Total re-wire on a 3 bed Wimpy home as an investment re-furb. Done 4 days 10 hours a day, taken some time off from my regular line of work. Have to say WHAT A FIGHT! Chases had to be done with an angle grinder, got through three 12 inch stone cutting disks and it looked like a snow storm when the job was done. Forget using a cold chisel, only an SDS would shift the brick work. Got the ground floor done (8 radials, all dropped in from above as concrete floor), finish the ring final on the 1st tomorrow. Not even looked at the lighting or smokes yet. My hands are so stiff and my back is fooked! Call me a soft southerner but I am KNACKED! Also dunched my arm drilling the joists out.
The council would have used surface trunking. I am not sure the approach taken is the correct one. Chasing no fines concrete walls is, as you have found, unreasonably hard work and inefficient use of time.
I don't think it's no-fines, there are brick walls behind the plaster, or it's some kind of concrete type plaster. It will look pretty tidy when it's done though.
Bricks or blocks? Probably normal skim plaster on top of a sand/cement scratch coat, usually on block work, as opposed to bricks. The sand/cement scratch coats can be very hard sometimes. I would always be looking to use a diamond disc rather than black stone disks. What age is the house? What prompted the rewire?
Well I had three stone disks about so I thought I would use them up. House is 1970's vintage, all the wiring was orginal, most of it was imperial size cable and there was loads wrong, ring was caput and half the house running off a 15 amp rewirable. Plan is to rent it out when I'm done with it. The render/plaster stuff was horrid, the worst I've ever had to work on.
Hmmmmm sounds like the property is built properly. Chase reinstatement indicates dprm trowelled just below surrounding surface, and then when set joint filler to bring flush. When the filler is dry, kiss it with 60/120 and then paint to suit.
sounds like a hard old session Col. Plenty of beer to cook down in the evening?! on a related note, anyone use the purpose built wall chasers
Wall chasers are good, but you need to go for one with good power/torque to prevent it jamming, and allow you to "pull harder". With a proper vacume, they're not too bad for dust, you could use it on site with other trades, but not in a furnished property. Without a vacume, fine for the odd chase, but not a house full.
If its rendered its usually only done to a metre high, usually for damp purposes, after that its normal browning or similar. I have always used an SDS bolster chisel when I have encountered render before, tough going but you get there in the end. Not keen on angle grinders and the like, its bad enough when the roofer is using a stihl saw, and that's outside.