Lets imagine you accepted our product pitch and went for the BFKMX bathroom fitters kit all in one tile drilling solution. It arrives on site (hooray) and you start to get on with installing your bathroom or kitchen. Now one of the most frustrating thing that can happen to you as an installer is that you are presented with one or two non standard hole sizes to drill. