@sharjah-saver
Sharjah homeowner who hates overpaying. I collect quotes like other people collect stamps.
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Omar’s activity — page 4 of 5
I need to add (or replace) an AC for a room and I keep seeing BTU and tons thrown around, but I genuinely don't know how to size one. I understand the risk both ways: too small an…
Our Al Furjan villa is one of the newer designs with a lot of glass — big windows, a glazed stairwell, wide sliding doors to the garden. It's bright and lovely in winter, but in s…
We're in one of the Motor City apartment blocks, and the buildings are now around 15 years old — and it shows in the AC. Chatting to neighbours, the same story keeps coming up: un…
We're getting a fitted kitchen made and the quotes all mention different carcass materials (the boxes/cabinets themselves, not the doors) — standard MDF, moisture-resistant (MR) M…
Several of my windows have gone foggy between the panes — a permanent misting/condensation I can't clean because it's inside the sealed glass. From reading here I gather the edge…
The ice machine in the café is going downhill: it's making less ice than it used to, the cubes come out smaller and cloudy, and — the bit that worries me most — the ice has starte…
I run a small café in JLT and I've realised our kitchen extraction hood has never been properly cleaned — the cleaner just pops the metal filters out, washes them, and puts them b…
Up in the ceiling void and on the runs to the outdoor unit, the insulation on my AC pipework is shot — cracked, crumbling, and in a few places the pipe is basically bare. The bare…
We're about to take handover of a new townhouse in Damac South — a community that's essentially just being built out, so we'll be among the early residents. It's exciting, but it'…
Our shower screen is tired — the seals are gone and it leaks onto the bathroom floor — so I'm replacing it. I'm torn between a cheaper framed one and a smarter frameless glass pan…
Our villa has decent water pressure downstairs, but the upstairs bathrooms and the top-floor shower are weak — a trickle rather than a proper flow, and it gets worse when someone…
I've realised I have no idea when — or if — the water storage tank for our home has ever been cleaned. Someone mentioned that Dubai Municipality actually requires it, which surpri…
Having just dealt with a roof damp patch, it's got me thinking about the bigger picture. The vulnerable waterproofing in my villa — the roof, the bathrooms/wet areas, and the exte…
We have a damp patch on the inside of a wall that faces the outside, and it will not go away. We've had it repainted three times — sometimes with "anti-damp" paint — and every tim…
We moved to Umm Suqeim for the beach proximity and love it, but the sea has a downside I underestimated: salt air is hard on aluminium and glass. Compared to my old inland apartme…
Mirdif is a great, established family area, but a lot of the independent villas here are now 12–20 years old, and I'm noticing a pattern chatting to neighbours: the original syste…
My villa's top-floor ceilings have started showing brown damp patches after the heavier Dubai rains — and annoyingly, they turn up in different spots each time, not the same one.…
The Springs and Meadows are lovely communities, but the villas are now 15–20 years old, and it shows in a predictable way. Talking to neighbours, the same jobs come round again an…
Every UAE villa owner knows the feeling: it hits 45°C, the whole family is home, and that's the afternoon a unit decides to stop cooling. In our Arabian Ranches villa we run five…
We've just gone electric and I'm trickle-charging off a normal 13A socket in the garage with the cable that came with the car. It works but it's painfully slow and the socket gets…
Curious how everyone decides this. My split AC is 9 years old, cools okay but needs a gas top-up every summer and the compressor is starting to sound tired. A technician quoted a…
Found a puddle under the electric water heater in the store cupboard, and it seems to be coming from the bottom of the tank itself, not an obvious pipe. Unit is maybe 6 to 7 years…
A technician quoted me to "refill the gas" on my split AC because it wasn't cooling well. The figure felt made up on the spot. What's a fair price for an AC gas refill in Dubai, a…
A couple of lights in the flat flicker now and then, and one LED downlight flickers a lot. Is this just cheap bulbs, or something I should worry about?
One of my internal wooden doors has started sticking — it rubs the frame near the top and I have to push it to close. It was fine before. How do I fix a sticking door without wrec…
Every time I repaint, the same hairline cracks come back within months — usually near door corners and along ceiling joints. Filling and painting clearly isn't enough. How do I ac…
Everyone has a horror story about a renovation that ballooned in price or a contractor who vanished mid-job. For those who've done it — how do you structure the quote and payments…
Every company tells me a different interval — one says every 3 months, another says once a year is fine. Obviously the 3-month one wants more visits. What's the honest answer for…
Getting quotes to repaint a 2-bed apartment (move-out, so walls + ceilings, white). The range I'm getting is huge and I can't tell what's fair. If you've done it recently, what di…
Tired of no-shows and inflated quotes. How do you all find a plumber who turns up when they say and charges fairly? General tips welcome, not just names.