New dwelling surprises :-)

[The Medway Handyman]

I guess you expect to find a few odd things when you move into a house that isn't new, but new to you.

First thing was a pair of wall lights, wired into sockets with the cables running at an angle, only noticed in a certain light which showed the uneven filling. They are coming out!

Removed the bath panel on the steel bath, to find that the nicely made steel cradles to support it where lying sideways on the floor at the back. Several offcuts of timber had been used to support the bath.

Flush handle on the toilet is a somewhat bulky wood & brass affair which means the seat fouls it & won't stay up, really annoying!

Weirdest of all, is the bathroom door. The mortice latch has been fitted the wrong way around. The flat side of the latch hits the striker plate first. Oddly enough if you use the handle it does actually stay shut.

I might be a busy boy for a few weeks :-)

[Andy Cap]

Whilst I used the cradles, I also placed timber under the chipboard base to provide additional support. It makes the bath much more stable.

Andy C

[Brian Gaff]

The latter one is obviously a dyslexia sufferer, but not in words but locks. Most locks of course can be unscrewed and the vital part reversed...

Quite what the bath fitters were doing is anyone's guess. I've seen the loo one before, its the toilet being too clost that is the issue of course. As for walllights. My late father used to fit lights that way, it saved cable he said.

Brian

[Baz]

You might have to get a man in.

[Titus Aduxass]

Dyslocksia?

[F]

Female plumber?

[newshound]

Not "late" because he didn't see the point of RCDs, I trust!

[John Rumm]

We looked round one house years ago where the owner had run surface mounted flex to the wall lights, and then papered over it - cable clips and all!

[GMM]

Just a few weeks? It's alright for some - it's a 10 year plan here!

I bought some wall lights from Ikea the other week and they were provided with cables and mains plugs with an inline switch (which I didn't notice till I got them home). Presumably this is to stop the terminally stupid from failing to wire them properly, although they would look fugly dangling down the wall. After a bit of thought as to how to 'modify' them they went back in favour of a more sensible alternative from elsewhere.

Our new bog has a handle like that: I sorted the seat so it stays up for gentlemanly relief purposes, but the spindle of the handle is slowly wearing a depression into the (always up regardless of gender) seat cover. Not the worst aspect though: As a new improved compliant model, the flush is bloody useless.

[Bob Eager]

When we moved here, the house was split into two 'flats' (no separate doors, it was really a granny flat upstairs). The power for the cooker point in the upstairs kitchen came from under the living room floor - the cable was clipped to the inside corner of the chimney breast alcove. And papered over. AFAIR it was wired into the downstairs ring.

[chris French]

In message , The Medway Handyman writes

We had a room thermostat in the hall that didn't seem to function.

Turns out that it wasn't connected up - cable was all there and everything just not connected up into the system.

In our old house there was a socket wired in to the henley block after the electric meter (esp. for the xmas lights in the porch AFAICT)

[Brian Gaff]

Yes, they have their tongue upside down.

Brian

[Brian Gaff]

No unfortunately not that reason. We never had rcs then, aand I'm not that convinced they are of much help except where water outsiede electrics etc are concerned.

Brian

[GMM]

When we moved into our first house, it had a new shower room complete with electric shower. The first morning I jumping into the shower - nothing doing. Investigation showed there was never an attempt to run a cable to it: presumably they had failed to appreciate the need for it in the design or found too late (as I did) that there was no spare way in the CU.

[docholliday93]

When I moved into my first house there were a number of interesting surpris= es like that! I discovered that all the kitchen sockets were wired into the immersion hea= ter circuit (a wire coming out of the switch on the kitchen wall). As I was busy sorting that out and rebuilding the garden wall, I got the pl= umber in to fit a stopcock on the incoming mains (since there wasn't one an= ywhere apart from the one in the street) and to disconnect the supply to th= e disused and broken outside loo. When I arrived home from work that evening I discovered my neighbour knocki= ng at the door to see if I could turn the water on again - it turned out th= at no-one had bothered to tell me (possibly because they didn't know) that = the supply to my outside loo also fed the neighbour's - and they didn't hav= e an inside loo. Unfortunately the plumber had actually removed a section of pipe, so I coul= dn't help them; they had to flush with a bucket of water until we got a new= connection from their supply sorted out.

[Andrew Gabriel]

circuit (a wire coming out of the switch on the kitchen wall).

plumber in to fit a stopcock on the incoming mains (since there wasn't one anywhere apart from the one in the street) and to disconnect the supply to the disused and broken outside loo.

at the door to see if I could turn the water on again - it turned out that no-one had bothered to tell me (possibly because they didn't know) that the supply to my outside loo also fed the neighbour's - and they didn't have an inside loo.

couldn't help them; they had to flush with a bucket of water until we got a new connection from their supply sorted out.

That happened to me in reverse. House next to me was sold after the old guy there died (just before I moved in). Nothing had been done to that house for over 50 years; still had it's original 1920's wiring, 1920's decor, etc. A plumber bought it, and started doing it up in his spare time. I came home one day and noticed a trench up their path from the street and a nice new blue water supply fitted. I was already suspecting this, but got indoors, only to find I have no water. He didn't know it, but the original pipe fed half the terrace. He spent next day digging up under the floors, trying to find where the old supply pipes went off to the neighbouring houses, and eventually connected us back up!

[Theo Markettos]

I've seen that... but under the paper ran the entire feed for upstairs from the CU. But the walls were made of something odd (1940s cindery-type material)... maybe a channel would have gone through to the other side. The sockets were surface mounted because the walls weren't thick enough to recess a pattress into.

Theo

[Tim Streater]

I suppose these days that would be covered by one of the forms you complete where the seller certifies that all appliances are in working order - or not.

[Peter Johnson]

I had one like that in my last house. I don't remember who it was wired now but the heating was dependent on the thermostat on the boiler (in the kitchen) until I sorted it out.

[Dave Liquorice]

The central heating thermostat when we moved in here was in the utility room. The coldest room in the place also no radiator... There was no zoning at all so two HW cylinders on gravity loops and a single pump for the two central heating loops. One of the first thing I did was make into a four independent time and thermostatically controlled zone system.

The previous owners said that the Baxi Burnall open fire place would get through coal or wood at a phenomenal rate. Well it would the under grate butterfly damper plate had fallen apart so there was no air supply restriction at all and the external feed to that is on the exposed (high) pressure side of the house. Talk about blown fires for melting metal?

The shower mixer in the bathroom was seized solid, never bothered fixing that as the (70's) bathroom was going to go. It finally did last year...

The electrics had four final circuits: ring main, cooker, immersion and lighting. Wired fuses of course. IIRC the garage socket came off the cooker fuse and the garage light off the immersion.