If you go to periodproperty.co.uk and post this message on their discussion forum you will be inundated with advice, most of it fairly reliable.
In answer to the person who suggested a cure for my keyboard problem, sorry it hasn't worked, thanks anyway.
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Nsar: There are several online forums for geeks. One such is
www.codeguru.com.
Try posting your question there. You might get an answer. (I find these sites a good source of code that I can rip off and re-use. If only cars were like that. On second thoughts it is probably a good thing that cars are not like MS Windows. Can't say I want to crash on a routine basis.)
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The original 1860 damp proof course (dpc), if there was one, was probably a line of slates laid in the mortar above ground level. The holes were probably drilled to inject a chemical (silicone, I think) dpc. The liquid soaks into the bricks and mortar and makes them impervious to rising damp. I can't see a problem with filling them.
Efflorescence is from soluble salts in the water that is soaking through the cellar wall from the ground. The water evaporates, leaving the salts on the surface. There are specialist companies who will treat the walls, but it's very expensive. I don't think there is any cheap solution, but I'm not an expert. Try searching on google. Maybe drylining with boards on battens.
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OK, so it's not car related but there's so much practical know-how on this site - How do I remove an extremely tight (steel) seat stem from a bicycle without damaging the (also steel)frame?
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This will get moved to the current "I have a question" thread in discussion later. DD.
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Is it rusty tight or just tight tight?
WD 40 of course, and you could try boiling water on the frame.
If it is rusty it might help to give it a thump downwards - any movement even in the wrong direction is useful to get things going.
I have in desperation used a stillson wrench on the top of the stem and managed to twist it a little. That was enought to let the WD40 get in and loosen it up.
If it is tight at the top you can drive a wedge down the split in the frame and prise it open a little.
Or depending how long the stem is as a last resort you can hammer the stem right down inside the frame and put another one in.
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Well, I can actually relate to this problem. The advice already given is pretty sound. Giving the stem a whack downwards with a Rover special tool 18G 1 (hammer) will undoubtably loosen it. Copious amounts of WD40 as well. On my son's cycle I removed the saddle and inserted a large bolt into the top of the stem. I then gripped the stem with a pair of Molegrips. it did collapse to the bolt but then it was solid grip. Plenty of heave ho and even hitting the grips with the hammer finally got it out.
See... even car technicians can turn their hands to most mechanical things!!!! Hope this helps.
These are the views of Robin the Technician with 35 years in the trade. I fix, therefore I am...
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Plus-gas is much better than WD40 for penetrating.
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Um - 'twas I who hammered it in there in the first place..
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Method 1: Strip bike sufficiently to enable you to clamp stem in bench vice extremely tight. Then use the leverage of head tube and rear stay ends to twist it out.
Method 2. Cut off stem with hacksaw then with broken hacksaw cut slot down the inside of the stem. Prise ends of slot away from down tube . Hey presto.
Method 3. Take it to local cycle shop.
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> I can't see a problem with filling them.
Thanks, that's what I thought, especially as they seem to be filled on the outside.
Efflorescence ... I don't think there is any cheap solution, but I'm not an expert.
Is it actually a problem? As it's in the cellar it's not a problem from the POV of looks, but I am wondering if it's damaging the bricks.
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Honestly Steve, go to the periodproperty.co.uk forum nad ask, you will not be disappointed
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I did have a look on there, and it seems to be mainly 'fancy' houses - not a lot seemed to relate to my typical Victorian Stopfordian terraced house. I did note that there were a couple of similar questions on the board that had been there quite a while without answer. Thanks anyway!
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"Honestly Steve, go to the periodproperty.co.uk forum nad ask, you will not be disappointed"
It's good advice Steve, it's a good site. Thanks Nsar, I've got it bookmarked now.
It's also got some information on your query. Go and look at the thread on lining vaults. Obviously you haven't got a vaulted cellar, but they suffer from the same problem. It seems the best answer is to dryline it and install mechanical ventilation to remove moisture from the void. There are some companies offering contoured lining boards for this application.
I don't think the efflorescence salts are a problem, the problem is in getting rid of the moisture which is, presently, evaporating from the exposed wall surface.
More research needed, I think, Try the Building Bookshop in Store Street, near Tottenham Court Road.
