issues.

Paul

I bought my charming leetle 17th c* thatched cottage last year with no survey as I knew that: 1) any survey report would also run to 65 pages or more, and 2) whatever it said, I was gonna buy it anyway.

Being built in 1700 I reckon this still makes it 17th century, just about. Feel free to quibble

Mike4 wrote:Being built in 1700 I reckon this still makes it 17th century, just about. Feel free to quibble

I'm one of these strange people who begins counting at one, so no quibble.

Ours is allegedly 1620, we had a survey but we too bought it anyway.

V8

88V8 wrote:

DrFfybes wrote:The survey report was 65 pages long, mainly minor things like wrong sort of mortar, missing lintel, misaligned gutters, wrong/no/poor insulation, downpipes missing or going into gulleys filled with moss, etc etc.

But you bought it. Is your middle name Masochist?

V8

It was either this or go and get a proper job.

MrsF worries I'll get bored now I'm not working.

And yes, we were going to buy this anyway. It was more how much haggling the survey would yield.

Paul

So this weekend's job was a intermittent flush on a close coupled toilet. These are proper syphon cisterns, so it means removing the cistern. A bit of a faff, but replacing with the 2 part syphon will mean it is a once only job.

Step 1 - empty the cistern. Actually easy, they had put isolation valves on everything, and the drain was undone.

Step 2 - remove the screws securing the cistern to the pan. Oh, they're not there, neither is the fixing bracket.

Step 3 - remove cistern from wall. No screws - it is stuck to the tiles with about half a tube of gripfill or similar.

Can so with the edges with the oscillating cutter, now wondering of the bowsaw blade will work as the long hacksaw blade is too short.

As a last resort, can you mix and match close coupled cisterns? We're no over keen on the design so smashing the old one up might be a better option of 7L ones are still available.

Paul

DrFfybes wrote:Step 3 - remove cistern from wall. No screws - it is stuck to the tiles with about half a tube of gripfill or similar.

Can so with the edges with the oscillating cutter, now wondering of the bowsaw blade will work as the long hacksaw blade is too short.

Use a length of piano wire looped through behind the cistern to cut through the adhesive. Hopefully it is silicone or decorator's filler not genuine GripFill, or there is no hope.

Cisterns on genuine syphonic close-coupled bogs are not interchangeable.

Mike4 wrote:Cisterns on genuine syphonic close-coupled bogs are not interchangeable.

Poo - we're not keen on the pan either (some fancy ictorian style scroll decor) but changing that also means removing the soil pipe and probably replacing the lino (assuming the lino goes around the loo and not under it, I haven't checked).

There are some spare tiles, so I could remove them with the cistern and then replace them nefore refitting properly.

When the shower thermostat went a while back I removed the bar to find the old one was held on with hope and gravity being just hung on the pipes, rather than the collars being fixed to the walls and then clamped to the pipes.

Paul

One of the strangest bodges I've seen were central heating pipes run across the middle of a stair tread. Not a good idea.

88V8 wrote:

Mike4 wrote:Being built in 1700 I reckon this still makes it 17th century, just about. Feel free to quibble

Ours is allegedly 1620, we had a survey but we too bought it anyway.

Hah, modern rubbish. We once bid successfully for a 15th century thatched farmhouse - beautiful house, nice location, and the vendor was an eminent ancient buildings specialist who had worked on a couple of cathedrals. What could possibly go wrong?

Daft question. We sent our surveyor in, and he phoned us on his mobile from inside the loft. " Yes, it's got an authentic fifteenth century roof, and two of the three main trusses are close to collapse, and the third one has gone completely. And I daren't explore this loft properly, because it isn't safe for inspection. I'll give you half your survey fee back if you instruct me to call this survey off, right now. Pretty please!"

Surveyor reckoned that roof repairs alone would top the quarter million mark (in today's money). It wasn't just that fixing the roof timbers would require the attentions of the only living joiner in England who could still do a triple Gloucester Anglezarke PlusBenet to the required English Heritage standards. It was also that the owner had applied a thin skin of fresh thatch over a rotting pile of old straw, in an evident effort to conceal the fact that the whole thatch would need stripping off and doing properly. At which point, the sucker who bought the place would presumably have become properly acquainted with the state of the historic timbers, and would probably have declared bankruptcy?

That, and the fact that the prat had sawn through a key timber that held the upper storey of the house together, apparently because it was lowering the ceiling height in a corridor. We didn't hang around to find out what else the idiot had done - we withdrew our offer, and not without shedding a few tears of regret.

I don't know what's holding up the roofs of Britain's historic cathedrals, but on this evidence I'd say that the power of prayer has a lot going for it.

BJ

And what is an Anglezarke PlusBenet, Gloucester or otherwise?

Dod

Dod101 wrote:And what is an Anglezarke PlusBenet, Gloucester or otherwise?

Dod

I assumed it was a sort of wosit thingamajig joint

Dod101 wrote:And what is an Anglezarke PlusBenet, Gloucester or otherwise?

Literary latitude. It made the point, though, I imagine? But thanks for Googling it anyway.

BJ

bungeejumper wrote:

88V8 wrote:

Mike4 wrote:Being built in 1700 I reckon this still makes it 17th century, just about. Feel free to quibble

Ours is allegedly 1620, we had a survey but we too bought it anyway.

Hah, modern rubbish.

If we'd known quite what we were buying we might have run away, but our hearts bought it... sometimes better not to know.... V8

Aha - a Maserati house.

Great to spend time in, but you wouldn't want to own it.



Paul

DrFfybes wrote:They had however had a brilliant water filter installed, quite a posh one with a byoass and it's own cutoff. This was useful as it has ben fitted on the rising main into the house BEFORE the stopcock.

... and the first job is to find and free off the not-touched-since-King-Æthelred water-supplier's stopcock in the road. That is unless the water comes from a spring locally named Manon de Sources.