Hey friends,

💡 Bathroom Lighting

The bathroom lighting is complete and looking pretty good. Steve once again helped wire everything up but I feel pretty good having run all the cabling myself. I'm improving!

Here's a schematic of the cabling with everything in their rough positions from a birds' eye/attic view:

I'll point out a few details of interest.

• Because there are 5 LED strips (you can only see 4 in the pic below) it's hard to wire up all of them to go into the driver directly. Instead they go via a connector box. From the driver this then goes directly to the switch.
• The mirror cabinet is wired straight into the JB (where the ceiling rose was previously) so always has power and doesn't depend on the lights being on. This is good if you want to charge a shaver or toothbrush.
• The extractor fan has a 3 core and earth leading to it from the isolator switch as it needs a switched live to tell it turn on with the lights as well as another always-on live (unless isolator switch is turned off) so that it can run for 10 minutes after the lights are switched off. Everything else is twin and earth cable.

Fancy!

• The downlights and the LED strips dim and brighten. ✅
• The mirror cabinet charges well and the lights turn off and on by the sensor underneath. ✅
• The extractor fan is doing its job and I set it to overrun by 10 minutes. I wouldn't say it lives up to it's 'Silent' name but it's pretty quiet. ✅

There are 4 niggles though.

• As I thought might be the case, the extractor fan does not switch on if the downlights are turned on at their dimmest setting. If I brighten them the fan does then get the signal and comes on.
• More weirdly, only 1 downlight turns on if they are turned on at their dimmest. If they are brightened and then dimmed all the way then they're fine. Dimming lights is always fraught with difficulties and why I would go with smart bulbs if we could have a plug for an Alexa in here. At least there's no buzz which can sometimes happen with dimmable lights. I did go for a good quality dimmer switch hoping this wouldn't happen but oh well.

• Similarly, the LED strips don't come on at the dimmest setting. Not sure why.

These are all things I can live with and wouldn't be an issue if I went with a non-dimmable switch.

• The big problem is an annoying buzz from the transformer for the shaver point in the cabinet, even when nothing is plugged in.

That's going to drive me nuts so I contacted Plumbworld who said it's a known issue with a batch of these mirror cabinets - oh, thanks for letting me know! They offered a full refund or replacement. My first thought was to go for a refund of £215 then try to find a replacement transformer and I'd be quids in. I then reconsidered as it would be pretty handy having a spare cabinet to cannibalise for parts as this one will be embedded into the wall and difficult to remove.

I try to judge a company not if things go wrong but on how they go about resolving them and I can't fault Plumbworld on their response, though I do feel they should have reached out to customers once they had identified a faulty batch.

⚒️ Chasing Out

Excitingly, the plumber is returning this Friday so in readiness I've been chasing out the shower/bath valve that will sit above the bath. You may remember that within the £2700 total bathroom suite budget (I previously said £3k, I miscalculated) we spent over £600 on one item. This is it:

The Crosswater MPRO Crossbox Push 3. Feel free to pass judgement but here's my reasoning:

1. Anything that is easy to replace I'm happy to go a bit cheaper on - the wall hung toilet, taps, our vanity etc. Once tiled, the shower valve can't easily be changed.
2. I've had a right 'mare previously with leaking cartridges that have been discontinued a few years down the line. Crosswater has a 15 year guarantee and will continue to stock parts long after that. Peace of mind.
3. As it will be within our solid brick wall, this model has a reasonably shallow depth. Less damage to the wall.
4. It's well made and Crosswater have a good reputation. I don't want hidden leaks behind the tile.
5. It looks pretty snazzy.

I marked up the position above the centre of the bath and cut the outline with a stone cutting blade on my angle grinder. It's as dusty as it sounds. Then I switched to my SDS drill on chisel mode to cut out the rest.

Helpfully, because of the 20mm tile backer I'm installing on top, I don't have to go as deep as I otherwise would.

I have a further three more pipe channels to chase out. One each for the overhead shower, handheld shower and bath filler. These just need to reach below the bath where they'll come out and go to their respective outlets. No need to reach the floor.

☣️ Removing Asbestos Sheets

Since receiving the asbestos result on our shed roof I've been reading up on the subject and it seems that if the sheets can be removed whole, you're outside and only doing it once in a blue moon there's very little risk to your health. That said, I think it's one of those things that if you feel at all uneasy with doing, just throw money at it to get the professionals in.

I wore a face mask the entire time and also bought a disposable boiler suit.

The sheets were attached with a few roofing nails. Rather than try to prise them up with a claw hammer and risk cracking the sheets, I cut through the heads with the reciprocating saw.

Before hauling the sheets down I unravelled my polythene sheet so I could lay the asbestos sheets straight on to them.

Then I wrapped and taped them which is how our council, and I imagine most councils, want them. I'll need to get a permit and pay a fee to get rid.

Here's the shed with its roof off. I'm pretty certain that when we got a tour from the previous owners they said it was there when they bought the house in 1971 so it's done very well. Still, I look forward to knocking it over 😀

The floor boards look decent but I don't think I'll be salvaging any of the timber - it's probably got years' worth of asbestos dust on it. I'm intrigued to see what it's built on - probably decades of mice nests!

👋

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