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Some 30 years ago there seemed to be a lot of new brickwork, which suffered from efflorescence from particular manufacturer of bricks.
Discussion at the time was that it was salt in the clay at the time of manufacture and as afm the water evaporates leaving the salt on the surface.
Funnily enough there doesn?t appear to be much of this nowadays for whatever reason. Generally it disappeared in time with new brickwork.
You mention bitumen on the walls... there was a system many years ago of preventing dampness in cellars, which was called tanking. This consisted of an impervious lining of the cellar with a substance such as valde travis which was in effect similar to hot poured pitch.
This was necessary, as a dpc below ground level obviously wouldn't work, as the damp would simply come horizontally from the ground outside.
With a property as old as yours it would be unlikely to have a stretcher bond to enable a cavity and would have been built with a solid wall in English or perhaps Flemish bond.
You haven't actually said I if you are having damp problems but if not I would simply wire brush off and find a suitable paint to smarten it up.
And as mentioned ventilation is essential to prevent any condensation. Easier said than done though.
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You mention bitumen on the walls... there was a system many years ago of preventing dampness in cellars,
This looks fairly new TBH. The side of the house has also been treated. Hard to tell how old, but certainly not >50 years I'd say, and the stuff in the cellar looks much newer.
With a property as old as yours it would be unlikely to have a stretcher bond to enable a cavity and would have been built with a solid wall in English or perhaps Flemish bond.
How wide would a cavity typically be? I drilled a hole for an outside light at the weekend, and there did seem to be a small gap between the two layers of brick, although of course this could simply be due to the size of the bricks.
You haven't actually said I if you are having damp problems but if not I would simply wire brush off and find a suitable paint to smarten it up.
No damp problems now, although I believe there were in the past. One thing I have noticed is that the worst area seems to be around what looks like a new area of brick. I *suspect* this was where an old coal-chute has been bricked over, so maybe the original bricks have already lost their salts.
And as mentioned ventilation is essential to prevent any condensation. Easier said than done though.
Yes, this is what I'm wondering - how to ventilate the area. It is very humid down there. I don't know if it makes things better or worse, but there is a radiator down there. My only concern is that there is no-where for any water to evaporate *to*. There are air-bricks but as they appear to be below floor level I can't see how they make any difference.
Any suggestions for how to ventilate it? The only thing I could think would be to take some ducting up the chimney behind the gas fire, but I certainly don't have the skill to take the fire out to fit anything and then replace it, even if that would be an option. I was thinking of putting one of those moisture traps down there, but that doesn't really ventilate it. How about just a fan that vents in to the kitchen that I can turn on every day or so for a bit?
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Also try looking at uk.diy on google, an absolute wealth of information.
>> You mention bitumen on the walls... there was a system many >> years ago of preventing dampness in cellars, This looks fairly new TBH. The side of the house has also been treated. Hard to tell how old, but certainly not >50 years I'd say, and the stuff in the cellar looks much newer.
Sounds like a recent attempt at internal tanking to go with the
injected damp proof course.
To be really useful tanking should be done on the external side of the cellar wall at construction time, obviously this is not possible so the previous owners have at some time covered up a damp wall with a bituminous coating which may actually be making things worse by retaining dampness in the bricks, this is now breaking through the coating and you see the efflorescent salts residue. Plenty of ventilation and clean off the coating?
>> With a property as old as yours it would be unlikely >> to have a stretcher bond to enable a cavity and would >> have been built with a solid wall in English or perhaps >> Flemish bond. How wide would a cavity typically be? I drilled a hole for an outside light at the weekend, and there did seem to be a small gap between the two layers of brick, although of course this could simply be due to the size of the bricks.
Solid brick walls may be constructed about 9 inches thick with a small 1 inch gap between the front and back face filled with loose rubble or mortar, this is for the courses of bricks with a stretcher bond, then every 10 brick courses a row of bricks is laid across the wall to bridge the gap (you will be able to see ta course of bricks with only the end visible).
My 1900 terrace had this construction and you could feel the gap
when drilling through. Internal bricks often much poorer quality than the external ones.
>> You haven't actually said I if you are having damp problems >> but if not I would simply wire brush off and find >> a suitable paint to smarten it up. No damp problems now, although I believe there were in the past. One thing I have noticed is that the worst area seems to be around what looks like a new area of brick. I *suspect* this was where an old coal-chute has been bricked over, so maybe the original bricks have already lost their salts.
