What "man jobs" have you done today?

Planted 130 Bluebell and 110 Snowdrop bulbs. Most of them on a strip of ground at the front of the house and the ones left over in some pots (which I will use to transplant once "in the green") Should hopefully bring some nice colours from about Feb to end of May (snowdrops first then bluebells to follow as the snowdrops end)

Also spread some Yellow Rattle and Common Poppy seeds on the wildflower patch ready for the frost in the upcoming Winter (both require Stratification to break dormancy). Not sure how the Poppy will do as they tend to prefer full sun (some of that wildflower area is mostly shade) so I put some in some pots as well in an area of full sun and can transplant them later if need be
 
Cleaned the double oven, cycled into town to do some food shopping, raked the leaves off the lawn, phew it's only 12.30.
 
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Gutter downpipe was blocked somewhere. Toom it off the wall, and it was the drain underground blocked with moss n leaves rotted down.
Bought a windy twisty metal unblocking cable, pushed it down, twisting with hosepipe managed to unblock it.
Re-fastened downpipe back to wall.
 
We had a bathroom refit many years ago, was well done, except we noticed only recently that rather than securing the towel radiator to the wall by using screws thru the metal spacers, they stuck the metal spacers to the wall.

So, it'll be no surprise to learn that lately the radiator came away from the wall and was only being held vertical by the in/out pipes at the bottom, so nothing could be placed on it.

Never drilled tiles before, and these tiles are 9mm Ceramic. A quick youtube search told me that a tunstgen carbide tile drill bit is required. I duely bought one from the local screwfix:-


£7.99, but I thought hell it'll do me for whatever i need in the future.

Started the first hole. By the time I was 2/3rds of the way thru, there was smoke coming out. Once I go thru the tile, i used a standard masonary bit to drill into the wall. The 2nd hole, well it took about 5 mins, and it was smoking from the start. I'm pretty sure I just burned my way thru that hole. When finished the bit was black half way down it's length and even the part of the bit that was in the makita drill was damn hot, the business end musta been seriously hot.

I think this bit is now shot.

Was my technique wrong ?, I was applying quite a bit of force , as that seemed to be needed to make any headway. Should I have just used a lot lighter force and maybe taken 10mins on each hole ? it did do the job, as i only needed to secure with two screws, and there was no skidding about the tile at the start which was great, but for a drill bit designated as "bosch expert high-performance carbide tip for long life in hard tiles" it seemed to wilt rather quickly.

I do (latterly) note that the screwfix entry says "slow drilling speed". I did use the slow speed until I had a good start and then switched to the higher speed. Maybe that's were i went wrong. I left a pretty scathing review on there, but maybe it was my technique ?
 
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Finally got around to replacing a failed inlet valve on my downstairs loo, did the main bathroom one a couple of months back too, just waiting on the one in the ensuite to fail next I suppose.
 
tangey said:
I do (latterly) note that the screwfix entry says "slow drilling speed". I did use the slow speed until I had a good start and then switched to the higher speed. Maybe that's were i went wrong. I left a pretty scathing review on there, but maybe it was my technique ?
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If you were using the slow speed with the trigger fully depressed, I imagine that was still too fast. Drills are generally always variable speed with the trigger now, right?

Mainly though I imagine you could have cooled the bit by periodically dipping it in water. If something is smoking you stop and wait or cool it down, don't just carry on! Yes if something is hot enough to change colour it might be knackered. :)
 
Redundant RJ45 needed terminating and as it's quite short, only really had one chance. Ended up doing a bunch of terminations, nice.
 
LuckyBenski said:
If you were using the slow speed with the trigger fully depressed, I imagine that was still too fast. Drills are generally always variable speed with the trigger now, right?

Mainly though I imagine you could have cooled the bit by periodically dipping it in water. If something is smoking you stop and wait or cool it down, don't just carry on! Yes if something is hot enough to change colour it might be knackered. :)
Click to expand...

Thanks for the response, I guess I was running it too quick, although it did seem to need either speed or good pressure to make any inroads. Also the bit was specifically marked as "dry use only"
 
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tangey said:
Thanks for the response, I guess I was running it too quick, although it did seem to need either speed or good pressure to make any inroads. Also the bit was specifically marked as "dry use only"
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Might have just been a rubbish bit then! Got a link?

Edit: oh you did. Yeah that doesn't look terrible. I like that Bosch series for masonry bits at least.
 
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Finally pulled my finger out and ripped down a load of wood, cut it up and glued some of it together to make the top for a dining room table
 
Replaced the cistern dual flush valve that came with the original loo. A direct replacement would be £7.42, replacing the valve of the same.. £7.42.. the water hardness etc had caused it to leak into the bowl after 12 years. Replaced with a flowmater dual valve that you can configure the two flush volumes independently plus you can take the thing apart in the cistern to clean etc without disassembling the toilet. The old valve material and the seal material between cistern and bowl was also starting to degrade so figured that it would be prudent to replace that too. 1h30 later including clean up and it's all done. Should help reduce the water consumption and at the current rate it only needs 9m^3 saved to pay for it (we consume about 0.5-0.55m^5/day before I've made some changes like this).
 
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Today I've put a double socket back box on the wall, done a tiny bit of plaster patching behind the box(where I chased to far up) and then melted off the old lead water feed pipe to the house and cemented it over. I think that's me done for the day unless I have to cook dinner.:)
 
Today I changed the electric shower for a new one. The old one started passing water out of the PRV, and I'd already replaced the solenoid in that one, years ago, so rather than chase that fault (even though it was probably only a £25 part), I decided to replace it entirely as that model is now discontinued. Ours was 8 years old, and I know they made it at least 6 years before that, so it's quite an old model.

It took a while to find one that would take the same pipe without me modifying it or the cable, but I did find one (Triton Omnicare). I had to nip to Screwfix for a compression coupling, as the video I watched showed a thread waiting, but when I got the shower in hand, it was just a smooth plastic pipe for the water inlet. Got the olives pasted up with compound, and there were no weeps when the water was turned back on.
 
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