I hate plumbing

Just sayin’.

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Well stop doing it then. :smiley:

(sorry to hear of your hassles Sir William - hope it gets sorted soon)

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At least electrons don’t leak all over your floors.

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Actually what I generally dislike, and am tackling at the moment is replacing a mixer tap which decided that it would no longer shut off fully on the hot side.

You can get replacement cartridges for these but the old tap was nasty, corroded and a decision was made to replace it. Especially as it very obviously was not an expensive one and replacement of the whole thing was only a smidge over €20 from Casto.

Note the integrated waste plug lever. If you pass this through from the top expecting it to stay there while you reach underneath to connect it up, think again. Despite some fairly sharp bends if the angle is right it will fall straight through.

Behind the back panel of the vanity unit.

Which I can’t budge - can’t see how it is fixed to the wall and the plan was not to engage in destructive remodelling.

Of course it is not magnetic so I can’t fish it out that way.

In the end I “borrowed” the old one, though it does not sit quite right.

Not to mention when doing jobs like this access is always impossible.

And whoever fitted the thing thought it would be a good idea to have the pipes run up to within about an inch of the undersurface of the bowl making it nigh on impossible to get the tails hooked up again (have stopped for a breather before I loose my rag and it does become destructive remodelling).

Still, cheaper and quicker than trying to engage a plumber.

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No but you might if the bang is loud enough :rofl:

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Thought that was plasma :open_mouth::joy:

Right I think  that’s in and watertight.

LED torch, mirror, and slimmer wrench did the trick.

Though the “tails” are so tight the hot kinked and when I managed to un-kink it I just kinked the cold instead.

I couldn’t even get a basin wrnch at the nuts.

These look interesting for tight spaces though.

Crows feet wrenches, handy but require quite a lot of space to rotate. There are thin walled pipe spanners for the job.

Our house in Cussy had the cheapest, crappiest mixer taps, along with the push-rod sink waste system that’s simply ineffective and leaky from the cheap waste fittings. When I moved and reinstalled the basin upstairs I fitted a nice quality mixer tap and click-clack waste. Then it turned out the bottom of the basin was warped where the waste went through, and the only way to get a seal was to slather it all with silicone sealer. But it IS in now, and I find the quality of the tap and waste really pleasing after the poor quality original fittings.

There’s still the downstairs bathroom to do, with another of those horrid taps and the garbage douche cabine plus single lever mixer arrangements. But that’s a job for the next couple of years.

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Use a rubber band or small cable tie to stop it falling (writing from experience) :mechanic:

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Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Of course I didn’t expect it to fall through, or I might have tied it down a bit better, or screwed the “extension” on so that it was less likely to fall behind the back panel of the unit.

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Can I just say how much I admire people who can do practical stuff like this. You seldom realise what an achievement it appears to people like me, who can often see what needs to be done but could never achieve it.

Right, that’s enough sincerity. I don’t want to faucet.

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Groan.

The irony is that I’m terrible at DIY but do it anyway because the alternatives are usually worse.

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I wish I could say that!

I can feel my sympathy draining away.

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Yes it’s a waste of

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We should all pipe down

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A substantial part is having the confidence to get on with it and the sense to plan in advance, the mechanics of the job generally not being that difficult. I fitted bathroom, kitchen, central heating to our first house having never done anything before, and just scanned through a couple of books (pre-youtube!) first. Talking with my brother last weekend, we both noted how we no longer feel confident to do stuff, even though we each have a lot of experience in plumbing, carpentry and some with electrics/electronics. Stamina makes a big difference too, and at the moment, after a couple of hours DIY I feel ready to stop.

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It drove me made in the UK that, following the introduction of Part P, I couldn’t do my own electrical work when I was doing it to a standard far higher than that of the “professionals” who built the house.

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That’s why I work digitally… Zeroes and ones never hurt anyone.

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