Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 119 total)
  • Weird shit people do to their houses!
  • jfletch
    Free Member

    Having just moved into a new house we are finding all sorts of “quicks”.

    Like why the hell would you plumb all of the radiators upstairs into the hot water circuit?

    Or put the thermostat in the garage, on an outside wall?

    nealglover
    Free Member

    Like why the hell would you plumb all of the radiators upstairs into the hot water circuit?

    Are you sure that they are ?

    If the motorised valve is knackered, it may appear like they are. But they probably aren’t.

    globalti
    Free Member

    They could be. In our house the bathroom rads were running off the HW circuit, meaning that if you ran a bath the boiler fired up and they got hot…. just as you were getting out of the bath feeling hot….

    molgrips
    Free Member

    My neighbour laid laminate flooring directly on top of the carpet underlay. He thinks it’s nice and bouncy. He also hasn’t put any edging or undercut the skirting or anything, so it looks like crap.

    dabble
    Free Member

    My aunty and uncle moved into a house that the owner had stuck what can only be described as “boobs” on the roof. They were in a circular pattern and were domes about 6 inch across that stood 3 inch high and had a nipple on them. The roof was also painted pink (although the nipples were the same colour, he’d (i’m assuming it was a he) not gone so far as to paint the areola in a darker shade). Weird shit indeed.

    purpleyeti
    Free Member

    same here bathroom radiator is on the hot water circuit. we also found two double sockets in series bridged off the back of a single socket on 5amp wire under the carpet.

    dabble
    Free Member

    we also found two double sockets in series bridged off the back of a single socket on 5amp wire under the carpet

    Needs a new thread, “Dangerous shit people do to their houses”.

    z1ppy
    Full Member

    We have a couple of radiators that heat up when we shower… no idea why.

    There an extention lead that comes out of the wall for the loft light, and has to be plugged into another that goes under the floor and come up again near the plug.

    We have dealt with the old cupboard that they just walled up (plaster boards over the doors), clothes and all…

    wrecker
    Free Member

    same here bathroom radiator is on the hot water circuit.

    Bypass radiator?

    bensales
    Free Member

    My plumber told me the reason for the bathroom radiator on the hot water circuit is so that while the hot water is being replaced after use, it’s heating either a radiator or towel rail for you to dry the used towels on.

    I thought it was a stupid idea and had him reconnect it to the central heating circuit. My reasoning being I want the ice cold bathroom to be heated for more than 30 minutes out of every day in the winter.

    cvilla
    Full Member

    Bathroom type radiator/towel rails sometimes run off hot water circuit so towels dry in summer, when winter heating is not on; not sure about a whole floor!

    purpleyeti
    Free Member

    Bypass radiator

    on the hot water circuit? would understand on the heating one, we have rads with no tvr’s for that reason

    29erKeith
    Free Member

    old fella must have felt a draft or two so covered up all the vent bricks with slates, then had damp issues on the walls so covered bits of the walls with plastic sheets then thin ply over that and then wallpapered it and then painted that 🙄

    hence a completely rotten ground floor and stairs needing replacement and re-plastering every wall in the house.

    we obviously knew about the damp and floors in bad nick but it turned out to be worse than expected just mind boggling seeing some of the bodges and how the problems were exacerbated by them

    nealglover
    Free Member

    It used to be pretty standard practice to have bathroom radiators plumbed into the hot water circuit.

    Its not really a “DIY Bodge” it’s just out of date really.

    But if more than just the bathroom rad gets hot when the CH is turned off, it’s either a spectacularly stupid design, or the motorised valve is buggered.

    My guess would be the latter.

    jfletch
    Free Member

    If the motorised valve is knackered, it may appear like they are. But they probably aren’t.

    No expert but wouldn’t the downstairs rads come on as well if the system is borked?

    Not really an issue as its all being replaced with a modern system before the winter anyway.

    They could be. In our house the bathroom rads were running off the HW circuit, meaning that if you ran a bath the boiler fired up and they got hot…. just as you were getting out of the bath feeling hot….

    See that makes sense to me, you get a nice toasty towel before getting out of the shower, nothing worse than a damp cold towel when its not cold enough to put the heating but not hot enough to drip dry! It’s the bedrooms as well that is just wrong.

    we also found two double sockets in series bridged off the back of a single socket on 5amp wire under the carpet.

    We haven’t started digging in the electrics yet but the previous owners we big fans of plug sockets in cupboards which is weird, and then installing a new socket on the outside of the cupboard but instead of wiring it in, simply running off the existing plug.

    The whole place just needs a rewire.

