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Home improvement guides
Practical, reviewed advice for planning repairs and projects, choosing the right pro and knowing what to ask before you hire.
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494 guides
- Guide
Hot Tub Installation guide
Hot tubs are the part of this market that is genuinely mainstream in Britain. Where a private swimming pool is a rarity, a hot tub fits a normal garden, arrives on a lorry rather than behind an excavator, and works in a…
17 min read14 September 2026 - Guide
Hot Tub Repair guide
A hot tub packs a heater, two or three pumps, a blower, a control board, sensors and a considerable length of flexible plumbing into a sealed cabinet that spends its life outdoors in British weather.
13 min read14 September 2026 - Guide
Hot Tub Maintenance guide
Hot tub maintenance is a water hygiene job with some plumbing attached, and that ordering matters. A hot tub holds a small volume of warm water, agitates it into breathable aerosol, and is used by people sitting in it…
10 min read21 September 2026 - Guide
Saunas guide
Home saunas have become a normal British garden purchase rather than an unusual one, and they arrive in three broad forms: a cabin built into a room inside the house, a prefabricated outdoor barrel or cabin in the…
10 min read21 September 2026 - Guide
Outdoor Structures guide
The structures that go up around a British pool are rarely decorative. A pool needs a plant room that is dry, ventilated and big enough to get a filter vessel out of; a household that swims in April wants somewhere to…
10 min read21 September 2026 - Guide
Basement Waterproofing guide
Waterproofing a British basement is a design job before it is a building job. The standard is BS 8102, the British Standard code of practice for protection of below ground structures against water ingress, whose current…
10 min read14 September 2026 - Guide
Foundation Waterproofing guide
Foundation waterproofing is an American phrase for a job Britain approaches from a different direction. Here the dominant problem below the damp-proof course is damp rather than water pressure against a poured basement…
11 min read14 September 2026 - Guide
Foundation Repair guide
Search for foundation repair in Britain and you will find an industry that barely exists here under that name. British houses do have foundations, usually a shallow strip footing of concrete under a masonry wall, but…
13 min read14 September 2026 - Guide
Foundation Cracks guide
Almost every British house cracks. Plaster shrinks, lintels deflect, render crazes, extensions move against the original building, and a long dry summer opens joints that close again over the winter.
10 min read14 September 2026 - Guide
Structural Repair guide
Structural repair is work on the parts of a house that carry load: lintels over openings, the ties that hold the two leaves of a cavity wall together, bressummer beams over old shop fronts and inglenooks, joist ends…
10 min read21 September 2026 - Guide
Underpinning guide
Underpinning extends a foundation downwards or sideways so that the wall above it is carried on something more reliable.
9 min read21 September 2026 - Guide
Drainage Systems guide
Drainage around a British house is mostly about rainwater: what comes off the roof, what runs off the drive, and where it is allowed to go.
11 min read14 September 2026
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