and today i have mostly been...

[Welly]

In for a penny:

See if you can ask Milos to poke his pipe up your hole from below then you can hold it and clean up the end before offering it into place for screwing.

Having worked in the HVAC industry all my life there's endless fun* to be had being able to say Flange, Muff Covers, Nipples and screwing without getting into any bother.

[trufflehunt]

Love the photo with the mole grips.

Like a pirhana fish.
"Gotcha. I'm hanging in here. And I'm not letting go."

[steve_earwig]

Get a good grip on your cock and it'll never slip

I've just now been working there, uncovering the joins on those pipes (which idiot used tile adhesive here? ) because Miloš the almighty said I shouldn't use the hot feed on the wall - what if you move it? I thought maybe that would be part of redoing the whole bloody bathroom but... So feed from the end of the hotwater, er, feed and hope that the water doesn't just dribble out of the taps upstairs. I've had to chop out a whole lot of wall because one pipe will have to pass behind t'other. At least this way I can put 2 cocks on the wall above the cabinet and leave upstairs isolated until such times as we work out where everything's going (have rough ideas but precise required.)

Also, the pipe for the bog (little brown boats with pretty coloured sails) will go straight through the wall to outside, the other drain will then tee into it outside and the whole lot will head south. Yeah, straight down the wall and into the first sewage drain. Umm, does it matter that it'll be outside the downstairs bathroom window there? Err, oh

Another thing I've got to bare in mind is, just because various angles of join are available in GB, it doesn't mean they will be here. I can't look it up in the Internet either because the websites for most stores here are one page, two if you're lucky.

Quick question: t'wife wants both a washer and a drier up there, it'll have to be a condenser drier - do I need separate drains for each or can they tee together? I guess I'll find out eventually but I thought maybe someone would have some experience.

[Doggy]

Quick question: t'wife wants both a washer and a drier up there, it'll have to be a condenser drier - do I need separate drains for each or can they tee together? I guess I'll find out eventually but I thought maybe someone would have some experience.

I don't know the definitive answer, but since the water is pumped out of the washer fairly quickly and the condensate from the drier is meant to drain by gravity (AFAIK), you don't want to connect them together.....
Seems they can both be put into a washer drain upstand, but I guess you need to be comfortable the washer waste runs away quickly enough if you're going to put both in the same upstand.

[steve_earwig]

Hmm, more research required but I suspect 2 drains will be best. Especially if they're running at the same time.

Right. First there was


then there was


and now there is

(the new feeds terminate up by the ceiling with cocks - it's all pressured up and holding)

I reckon that's the most bizarre bit of bodgemongery I've ever perpetrated. I couldn't tell you how many fittings I've used but there's more of them than there is pipe. It's taken me all day, I have various burns and cuts on my hands and my back is on fire I think I'm well overdue an early night!!

[Doggy]

Why the galvy tees? (Looks like it would have been easier with copper / less joints)

Well done you for getting to the end of it without mishap.

[steve_earwig]

The existing pipework is steel with 1/2" BSPT threads, so to joint to it I'd need 18mm to 1/2" adaptors in between and everything would have ended up out of line. Don't worry, I spent ages working it out (the bog's right next to it)

Cheers, it could have gone smoother but I got the job done without having to destroy too much.

Now I'll need to fill all the holes in and I just happen to have lots of bits of breeze block lying about...

[steve_earwig]

It's occurred to me that, before I do any more plumbing, I'll need to drill 40mm hole in the wall for the drains (otherwise there'll be no room for the drill). 40mm shouldn't be too much of a problem, however the wall is 32cm thick. 5cm of this is polystyrene of course. That'll be the easy bit then

More loft conversion pics:

At 2 meters Miloš made forms and cast a reinforced concrete lintel (if that's the right word) around the whole lot to tie it together into the roof:










He then carried on building up into the roof:


















And the man himself, it's gard to see in the picture but that block too him a while as is has to fit into a weird angle with the two mains cables and it really did look like a piece of modern sculpture.


Apparently Monday he'll be showing me how to clean the wood up with an angle grinder, ready for varnish

[Welly]

That's bloomin marvelous, the progress is very speedy.

That plumbing you did - I'm not surprised it took ages all those soldered joints close together; one joint tries to un-solder the next, stuff moves around and sets solid. As long as it does what you need etc but you're stuck when tagging onto existing stuff, still think of all those fittings you've got left over - be handy

[OllieNZ]

Hmm thinking I need to get round to getting a dash cam that's does front and back after watching someone behind me take both hands off the wheel to take a picture of my Jimny at around 30mph on a bend :s

[steve_earwig]

From what I read when I researching them a couple of years back, cameras that do front and back are either crap (low def) or very expensive. The conclusion was it would be better to buy two cameras.

That's bloomin marvelous, the progress is very speedy.

That plumbing you did - I'm not surprised it took ages all those soldered joints close together; one joint tries to un-solder the next, stuff moves around and sets solid. As long as it does what you need etc but you're stuck when tagging onto existing stuff, still think of all those fittings you've got left over - be handy

Sorry Welters, didn't see this earlier (this board )

I wish it was quick, everything I do seems to take ages and I keep getting interrupted. I couldn't imagine doing this and having a job!

I really hate using so many connectors, I keep thinking about a pipe bender but I doubt I'd get the bends tight enough with it.

Yesterday I punched a 2" hole through the back wall, that was a nightmare too: going out I had to watch for the 2" layer of polystyrene insulation as I could imagine hitting that too hard and making a huge mess. That turned out ok, I used a 10mm drill from the inside and took it slowly after about 10". I cut a hole in it using a masonry hole saw and then worked my way back in, but the iron-like properties of the mortar (just my luck to need the hole right there), coupled with the flower pot bricks threw the drill all over the place, so I had a frantic 90 minutes rushing up and down the ladder and stairs trying to get it finished as the rain was imminent. Eventually I'd pulverised enough of the inside of the wall to whack a bit of scaffold through to clear it (scaffold poles are 2"? Who knew?). It's still looks fine from the outside, for the rest there's cement

This morning I went back to buy even more fittings and a stack of 2" poly pipe, I've been fiddling about with that to work out where to make holes and have started cutting slots in the deck to fit the pipes. That's a horrid job too, Miloš had a big diamond-bladed angle grinder but it made so much dust in just a few seconds I decided it would be healthier to use a Kango and join the dots together with a chisel. It's only 2" down to the polystyrene but, beneath the surface, it's like gravel with rocks in. Hours of fun*

[steve_earwig]

Copper pipe musings:

[steve_earwig]

It's always a bad idea to walk around the eves looking down...

"..and Steve's gone back to the storage room for the 12trh time, he's not looking where he's going and...OOOOH, he didn't see that coming! ..and...yes...yes yes, there's claret!!!"

I presume scalp wounds stop bleeding eventually? Ah well, it'll be an observation test for t'wife when I pick her up

[Doggy]

Ouch!

I presume scalp wounds stop bleeding eventually?

Absolutely, no doubt about it.
In tests, loss of more than 8 pints of claret could only be achieved by topping up continuously.

Scalp wounds and the like seem to bleed forever. Someone I know* walked into a post last week and split his beak open.
It was 2 days before I could dispense with the 'what an idiot' plaster on the snout.

[Welly]

Fact* scalp wounds take a longer time to seal because the skin is tight, not very thick, and in some* cases may contain lots of hair follicles reducing the the ability to knit the wound back together.

In other words watch where your f*cking going

And keep it CLEAN.