The original mortar was probably lime based rather than portland cement, this is softer and water breathable, the repair has been done with a mortar mix using Portland cement which is much too strong and is waterproof, therefore the damp in the walls has to exit through the bricks rather than the mortar this causes the efflorescence. A very common error, dont use cement based mortar when a lime based was originally used.
>> And as mentioned ventilation is essential to prevent any >> condensation. Easier said than done though. Yes, this is what I'm wondering - how to ventilate the area. It is very humid down there. I don't know if it makes things better or worse, but there is a radiator down there. My only concern is that there is no-where for any water to evaporate *to*. There are air-bricks but as they appear to be below floor level I can't see how they make any difference.
reinstate the coal shute area and use air bricks plus a fan if required, you must ensure a flow of air
Any suggestions for how to ventilate it? The only thing I could think would be to take some ducting up the chimney behind the gas fire, but I certainly don't have the skill to take the fire out to fit anything and then replace it, even if that would be an option. I was thinking of putting one of those moisture traps down there, but that doesn't really ventilate it. How about just a fan that vents in to the kitchen that I can turn on every day or so for a bit?
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I was thinking about this. Have a look at C&A Supplies www.casupply.co.uk.
They do plastic and plastic-coated-metal sheets, both flat and corrugated/profiled, plain & patterned (Deceuninck), which they use for wall cladding and lining old buildings, like railways arches. See also
www.deceuninck.com/HTML/Subsidiary6/English/Pages/...m
There are probably similar suppliers local to you. These sheets wouldn?t rot or sag, like plasterboard. The profiled sheets would look industrial, but would be more rigid than the flat sheets.
If you could get some galvanised ?z? sections (suspended ceiling suppliers, or pay a sheet metal shop to guillotine & fold them up) you could fix these horizontally round the room, and fix the sheets on top with self-tapping screws, leaving 3 or 4 1?-2? deep ?ducts? behind the sheets. Hire a Hilti gun & a powered collated screwdriver. The ducts would have to connect to the extract fan inlet. I?d fix adjustable grilles into the sheets, or leave an air gap, at the points furthest from the extract to let air flow through the entire lengths of the ducts, taking the water vapour with it. I?d arrange make-up air to flow from the house to the cellar (undercut door, or similar) so you don?t get the dank, smelly air from the cellar entering the house. You can get little extract fans that will fit inside a 4? plastic drain pipe. One or two of those should be adequate. Excess negative pressure would bow flat sheets towards the walls.
I don?t think it will ever be a habitable room, but it should make a useful store, workshop, gym, whatever. I?ve thought this up; someone must have done this before, so I?m sure there?s more informed techniques published somewhere.
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I think Ian is going along the right method of ventilating your cellar. If you had a coal chute the top of the cellar must be quite close to ground level.
If possible I would excavate down in this area and construct perhaps a 4" pipe up the external wall and carry this through to inside the cellar and fit an extract fan perhaps even with an auto humidifier switch.
You would then require another vent to provide for the ingress of air.
However you could use the same inlet and provide a pipe or duct across to the other side of the room to give an air flow across the whole area.
This is a similar method to a balanced flue and should be quite effective.
alvin
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I think venting the cellar may be more difficult that it seems. Both 'outside' walls of the cellar are property boundaries - i.e. the front of the house is straight on to the pavement and the side on to a passageway. Also not sure how I'd go about preventing rain ingress anyway! (Any vents would have to be at or just below ground level as far as I can tell.)
The only way I can see to vent would be up the chimney, but that has been sealed off in the cellar (may have always been) and it would involve moving the gas fire to gain access in the living room, something which I don't fancy doing myself!
The only alternative would involve all sorts of hidden ducting to get it out at upper floor level and even that wouldn't be easy...
Would a dehumidifier make any difference? I know they aren't cheap, but the work required may be enough to make them worthwhile...
Thanks for all replies and suggestions so far!
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Steve,
The dehumidifier would help but the running cost would be prohibitive for anything more than the initial dryout.
The injected DPC is only to stop rising damp into the above groun walls (and their effectiveness is very much open to debate however much mortgage companies like them). It sounds like you have a penetrating damp (ie through the wall) problem plus probably some condensation.
