Steve's workshop - Painting the outside walls

[Steve Maskery]

Great, thank you.
S

 

[Steve Maskery]

I've had a reply from the BCO. Waste from a wash hand basin should not be discharged into a soakaway.

So I either do without, or install a WHB and discharge into a caravan-style waste container. "Proper" drainage would have to be pumped uphill to the house and I'm not going to that trouble for such a small amount of water.

 

[nanscombe]

Washing up bowl for rinsing your hands and sling it on the garden when finished?

("finding", How on earth did I type that?)

 

[Penny]

I've had a reply from the BCO. Waste from a wash hand basin should not be discharged into a soakaway.

So I either do without, or install a WHB and discharge into a caravan-style waste container. "Proper" drainage would have to be pumped uphill to the house and I'm not going to that trouble for such a small amount of water.

Odd thing, that.

Many caravan sites (especially on the continent) ask that you empty grey water into the bushes as it waters the plants, and the small amount of soap in it makes no odds. As long as there's no chemicals being poured into the sink I can't see the issue!

 

[nanscombe]

Perhaps it also depends on whether you've been washing brushes, with goodness knows what on them, or washing out containers in the wash basin as well.

 

[wcndave]

definitely put a sink in, one day... if you wash your hands, throw the water out, if you're washing something nasty, pour into container with funnel and take up the house. the convenience is worth it. In my old shed, I threw out so many brushes, brayer rollers and other things, never watered down paint etc... and now I have a sink it's made such a difference, I had no idea what I was doing without!

 

[NickWelford]

Talking about convenience, shouldn't you have a convenience, so to speak?

 

[Steve Maskery]

There is one in the log cabin, I don't need another outside the house.

 

[AES]

Are you THAT confident about your cooking Steve????

:lol: :lol: :lol:

Krgds
AES

 

[Steve Maskery]

I spent the morning going to the tip. There were bags of clay to get rid of (from the pond lining) as well as a crate of brambles and ivy, and a tree root. It should have taken 20 mins max, but they shut the site just as I drew up to the entrance. It took ages for them to shuffle skips around inside, so by the time I had unloaded and been shopping for some bread and milk, the morning was nearly gone.

Meanwhile, guess what Ray was doing?

He'd finished the trench, including digging under one of the walls of the old privvy and also under the concrete that was up against the house. We had a complete trench.

I thought I'd better do something more than jut drive a car today, so I started at the workshop end. I needed to ease the concrete so that it does not chafe the cables as they go into the building. An angle grinder and chisel did the job in no time

I'd forgotten to allow for the Cat5 cable entry when I had started to clad the front, so a little demolition work was necessary.

Then I drilled a hole through the OSB, being careful not to be heavy handed. I think that the power cable goes up the side of the cavity, but I wasn't certain, so it was some careful poking about that determined that it was safe to drill straight through.

I'm going to run two Cat5e cables down. I'll probably only use one, but you never know. So we pulled out enough for the first run.

and rolled out enough MDPE to reach from the conservatory to the front of the workshop

But how to get the cable through the blue MDPE? First we tried just pushing the Cat5 though it. After a while it just snarled up. So we tried pushing a hosepipe down.

Easy to start with but it got stiffer and stiffer and stiffer. In the end we gave up, Ray reckons he has something at home that will do the job.

So we finished off by lining the hole through the wall with a bit of hose pipe with a drawstring through it

 

[Steve Maskery]

There is enough at the house end to reach the conservatory, wherein I plan to install a wire bridge to collect the wifi signal from my house router. It's easier than getting a cable from the SW corner of the house to the NE corner, although I'm sure I shall pay a price in speed.

The MDPE was 50m of 25mm. I don't need 25mm dia for water, but it is ideal for a couple of Cat5 cables, and it was cheaper to get 50m of 25mm than 25m each of 20mm and 25mm. And there is just enough to do the Cat5 conduit and water to an outside tap on the front corer of the building. No waste at all really.

So this is what it looks like from upstairs. Ray called it a bomb-site.

 

[Graham Orm]

Why not use purpose made ducting in sections Steve, or rainwater pipe? I can't imagine you being able to get anything down that length of Alkathene. (MDPE)

 

[Mark A]

Thinking out loud...

Could you use a magnet to pull a nut with some thin string tied to it through the pipe?

 

[Steve Maskery]

Well I was assuming we would use rainwater pipe, but Ray reckoned...

We'll manage, somehow. If it was bigger we could suck a ping-pong ball through it. The ball carries a thread, the thread pulls a string, the string pulls a cable. We'll see.

S
PS Ooh, Mark, hadn't thought of that one. I think I might try it and tell Ray it was my idea

 

[Woolf]

Have used a vacuum with a piece of sponge cut to fit the inside of the pipe. Worked well

 

[CHJ]

If you have a compressor and air gun try blowing a piece of knotted string down the pipe, string needs to be free running but once it starts to flow it usually shoots through.

In the past I've used inline couplers to reduce the length into sections making it easier to pass primary lead cord through.

 

[jpt]

Back in the day when I worked in IT we used to use a plastic bag taped onto a piece of string with half of the bag open then blow it through with a compressor, worked every time.

john

PS, great thread I am enjoying it, just wish I could do the same.

 

[Brentingby]

Steve, if it isn't too late, and if there's room in there, pull an extra piece of heavy duty string just in case some day you need to pull another cable through. You might not ever need it but it won't get any easier to do it than it is now. There's a lubricant you can get that is designed for cable pulls that can make it easier to get the CAT5e through, too.

 

[Steve Maskery]

Hi B
Yes, that is the plan. I think I'll need only one cable, so one is a spare, but if ever there is any damage, I shall be glad of a draw-string.

I used to install Cat5, and once I got the job of installing a length of rectangular trunking under a floor from one end of a building to the other, so that BT could get their cable from the nearest point outside to the computer room. I laid it, with both a drawstring and another draw string to pull in with the cable as the original drawstring was being pulled out.

What did the dork do? He just pulled his cable in, using the drawstring, but not replacing it as he went. When he'd connected up both ends I asked him where the drawstring was. I told him I wouldn't sign off the job unless there a was a drawstring in the conduit at the end of the job just like there was at the start. I didn't have the authority to say that, and it wasn't me who was going to sign off the job, but he didn't know that.

I worked with quite a few BT engineers in those days, on different jobs. One guy was excellent. Professional, helpful, just the sort of guy you would want to be on the job. One. All the rest were, quite frankly, idiots. And if you are that one BT engineer, thank you, you were a pleasure to have on the team.

 

[xy mosian]

+1 with Woolf.
In my case it was a ball of fluff tied to fine string.
xy