As many of us will be in front of the computer at work during Ramadan, I have created a wallpaper with the Ramadan timetable based on the East London Mosque’s timetable so you can check prayer times as well as when to break your fast. Please feel free to download the .gif file and use it as your wallpaper.

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It took two days to strip existing wall tiles rather than the one day I had predicted. Three out of the four walls were straightforward as the tiles were on plaster and came off relatively easily. The fourth wall was a nightmare!

The wall was a mixture of cement board and wood and the tiles would just break into a million pieces when trying to take them off. The adhesive on the wood and cement board also took a lot longer to remove than I had thought.

Once the bathroom was free of tiles, the bathtub, toilet and basin were removed leaving an empty room to apply fresh wall tiles onto. There was no going back now!

Tiling took an absolute age as well. Large tiles are harder to work with than smaller tiles and cutting them to size wasn’t easy, even using an electric tile cutting machine. All in all, it took just over a week to tile the entire bathroom and applying the grout.

Now that the walls were ready, it was time to install the new suite. The bathtub was the first to be installed. The legs were pretty straightforward to fit onto the new shower bath. I had a few issues making the plug hole water tight and found out how frustrating it can be to work under the bathtub when its in position. The existing 22mm hot and cold water pipes had to be cut in order to accommodate the bathtub’s tap positions. Compression fittings and flexible tap hoses were used to connect the taps to the pipes. Compression fittings can be a rather difficult to work with when you have multiple connections in small areas and I spent an awful lot of time fixing water leaks.

After that, it was time to connect the trap to the plug hole and the waste pipe to the trap. This was straight forward enough but I had to buy an extra metre of 40mm pipe, a compression 90 degree (elbow) fitting and a compression 135 degree fitting to get to the weird position of the bathtub’s plug hole. Once that was connected, the taps were turned so the plughole, trap and waste pipe could be tested for leaks.

Shoot! Another bloody problem with a slight dripping of water from the bottom of the plug hole. Obviously the silicon I added to make it water tight hadn’t worked properly. A bit of Plumber’s Mait soon sorted that though – this stuff is super! That was the bath done.

Next was the pan and cistern. Installation was simple enough. The cistern came with the valve and siphon already installed so I didn’t need to do anything there. The pan and cistern were put into place and screwed onto the wall and floor. Some silicon was used under the pan to stabilise it from movement as the floor tiles were ever so slightly uneven. The pan connector was then attached to the soil pipe without a hiccup and the only thing left to do was to connect the 15mm pipe to the cistern.

I connected a 15mm isolation valve to the pipe so that if I needed to do any work to the cistern at a later time, I wouldn’t have to cut the main water supply off, I could just close the valve. I also wanted to attach a douche shower for cleaning ourselves after paying the toilet a visit so I had to use a compression tee to split the existing pipe so the douche could be attached. I added another isolating valve to the pipe that the douche would be connected to so I could control the water flow from the douche – after all, we don’t want to sting our arses by pressure washing them now do we? This gave me some problems with leaks in the compression fittings, which were duly fixed with a healthy amount of PTFE tape.

That was the toilet sorted. The water was switched on and the cistern allowed to fill up. The flush was tested and all came out well. Next was the most important part of a toilet installation – testing it ‘properly’. Luckily, I had saved myself from going that day so this wouldn’t be an issue! The toilet passed the test with flying colours I’m happy to say

Two down, one to go. The basin was next to be installed. This would be easy surely? It wasn’t. Again I used flexible tap hoses and isolating valves for connecting the taps to the basin. Again I had issues with the compression fittings – I think I’ll invest in a blow torch next time as soldering is far more watertight and permanent. Once taps were installed, I got to the next problem – the ‘p’ trap wouldn’t fit onto the basin as it couldn’t reach from the waste pipe onto the plug hole on the basin. The solution? An expandable trap of some sort! So off I went to the diy shop and bought an expandable bottle trap.

This time I didn’t have a problem connecting to the plug hole - yay! But I couldn’t connect to the waste pipe now as the bottle trap’s pipe were too short to reach the waste pipe by about two inches. I couldn’t just add a small section of pipe either as that would require the use of a coupler and they were more than two inches in length. A few more trips to diy shops ensued to see if there was a solution and eventually bought a fitting that was just the right size and problem solved. The basin was tested for leaks and as usual there were leaks.

The leak was from the bottom of the plughole that connected to the bottle trap - the trap wasn’t 100% aligned to the plug hole and so the compression nut wasn’t connecting to the thread in the plug hole properly. This was solved by cutting about an inch off from the waste pipe.

Some silicon was then used to attach the basin to the wall and the pedestal. That was the suite installed. Job done

Adding finishing touches took a while too. The bath panels were tricky to install, the glass shower screen was really heavy and I bought a few bits and bobs to complete the look.

