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Product review: Hilti TE 1000-AVR Breaker

Power and safety are the cornerstones of next generation Hilti TE 1000-AVR breaker.

Hilti has launched its next generation TE 1000-AVR breaker, which has more demolition power and less vibration than its predecessor.

Utilising the company’s new HiDrive technology, which features a brushless motor, dynamic transmission and electronic power steering, enables the tool to create 26 joules of high impact energy and a hammering frequency of 1,950 impacts per minute.

The Active Vibration Reduction (AVR) system cuts tri-axial vibration from 6.5 m/s² to 5 m/s², meaning the product can be used for eight hours per day before reaching exposure limit value (ELV).

Hilti TE 1000-AVR Breaker 2

In addition the tool, when used with the TE DRS-B dust removal system and a Hilti M-class vacuum, removes up to 97% of hazardous fine dust from the point of impact for a safer, cleaner environment. The system also protects the machine’s workings, meaning continuous performance and reduced downtime.

Productivity can be improved still further with Hilti’s recently launched TE-SP chisel, with features an innovative ‘wave’ design for more breaking power and less sticking, which in turn markedly increases performance.

Applications include demolishing concrete and masonry at floor level or below waist level, corrective chiseling, removing tiles, bushing and compacting and renovating floors.

Tom Clegg, Northern Europe Product Manager (Heavy Duty Tools) at Hilti, said: “To increase power is one thing but to significantly reduce vibration numbers with optimised levels of dust extraction – without compromising the weight of the machine – makes this tool a truly innovative development.

“Alongside the recently launched TE 80-ATC AVR combihammer, plus the larger TE 1500-AVR and TE 3000-AVR heavy-duty breakers, we have a cutting-edge portfolio which will maximise productivity across the board.”

The TE 1000-AVR can be purchased through Hilti’s Fleet Management programme whereby a fixed monthly charge covers all tool, service and repair costs over four years. For customers who prefer to own their own tools outright Hilti’s Lifetime Service gives a complete no-cost period of two years.

Find out more about the Hilti TE 1000-AVR breaker.

The renewable heat incentive that’s anything but

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Underwhelmed By The Renewable Heat Incentive

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am slightly underwhelmed by the government’s Green Deal and also by the way the RHI (renewable heat incentive) favours those companies that are willing to go through all the red tape it requires to become an approved contractor. For the smaller builder (like me) these schemes offer little or nothing.

I am currently working on a house that doesn’t have mains gas. The householder is keen to install as many renewables as possible and I quickly realised that I would not be able to help him. I got the job of ripping up all the floors and installing underfloor heating throughout, but when it came to the solar thermal I was unable to sign off the job so he could qualify for the RHI. We looked at using an outside contractor but they were double, sometimes treble, my price. Good luck to them but it means that any saving through the Renewable heat incentive is being mopped up by the installation companies, not passed on to the consumer.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a cartel but when you look up how many companies operate in this field it is an exclusive little club. Even getting them to quote for the job is impossible, they are interested in new build housing estates not one off jobs for private clients. It’s been the same story with heat pumps. I contacted over ten companies and not one of them came back to me. My customer was getting impatient. He embraced the whole concept of green energy but he wanted to get a move on. His house was cold and his wife was unhappy.

We had a meeting, and worked out the total value of the government incentives and set them against the savings he would make using a one man band like myself. Of course we didn’t have any actual quotes to go on but we found some examples of jobs on the internet. The other advantage in not going for the Renewable heat incentive is that he won’t have to pay someone £300 for an energy assessment. The house already has cavity wall insulation; 200mm loft insulation and triple glazing. Short of relocating it to the Caribbean there isn’t a lot more they can do to cut their energy consumption. I wonder if there is a government grant available for that.

Find out more about the Renewable Heat Incentive UK.

The Renewable Heat Incentive Scheme

Thermal Earth – Renewable Energy Systems

Cordless jigsaw Product review: DeWalt DCS331M2

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This cordless jigsaw has loads of capacity and grunt to complete the average kitchen…

There are two kinds of product tests that I carry out for Skill Builder, explains Roger Bisby. The first is to take a brand new tool out of the box, and give my immediate impressions by taking it out on site, hopefully letting a few of my fellow workers give it a go to get their opinions. This has obvious limitations because some problems take a while to surface.

The second kind of product test is to use to use a tool for several months and then report back. This is the test I prefer, but most manufacturers are understandably keen to get their new products out into the market place, and some are also very keen to get them back. Often they are on the phone asking for them back before I have had a chance to run them around the block. What are they afraid of? Do they think their shiny power tool will fall apart?

Refreshingly, some give you a little longer to get acquainted. I first took delivery of this cordless jigsaw over six months ago, so it has had some good use! A few years ago I would have said a cordless jig saw is a tool to get you out of trouble, rather than as a replacement for a corded one, but battery technology is now so advanced that you could use this as your only jig saw. I don’t think you would find a job that it would not do as well as the corded version.

Coupled with the 18 Volt 4amp hour battery, this cordless jigsaw has loads of capacity and grunt to complete the average kitchen…

Having said that, you will notice that a cordless jigsaw is considerably more expensive that a corded version. So if you work in easy reach of a power supply there may be no reason to go unplugged.

If you are already a committed DeWalt cordless jigsaw user running on an 18 Volt XR platform, then you can buy the naked body for the same kind of money as a mains power model.

What you want from a cordless jigsaw, is enough runtime to cut through worktop and the like, without running out of power part way through. Coupled with the 18 Volt 4amp hour battery, this cordless jigsaw has loads of capacity and grunt to complete the average kitchen fit and still have something left in the bank. If you are cutting laminate worktop, you are more likely to stop for a blade change than a battery charge. I just couldn’t believe how many metres it had in it. One day perhaps over the Christmas break, I will do a proper measurement of how many linear metres it will cut on a single 4AmHr battery.

When you do need to change the blade, the large lever on the front is easy to flick out, even with gloves on, and the T pattern blades lock in easily and stay put. Similarly, there is a lever at the back to adjust the base plate angle for bevel cuts.

The other features of pendulum action, variable speed and fan blower to clear the cutting line, are standard on all good jig saws. If you use this saw, you may wonder why it feels a cut above many of the others out there. The difference is the counterweight on the action, which dampens vibration and gives the saw a lovely controlled balanced feel, even on the full pendulum setting. Until you have used it, you don’t know what you are missing.

In fact the other day I saw a PVCu cladding guy making a dog’s breakfast of a bit of fascia. I could see it was almost entirely due to the grabbing action of the piece of tat he was using. I thought about how much better he would do the job with a decent variable speed machine, that gave a nice soft start. I thought about it, but I didn’t say a word. If it was you, then I am sorry, but you know now. There is a better tool out there, and it will make you a craftsman rather than a butcher.

Technical
2 x 4Ah Li-Ion Batteries
3-Stage Pendulum Action
Single-Speed Variable
Tool-Free Blade Change
Dust Extraction Facility
1hr Charger
Aluminium Base & Chip Cover
Lock-Off Switch
All-Metal Gearing
Rubber-Coated Grip

Dewalt Cordless Jigsaw – Buy It Here

Cordless Dust Extraction

Oxley Woods

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My heart goes out to the people who bought homes in Oxley Woods. These modern style houses on the outskirt of Milton Keynes started life with such promise. For a start they were designed by a partnership that included Richard Rogers. They were bold, bright and beautiful, built from prefabricated panels with sleek lines and maintenance free exteriors. No more boring old brick. The people who managed to snap up these iconic homes could rightly have felt pleased with themselves, but all that changed when the rain came in. At first the builders tried to fix the problems with mastic. It is a standard approach for many leaks. ‘Squirt a bit more gunk in there’ but it soon became clear that there was a deeper flaw.

they got a bit too cocky and ignored time honoured practices that have served us well…

The case has now gone legal with the usual finger pointing and buck passing that leaves the home owners feeling abandoned and trapped in homes that, for the foreseeable future, they have no way of recovering their investment on.

I won’t be so bold as to prejudge the outcome but I would say that, as much as I love modern architecture and particularly the work of Rogers, and those other great British architects in his group who have built some of the most iconic buildings of our times, I would have been very wary of buying one of these homes.

To my mind they got a bit too cocky and ignored time honoured practices that have served us well. The best thing you can do with rainwater is to get rid of it as quickly as possible. That means pitched rather than flat roofs, big overhangs as seen in Alpine chalets and gutters with downpipes on the outside of the buildings.

The designers of the Oxley Woods homes presumably considered these highly functional features to be ugly or boring because their designs have none of these things. That only becomes a problem when it rains.

How to Make a Fake Wall with Brick Effect Render

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In this video Roger demonstrates how to use a fake brick effect render from Bostick.

The system is applied in two easy steps, starting with a grey mortar undercoat. Once this is touch-dry it’s followed by a coloured face coat which is cut through with a specialised tool included in the pack to expose the grey mortar underneath, creating a brick and mortar joint effect.

Both coats are polymer modified render, offering excellent adhesion and weather resistance whilst remaining vapour permeable.

With the summer months approaching, there is likely to be an increase in demand for external renovation and refurb products. This Brick Effect Render system provides a simple, effective way to revive the appearance of walls that may need to be updated – such as garden walls or prefabricated buildings.

How to Solder Copper Pipework Without Leaks

In this ten minute video, Roger shows us how to solder copper pipework and achieve leak-free plumbing that will last.

“The first thing is cleaning the pipe. If you got a bit of tarnished pipe like some of this which I have just taken out of the shed, it really is no good, even with self-cleaning fluxes. That won’t polish up to be a perfect job. So, we get something like a little bit of emery, a little bit of abrasive. You can even use those Scotch Brite pads from the kitchen, anything like that, and just take the rubbish off the pipe, and make sure that it’s nice and shiny. The same goes for the inside of the fittings. You can see this is an old fitting here. It’s been lying around a while. Self-cleaning flux won’t clean that up. What you need to do is you need to get something like a wire brush or something like a bit of emery, and get it inside of that fitting and just polish up.

It really is important that you make it clean. Now, at some point, you’re going to want to cut some pipe. Now you can do this with a junior hacksaw, but it doesn’t give you a very square edge. The best way to cut copper is with a pipe slicer. This one is sold by Monument Tools. It’s very easy to put on the pipe and just spin it around and cut it, and what it gives you is a nice, clean, square-edge pipe. Now, you can get these in different sizes. This one is 15 millimetres or the old half-inch if you like, and you can also get them in larger sizes or you can get one pipe slice, or one pipe cutter rather which will do all sizes, but you have to fiddle about and adjust it. These are my favourites. Now, before I go any further, I’ve spoken about cutting pipe with pipe slices and the like, but what they do is they slightly bevel over the end of the pipe. Now, in a purer school of plumbing, what people say is you’ve got to get rid of that slight burr on the inside of the pipe because it creates turbulence, resistance, and they’d reckon it can cause leaks.

How to Solder

Personally, I have never seen any plumber remove the burrs, most of them just slice it and put it in, but if you want to remove the burrs, they are plenty of things around to do it with. What I use is a bolt, just a simple six-inch bolt, and I just put it around the inside and just take away that slight burr there that’s on the inside, but as I say, really speaking when that goes in, it forms to my mind a smooth a transition between the pipe and the joint as you can get. All right, so that’s the pipe cleaned up. That’s the pipe cup ready to go. The next thing we need is flux. A fluxing is very important. This is a self-cleaning flux. There are lots on the market. This is a non-acidic water-soluble one by Layco which is pretty good, but everybody finds a flux that they prefer. A lot of people use EverFlux. It’s a little bit acidic, and it stings if you get it on your fingers, so be careful. You can wear gloves. That makes it a lot easier. It’s important not to put too much flux on. All you want is enough to cover the pipe and stop the oxidization.

Right, so the next thing we need is how to solder. This is lead-free solder. That’s the way to go nowadays. That’s what everybody is using, and it’s fairly expensive stuff, so we have to use it sparingly. Now people wonder how much solder you need to do a joint. The amount of solder you need is equivalent to the diameter of the pipe. So this is a 22 millimetre or ¾ inch pipe if you’re in America, and then you just bend the solder around so that you’ve got ¾ of an inch or 22 millimetres of solder, and then you do another one, and then you do another one. So you get yourself a nice little zigzag of solder. If you’ve got a smaller diameter pipe, then you make smaller bends, but if you carry on like that, then every time you get to the end of the bend, you know you’ve used the right amount of solder. Now, there’s no point feeding solder into a joint if it’s not running, and it doesn’t like it’s feeding up into there. Don’t just keep stuffing solder in because you’re just wasting your time. If it’s not running right, there’s a reason it’s not running right, and we have to find out what that is. Go back to the basics.

Now we get to the exciting part where we introduce the heat, and for that you need a blowlamp. This one is from Vulcan, and it self-ignites. It’s got a peso spark in there, and the reason I like this one is that a lot of blowlamps, the peso spark goes fairly quickly in them, and then it’s a nuisance to use them. With this one, when the peso sparks go, you just insert a tiny cassette into there, and that’s a brand-new peso spark ready to go. You could also change the nozzles on it. It’s just the nice, easy, automatic sequence to use, but any blowlamp will do. If you get a butane one, they are not so good in very cold weather. So if you’re trying to repair frozen pipes and things like that, the butane ones don’t work as well as the propane ones. So this is the kind of thing the professionals use all the time.

Okay, now we’re ready to apply the heat at long last. If you’re working in situ, if you’re working existing plumbing, you must make sure all the water has got out of that pipe because if there’s a little trickle of water still running through the pipe, it won’t allow the pipe to solder, so you must make sure. I turned the blowlamp down because it’s a bit fierce. I don’t need it that fierce. What I was going to do is just heat the joint. This isn’t going to happen instantly because you just need to get a bit on the whole pipe working the joint. Just make sure it starts to warm up. There’s no point in introducing the solder until you’re ready because if you do, all you are doing is dipping the solder into the top of the flame and melting it, and wasting the solder. So all you do is heat the pipe, try a little experimental dab on there, it’s not ready yet, when it’s ready you’ll know. Now it’s ready. That’s it. Up to that zigzag, that joint’s done. Let’s go over, let’s do the next one which is here which is a smaller one, 15 mil, that’s done. Now the bottom one, it’s going to suck up the capillary action right into the bottom, and that’s done. Okay? You don’t need any more than that. That’s sucked that solder straight up into that joint there and it’s made a perfect seal on it. If you put more in, all it’ll do is run down the pipe.

Now it’s a good idea, that might be slightly hot, yeah, that is, but it’s a good idea jus to wipe around the joint with a dry rag. Some people use a wet rage. It makes the joint go off, but I have heard that can crack the solder, so a little dry rage, do that. Once the joint’s cooled down a bit, get a damp rag and just wash off any excess flux that is on the pipe, but as you can see because I didn’t use a huge amount of flux, it’s not running down the pipe. You can see all three of those joints, if you have a look at them, they are all perfect. They are all sealed all the way around. That joint won’t leak. That’s soldering in a nutshell, and here are my top tips for getting it right every time so you don’t get leaks. Make sure the pipe is clean. Use self-cleaning flux, but use it sparingly, and when you use it don’t introduce any contamination into the joint.

Keep that lid on so you don’t get any grit or anything like that. Make sure there were no hairs dropping off the end of the flux brush when you apply the flux. When you’ve done that, prepare your solder so you use the right amount by bending it. Apply your heat not too fierce, take a little bit of the time, make sure the pipe’s warmed up, and then introduce the solder. Don’t do that too soon. Let the solder run, check your joint visually. Don’t disturb the joint while it’s cooling, and you can give it just nice, little wipe around. Before I lose you good people, I just want to give a little bit of publicity to a friend of mine who has invented something which I think is rather brilliant.

He’s a carpenter, but then nobody is perfect, but he was fed up with plumbers the backs of his kitchen units, so he came up with this idea. It’s a heat-proof mat, that existed already, but what he’s done is put a little hole in it. It’s the mat with a hole in, and what it does it just pops around the pipe like that. You put that back against the unit, and then if he’s soldering a joint onto there, there’s no risk of burning the surrounding area. It’s a great idea. It’s called the O-Mat. It comes from Monument which is in the UK, but you can order that on the web or anywhere you like, and it’s a great general-purpose, heat-proof mat.

How to Use a Diamond Core Drill for Soil Pipes & Boiler Flues

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Roger gives a few diamond core tips on using diamond cores to make holes for soil pipes and boiler flues including information on how to get the most our of your diamond core bit.

Installation of Bifold Doors with Quickslide

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Roger Bisby provides a detailed installation of bifold doors guide for Quickslide bi-folding doors making a complex installation easy to understand.

Roger talks through some of the key considerations and challenges for the installation of bi-folding doors.

Quickslide

Quickslide is a well-established business specialising in the manufacture of sliding sash windows, casement windows and doors, bi-folding- and sliding patio doors in PVC-u, Aluminium and Timber.

Quickslide’s bi-folding doors glide on stainless steel rollers, which allows for unrestricted thoroughfares and maximum use of space and light. The smooth contours and curved clean lines create an attractive aesthetic that will compliment any home, whatever your taste or style.

Glass

Glass specification is key when affecting the doors’ thermal performance as glass generally accounts for 80% of the surface area of the doors. Each door set carries 28mm double glazed units incorporating soft coat toughened safety glass as standard.

Secured by Design

Quickslide customers have the opportunity to request SBD (Secured by Design). SBD focuses on crime prevention of homes and commercial premises and promotes the use of security standards for a wide range of applications and products, including windows and doors helping to put the resident at ease.

Energy Efficient

Quickslide’s doors include multiple rigid rubber seals and draught excluders to ensure that you get nothing but sunlight passing through your doors. Their latest bi-folding door system utilises the latest polyamide thermal barrier technology. This advanced profile technology creates a thermal transmittance barrier between the cold outside and the warm inside.

www.quickslide.co.uk

Printing 3D Concrete

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This latest one is printing 3D concrete..

Simply load up the shape and dimensions of what you want to build and watch it chug away building up layer upon layer of concrete.

If I had a pound for every time I have seen an invention that promised to revolutionise house building I would have at least £32.50 by now.

It looks a lot of fun and I would love to see it work but somehow I suspect it is destined for the dustbin of history.

The inventor’s claim that printing 3D concrete could lead to cheap housing might well be true if we had cheap land.

It isn’t labour that pushes up the price of houses, what makes homes expensive is the rationing of land through the planning process.

I am not suggesting that we allow a free for all but we should at least acknowledge that it is land prices not labour that pushes prices beyond the reach of even those who build them. A 3D printer will not change that.

The Future Of The Construction Industry

How Concrete Homes Are Built With A 3D Printer

Flooding Tackled Today

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Well, we can’t say they didn’t warn us about climate change; more rain, rising seas, extreme weather. The television is full of images of flooding homes and the miserable aftermath. People being interviewed say that they have never known it this bad. Houses that were once considered above the flood plain, are now being deluged and everyone is looking for someone to blame for the flooding. Try Jeremy Clarkson.

Flooding needs to be tackled long before the water reaches town…

A week before the flooding I was down in Kent, with a company that was installing Smart Air Bricks, backflow prevention devices, and Flood Gates in a vulnerable cottage near the river Medway. It was just in time for the latest deluge, but did those preventative measures work? To some extent yes, in that they kept the water out to the specified height, but the water was higher than it had ever been; there comes a point (around 750mm) where it is better to let the water into the house, in order to equalize the water pressure on both sides. If this is not done then there is a risk of the walls being pushed in.

An interesting thing about water pressure is that it’s directly proportional to the height of water (static head) and is not affected by the amount of water that lies behind it. So a two foot wall at the end of Lake Windermere will have the same pressure on it as a two foot wall around a swimming pool. This allows us to calculate the forces precisely. However this doesn’t allow for surges. If the water is travelling towards you in a wave, that energy has nothing to do with static head.

Water will also find its own level so what you have on the inside you have on the outside, which is useful because it stops the walls being pushed in. In the case of a cellar flooding, it’s unwise to pump it out if the water table on the outside is too high. It may also be futile.

That said, it’s heartbreaking to stand and watch your home being flooded and any small thing you can do to reduce the impact of flooding must be better than simply sitting there watching nature take its course.

There is a great deal that can be done to reduce risk of minor flooding starting with the use of basic sandbags, and then moving up the scale in terms of expense, but not necessarily effectiveness. In particular you should not neglect the loo. You can sandbag all around the house but if the water level rises it has a route in through the drains and can pour out through the loo.

Leaving aside DIY flooding solutions, lots of people are now asking what more the Department of the Environment can do. One thing is certain, the problem needs to be tackled long before the water reaches town. In some cases this might mean diverting rivers and water courses or building sea defences. It might also mean building homes higher out of the ground. There is no reason why this can’t be done; it’s done all over the world. Houses on stilts! The technology has been there for centuries we have just been too complacent.

Flooding aside, there are also people who are finding water coming into their house through the roof and walls where it has never appeared before. If you get enough rain, it will drive through brickwork and mortar courses, which is why some of those DIY flood prevention devices are dubious.

In the normal course of events with heavy rain you wouldn’t necessarily know it’s happening, because the water runs down the inside of the outer skin, and is drained through weep holes in the mortar courses. However, problems often occur where the house has been extended on the ground floor, and a wall which was previously on the outside now finishes on top of a steel beam. Where then, is that water which runs down between the inner and outer wall going to go when it hits the beam?

The answer for many is into their nice new extension. If the builder has been diligent, this won’t happen because he/she will have put in cavity trays above the newly formed opening. The trays need to be above the roof line so the water can be drained out onto the extension roof, but I know many builders who simply don’t bother doing this, because it involves chopping out mortar courses and inserting the trays one by one to form a cascade. In most cases they get away with it because the rain never normally manages to drive that far through the brickwork, but we live in extraordinary times.

People are talking about ‘freak’ weather conditions. I love the use of the word ‘freak’ it’s applied to all sorts of things that really don’t warrant it. Admittedly the weather is unusual but storms are not freaks of nature. The British Building Regulations recognise this, and makes provision for unusual weather. That is why the regulations specify cavity trays. So the builder who glibly says to the client, “yeah we are dealing with freak weather conditions here”, is looking to blame something other than his/her negligence.

The opposite to negligence is zealousness or over-zealousness. I often see instances where home owners have spotted those weep holes above the window lintels, or on the cavity trays and filled them up, believing them to be holes that were overlooked during the construction process. This for me is the easiest kind of problem to put right. It takes ten minutes with a masonry drill to clear them out. Sometimes you are treated to a nice little jet of water coming out of the hole. It is as satisfying as lancing a boil.

Why are we building new homes on flood plains?

How To Protect Your Property From Flooding

Theatre Ceiling Collapse – A curious incident

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The Apollo Theatre ceiling collapse

The recent incident of The Apollo Theatre ceiling collapse – on to the audience – thankfully resulted in no deaths, though it appears there are some very serious injuries. No doubt even many of those lucky enough to have escaped unscathed will have nightmares and may hesitate to enter old buildings for a while. At the very least they will become habitual ceiling watchers from now on.

As is so often the case there was a knee jerk reaction as inspectors scurried around in ceiling voids checking the ceilings of other London theatres but why stop at theatres? There are plenty of other old buildings with high ceilings and it’s quite possible that they too are within a whisker of dropping, but it isn’t always easy to tell.

Such a tale is likely to induce paranoia in those living in old houses but how do you know if your ceiling is safe?…

I have some experience of this from carrying out loft conversions in old houses. There is a stage of the job when you are obliged to walk across the ceiling joists in the loft to install steel beams before you can build the new floor. This flexes the ceiling and loosens the bond between the lath and the plaster. Nowadays I make sure that the ceilings are propped from below during this stage to eliminate deflection in the joists but I wasn’t always so diligent. It took a ceiling collapse to wake me up to the dangers.

The piece of ceiling collapsed into the hallway of a Victorian house, crashing down through the stairwell and landing in the front hall. It filled, and almost demolished, a pram where minutes earlier a baby had been asleep. It was only sheer luck that the baby woke up hungry after its outing and her mother took her through to the kitchen to feed her. The weight of the chunks that were fished out of the pram would surely have killed it or given it life changing injuries. I still see that child from time to time.

Such a tale is likely to induce paranoia in those living in old houses but how do you know if you’re at risk of ceiling collapse, and what do you do about it if you suspect it?

If you have a lath and plaster ceiling with lots of cracks in it that looks even slightly lively, you can have it replaced but often the quicker and cleaner option is to board it over. This of course is not an option on a ceiling with ornate plaster. Another good cure is to pour a few buckets of diluted PVA across the laths from above. This has the miraculous effect of soaking into the plaster and sticking it to the laths, binding the whole thing together.

Undoubtedly the cause of the Apollo theatre ceiling collapse will be discovered soon, and there’s no point speculating but I have seen plenty of ornate plaster ceilings that have been damaged by leaking roofs. Often the leak is not discovered for many years because the timber and plaster soaks up the water, and the heat from the building dries it out before a stain appears. This is the perfect recipe for rot.

The answer of course is rigorous maintenance. A thermal imaging camera will show up leaks in roofs, because damp is more conductive, and an inspection from above should establish the cause of the leak but all this costs money. Theatres, particularly those in listed buildings, are always walking the tightrope between getting bums on seats with high cost productions and saving enough money to look after the building.

Everyone hopes that a theatre will be fortunate enough to have a production that, using a critic’s cliché, ‘brings the house down’ but hopefully never literally.

More From Skillbuilder – How To Support A Load Bearing Wall

Prevent Ceiling Collapse – Common Causes Of Damage

Sticking Doors

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It’s raining again and it looks set to carry on for days. My daughter phoned to say that the problem of damp around one of her windows has returned. She lives on top of a hill and the gable end of her house catches everything that nature can chuck at it. We have had all summer to fix the problem, but we left it. Somehow when the weather is topping 28 deg centigrade it is hard to think about damp.

In our defence, she is going to have the house extended next year, so she was hoping it might be OK until then. It isn’t, and if there’s a break in the weather I will be up there with some Dry Zone solution giving it a quick going over.

Those sticking doors lie between you and a lifetime of drudgery, it’s your finger in the dam…

Meanwhile back at my house, there are things that need doing. There are always things that need doing. My wife has a list as long as her arm and it never seems to get any shorter. A bloke I know told me a long time ago that you should never fix sticking doors, or whatever it is that your partner constantly complains about. His idea was that if you did that job, another one would be sitting in the holding bay ready to take its place. You would never be free, so the best strategy is to hold your ground against the onslaught.

“Never break ranks. Those sticking doors lie between you and a lifetime of drudgery, it’s your finger in the dam!” he said.

I liked him, he was completely un-reconstructed but amusing. He gave me lots of advice, most of which I failed to heed. I fixed the squeaky door and – he was right – I haven’t stopped since.

I bumped into him the other day – no not in the builders’ merchants – and he has retired. He has a nice new apartment with a balcony overlooking the golf course.

“Any sticking doors?” I asked.

He looked at me nonplussed, so I reminded him of his advice.

He laughed, “Ah that, no there are no sticking doors, not yet, but if one starts to play up my wife sorts it out – she has learned a lot over the years”.

“Oh has she taken up DIY?”

“Goodness no, she gets someone in”.

Rising Damp Conundrum

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Rising damp is not usually baffling..

I have always been a sucker for a challenge. If someone tells me that they have a problem that nobody has been able to fix, I am there. Rising damp is not usually baffling but rising damp in a third floor flat is. Yes I do mean rising damp and not penetrating damp, the proof being that some of it was on internal walls. But where was it coming from?

The homeowner, a well known television and radio presenter, had been royally ripped off. I am not sure it was completely intentional, as in – ‘he’s famous and has loads of dosh so I will take some from him’, but when you get someone who has a bob or two, there’s not the same tendency to be cautious as there would be with a vulnerable pensioner.

So in they went, these damp specialists, and hacked all the plaster off the internal walls, injected them and applied waterproof render and new plaster. It made a right mess and the whole flat had to be redecorated. It cost thousands but they guaranteed the work. Six months down the line the rising damp was creeping back and the homeowner couldn’t get them to answer his calls.

…the fact that the rising damp kept coming and the whole place was growing mouldy suggested that the plumber had got it wrong.

Then he got in touch with a plumber who came round and told him that it was very likely a pipe under the screed which was leaking. It was a good hunch because the damp seemed to be concentrated around all the radiators. His cure was to cut off all the under floor pipework and run it on the surface. This meant taking the pipes up and over the doorways with little air release valves at the high points – in a luxury London apartment one thing was certain, it didn’t add value.

The plumber took his money and told the homeowner he would have no more trouble. You can sort of see why he was so confident. There were no more pipes under the floor and as it clearly couldn’t be rising damp on the third floor what else could it be? Personally I would have started from that point rather than ended on it. It could be the heating pipes but what else could it be?

The fact that the damp kept coming and the whole place was growing mouldy suggested that the plumber had got it wrong. At the point where I got involved the home owner was about to hire a surveyor.

“Let me take a quick look first,” I said.

“Ok, but I don’t see what you’ll be able to find out if the others haven’t solved it.”

Then I said the magic words. “If I don’t solve it I won’t charge you a bean.” And he was hooked.

I soon noticed that there were ducts in the floor which had carried the heating pipes from the boiler to the radiators. If the central heating had been leaking these would have provided a perfect distribution network around the flat so you could see where the plumber was coming from but why didn’t he pressure test the heating before cutting it off? Whatever the reason he had now taken all the live pipework above the floor so it couldn’t be that.

So what else could be leaking into those ducts? The first thing I did was trace the route of the ducting by tapping on the floor and listening to the hollow sound of the screed. It ran along the hallway and into the bathroom and under the bath to the airing cupboard.

I removed the bath panel and could see the uncovered duct running under the bath. It ran right along the middle between the bath feet and right under the bath waste. The little flexible overflow pipe which is normally just a push fit onto the bath overflow spigot had come loose and was dangling in the duct. Every time the man or his partner had a shower or a bath, the water would pour out of the flexible hose into the duct and out through the mini canal system to the point where it met the walls.

I grabbed a Jubilee (worm drive) clip from my van, reattached the hose and secured it to stop it from ever dropping away again.

“I will guarantee that job for life”, I said and I meant it because there was no way it would ever come off even if you tugged at it which begs the question – ‘Why don’t manufacturers include a clip on those hoses in the first place?’.

Don’t tell me, I already know the answer. They have a responsibility to a small army of tradesmen depending on the work it creates.

More From Skillbuilder – Rising Damp Exposed

Rising Damp – Capillary Action

Why Your Shower Tray Leaks

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I went to look at a shower tray leak today. It was the usual story, a leak around the tray. The water was pouring out. The householder had been trying to solve the problem for months. He had even renewed the grout and silicone on the bottom three courses of tiles and still the water poured out onto his lovely oak floor.

For 15 years I was the DIY expert on a London Broadcasting show called The Fix-It Phone In, hosted by the talented Therese Birch, and we used to get asked the same leaking shower tray questions week after week. The first thing people do when they get a leak around a tray is to squirt silicone all around the inside – big mistake. If there was a chance of finding out where the leak was coming from, the application of half a tube of silicone ruins that prospect at a stroke.

Despite the fact that someone had been busy with the silicone I could tell straight away where today’s leak was coming from, but one thing I have learned about fault-finding is to never assume. I always go through the basics regardless of hunches. Each possibility has to be eliminated by evidence, not by guesswork.

The fact that large house builders employ silicone specialists on all their properties explains why leaks around shower trays remains the number one call back on new homes

First I played the water all around the tray where it met the wall. No leak. Then I moved slowly up the wall. Still no leak. Then I aimed the spray into the corner where the shower screen wall profile meets the wall. Still no leak.

It is necessary when carrying out these tests to stand in the shower and it is also necessary to replicate the weight of the person who normally uses the shower. This can be difficult at times. I took my socks off so I could stand in the right position and then I gradually raised the height of the spray up the corner profile. Suddenly the water started pouring out from the back of the profile.

I knew immediately that the hollow profile had simply filled up with water. On every shower screen installation instruction sheet I have ever seen it says, “Do not seal around the inside of the shower screen.” But the reason is hardly ever explained. The frame or wall profile will fill up and it needs to leak into the tray. A DIYer could be forgiven for not knowing this and perhaps not reading the instructions but the silicone seal was applied by one of the growing band of silicone sealant specialists who ought to know better. The guy who did this job had clearly never read the instructions on a shower screen installation but even if he had, the fact that he follows the plumber after the installation means he can never do the job properly.

There is an order in which things must be done.

The first job is to seal the tray against the wall. The second job is to tile. The third job is to grout and the fourth job is to apply the second run of silicone. Only then can you fit the profile to the wall, fit the surround panels and seal around the outside. If the job isn’t done in this order it is not just a possibility that it will leak, it is inevitable.

The fact that large housebuilders employ silicone specialists on all their properties explains why leaks around shower trays remains the number one call back on new homes. It is a problem that has persisted for years and in this respect, the building industry remains stubbornly resistant to change.

Shower trays can also crack, see our video on this subject.

Pointing, Are You Missing the point?

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Does one have to be brain dead in order to enjoy pointing?

I have been re-pointing some brickwork this week. Despite having a shed full of various pointing guns I was doing it the old fashioned way with a hawk and a Marshalltown tuck pointer. The reason for using hand tools as opposed to the compressed air gun was simply to reduce noise. The customer has a one week old baby and I didn’t want the compressor kicking in and scaring the living daylights out of the poor mite.

So I had a very pleasant couple of days out on the scaffold tower watching the world go by and listening to the birds sing. My builder friend Steve dropped in to see me and made a comment about having to be brain dead in order to enjoy pointing. OK, I am brain dead but it is stress free and the repetitive nature of the work is strangely satisfying. This is probably because I don’t do it day after day for the rest of my working life. It is in effect a holiday.

…the big difference between what they were doing and what I was doing was the magic ingredient of being outdoors.

When I was a kid I used to see television footage of car workers on assembly lines. They were on the news because they were on strike. That happened a lot in the sixties and even at my young age I had a great deal of sympathy. Faced with the nature of their work, the noise and the grim prospect that they would be doing it day in day out until they won the football pools, I would have found any excuse to walk out into the sunshine.

The big difference between what they were doing and what I was doing – pointing brickwork – was the magic ingredient of being outdoors. A lot of building workers like being out in the open, it’s why they joined. Admittedly it isn’t much fun in January but there is still something appealing about it. Whenever some bright spark comes up with yet another system-built house put together in the factory and hails it as the end of site built housing I hang my head low.

Yes it is more efficient and probably cheaper, it may even have better quality control but it isn’t nearly as much fun. The measurement of job satisfaction isn’t something that economists think much about. The fun footprint is not measured in the way that carbon is. That is a shame because it figures large in people’s lives. It would be nice to have a little stamp on products saying that the maker enjoyed making it. I would put one on my brick pointing, a little smiley face hidden in the mortar lines. A little message for the future generations of builders.

More From Skillbuilder – Working Beyond Retirement, Preference Or Pressure?

Its A Wonderful Life – Working Outdoors

Why help to buy?

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Help to Buy scheme…What could possibly go wrong?

It never ceases to amaze me how many politicians never seem to see beyond their next move. They certainly aren’t chess players. Yet again we see another politician blundering into a trap as obvious as any fools mate. His eye is firmly fixed on the immediate prize and he seems to be blind to the dangers. If only he could step back a bit and look at the whole picture.

People are warning David Cameron that his Help to Buy scheme will produce the opposite outcome to the one he intends, but he refuses to see it. “Trust the Bank of England” he cries. He might just as well have prefaced that with “If you can’t trust me”. His declared motive for the policy is that he doesn’t think it is fair that the only people who can afford to get a foot on the property ladder are those with rich parents. Quite right David.

…In many ways it resembles a student loan but instead of investing in a person the tax payer is investing in property.

So in order to even out this inequality he feels so deeply about, he has cast the British tax payer in the role of rich parent. We are about to lend would be purchasers of houses under £600,000 a full 20% of the market value through a Help to Buy scheme. In many ways it resembles a student loan but instead of investing in a person the tax payer is investing in property. What could possibly go wrong?

The government has been warned that this well intentioned move will fuel another housing bubble pushing prices even further out of the reach of first time buyers. We have seen that house prices rise in proportion to people’s ability to take out, but not necessarily to repay, the loan. Think toxic loans, financial meltdown, Northern Rock.

There is also a danger that a lot of this money will be used by people who don’t need it. It will be easy enough for those looking for a quick buck, to take the government money, buy a property, run around the board twice to see it rise by 30%, sell the property and pay the government back. But the even greater danger is that the bubble will burst and once again thousands of people will find themselves in negative equity. With only 5% of their own money tied up in the property there will be very little to stop those Help to Buy victims cutting their losses and throwing in the keys. We have been there before.

This is not a Monopoly game, people need houses to live in not to speculate with. Tinkering or rigging the market will not provide long term stability let alone cure a housing crisis. To take the heat out of the housing market we need to build more homes. Nothing else will work.

Help To Buy – Equity Loan

First Time Buyers Guide

The Beautiful Game (not quite)

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Qatar, host nation of the 2022 World Cup, (that is soccer for our American followers) is busy building the infrastructure for the games. An expected 500,000 migrant construction workers will make their way across the Indian Ocean to provide the labour and for many it will be a one-way ticket.

Put bluntly the Health and Safety record on construction projects in this fabulously wealthy nation would be criminal if normal laws applied. Sharon Burrows, general secretary of the International Trades Union Confederation, predicts that more people will die building the stadia, roads and hotels than will take to the pitch through the entire tournament.

If each of those players came out with a black armband for the construction workers who will die it would shock the world, but it won’t happen. For a start the rulers of Qatar will not release the figures even if they keep them, which is doubtful.

It is estimated that one worker a day dies in Qatar on these projects and as deadlines loom and require higher output this figure will not go down. No guest worker in Qatar has the right to join a trade union and they must obtain an exit visa from their employer to leave the country. Any worker speaking out would, therefore, be imprisoned.

…part of the bidding process to host this prestigious event ought to include statements on workers’ welfare and on-site safety.

The workers are quite simply seen as disposable. Not all the deaths occur through incidents, some are the result of working long hours in extreme heat. If you think playing football for 90 minutes is hard in 50 deg cent try shovelling concrete.

People are worked to death and die in their sleep crammed into tin huts with no air conditioning. Yet these are not seen as work-related deaths even though they are in construction camps.

Surely part of the bidding process to host this prestigious event ought to include statements on workers’ welfare and on-site safety. It is scandalous that a nation as rich as Qatar cannot see its way to providing basic human rights to its ‘guest’ workers.

When you compare Qatar to the health and safety record of the London 2012 Olympics you begin to see that our triumphs as a host nation started long before the opening ceremony. Rather than ridiculing ‘health and safety’ we should be proud of achieving the safest ever construction project on the planet.

If the rulers of Qatar have no sense of shame then it is up to others to shame them. It is too much to hope that an organisation with the track record of FIFA will expend much energy in this area but ex-players such as David Beckham, who command the attention of the world’s media, are in a perfect position to champion the cause of these workers where nobody else can.

A well-timed and accurately placed statement from him would score a goal for human rights and seal his reputation as a true ambassador of sport.

Green Deal or no deal

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As soon as I saw the way this green deal was shaping up I knew it was in trouble..

The British government has been working on ‘The Green Deal’ for several years now. It was originally the brainchild of the previous Labour government, but the coalition took the idea on and brought it to fruition. I say ‘fruition’ but that is hardly an accurate description because it has failed to even blossom, let alone bear fruit. There are currently just four households in the UK that have signed up. Yes that is four not four thousand or even four hundred.

