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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
Gas Line Installation guide
Gas line is an American phrase. In Britain the pipe that runs through your home to each appliance is installation pipework, the people who work on it are gas engineers or gas fitters, and the jobs homeowners ask for are…
12 min read14 September 2026 - Guide
Plumbers guide
Plumbing in a British home covers the cold water arriving at the stopcock, the hot water and heating pipework, and everything that drains away: taps, cylinders, showers, toilets, washing machine connections, outside…
10 min read14 September 2026 - Guide
Emergency Plumbers guide
Emergency plumbing is the part of the trade that runs on the clock rather than the diary: a burst pipe soaking a ceiling, a leak that will not stop when you close the stopcock, a toilet or soil stack backing up, a hot…
11 min read14 September 2026 - Guide
Plumbing Repair guide
Plumbing repair covers the unglamorous middle of the trade: the cistern that refills all night, the compression joint weeping behind a kitchen unit, the radiator valve that will not shut, the shower that has lost its…
14 min read21 September 2026 - Guide
Plumbing Installation guide
Plumbing installation is new pipework rather than mended pipework: a bathroom where there was a bedroom, a kitchen moved to the other side of the house, an outside tap, a garden watering system, a second WC under the…
13 min read21 September 2026 - Guide
Drain Cleaning guide
Drain clearance covers everything downstream of the trap: the waste pipes from sinks, baths and showers, the soil stack that takes the toilets, the gullies outside the kitchen and bathroom walls, the inspection chambers…
10 min read14 September 2026 - Guide
Blocked Drains guide
A blocked drain is the one household plumbing problem where the first question is not how to clear it but who owns it. In England and Wales the answer changed in 2011.
11 min read14 September 2026 - Guide
Sewer Repair guide
Most British householders who go looking for sewer repair are actually looking at a private drain: the run inside their own boundary that carries waste from the house towards the public system.
10 min read14 September 2026 - Guide
Sewer Line Replacement guide
Replacing a sewer line means taking out a length of buried foul drainage and putting a new one in, rather than patching or lining what is there.
14 min read21 September 2026 - Guide
CCTV Drain Surveys guide
A CCTV drain survey pushes a camera through the underground pipework and produces a recording, a plan and a coded list of everything the operator saw.
9 min read21 September 2026 - Guide
Backwater Valve Installation guide
The device is real in Britain but the name is not. What North America calls a backwater valve is called an anti-flooding valve or a non-return valve here, and it does the same job: it lets foul water out of the property…
11 min read21 September 2026 - Guide
Sump Pump Installation guide
Sump pump is a phrase that covers two quite different British jobs, and the first task is working out which one you have.
10 min read14 September 2026
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