The Money Pit

Fitting Radiators Above Tiled Floors

Tips on this site are like buses - wait ages then two come at once!

Today I want to share the method I came up with for drilling radiator pipe holes through our newly-tiled hall floor. This I managed with no damage to the tiles immediately surrounding the hole, which is always something to worry about. Here's how:

1. First thing to do is fix your rad to the wall

2. Find a piece of wood large enough for you to rest all your weight on with both knees and drill a hole in it (more on the hole in a mo)

3. Site the hole directly below the rad valve and mark the skirting to show where the board should line up with once you've removed the rad and are ready to drill. In the shot below I'm using a short piece of pipe that's just long enough to help line up the valve with the floor.

4. Do the same for the other side and remove the rad from the wall. Put the board back in its place and squirt some water in the hole. As you can see below I've hired a 30mm diamond-core drill bit and drill from a local hire shop. It can get warm so nice to try and water cool it.

5. With all your weight on the board you can start drilling. The whole idea of the board is to stop the drill slipping off in any directions and scraping the tiles. After a while you've got a "pilot" hole going and can remove the board and carry on without it. I'd suggest cleaning up as you and giving a fresh squirt of water as well. Don't try and wham the drill through in one go. Each hole took me about 1o minutes!

6. Once you're through the tile and glue (sorry, as Shaun "Tiler" Taylor says, "adhesive") you can remove the plug and there you have it - a hole. All you need now is a normal wood drill to finish the hole off through whatever's below the tiles (2" of plywood and chipboard in our case).

7. You're probably wondering why the 30mm hole for 15mm piping!? Well, 30mm is the smallest core drill the hire shop had. That's why the board has the large (32mm!) hole in it. But it's nice as it give us a bit of room to play with when it comes to plumbing time. I already knew I'd be covering the holes with collars (like below) so it's not an issue for me.

Et, voila!

Fixing Skirting To (Curved) Walls

There's a wall in our house that's has a slight curve in it. This hasn't caused me much bother at all really. Although I always knew it would when we did the hallway and I had to replace the skirting on said wall. Not something I was looking forward to at all. I've mentioned before how I hate doing skirting.

Well, when I took off the hundred year old skirting at the beginning of the hall project (more of which later) I noticed something about it:

At the end where the bend was they'd carefully cut a dozen or so slits in to the back of the board, which helps it bend a little easier. Until I saw this I don't know how I thought they might have done it. Gradual bending under the effect of steam maybe?

Anyway, that was months ago, but I made a point of remembering the trick as I knew at some point I'd have to put some board back on. That time came this weekend gone. Although I was replacing nine inch board with five I still thought it might help.

Here's the board after I'd added the slot and ready to be stuck to the wall:

Aside: Notice the tiled floor! This is the reason the skirting came off in the first place (I'd always wanted to avoid taking it off). More on the tiles and the floor, which was a massive project in itself, later!

To help hold the board to the curve of the wall I used three "sprags" as you can see below:

This is only really possible when the width of the room allows a piece of wood to span it.

It's at this point that I had added a load of grab-fast/no-nails/stick-like-shit/whatever-you-call-it to the back of the board. Whether or not I could have left this for a day or so before removing the sprags i don't know. I didn't want to find out though and decided to find a better way of securing to the wall.

The original skirting was attached with nails which were hammered through the board and in to a noggin of wood in a joint between the bricks behind. How on earth they ever managed this I don't know. I've tried in the past to do this and never had any luck.

The other method I've tried is to hold the board in place and drill through it and slightly in to the wall behind to mark where each hole was. With the board removed you can then drill and plug each hole before putting the board back in place and screwing to the wall. Getting all the holes to line up is a bit hit and miss though and not an approach I'm keen on.

What I did this time was try and new approach, which also drills the wall behind and plugs/screws though, but does so while the board is in place.

To do this you need the following:

• 7mm Rawl plugs
• 7mm wood drill
• 7mm masonry drill
• 10mm wood drill
• 10mm wood plugs
• Screw with a 10mm diameter head

With the board in place you then:

1. Drill 10mm holes in to the board (<=10mm deep) in the place you think you need to secure it.
2. Using these holes as markers drill 7mm holes right through the board.
3. Use the 7mm masonry bit to drill the whole in the wall behind (hoping at this point there's a brick there and not a joint).
4. Get the Rawl plug and bang it through the hole in the skirting and in to the wall behind. Use something 7mm or less in diameter to do this. I used a nail punch to help me.
5. Screw the board up using the screws. Because the screw has a 10mm head it will go in to the first hole but not through the 7mm inner hole!
6. Plug the outer hole.

In pictures:

The tools

Drilling the hole in the wall behind (with that reassuring site of red dust ;o):

Plugging the holes (This board is something Dad did for me using his plug cutters. Very useful to have. Thanks Dad!):

And there you have it. It's a little faffy but it's an easy way to get the board secured to the wall without any guess work or room for mistakes.