We've just finished a fairly major project at home in doing up our living room (right). It's been fairly major in that the room is quite large and has an open stair well so we've had to include the stairs and landing too. It's been a complete overhaul with the fire you see in the picture having been fitted, the upstairs ceiling plastered, new carpets, a little wall paper hung, painted and thoroughly decorated. However, one thing I wanted to do as part of the redecoration was to run Ethernet cable between the TV point in the right of the picture all the way around the room past the door on the left to the computer point in the kitchen. Basically, I've been long since fed up of wireless being slow, if not dropping out entirely. So here follows a few notes to remind myself what I did with the hope it might be useful to someone else out there too.
I started out by planning the route for the cable and researching the kit I would need to buy in order to complete the job. I decided to channel the cable into the wall where the fire is, using a channel I had the fire fitter make behind the fire when it was fitted. For the rest of the run along the green wall and into the kitchen the cables are sunk into the back of the skirting board. Having replaced the skirting, I routed out a channel just big enough for 2 Ethernet cables and re-hung the skirting back in place.
The next decision was what type of cable to buy, Cat 5e or Cat6, Solid Core or not? I already knew I wanted 2 cables, driven mainly by the fact it seemed pointless just to run one and a lot of Ethernet wall face plates have 2 sockets in them so that's what I decided on. Then I went shopping.
I already had a couple of single metal backing boxes to mount face plates on, the rest of my shopping list consisted of the following for the sum of just under 40 quid:
As you can tell from that little list, I decided to go with shielded Cat 6 and bought 2 cables with ends already attached. I found it was cheaper to do this than to buy a reel of cable! It was simple enough to cut the ends off and as you can tell from the rest of the list I decided to use whatever length was remaining to make up some Ethernet cables using the ends and crimper tool.
I've been re-grouting my kitchen and bathroom recently, not in itself something worthy of a blog post. However, I discovered a power tool to make the job far easier and since a few people have already asked me about it...
The MT3 made by CEL UK is an oscillating Multi Tool with all manner of different attachments, one of which is a carbide grout removal tool. The fact the tool oscillates (rather than rotates, say like a Dremel multi) means you don't fling the grout all over the house as dust. Vibrations from the tool are enough to remove grout and drop the majority of the mess neatly out of the joints in front of you.
I think at this point you probably already get the picture so here's a fun video of someone using the tool before I splurge out a bit more detail on it:
As you can see in addition to grout removal, it can be used for cutting but also sanding, rasping and probably a whole load of other tasks too. There's a bunch of other videos on the MT3 and other tools from CEL on their YouTube channel.
As an alternative, the known branded version of this thing is the PMF 180 E from Bosch. The best deal I found on the Bosch was at Amazon who sell the tool and large accessory pack together for just under 100 quid at the time of writing. This is more or less the same price as the MT3 from CEL so here's my logic for why I didn't go for the big name product.
Accessories are expensive for both products, but the Bosch is even more expensive than the CEL. However, the Bosch is only capable of using bits supplied by Bosch themselves where as the CEL is capable of using bits from pretty much anywhere, including Bosch (they include an adapter for Bosch bits). Given this and the fact the CEL is slightly more powerful I thought I'd go for supporting the small British startup company rather than the large German corporation and if CEL doesn't survive into the future I can always buy alternative bits for the tool from other manufacturers anyway.
Dealing with CEL while buying the tool was an absolute dream, one of the best Internet buying experiences I've ever had and really shows how the personal service you can get from a small company makes a difference. I wanted to buy the MT3-C Pack which at the time was advertised as "coming soon" and is made up of the MT3 Tool, accessory pack, and a case. Buying all 3 as a pack represented a saving of around £20.
I wrote to the generic sales email address on their web site asking when the pack might be available as I was interested in buying all 3 products together. Within half an hour I had a response back from their office saying they had all three parts, they were willing to put them together as a pack and honour the advertised pack price on the web site. This is where it gets really good, in addition they also sent through a PayPal invoice so should I wish to go ahead with the purchase I just had to complete the invoice and they would send the products out that afternoon for next day delivery! At this point it was a no-brainer, I returned the invoice and followed up via email too. Again, only half an hour later I had a response saying they had received the payment and sent the product out. 8:30am the next morning arrives and I've got my new tool, brilliant!
So far the tool and dealing with the company have both been great so I'm completely sold and wish CEL every success for the future and in creating some more great kit.
So now I'm cold, the reason being I've just been in our loft to take the most boring picture (right). But cold is good, right? That means my loft insulation must be working quite well on this cold winters evening. After my previous eco-minded post about our new LED light I thought I'd put up some info about another of our recent projects at home, insulating the loft.
It's a pretty simple job if somewhat cramped, dark and grim. It's well worth doing though as we can testify to having a warm house, cold loft, and doing well in the "who's roof melts the frost first" competition in our street. Loft insulation is supposed to be about the best bang-for-your-buck thing to do in terms of home efficiency; I've definitely noticed our radiators coming on a lot less. We're now up to a whopping 300mm insulation so well above the rafters and above what I still think is the recommended minimum of 250mm.
The real reason behind this post though is to say be careful when choosing what product you use. Don't just go to the local hardware store and buy the bulk standard "space blanket". Grand though it may sound those products are said to cause quite a lot of harm during manufacture. I've fitted Eco Wool (terrible web site, decent product) which is available in the UK through B&Q. While not the most ecological product ever (it uses 15% polyester for binding) it does use recycled plastic for the most part. It's very thick and has pretty good insulating properties, cheap and is easy to get hold of.
Unlike my post about our LED light I can't finish on any drawbacks with this one, there are none. Go insulate your loft, and think about what you lay first! Eco-warrior over and out.
We're having a little bit of work done on the house and as part of that I had to move the outside light by the front door. On further inspection I found the old light wasn't going to cut the mustard in the new location, it wasn't going to be waterproof for one, which is sort of important. So a great excuse as if any were needed to buy something new and funky!
The obvious choice to me was to look into whether LED lights are available for outside lighting. Imagine my surprise when I found it seems they're actually getting quite commonplace and we were able to nip down to our local DIY store and pick one up. For some reason I was expecting to hunt around Internet sites and order one. The pictures shows what we bought. It's a fairly small chrome effect affair with two plastic panels beyond which are mounted a total of 24 white LEDs, 12 of these are at the front and 12 to the rear.
It provides plenty of light, not massively bright and offensive like security lighting, but easily enough to see your way up the drive to the doorway. The best part of this, as with all LED lighting, is the power usage. My current cost meter doesn't budge when it's turned on, not even a sniff of a change in power usage. Assuming I've not wired it up to some free electric supply I'm not aware of, or accidentally stolen from our neighbours, I can only conclude all 24 LEDs are using less than one watt of power. It's my first LED installation at home and almost certainly wont be the last.
I hate to finish on a downer but there are drawbacks of course. The LEDs are not replaceable so if one dies, however unlikely, you have to put up with it looking silly or replace the entire light. The other is the colour of the light, we've all been brought up with tungsten lighting so the colour of LED light does take a little getting used to.
