Monthly Archives: September 2014

One more cross to bear

This is just opinion.
At one of my DIY lectures today I was shown and Ulti-Mate screw which is supposed to be an enhanced version of the traditional cross head screw. Packs come with their own drill driver bit, but as yet screwdrivers for these screws are not available.
The benefits appear to be:
1) the bit and screw socket are precision engineered which means you can put the screw onto the driver bit and it fits so snugly that it won’t fall off even when pointing the screw straight down ..although I can’t imagine this would still be the case when the driver bit has worn.
2) They have a self-countersinking shoulder although as I understand it these are having to be modified because the screws will not currently sit properly in the ready-made countersunk holes of many hinges.
There are other benefits but here is my take.
There are already two standards of Philips and Pozidriv which are not entirely interchangeable and are just different enough to be irritating at times …so do we really need a third standard however good it might be?
These new screws seem to have a square centre to the socket hole in the screw head which from my brief inspection and testing seemed to make an ordinary Pozidriv or Philips screwdriver not fully enter. This will obviously allow easy camming-out of the driver when it slips resulting also in damage to the screwhead socket hole so making it difficult for a damaged screw to be withdrawn (unscrewed).

Slightly embarrassing

In all my years I have never had an isolating ball valve fail — you just turn the little widget with a screwdriver and if the slot is across the flow then it’s off and in-line with the flow then it’s on.
The one shown below went to an electric shower which needed replacing. But as you can see after I dutifully turned it off it actually sheared inside (probably due to limescale build-up) so when I uncoupled the shower quite a lot of water spurted out. You live and learn.
photo 1-1photo 2