Be Excellent To Each Other

Check if you can stop the water entering the tank by holding the arm with the ball attached up slightly. If so, adjust it so that it stops before overflowing.

Otherwise, it's usually a piece of dirt jammed in the valve - dismantling and cleaning can fix it, or replace the washer as wookie sez.

But switch the water off first )

For the second one, yes

Oh, jesus, this.

Or, don't switch off the water, but get someone with a video camera to stand by.

And then use You've Been Framed's £250 to hire a plumber.

Since should i turn the water off

Since it's you

Refenced the back garden today. Fucking knackered now.

I referenced your post, it wasn't that tiring.

You probably didn't have to smash up a load of concrete with a claw hammer

Wimp... You want to do some proper man DIY like me! I've put together 2 flat packs AND fitted a new washing machine today.

Can you come and do mine now please?

Can think of no good reason but am building a garage in NGS* style.






2 cubic metres / 5 ton of concrete, mixed by hand

Dude! Sweet!

BLISTERS!

Amazing work. I can't believe you hired a massive digger/tipper thingy but no cement mixer, you loon.

That is very impressive! I'll look forward to seeing the finished job... Unless that is the finished job? A nice big slab of concrete. Beautiful.

To clarify - I do have a small mixer, and I used that instead of getting ready-mix delivered. Yes, that's fairly looney, but is the essence of NGS.

The teeny tractor is, uh, borrowed. I got Wookie to bring it in a borrowed trailer towed by a borrowed van. It's currently also broken because we tried to dig a massive tree stump out with it and the stump won.

Cheers. Will post more pics when the actual structure appears on the slab, assuming I correctly water the garage seeds that are mixed into the concrete.

Ah that makes more sense, I thought you'd done the whole lot with a shovel.

NGS?

Sure it's not just pinged a hydraulic safety valve?

JCBs do that if you try and pick up a loaded tipper truck for a laugh.

For instance.

LULZ no it bent the dipper ram to approx 90 degrees!

Oops.

Converting the garden to a kitchen garden continues slowly - sleepers and greenhouse ready to be put together, bushes/shrubs/trees removed, paving lifted, aerated blocks laid out to level/support the beds, two beds put in place, just need to get the screws in to stop them falling over.

They're these timberlock things with a hex head that allegedly don't need pre-drilling, allegedly ideal for the sleepers we're using from the same place.

My corded 550w drill got the first nearly the full 200mm through one sleeper then said "ohferfuckssake..." and stopped.

God damnit.

Do I buy a £40 1010W Draper or hire something? How do I get a hex head into a chuck? (I just clamped the prong things onto three sides, seemed to work but also seemed desperately unsafe.

No, get a set of bits that includes an 8mm hex socket, or you will knacker the chuck.

Corded drills are not suitable for screwing - they are geared way too high for that job. This is where a battery drill would have succeeded!

I'd probably just do those by hand with a ratchet. Depends on how many you need to do though I guess.

Check. I wanted us to have a third set of bits (plus inherited random and varying masonry) anyway.

What, really? Helen's got a battery drill, with a 20-point dial from "all drill" to "all screw". I generally find that it's complete shit at both jobs in any position so I didn't even consider it. My drill does have a small dial on it with some of graded scale, is that potentially related and useful?

Many - two in each corner, one in the middle of each side, repeated on five beds.

Bik, you need a nailgun.

I would not trust me with a machine firing 25cm nails. I've only just started trusting me with a drill.

That's the adjustable torque clutch, you'll probably need it turned all the way up for screws like that though.

Just make sure the gear selector on top is in the "low" position, and you should find it'll drive in pretty much anything. Unless it doesn't have a gear selector in which case you're right, it's shit

Yeah, it's just the twist dial and forward/reverse.

See the drill thread for a new drill then Or drill a starter hole and use a ratchet like Mark said...

Cheers.

I'll see how my ratchet goes on the one I started. Still seems odd it got it most of the way through the sleeper easily before stopping dead though, when it's only got 5cm of thread.

Are you trying to screw it straight through two sleepers? You should at least drill right through the first one big enough that you can just push it through, then just screw it into the bottom one.

It stopped most of the way through the first - no exposed point on the underside, with about 6cm of shaft remaining above.

Shaft. Heh.

Yeah, you are just making it unnecessarily difficult for yourself. Drill straight through the top one first.

If only I had a 20cm wood bit.

Or a nailgun.

And 25cm nails. And not £60-worth of these screws.

Ooh, cheaps.

Yeah, that sort of thing will do it.

Regardless of making it easier, you should always drill a hole big enough for the screw to drop through in the top thing you're drilling, or the screw will just rip the wood to bits as it tries to re-cut new grooves as the two bits move closer together.

Don't drill it bigger than the head of the screw, obv.

Agreed, but if you look at the screws he's using, they only have thread on the end 50mm, the rest is plain. So it will fasten two sleepers together without this problem, without needing to drill a clearance hole.

I'd use very big nails for this job. But then I wouldn't be using fresh new "sleepers" in the garden anyway...

It was £3 more expensive to replace the valve than buy a washer pack. Job done!

I'm sure everyone was wondering if I'd done this, gone back to not doing this, or drilled a hole through myself instead of the wood.
That sort of thing has indeed been doing it nicely. Only a couple of minor explosions early on related to "boiling water and sap caused by drilling through new, wet wood", easily resolved by going at it like a porn star instead of trying to do it in one motion.

This is where the back garden is at. Not long to go now!

Just replaced the fuse wire in a consumer unit fuse. Am I allowed to do that?

If your consumer unit still has fuses instead of breakers, you're probably on fire already.

I gathered that after the amount of effort it was to find somewhere selling fuse wire.

My consumer unit is still fuse wire, I'm just too lazy to change it. I really should.