As mentioned in @Spinal 's recent thread on obtaining boiler parts, doing anything DIY here can be fraught with frustrations, red tape, lack of parts and so on - and the cost of getting someone to do it can be astronomical or totally over the top.
So, put your DIY stories down here with photos, links to suppliers and regulations and helpful hints here:
Shower Repairs:
From Spinal’s thread:
Showers
Door runner replacement/repairs
The nylon runners on the round glass doors of our shower were cracked and broken so the doors would not slide smoothly.
I got no response from the manufacturer or distributor and the only original part I could find was a one-off on eBay for ÂŁ80. (I needed eight).
So I bought some brass M6 bolts and nylon wheels (with an integrated ball-bearing race) from Ali-Express. I cut off the bolt heads and filed down the threads to make a compression fit with the center hole in the bearing and screwed this into the existing off-set plastic parts.
Works a treat and was less than CHF10 in total.
Shower Seals
It’s sometimes difficult to get the right door seals here with the right profile and dimensions here. Use the wrong one and you’ll get water everywhere.
I’ve used https://showersealuk.com/ in the UK and they’ve been great.
Not specifically for steam showers but for other parts too, https://www.steamshowerspares.com/ has been excellent.
A little bit of a “given”, but i order a lot from:
https://www.buyspares.de/
(and get them shipped to a German postal box)
Another one, that apparently has parts. Haven’t ordered from them yet - but they seem to have a selection of parts:
Well I grew up in my Grand Uncle’s house, a master blacksmith, so I had a good teacher! My earliest memory is fixing a leak in a framer’s bucket with a bit of solder. And in those days you stoked up the fire, heated the soldering iron and worked fast before it cooled.
The most important thing for me - buy proper quality tools, not the crap you get in DIY shops. I go to the local hardware shop where all the tradesmen buy their stuff - better quality, better advice and you get to network with the local tradesmen early on Monday mornings, when they are in stocking up for the week ahead.
I’m going to disagree with you there.
It depends. If you want one specialized tool, to do a particular job which you might use two or three times in your life time, then, if the DIY shop tool is up to it, and much cheaper than the profi one then you’d be wasting your money paying more.
If it’s something like a drill then even then, a DIY one will last you many years.
Sound advice I was given was, never buy the cheapest - buy the third one up in price and it will be fine - unless DIY becomes a major hobby.
There are caveats to the above though - especially where accuracy is concerned
I plumbed in a power shower in the UK with copper piping (this was before snap-together plastic piping), and I soldered the joints using a kitchen creme-brulee torch.
Beautiful job.
Sure, like bicycles or anything really, expensive is lovely to use but cheaper will do the job.
And on a separate subject - I want to replace a panel in a uPVC door which has a large dog-flap in it.
Has anyone bought a panel in Switzerland and if so, from where?
I don’t know thickeness etc yet as obviously I don’t want to remove the old panel until I have a source for a new one.
Thanks.
I have until recent times avoided buying tools as I thought it was pointless for occasional use. Now I have the opposite view: just buy the tools. If you only use it once, it at least saves you a lot of swearing and hassle. Worse case you never use it again and sell it to recoup some of the cost.
More likely, you use it again and glad it have it handy without having to delay a project to rent a tool or wait to buy a tool or bodge it with unsuitable tools.
Or you need a FIL with a shed full of top-tier tools for every eventuality…
I built up my initial collection of tools - mainly for working on cars, by finding out how much the work would cost if a garage did it, and then seeing if buying the tool would save me money.
I never factored in labour costs because basically I was learning a new skill each time.
The last tool I bought along those lines was a stainless steel pipe joint crimper so I could replace a broken gate valve. Worked a treat (once I had worked out the correct tension).