And here is the finished article. What do you think? A big improvement I say. The bathtub is huge and is a joy to bathe in – although it does take a while to fill up.

Massive thanks go out to the wife, who helped every step of the way and also to Muhit, who helped fit the glass screen and solve a few water leak issues.

Day 5:
The topics for the day were radiators, central heating systems, boilers and tap washers.

We started off discussing boilers - both conventional and combination types. We looked at how the boilers worked and how they fitted into a direct and indirect system.

This moved us nicely onto radiators and how they operate. We were shown how to install a radiator and how to take one down for decorating.

After that we  looked at one of the most common problems in the household - tap leakages. The main culprit when it comes to tap leakages is the washer inside the tap. We opened up several taps and changed the washers from the barrels to stop the leaks.

And that was that! Course over, certificates dished out and bye-byes said.

This was a fantastic course, taught by a wonderful teacher and I would recommend it to anyone. Having done the course, I am now able to install a bathroom suite from scratch. I can install showers, radiators, waste systems and a lot of other things that I would normally get an expensive plumber to come in and do.

I have ordered a bathroom suite already (to be delivered on monday) and have bought some tiles to replace the existing bathroom tiles. I’ll keep you all posted on how things go.

Day 4:
Our topic for the day was the crapper, aka the toilet. There are many types of toilet variations around (close coupled, space saving, wall hung etc) and we looked at how the cistern works.

There are two main components of a cistern - a ball valve or its modern equivalent the float valve and a siphon.

As part of the project, I installed a close coupled cistern and pan and connected the ball valve, siphon and a dual flush to it. It was very straight forward - much easier than i’d thought it would be.

So far then, I have installed a complete bathroom suite and carried out the plumbing work for it too including waste pipes and a hot and cold water feed.

Tomorrow is the last day of the course and we’ll be looking at radiators.

Day 3:
Today we looked at the waste system. There are two types of waste - grey waste (water from your shower, basin, kitchen sink, bath tub etc) and soil waste (the solid stuff).

We looked at the two types of grey waste pipes and the two types of solid waste pipes (old cast iron and newer plastic versions).

For the project, we had to install a bathroom suite - complete with waste system as well as a kitchen mixer tap and basin.

I can’t believe how straight forward it was! I have now ordered a new bathroom suite to install at home. It gets delivered on monday so watch this space for installation updates

Whats on the menu for tomorrow? The toilet pan and cistern. Should be fun.

Day 2:
We continued from where we left off yesterday - more about pressure and we covered the very important topic of direct (mains water pressure driven), indirect (head pressure driven) and mixed systems. The system you have very much dictates what sort of boiler you can install in your house.

We looked at conventional boilers as well as combination boilers and how they fit into the water system in your home. It was intriguing to learn about how hot and cold water is supplied throughout your home and how water pressure is affected.

We covered stopcocks and gate valves and their uses as well. Stopcocks are used in direct systems where there is a lot of pressure but gate valves are used on indirect systems as they cannot handle too much water pressure.

The main project of the day involved creating a small model of a mixed system and connecting bathroom taps, a garden tap, a stopcock, a gate valve and pressure testing for leaks at 5 bar.

This is what I built:

And tomorrow we tackle the waste systems! Sounds lovely.

Day 1:
I found out about the different pipe types, the various pipe fiittings, how to bend pipes and how to solder copper piping using some flux, some solder and a blow torch!

The practical work involved creating a ring using copper pipes, some end feeds, some yorkshire fittings, some compression fittings and some plastic push fit fittings.

We then pressure tested the ring for leaks up to 5 bar. Awesome.

The theory part involved knowing when to use the various fittings and the pros and cons of each. We also covered how pressure works and its effect on a mains system as well as a gravity-based system.

Day one was brill - can’t wait for day two

Since the last version of yanulhoque.com came offline, I have been working slowly in the background getting this site redesigned.

One design after another, I must have done a million gazillion mockups of the new site but eventually had to just pick one and stick to it. A few months later, here it is in all its glory.

I have added a few colour schemes that can be selected and have introduced a blog and a shout box since the last iteration. There are also other bits and pieces I am working on that will be added in due course.

So whaddya think?

On 25th October, at 4.32am, I became a parent. Maryam Hoque was born weighing 6lb and 3oz (2.8kg) and the whole experience was something to remember and cherish.

I’ll never forget the moment she arrived and thank Allah for this blessing. It was truly amazing.

Both mother and child were well enough to leave the hospital at 8pm the same day and a sleepless night followed. Better get used to it I guess.

This has been a challenging build due to the timescale that was given for building the site but the hard work paid off. I’m sure you would agree the site looks fantastic and the whole team working on the project at The Group have done exceptionally well.

Let me know what you think.