"The Medway Handyman" wrote in message
om...
Hugo Nebula wrote:
On Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:18:09 GMT, a certain chimpanzee, "The Medway
Handyman" randomly hit the keyboard
and produced:

Ferzacerly why I'm not touching it without a structural engineer
saying its OK.

You're not from Liverpool by any chance are you? I've not heard anyone
from outside Merseyside use Fazakerley (or any approximation) as a
substitute for 'exactly'.

Thankfully I am pretty much as far away as possible. Born in east London.
Google reveals there is a Fazakerley High School in Liverpool, so I spose
thats where it comes from.

It also has a prison.


Adam

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
dennis@home wrote:


"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
dennis@home wrote:
As long as he sticks to being a handyman it will be OK. Its when
they
decide to make a few extra quid by doing something they don't have
a
clue about that they become cowboys. That and stuff their insurance
doesn't cover.

Err, how do you know what his insurance covers?

Who's?

Perhaps you don't realise what you've written. It's at the top of this
post.

Oh I know what I wrote.
Its quoted above.
You may notice that it says "they" and doesn't specify an individual.

But can be taken to imply it. Allegedly. Given you appear to have some
restrictions as to what a handyman can be allowed to do.

There are restrictions on what a handyman can do.


Taking down an internal wall under the supervision of a pro can be a
DIY task. I've done two here, and I'm not a builder. I've also seen
it
done by a 'proper' builder where they took risks. And then left all
the rubble under the floors...

I have also taken down internal walls, without supervision, but I
could
tell the difference between the load bearing and none load bearing
walls.

Just by looking at it?

In that case yes.

You must have X-ray vision, then. As well as the ability to do lightening
calculations. My structural engineer did a full inspection and worked out
the loadings.

Maybe he needed to in your case?

In article ,
dennis@home wrote:


"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
dennis@home wrote:


"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
dennis@home wrote:
As long as he sticks to being a handyman it will be OK. Its
when they decide to make a few extra quid by doing something
they don't have a clue about that they become cowboys. That
and stuff their insurance doesn't cover.

Err, how do you know what his insurance covers?

Who's?

Perhaps you don't realise what you've written. It's at the top of
this post.

Oh I know what I wrote. Its quoted above. You may notice that it says
"they" and doesn't specify an individual.

But can be taken to imply it. Allegedly. Given you appear to have some
restrictions as to what a handyman can be allowed to do.

There are restrictions on what a handyman can do.

I doubt there's any official definition of a handyman anymore than a
builder. And I'm sure they vary in capabilities equally.

Taking down an internal wall under the supervision of a pro can
be a DIY task. I've done two here, and I'm not a builder. I've
also seen it done by a 'proper' builder where they took risks.
And then left all the rubble under the floors...

I have also taken down internal walls, without supervision, but I
could tell the difference between the load bearing and none load
bearing walls.

Just by looking at it?

In that case yes.

You must have X-ray vision, then. As well as the ability to do
lightening calculations. My structural engineer did a full inspection
and worked out the loadings.

Maybe he needed to in your case?

In terms of this group it's advisable to take professional advice in major
works such as those. Not everyone has your obvious panoramic knowledge of
building design. And I've seen a lot of properties fall down where some
clown decides a wall ain't loadbearing...



--
*Sherlock Holmes never said "Elementary, my dear Watson" *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Fri, 11 Sep 2009 02:07:50 -0700 (PDT), a certain chimpanzee, "Man
at B&Q" randomly hit the keyboard and
produced:

A buttress is load bearing.

Isn't it more that common usage has come to interpret "load bearing"
as supporting something above rather than supporting something to the
side?

In the sense that load = a force acting on an object, then yes, a
buttress is load bearing. However, I did want to point out that a
structural member does more than react to gravitational forces.
--
Hugo Nebula
"If no-one on the internet wants a piece of this,
just how far from the pack have you strayed?"

On Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:46:53 GMT, a certain chimpanzee, "The Medway
Handyman" randomly hit the keyboard
and produced:

Google reveals there is a Fazakerley High School in Liverpool, so I spose
thats where it comes from.

It's a district of North Liverpool.
--
Hugo Nebula
"If no-one on the internet wants a piece of this,
just how far from the pack have you strayed?"

On Fri, 11 Sep 2009 18:19:19 GMT, a certain chimpanzee, "ARWadsworth"
randomly hit the keyboard and
produced:

"The Medway Handyman" wrote in message
. com...

Google reveals there is a Fazakerley High School in Liverpool, so I spose
thats where it comes from.

It also has a prison.