When the government first started consulting on this scheme a lot of interested parties sat on endless committees and contributed their thoughts. As happens with these things people complained of being ignored but whenever you sift ideas there will be rejects and with that comes hurt pride. But looking at what got accepted I can’t help but wonder what the rejects looked like. They must have been very bad indeed because there seems to be no aspect of this scheme that appeals to the British homeowner.

A local builder could do the job just as well, probably better, for a fraction of the price…

As soon as I saw the way this green deal was shaping up I knew it was in trouble. The usual suspects began to emerge. Cold callers, ex double glazing salesmen in the guise of surveyors and people outside DIY stores with big smiles and clip boards. They were fooling nobody.

There are many aspects of the Green deal that are wrong. The extortionate interest rates being one, but the fundamental flaw is that there is no real competition for the work. When you look at some of the quotes being given for jobs such as insulation and double glazing, you start to get the idea that this is a cosy little club. At those prices and considering the 8% interest rate, the savings take too long to kick in.

A local builder could do the job just as well, probably better, for a fraction of the price. Furthermore, if the householder went to one of the High Street building societies, they would probably be able to secure a loan for 3 percent less than the ‘Green Deal’ rate.

So anyone who is serious about saving energy can either go through all the red tape and paraphernalia that seems to be part of any government package, or they can ring their trusted local builder who will come round on his way home, probably in his overalls not his suit, and give them an honest assessment of what is likely to be a good investment in energy saving.

Most of it is fairly obvious stuff, a new boiler, better controls, under-floor heating, draught proofing, double glazing, insulation and perhaps some solar panels.

The Green Deal – Overview

Experts Training To Deliver Green Home Scheme

Fake Chimney, Lost in Construction?

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Fake Chimney Faux Pas

It might seem like a busman’s holiday but whenever I’m out enjoying myself, I still can’t stop looking at buildings. Now comes the bit where I inflict my holiday snaps on you, and if you are well brought up you say “nice” but anyway feel free to comment.

The first is someone’s ingenious attempt to protect a gable end wall from the weather. This is a common problem where a building has been demolished, leaving another to face the elements. Many people do a bit of vertical tile hanging, but this builder has left part of the roof of the demolished building ,and supported it on cantilevered purlins. Nothing too unusual about that I suppose, but look at the chimney.

It’s hanging in mid air. What possible reason could there be for leaving it there, and what is supporting it? This is not a glass fibre fake chimney; there is half a ton of brickwork up there.

It just looked wrong. If you are going to fake something, you do it properly or don’t bother…

On the subject of fake chimneys, which some house developers think adds character to their new homes, I saw one a while back that was clearly a fake. You could tell because you could see straight in through the bedroom window and where the chimney breast should have been, there was the open space of a large bedroom. It just looked wrong. If you are going to fake something, you do it properly or don’t bother.

The second picture I wanted to show you is a slate roof in Luxembourg. There are many fine examples of slate work in Northern Europe, particularly the numerous church domes. It seems that slaters just can’t resist trying to outdo each other.

Odd tiling in Luxembourg

On this roof they have not only swept up the cheeks of the dormer windows, but the whole slate roof has been run at an angle, rather than being parallel with the ridge. I could see no practical reason for doing this, but then I started wondering if it’s something to do with snow and ice. Slates laid on the slant are less likely to be dragged down if the snow slides off. Each one is held by the one below.

I have no way of knowing if this is the reason and I can see nothing in the roofing manuals that supports this theory, so perhaps they were just showing off after all – and there is nothing wrong with that. Perhaps that’s also what the fake chimney is all about.

More From Skillbuilder – Whats Supporting This Troublesome Chimney?

Why Have A Fake Chimney?

Washing Machine – Indecent Exposure

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The fault lies not in the cupboard or the washing machine..

I had a call-back on a job today. The kitchen unit doors were knocking together. I assumed it would just be a simple matter of adjusting the self-closing Blum hinges and I would be on my way. It turned out that the hinges causing the problem were not Blums but the hinges attached to the washing machine.

For those of you in any nation but Britain I must just explain that we have this odd idea of putting the front-loading washing machine in the kitchen. Don’t ask me why it’s just the way it happens to be. Obviously we don’t like it because we then attempt to hide it behind a cupboard door so all you can see is a clean row of cupboard doors. There are two ways of doing this. One is to leave the doors on the cupboard carcass and the other is to attach the door to the washing machine itself.

The problem is that washing machines, especially front loaders, have a tendency to move slightly when they are in fast spin. Given that the gap between cupboard fronts is around 5mm on each side you can appreciate that you are on a hiding to nothing in trying to maintain that gap.

I explained to the customer that this is not an installation fault, but a design fault. The fault lies not in the cupboard or the washing machine but in the marriage between the two. The kitchen unit manufacturers cannot be expected to cater for a washing machine that walks and the washing machine manufacturer cannot be expected to stabilise the machine within such fine tolerances.

“So what” asked the customer “is the solution?” I thought for a while and eventually in desperation suggested. “The only solution is to remove the decorative door and expose the naked front of the washing machine”.

She was horrified. The idea of spoiling the nice clean line of kitchen cupboards with a washing machine front was so abhorrent that she could hardly believe I had dared suggest it. What kind of Philistine was she dealing with?

What I should have done at that point was tell her that there are some things in life that aren’t fixable but something in me resists that piece of logic.

I played around with the feet and repositioned the machine centrally. Then when her back was turned I took a couple of her tea towels and rammed them deep down into the gap on either side of the machine. I used a long spatula to make sure they were so deep that she wouldn’t detect them. In engineering you might call it a shim, which makes it sound a whole lot better than a bodge.

Skillbuilder Call backs – Why Your Shower Tray leaks

How To buy The Best Integrated Washing Machine