January 2015 - Helpful Colin

A North Norfolk Railway Journey

The North Norfolk Railway Poppy Line

The North Norfolk Railway (NNR), known as The Poppy Line, runs from Holt to Sheringham via Kelling Heath Halt (for Kelling Heath Park) and Weybourne. A total distance of 5¼ miles. It runs along the eastern section of the North Norfolk coast but stays inland from Holt to Weybourne at the western end. After Weybourne it runs nearer the coast on its way east to Sheringham. See a map of the line here. This has been made available by www.strollingguides.co.uk. The line is also highlighted here on a Google map.

My wife, our dog Leo and I road the rails there and back from Holt on 10^th April 2014.

Below: You can see No.76034 having recently arrived at Holt. (Also shown in the featured image.)

north norfolk railway — No.76034 having recently arrived at Holt.

Mira Shower Thermal Switch Replacement

Introduction

This article advises how I have replaced a Mira Shower thermal switch in a MIRA Sport 9kW Thermostatic Shower on several occasions.

Originally I installed a MIRA Sport 9kW Thermostatic Shower as part of a new bathroom and had it tested and certified by a qualified electrician on 1^st May 2007. I was very pleased with it and it worked well for three years until June 2010 when it developed a fault.

I found that in the middle of taking a shower the water would go cold for a few seconds and then get warm again. On the first few occasions I wondered if cold water being drawn off by other taps and appliances was lowering the water pressure to the shower and so causing it to operate incorrectly (although the low pressure light was not illuminating). As the days went by the problem got worse and my wife ended up washing shampoo off with cold water. I knew then that I would be in bad books until it was fixed.

I had to determine if this fault could be fixed or if I would have to replace the entire shower unit. For this I needed to take a look inside the shower unit.

Tiled Bath Panel Construction

Preface

I could write an article about Building A Bathroom or Tiling A Bathroom but I have decided to just cover a Tiled Bath Panel in this article even though some detail of the tiles on the walls is mentioned. Bath panels can easily be made from painted hardboard or plywood, or boards, but a tiled panel can fit in with the rest of the bathroom very well when all the walls are tiled.

Dishwasher Rinse Aid Dispenser Catch Repair

Introduction

It must be nearly two years ago that I first had a problem with my Dishwasher Rinse Aid Dispenser Catch. The tab that has to be pushed towards the top of the door to open the rinse aid dispenser, so that more rinse aid can be added, had somehow broken and disappeared. I found I could continue to open it by pressing the remaining catch towards the top of the door using the handle end of a teaspoon.

Since refilling the rinse aid dispenser doesn’t happen everyday I was happy to continue with that opening method indefinitely. However about six months ago I found the entire catch was missing leaving the rinse aid dispenser door flapping in the breeze. I searched inside the dishwasher and found the plastic part of the catch but not the coil spring. Also when I inserted the catch its retaining clips no longer wanted to spring outwards and perform their retaining action. The whole plastic catch appeared to have been eroded by the dishwashing process. I noticed that the dishwasher liquid dispenser catch looks similarly eroded, but that works on a different principal and is still O.K. The detergent and rinse aid compartment covers are made of a different plastic which has not shown signs of erosion.

After several months without using rinse aid I decided I should take action to fix the catch.

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My Latest News

6th October 2019: I have in the last few months worked through all my blog posts and pages and converted them from Classic Editing mode to Block Editing mode. While doing this I have found posts that had problems which I fixed. In particular with linked videos which were no longer working. I deleted one post amongst these. I may be tempted to delete more posts which are no longer relevant and just take up space on the server.

Along with the list of contents introduced to longer posts I have added a list of pictures too. I have been able to do this by giving the pictures their own headings. They could be interspersed with the contents but I am keeping them separate at the moment.

On some posts I have introduced a Preface to give a simple description of the post. This enables me to put the contents before the introduction.

The contents are compiled from all the headings in a post and underlined. These can be selected in the normal way in order to navigate straight to them. This should save a lot of scrolling for anyone who is referring to a post and its pictures to help them fix the item described.

NOTE: I have noticed that selecting a heading might not scroll all the way to it at the first attempt. Successive attempts during the same viewing get nearer. I hope to get this fixed in the course of time.

I have found that the reason the headings on small screens aren’t emboldened is because they aren’t set to use a bold font. On large screens there isn’t an issue because the headings look like headings anyway. However I use Jetpack to convert my blog for display on mobiles which displays headings as normal or bold according to how they are set. So I will be emboldening headings to give a better display on mobiles as and when i get around to it.

NOTE: I do expect most people to read my blog on a mobile phone these days. So I will try to keep it looking good for them.

3rd June 2019: I’ve had a go at making testimonials look better. The previous method was a mess so I’ve used the Kadence Testimonials block to produce a testimonials page with two neat columns which are now accessed from the Posts menu since they all originate via Post Comments.

1st June 2019: Continuing to edit using blocks I have changed to a Kadence FAQ block to display Frequently Asked Questions and their answers. I spotted a problem with the accordion block and Ben Ritner has very kindly edited the block to resolve it. There has been some editing of the Qs & As and you might find I mess with it some more.

I have also begun using the Contents Table block by Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg to show the contents of my posts. I am inserting this block after the Introduction. If I put it first, as it would be in a book, it causes some issues:

In my list of posts that is shown in reverse date order I only want the Introduction or part thereof to be seen. If I put the contents block first that will be seen. It will take up a lot of screen space and won’t be very interesting.
The contents block links to all the headings used in the post but that doesn’t work when it’s viewed in the list of post snippets described in 1 above.

Continue to My Latest News Archive.

Site Construction

The site helpfulcolin.com was originally built in September 2011 by Digitalog© now Wolf & Player using the Side Blog theme and handed over to Helpful Colin by his mentors in December 2011. It was changed to a ‘Twenty Fourteen’ child theme in February 2014 by Helpful Colin.

The theme was changed again in December 2015 when WordPress version 4.4 became active and Helpful Colin changed the theme to the ‘Twenty Sixteen’ theme which is designed to look good on all screen sizes. Although this may have improved the blog for mobile users it has removed some functionality available in ‘Twenty Fourteen’.

Helpful Colin took on board Gutenberg at an early stage and has since converted all posts to use the block editing format. The current version of WP used at 30/09/2019 is 5.2.3. Jetpack is used to convert the Helpful Colin posts to display correctly on mobile devices.

When WordPress 5.3.2 came on the scene on 18/12/2019 I adopted it immediately.

As of 20/01/2020 I have installed the Cache Enabler plugin to try and speed up the serving of files.