And a large Council estate (which is pretty much the same thing).
--
Hugo Nebula
"If no-one on the internet wants a piece of this,
just how far from the pack have you strayed?"

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
dennis@home wrote:


"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
dennis@home wrote:


"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
dennis@home wrote:
As long as he sticks to being a handyman it will be OK. Its
when they decide to make a few extra quid by doing something
they don't have a clue about that they become cowboys. That
and stuff their insurance doesn't cover.

Err, how do you know what his insurance covers?

Who's?

Perhaps you don't realise what you've written. It's at the top of
this post.

Oh I know what I wrote. Its quoted above. You may notice that it says
"they" and doesn't specify an individual.

But can be taken to imply it. Allegedly. Given you appear to have some
restrictions as to what a handyman can be allowed to do.

There are restrictions on what a handyman can do.

I doubt there's any official definition of a handyman anymore than a
builder. And I'm sure they vary in capabilities equally.

Correct, you are getting there.
A builder that does something they don't know how to do or isn't covered by
their insurance is a cowboy.


Taking down an internal wall under the supervision of a pro can
be a DIY task. I've done two here, and I'm not a builder. I've
also seen it done by a 'proper' builder where they took risks.
And then left all the rubble under the floors...

I have also taken down internal walls, without supervision, but I
could tell the difference between the load bearing and none load
bearing walls.

Just by looking at it?

In that case yes.

You must have X-ray vision, then. As well as the ability to do
lightening calculations. My structural engineer did a full inspection
and worked out the loadings.

Maybe he needed to in your case?

In terms of this group it's advisable to take professional advice in major
works such as those. Not everyone has your obvious panoramic knowledge of
building design. And I've seen a lot of properties fall down where some
clown decides a wall ain't loadbearing...

As I said, it obviously wasn't a structural wall.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
You must have X-ray vision, then. As well as the ability to do
lightening calculations. My structural engineer did a full inspection
and worked out the loadings.

I remember once a consultant engineer being called in to go through a
noise problem on a circuit I was working on. he appeared one day and I
said 'who are you?' ' I've come to investigate the noise problem on the
tuner' 'Oh, its in the tuner head - the bit I didn't design' 'Thanks but
I'll be the judge of that'.

Obviously you had an employer who didn't trust your judgement.


No, it was I discovered later, political.

The prime customer was in fact a german company, and they insisted that
instead of an FM tuner head made in Japan, we used a German one made by
IIRC Siemens.

When I used that the noise level increased. I was under extreme pressure
to finish other parts, so apart from knowing where the cause lay, I
could not actually say why.

The Good Germans refused to believe that anything made in Germany could
be so crap, so the consultant was called in to make an unbiased report.
Most industrial consultancy seems to be more about solving political
problems than technical.


Anyway, after all that I had to dive into the blasted tuner and work out
why it was noisy.

I found two complete and utter balls ups in the design. It was an FM
tuner head.

The first utter balls up was that an unsmoothed zener diode was being
used to stabilise the voltage of the oscillator. Very good, as it meant
there was no chance of drift with supply voltage, HOWEVER zener diodes
are wonderful noise sources..which essentially caused the oscillator to
jitter, giving the noise. The addition of a very large capacitor
instantly removed that. I was able to demonstrate the actual noise
levels equated to the frequency to voltage slope times teh theoretical
noise of the zener..took a two day bit of math, but the Germans like
lots of numbers.

The second fault was that the stupid designers had used a ferrite cored
oscillator core. Ferrite is nice stiff, but it varies its reluctance? I
think that's the right word - when in a magnetic field, and the mains
transformer in this design had to be close..we retrofitted 1000 brass or
aluminium cored cools to these stupid tuners. I would say that 'good
german tuner' set the project back 3 months plus, and cost thousands of
man hours.


In my case I employed the structural engineer who I did trust. And had no
reason to change that trust afterwards.


Oh, don't get me wrong, I trusted the consultant: It was just that in
terms of getting an answer, there were quicker ways. It didn't
invalidate his way at all, juts made it seem very expensive!

Its not possible in structural terms to remove a wall to see if the
house falls down, and then put it back. HOWEVER even structural
engineers can be better than this suggests., I had one round to look at
my roof and his answer was after 15 minutes looking at the loft, that
no, I couldn't put anything heaver than shingles on the roof, and he was
surprised that the bits of Christmas tree and old hoe handles even kept
that up.. ;-)

Was there anything about the house at all that was sound? 'You will find
out when you renovate it'

And I did, and the answer was 'nothing that wont be more expensive to
keep than to demolish'

BUT even there, the builders used had a pretty good idea of what would
take what sort of load. When you work around structures, and have seen
some fail, you 'know' that a wood beam will or wont take that many bags
of cement loaded on it, or being hoist by it.etc etc.

