Hey friends,

Some good progress to tell you about this week.

⚓ Anchor Resin + Threaded Rods

Following on from my last newsletter I've now installed the pull-up bar in the garage. The blocks that make up the garage are the lightweight aerated kind that you can hammer a nail into. The first thing I tried, with not much hope, were some masonry bolts I had found as part of my re-org. And sure enough they failed at first time of asking.

So I got to use something I've been wanting to try for a while: bonded anchor resin in conjunction with some threaded rods. I expanded the holes, squirted the resin in with a sealant gun and pushed in the rods. Working time varies depending on temperature (2-15 mins) so I did one at a time, wiping away any excess and held the threaded rods in the centre of the holes.

I hung the bar and tightened the supplied nuts over washers.

Strong enough? You betcha:

I've got some way to go though.

So this resin is good stuff. In terms of other applications, it's how I'd go about attaching timber walls to a concrete base:

1. Work out your stud spacing and mark out on the concrete where the rods will push up through the spacings between studs.
2. Drill holes in the concrete, squeeze in resin and insert threaded rods (holding them upright until the resin sets).
3. Build the walls and drill holes in the bottom plates for the rods to come through.
4. Lift the walls on to the rods and secure with big washers and nuts.

💡 Attic lighting + re-routing cabling

Time to get into a proper project. Because I re-worked the downstairs floor-plan I put the woodburner installation on hold in case it changed things but will go ahead with it later this year hopefully. My next task is the landing which will finish off the upstairs, having now completed the bedrooms and bathroom.

I need to work backwards again so it looks roughly like this:

1. Sort out the electrics in the loft including...
2. Moving a lightswitch in our bedroom, reverse door hinge side, re-do some paintwork etc.
3. Add insulation and board out half the loft. Move stored items from above the landing to the new boarded area.
4. Do landing - take down ceiling, walls. New joists, banister, loft ladder, possibly new water tank, downlights in hall below, re-plumbing etc.
5. Insulate and board the rest of the loft.

It's a big job and admittedly I've been putting it off but it's a good time of year to get in the attic - not too hot, not too cold. It'll be summer by the time I open up the landing ceiling so that works as well. I'll intersperse it with other projects so I won't put a timeline on it.

To start, it's always a nice thing to be able to see what you're doing so I began by replacing these two hanging bulbs...

...with some 4' LED batten lights. 1920 lumens each. Much brighter. You can't replace the bulbs with these, you have to replace the units but they won't get much use after this project so should last a lifetime being LED. The connector wasn't much good for adding a second light in series (2 cables going into one side of the connector) so I replaced it on the first light with 3 blocks of terminal strip which fitted inside the light nicely. Alternatively I could have run a separate cable to each light. I didn't add a light to the hipped side of the roof because that will be taken down when we extend to the side.

The rest of this lighting circuit provides power for the upstairs lighting which I've replaced in each room with downlights from a junction box. There are two lights, represented by the red dots below in the old floor-plan which I need to remove. This was pretty simple: the cable from the consumer unit now by-passes these and runs to the junction box for the new bathroom lights and then loops to the 2 bedrooms and then the new attic lights - it just took some time to work out where the cables went.

The green dot above is where a bunch of cables come up to the loft including this lighting circuit. They aren't in an electrical safe zone and this wall is going to be removed so I'm moving them to the new wall on the left of the photo below. The socket and light-switch I installed here for the boy's room makes this area a safe zone so that's where the lighting circuit cable from the consumer unit now lives. Lighting circuits are radial so there's no return cable to the consumer unit.

I then had to figure out what the 3 remaining cables were for:

1. Part of the ground floor lighting circuit to power the landing light (it's on a 2 gang 2 way circuit with the hall lights). This went up to the loft, into an old style junction box (the round kind) then another cable connected to the landing light. Once I'd moved it the cable to the safe zone I had less slack so I simply replaced the cable to from the JB to the landing light. This will all get re-done when I install more lights when I do the landing.
2. Tracing this cable it goes up into the loft then dives back down to power the mirror light/shaver point in this same area - the old bathroom. I consulted the consumer unit which has a breaker labelled 'doorbell transformer & shaver point'. It's strange that the cable didn't go straight up to the shaver point as it comes in directly below it 🤷‍♂️. Anyway, I detached the cable, checked the doorbell was still working when the power was back on; it was, so I put terminal block on the end of the cable, put that inside a choc box, labelled what it was for and put the cable under the landing floorboards for safety. It could be useful in future. I then changed the labelling on the CU too.
3. It's a phone line. In the loft I have this box. There are two cables into it which is the phone line that comes into the house via a telegraph pole outside. Two cables come out of this box and extend it downstairs to our phone/data socket which is where the router is plugged in. Of the two additional plug things held on by tape one goes to our bedroom which I remember tucking under the floorboards and the other is this mystery cable.

Some detective work later, helped by the distinguishing round coaxial shape, I traced the cable to under the stairs where it goes up...

...and looks like it got covered up in the past:

I'm not sure where the second cable from it goes but clearly they're not in use so again I've wrapped the cable up and put it under the landing floorboards.

So with those cables dealt with I added another for a socket in the loft. You may remember I prepped for this when renovating the boy's bedroom by ensuring the socket here was on the ring and not a spur and therefore I could spur from it to the loft. So here are all the remaining and new cables happy in their new electrical safe zone:

And the new socket in the loft for which I used a surface pattress box:

There's a few more electrical things I'm thinking about for later on:

1. a wired in smoke detector (current one is battery only). This can be connected to the ground floor/landing lighting circuit but I'll need to decide whether it's wifi/radio linked or wired to others, incl. a heat detector in the kitchen and CO detector in the living room, so they go off simultaneously in the event of a fire.
2. a ceiling mounted wireless access point which will require an ethernet cable and possibly a powered switch for power-over-ethernet by the router. I'm still keen on ethernet direct to device for a tv or desktop but wifi has gotten much more reliable in recent years so no need to run ethernet cable everywhere.
3. maybe a passive input ventilation (PIV) unit. I've ruled out a mechanical ventilation & heat recovery unit (MVHR) due to cost and complication of ducting but a PIV may be a good shout as we do get condensation on the windows. It's quite an interesting topic as they are becoming more of a requirement as we increase air tightness and insulation in our homes. A dehumidifier may be just as good but with a PIV you get fresh air input too. I'm sure indoor air quality will become a hot topic in years to come. I'm mulling it over.

Onto phase 2.

👋

We've hopped on the air fryer trend. Compared with an oven they supposedly heat up quicker, make food super crispy and are a lot less energy hungry. They also use less oil than frying. As the household's principal chef Abi's besotted with it. I'm more apathetic but do like the sound of lower energy bills. It's this one.

Hit "reply" if you've got any comments on this week's newsletter – otherwise I'll see you next time. Have an epic week :)

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