I learned two things over the weekend.
1. At 3am Sunday morning, I learned that the toilet is close enough to the sink to provide a possible solution to simultaneously dealing with both symptoms of Gastroenteritis.
2. At 3:15am Sunday morning, I learned that the possible solution above isn't actually a very good one.
The sink is now out of order.
Apart from the illness delaying work, it's quite a setback to the bathroom progress because it looks like I'll have to remove the sink again.
Well, the shower manufacturer don't really want to know that they've got the labels on the pipes wrong. They even suggested that it would be hard to prove that I hadn't swapped the labels round after. A very sympathetic guy from customer support suggested that I ask my customer if they would mind if I fit it upside down...I said that I don't think that the idea would go down well.
For reference, here is the unit with the stickers the wrong way round.
Midas 200 with wrong labels
I decided to tackle the problem from the hallway, rather than taking down any tiles.
Here is the quite neat "before" shot.
And here it is "after", not looking nearly so good.
Pipes the right way round.
The little U in the hot pipe is because the pipe is quite rigidly fixed at the bottom and I didn't want the expansion to stress the also-rigid, push-fit shower fitting. I'm not sure how effective it will be, but it's probably quite effective at reducing the flow rate in the shower.
Soldering those pipes was tricky: the plastic shower fitting is fixed to the wall (screwed from the front, under the tiles). The pipes are rigidly fixed somewhere (especially the hot). So you have to assemble the pipes and solder in-situ, it would be impossible to solder and then insert them into the shower fitting. It looks like I didn't melt the plastic, somehow.
And here's the end result - it actually works. If only I had a shower curtain....
Shower!
Incidentally, someone stole the old sink, radiator and a broken toastie machine from outside my house on Monday. Now all I need to do is get rid of the old bath.
You may recall the effort spent plumbing the shower fitting in the wall. You may also recall the effort tiling it. The finish is now complete, grouted and sealed. It looks great.
Unfortunately....well, see below.
From: Ian Broster
To: Aqualisa Technical Support
Date: Saturday 19 September 2009
I have just fitted a Midas 200 - but it
does not adjust temperature correctly.
I have double checked that the inlet pipes
match the makings on the tap (i.e. the left
one closest to the output pipe is cold).
Please can you confirm that the markings on
the shower unit are correct?
Regards
Ian
And the reply
From: Aqualisa Technical Support
To: Ian Broster
Date: Monday 21st September
Dear Ian Broster,
Thank you for your e-mail.
This does sound as though the stickers on
the valve may be on the wrong way around,
if you look at the front of the valve with
the outlet on the bottom left, the hot
connection should then enter in the rear
on the left as you look at it.
...
There have been so many opportunities to get this right! When I first did the plumbing, I noticed that the pipes were the other way round to the old shower, a different model from the same company. So, I did a quick check.
I searched in the documentation and installation guide for confirmation, but it only refers to the "markings" on the valve. It does not say which is the right way!
I even searched the internet to see if anyone else could confirm which way round, but I could not find anything relevant.
So, thinking 'how can anyone get two really important stickers the wrong way on a production line!' I went ahead. Damn.
So, in case any one else happens to have this shower, and are not sure which way round they go...then now you know.
With the cold weather approaching, there is a certain pressure to get the heated towel rail fitted. It's not that we need cosy warm towels that urgently, but that when I moved the radiator pipes, I didn't bother to refill the central heating system again, thinking that I'd save some time (and inhibitor solution) by leaving it turned off until the hot towel rail was properly fitted. This means that we have had no heating. During the summer months, of course, we didn't notice.
Anyway, after spending a long time drilling a few holes in the tiles (and probably ruining a nice masonry drill bit in the process - how can it take 10 minutes a hole to drill through 9mm of rather fragile ceramic?), we have a nice new heated towel rail (and a cosy warm house too).
I never thought I would liken drilling breeze block to drilling into soft cheese until I tried drilling through a breeze block wall with tiles in front of it; the contrast is spectacular. With some irony, the next day some new proper tile drill bits arrived for me in the post. I'm sure that they turn my tiles into cheese too.
It's been a long time since the last update. Since then I've been tiling. And that's about it. Tiling for weekends and every evening for over 2 weeks. I have fitted over 300kg of tiles to the walls (I really hope they're strong enough).
Perhaps I'm just not a fast tiler. Perhaps I can blame it on the huge tiles. Perhaps I can claim that I had to buy a few extra tools (which is certainly true).
In any case, I really have almost done tiling. It only remains to tile around the extractor fan (I'm waiting for a 110mm diamond hole saw to arrive) and a tiny bit of boxing to make and tile.
I've grumbled about large tiles but now that I'm at the end, it doesn't seem so bad. The large tiles generate quite a lot of wastage, however. There were 35kg of offcuts, 12%, counting only the bits that I bothered to save (the larger bits that might conceivably be used somewhere else).
I only broke one tile (actually, not broke it as much as somehow cutting it in mirror image).
The one upside of the large tiles is that the grouting was easy, completed in only a few hours. It's looking good. Finally. Pictures will come when the tiling no longer almost done.
Yes, the tiling is going very slowly. Did I mention how awkward it is to work with huge tiles?
I'm averaging about 5 tiles in an evening (3 hours) at the moment, mostly because each tile needs to be cut into so many pieces.
Anyway, here are some photos.
Around the bath
You'll notice around the bath, there is a row about 10cm high. This is perhaps unusual, the typical advice being to make the row above the bath just less than a full tile. Again, this a the problem of large tiles. It is important to get the border at the right height (not too close to the sill, not hitting the sink, etc.) and the large tiles don't leave much room for manoeuvre. There were no options that hit all requirements, but the best option was having a thin row above the bath.
Here's a bit of carefully constructed boxing that's about 70% of the size of the previous boxing but holds the same pipes.
Boxing
And finally, an example of an awkward tile, yet to do, that needs to be cut around the door.
Tiling Around the door.
Despite an appeal on facebook, I failed to find someone with a 110-120mm diamond hole saw to lend me so that I can cut the extractor fan vent. Although they're not expensive for a tool (about £10-£15), as I'm only going to drill one hole with it, it's an expensive hole! Once the rest of the bathroom is in a better state, I'm going try a tungsten carbide jigsaw blade instead.
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