I 'know' that a 4x2 will take a couple of tons central over a 9ft
span..just..because I have lifted that much on it. I wont ever do it
again mind you, because it didn't look quite the same afterwards.

So I wouldn't e.g. use a 4x2 to support a solid wall above it, on its
own.. of any height. I 'know' that a pile of bricks abut a meter cube
weighs about 1 ton and a bit, because I had to put them in two
landrovers and drive them, and it wasn't fun, three trips in all, and
still hairy..

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:


In terms of this group it's advisable to take professional advice in major
works such as those. Not everyone has your obvious panoramic knowledge of
building design. And I've seen a lot of properties fall down where some
clown decides a wall ain't loadbearing...

The cost of a structural engineer, whose report is enough to validate
insurance policies, is a couple of hundred quid usually. In many
projects its a trivial amount and all arses get covered. And if things
go wrong, insurance pays out. You tried your best to reduce the risk.

But its pretty easy to see if a wall IS load bearing or not, by going up
and seeing what is on top of it.

After all, that's really what the engineer does.

He doesn't have access to better data than the handyman, he is just able
to interpret it better. And most of all, he actually asks the question
'will it fall down' where the handyman probably assumes it wont.


In engineering, provided you ask the right question, the answer is
actually usually simple to arrive at. The major disasters that happen in
engineering projects are almost always because the right question was
not asked.

Once you say 'will the house fall down if I pull that wall?' you are
already 90% of the way there.

The handyman isn't a structural guy: A builder is. The builder may be
expected to ask the question, the handyman is not.

Hugo Nebula wrote:
On Fri, 11 Sep 2009 02:07:50 -0700 (PDT), a certain chimpanzee, "Man
at B&Q" randomly hit the keyboard and
produced:

A buttress is load bearing.

Isn't it more that common usage has come to interpret "load bearing"
as supporting something above rather than supporting something to the
side?

In the sense that load = a force acting on an object, then yes, a
buttress is load bearing. However, I did want to point out that a
structural member does more than react to gravitational forces.

Ultimately in a building, there are no others.

Except maybe in prestressed concrete, where the stress is in the form of
tensioned steel, or in groundwork where its soil movement due to
humidity changes, and occasionally one takes wind stress into account,
but these are specialise areas. In the end the rest of the forces are
all due to gravity. They may not be straight down, that's all.

Buttresses are directly about the roof weight on arched, ridged or domed
rooves. They are there because masonry does compressiion wonderfully,
but is crap in tension, and hence bending.

dennis@home wrote:
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
dennis@home wrote:


"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
dennis@home wrote:
As long as he sticks to being a handyman it will be OK. Its when
they
decide to make a few extra quid by doing something they don't
have a
clue about that they become cowboys. That and stuff their
insurance doesn't cover.

Err, how do you know what his insurance covers?

Who's?

Perhaps you don't realise what you've written. It's at the top of
this post.

Oh I know what I wrote.
Its quoted above.
You may notice that it says "they" and doesn't specify an
individual.

But can be taken to imply it. Allegedly. Given you appear to have
some restrictions as to what a handyman can be allowed to do.

There are restrictions on what a handyman can do.

And what would they be Dennis?


--
Dave - The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
dennis@home wrote:


"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
dennis@home wrote:


"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
dennis@home wrote:
As long as he sticks to being a handyman it will be OK. Its
when they decide to make a few extra quid by doing something
they don't have a clue about that they become cowboys. That
and stuff their insurance doesn't cover.

Err, how do you know what his insurance covers?

Who's?

Perhaps you don't realise what you've written. It's at the top of
this post.

Oh I know what I wrote. Its quoted above. You may notice that it
says "they" and doesn't specify an individual.

But can be taken to imply it. Allegedly. Given you appear to have
some restrictions as to what a handyman can be allowed to do.

There are restrictions on what a handyman can do.

I doubt there's any official definition of a handyman anymore than a
builder. And I'm sure they vary in capabilities equally.

I'd love to see such a definition, but alas its prolly just Dennis making
things up again.


--
Dave - The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk

Roger wrote:
"The Medway Handyman" wrote in message
om...
Looked at a job on the way home tonight, lady wants a wall between two
landing cupboards removed.

She reckoned it wasn't structural, but seeing as though she was a dental
nurse & AFAIK they are not trained in this area, I told her to get it
checked out by a structural engineer.


You always make me laugh. Each time you get a job you come on here and
ask what to do - suggesting you are a right cowboy!

*plonk*