    Northwind
    Full Member

    After a power failure… Inside the wall, we found a mains socket, with a bunch of 4-gangs plugged into it, each of which led to… a mains socket in the skirting boards! Half the sockets in the house were run from one original plug.

    Oh, and the attic is floored over with very thin hardboard that won’t support your weight, so you have to look for the nails to figure out where the joists are, otherwise you fall through the roof. Again.

    parkesie
    Free Member

    We had a rad that had been put in line with the cold tap.

    edlong
    Free Member

    Some eejit did a really nice job of tiling all round our bath, but neglected to consider any sort of access panel to get to the plumbing. Looks great now, but at some point in the future, if there is a leak or somesuch, it’s going to involve some level of destruction to get at anything. What a plum

    😳

    clubber
    Free Member

    I know someone who lived in a victorian basement flat with a very wide hall/corridor and a damp problem. Since he was moving, he didn’t want to pay to have the damp sorted so had false walls put up over the damp ones – the corridor was wide enough that it wasn’t noticeable. Unfortunate for the new owners if they ever found out though…

    rocketman
    Free Member

    The last time we went house-hunting it was a real eye opener

    * Bright blue carpet, purple sofa and scary paintings on the lurid orange walls. Blackout blinds closed at midday. Witch-like owner.

    * CH plumbing routed up/over and down the front door on the inside. Chromed too. Apparently it makes the porch warmer in winter

    * Conservatory that stopped just short of the end of the garden so that there would be a 1m strip of lawn for the rabbits to play on

    * Bathroom door missing. Torn off during a domestic argument

    unklehomered
    Free Member

    old fella must have felt a draft or two so covered up all the vent bricks

    My Dad’s done that… 🙄 Will not accept the cause of damp in that bit of the house – scrap that, will not accept that there IS damp…

    In line with recent developements of ‘life plans’ and a new job, I looked at some houses for sale recently. My conclusion. Nobody anywhere has any taste, and Skip hire is an essential part of buying a house…

    valleyman
    Free Member

    next door neighbour to the inlaws bought a conservatory off ebay and installed it, but cut a serious corner and didn’t cut into the house and install/use proper ‘lead’ flashing they just used the crappy tape!… disaster waiting to happen!

    torsoinalake
    Free Member

    The previous owners of our house have done some very interesting DIY/construction work. The latest discovery is a stud wall that appears to have been erected to house two radiator pipes. There is brickwork behind all of it except for where a door used to be, this is plasterboarded on one side, the other was covered by the stud wall.

    On the other side of the wall is a shower cubicle with one side made out of glass bricks. They have put the reinforcing rods through the plasterboard.

    unklehomered
    Free Member

    Our new neighbours discovered some insane things by our old neighbour, who was a bit wierd. Best of all has to be relaying a roof with the tiles end-to-end rather than overlapped… obviously the failing of this became apparent the first time it rained… 😕

    wwaswas
    Full Member

    I think everything on this thread shows why local authorities seem to be getting Building Control involved with so many areas of the work on housing stock at the moment and why it’s probably a good idea.

    project
    Free Member

    Went out with a lady who had white shag pile carpet in the toilet and bathroom, shoes of when you entered the house and slip on paper slipers to wear over socks.

    Houses ive worked on, central heating pipes fed behind arictrave and up and over a doorway instead of unde the floor,

    laminate floor layed in long lengths like floor boards with out the overlap holding them together,

    Drain on the bath higherthan the plug hole, bath empties until it reaches the height in the pipe through the wall and then doesnt empty any more,

    Bathroom shower wired into a 13 amp plug with screw for a fuse,

    Chipboard bathroom floor so rotten i almost went through it,

    somebody laying laminate flooring in a large room, and putting it higher than the opening door , which they couldnt then open,

    Hot water tap outside so he could wash his bikes in warm water in winter,

    and lots more……….

    tinybits
    Free Member

    Hot water tap outside so he could wash his bikes in warm water in winter,

    I see no problem with this at all!

    wrecker
    Free Member

    Bathroom shower wired into a 13 amp plug with screw for a fuse,

    That made me grimace. Yikes.

    thepurist
    Full Member

    Went out with a lady who had white shag pile carpet in the toilet and bathroom, shoes of when you entered the house and slip on paper slipers to wear over socks.

    So you took STW’s advice then?

    bencooper
    Free Member

    Drain on the bath higherthan the plug hole, bath empties until it reaches the height in the pipe through the wall and then doesnt empty any more,

    😀

    We had our garage converted to a bedroom and bathroom a few years ago (the garage was too narrow for any modern car and had a tree right in front of the door, but that’s another story) – anyhow the plumber drilled a hole through the wall for the toilet waste pipe, the waste pipe then went along the back of the garage dropping a couple of feet on the way. no problem.

