DIY idiocy!

[gibbo_ap]

so having gone to ikea on sunday i decided to put my new wine rack up on the wall.

 

so i get my man drill out (sounded better in my head sorry)...... and proceded to drill through a water pipe!!! FFS

 

any one have an idea how much this will cost to fix???

[elsiegee40]

Are we talking about the plumbing or placating your significant other?

 

Both could be very expensive!

[mac_shinobi]

Someone was obviously insanely thirsty after all that hard work as well, tsk tsk lol

[rad]

I take it this is your waterpipe?

 

I'd take the plaster back to expose said pipe then have a look at what you got to fix, after all if you do the donkey work it'll be cheaper so said plumber just does job and goes.

[gibbo_ap]

i drilled two holes, the second struck water.... im off africa with this luck with finding water they will love me.

[maniac]

Been there, it's not good! However not too tricky to fix yourself if you get a big enough hole in the plaster to give some flexibility in the pipes, then just use a push and fit join and all's good again. If you don't fancy leaving the push and fit joint as a permanent fix, it would do you as a temporary one until you can get it fixed properly.

 

(My pipe was in the floor, drilled through it when fitting a door thingy between the bathroom and kitchen.)

Edited November 17, 2010 by maniac

[gibbo_ap]

got the missus granddad here atm, hole in wall and looking at it i shaved the edge of the pipe just my luck lol

[tech_guy]

At least it was water and not electricity! One of the reasons though why I hate DIY. I always take ages to do even the most easiest of jobs as I'm worried I'll cack it up doing something like this.

[MK-2]

my dad done exactly the same thing, just shaved the edge.

large chunk in the plaster to expose the pipe, then repair and refill and plaster. good as new!

[LosOjos]

What you all need is one of these:Metal and Voltage Detector : Enviroment Testers : Maplin

 

They're a real life saver!

[elsiegee40]

What you all need is one of these:Metal and Voltage Detector : Enviroment Testers : Maplin

 

They're a real life saver!

 

They work brilliantly until you are in a modern building with insulated (foil back) panelling... as we discovered over the summer when trying to work out where to put up a projector mount

[webman]

When we moved in to the house we're in now, I put some shelves up in the alcove of one room. During this summer when the room was re-plastered (due to other work following a damp problem), I discovered two holes I drilled for one of the shelves was half an inch to the left of an electricity cable. Couldn't believe I'd been so lucky!

[Andrew_C]

Many years ago, I was putting pictures up in a pub, and hit a gas pipe. It shouldn't have been there (against regs) and I was being careful as the pub had had both hot & cold pipes to the bar drilled by builders earlier in the project.

 

No significant damage, and the gas board did find another leak in the kitchen after they'd fixed my whoops moment.

[SteveBentley]

Compression plumbing fittings are easy enough, just need a pipe cutter and a bit of wire wool to clean it up and a couple of spanners. You can probably get the bits and pieces for under £15 from screwfix.

[john]

When we moved in to the house we're in now, I put some shelves up in the alcove of one room. During this summer when the room was re-plastered (due to other work following a damp problem), I discovered two holes I drilled for one of the shelves was half an inch to the left of an electricity cable. Couldn't believe I'd been so lucky!

 

I can beat that one, taking a shelf down fitted by someone, plaster came away with it and they had drilled and plugged through the mains lead between earth and live! The Plasplug was keeping the conductors seperate but talk about luck when someone drilled that one!

[maniac]

That reminds me of the time my dad drilled straight through a cable when putting up a curtain pole about 20 years ago. Their house still had the old fuses so there was an almighty blue flash before it blew (Don't don't get that these days with modern RCDs) melted the drill bit in the process. Repair was easy enough, but when we thought about it, only a week before he'd brought a new drill, a plastic one - his old one was an old fashioned metal drill so if he'd still had the old drill he'd have got a very nasty shock - lucky escape that was considering mum had been nagging him for months to do that job!

 

Of course there were two ironic things about that job, not only had he plugged his drill into the very socket the cable he drilled through fed, but because of the design of the room there was a socket on the other side of the window and yep, his marking out would have achieved the same result again had he not realised!

Edited November 19, 2010 by maniac

[teejay]

That reminds me of the time my dad drilled straight through a cable when putting up a curtain pole about 20 years ago. Their house still had the old fuses so there was an almighty blue flash before it blew (Don't don't get that these days with modern RCDs) melted the drill bit in the process. Repair was easy enough, but when we thought about it, only a week before he'd brought a new drill, a plastic one - his old one was an old fashioned metal drill so if he'd still had the old drill he'd have got a very nasty shock - lucky escape that was considering mum had been nagging him for months to do that job!

 

Of course there were two ironic things about that job, not only had he plugged his drill into the very socket the cable he drilled through fed, but because of the design of the room there was a socket on the other side of the window and yep, his marking out would have achieved the same result again had he not realised!

 

Yep, this explains perfectly why us blokes always procrastinate on diy jobs for a couple of months before we give in to the constant nagging, we're really doing a Health & Saftey assessment during that time

[HarryMonkey]

What you all need is one of these:Metal and Voltage Detector : Enviroment Testers : Maplin

 

They're a real life saver!

 

That's all well and good until, as I found out to my cost, you discover (the hard way) that the builders have used plastic pipes for the central heating system buried behind the plasterboard. I had to hack out the palsterboard, trim the pipe with a stanley knife and fit a compression joint (after leaving my daughter with her finger over the hole whilst I dashed off to B+Q). Did the trick though, filled the hole and repainted. Job done. Oh yes, and drilled the new hole that I needed whilst I could see where the pipes were.

[LosOjos]

I move in to a new place next weekend... think I'll hold off on the DIY after reading this thread!

[maniac]

I move in to a new place next weekend... think I'll hold off on the DIY after reading this thread!

 

DIY is fine if you take your time. It's taken me a year to fit my kitchen in my place.

[gerardsweeney]

I hate DIY. Hate it, hate it, hate it.

 

I despise feeling like an idiot where something as simple as sawing a couple of CM off the bottom of the door takes me about 10 goes and ends up squint.

 

There is no undo facility in DIY.

[Andrew_C]

There is no undo facility in DIY.

Haven't you heard of squirty foam and grip-fill?

[Rydra]

Don't forget Ductape and superglue.

 

You can fix anything with enough of either or both!

[gerardsweeney]

Heh..

 

Now I just need some way where me using a saw doesn't have the appearance that I had 12 pints of cider beforehand