Condensation will leave fresh water on the surface of the bricks causing black mould, penetrating damp will come through the mortar and bricks leaching out salts and causeing efflorescence.
(Mould cannot survive in the salts deposited by efflorecence)
In a cellar under normal well ventilated situations and no paint/bituminous coatings the penetrating damp and condensation would evaporate away.
Blocking up the drafty coal shute and using a waterproof coating are causing this problem, and it is made worse by the type of brick and mortar used for the repair/patching work.
regards
Ian
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Steve, My brother in law had a dehumidifier and was quite pleased with it at first. It was his favourite topic for a while showing everyone how much water it was pulling. Gallons were collecting in the container, which he thought was coming from drying out his house but eventually when it never stopped he realised that it was simply taking it from the atmosphere and would never stop.
I'm sure your only answer Steve is to provide ventilation in your cellar one way or the other so the bull has to be taken by the horns and find a way to do it and make it a pleasant environment.
You say the chimney has been sealed off. It sounds unlikely that there would ever have been a fireplace in the cellar so probably the chimney breast you can see has simply been taken from foundation level and doesn?t actually turn into a flue until it reaches the upper floor.
Personally I would be looking at taking air in from outside and expelling likewise. Didn?t you say that you had taken a cable through the wall for and outside light? If so at what level did the cable come through? If it were above ground level that would suffice. Regarding rain ingress there would be no problem as air bricks for example are angled to prevent this. Houses with suspended floors on sleeper walls simply have air bricks at the course above DPC and they work very well.
Have another look Steve and come back to us.
alvin
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I don't have a clue, but Jeff Howell from the DT property pages is usually very responsive and knowledgeable.
Worth an email or letter.
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When I surf* at home, I often get an "Internet Messenger" window appear. The message is always from "Yanita Girl" who wants a "boy in the UK".
This particular UK boy isn't interested and I'm getting a bit fed up with the messages (as is Mrsb).
Any ideas about what to do? I am running Windows XP and Explorer Version 6.0. My ISP is Tiscali.
Many thanks in advance.
Peter
* No jokes about the waves in North London being smaller than those in Cornwall, please!
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Go buy a Mac, then you won't have all that MS low-level piracy stuff !
:-)
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You need to get a firewall. There are a couple of free ones on the net you can download that will fix this. Or if you dont want or use messenger then hunt the web for ways to remove it from the registry, Juanita wont be able to start it.
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This is caused by a vulnerability in the messenger service that's been part of Windows for some time.
This is not to be confused with Windows Messenger (aka MSN Messenger) and removing it won't solve your problem.
See www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,55795,00.html for background info and support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb%3ben-us...4 for the solution.
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Recently my hard drive packed in and needed replacing. Luckily I have an old second hard drive in the computer which I use as a backup so I didn't lose any data.
Previously I used to leave my computer switched on all day with power saving mode the hard drives would shut down until required.
Now they go into sleep mode but every hour or so they spring back into life and the floppy begins chattering.
This is whether it is connected to the internet or not..
Have checked such things as scheduled maintenance tasks with no joy.
ANy ideas please as to how to cure this.
alvin
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Did you have to reinstall Windows and MS Office as part of your problem? If so which versions?
One thing I had on mine was a cursor going busy every so often even when idle. There is some background indexing task in 98 or Office which was turned on by default, which I turned off, and it seemed to make a different to overall performance. Can't remember what it was exactly, but I'm sure this will jog someone's memory. (It seems odd that the floppy is going as well).
On the right versions of Windows (XP/2000/NT) you could try ctrl/alt/delete when it starts up, and see if you can tell which the active process or task is, that would help.
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Smokie, Yes I had to reinstall Office 97 pro and Windows 98.
Yes it is odd that the floppy drive is being accessed as well.
This goes on for about 8 seconds or more.
alvin
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I think you could be on the right track smokie.
I forgot to mention that my previous office was 95 and as the installation disk had gone faulty I borrowed the 97 one.
Opening findfast in control panel it says tht both my hard drives had updated (whatever that means) at 21.45hrs and was due to carry it out in another 48 minutes.
I will have study in the links you sent on how to disable it.
alvin
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