    Then they got to fitting the shower, and decided that it’d be a good idea to plumb the shower outlet into the toilet waste pipe. Then they realised that to do that the shower base would have to be on a plinth. So they did that, but they were both rather short lads and didn’t notice that the headroom in the shower was now 5’2″ – that’s space to the ceiling, not to the shower head 😉

    Told them to stop being silly, and drill another hole in the back wall for the shower outlet. It honestly hadn’t occurred to them…

    Teetosugars
    Free Member

    Hot water tap outside so he could wash his bikes in warm water in winter,

    I’m just about to do exactly this…

    Didn’t realise it was an issue? 😳

    project
    Free Member

    and another house bath supported on just a chipboard floor, no bearer and no joists near the feet and the plain chipboard, which wasnt waterproof (green), then there was another with more cables under the bath floor for a jacuzzi type blower pump,
    then a major hospital with a vent stack supplying/extracting air from the shower rooms, hole in the panneling, the patients used to have a fag in the shower and chuck fag ends into shaft, which would be sucked up into fan,luckily there hasnt been a fire so far.

    bencooper
    Free Member

    Oh, and also in our slightly dodgy flat – mains smoke alarms wired up with 4-core phone cable.

    Gave the BT technician a shock. Literally.

    lemonysam
    Free Member

    Bathroom shower wired into a 13 amp plug with screw for a fuse,

    Oooh, ooh, oooh! one of my old rental houses had this, when one of my housemates went to change the fuse he came back white as a sheet and refused to let us turn the power on to the house until we’d had an electrician round. He then condemned every plug in the house except one. The same house had the boiler in a shed outside to save room in the kitchen. After three winters in a row during which it froze and disintegrated they finally realised their folly.

    mrmoofo
    Full Member

    Funny you should say about the air brick thing. My house has three of the F***ers… basically straight through the walls. It is mainly because we had an internal boiler, that needed air supplied. So when the boiler came on to heat the house, it drew in cold air from outside, making the house effing freezing!!
    So now we have a combi boiler with a combined inflow / out flow. So I have blocked off two of the air bricks on the inside only. The other airbrick that comes all the way through the wall now has an adjustable grill on it, so the east winds no onger will freeze may nuts off.

    I will, however, keep and eye out for any signs of damp ..

    scratch
    Free Member

    Hot water tap outside so he could wash his bikes in warm water in winter,

    That was the deal clincher when I bought mine!

    ads678
    Full Member

    The previous owners of our house had a massive TV on the wall and the sky/dvd boxes on a shelf next to it. They had plastered in an extension lead and Ariel cables up to the shelf, which was in an alcove, then from the shelf round the corner to the TV they had plastered in another extension and a scart extension. They had also stuck a concrete block into the wall to mount the TV on and then had the wall skimmed but not skimmed over the concrete block and had not removed the radiator so skimmed around that as well!! made a right bloody mess!

    The room was painted a satin finish poo brown colour as well. we literally had to turn the lights in during the day it was so dark in there.

    Fortunately it’s now a very nice room. IMO any way.

    mrmonkfinger
    Free Member

    blimey

    I feeling quite pleased that we’ve only discovered a few low grade bodges at our place:

    leaky toilet? why not simply almost turn off the ball valve to lower the bathroom water pressure “a bit” resulting in 20 minute cistern fill time and a tap that just about dribbles… new fill valve, £10

    drain pipe from conservatory roof? yep – run right in front of an opening fanlight… cost me a £3 elbow to fix

    the worst thing we have found (so far) is the frankly insane layout of light switches, most of which are on the wrong side of doors or in the wrong room, or both.

    avdave2
    Full Member

    I stood back after redecorating our bedroom in my old house admiring my work when it occurred to me that although I’d painted a chimney breast there wasn’t one in the room below.

    They also artexed all the kitchen walls and in the bathroom I lifted the boards to discover virtually more than half the joists had only an inch left on them after they’d been cut through to put a radiator in.

    somafunk
    Full Member

    Fife stone built fireplaces stretching along one entire wall with a tiny 16″ wide open fire in the centre – very aspirational for newly bought council houses in the 80’s/90’s. Artexing on ceilings dripping down like stalactites, one “simple/retarded” couple lifted their wood floors/joists and burned them, when we went in they were living on the solum, plasterboard shower cubicles lined with thick plastic bags, just some of the stuff i had to deal with when i worked for a mate doing damp proof remedial work. The stupidity of some folk never fails to provide amusement…or work.

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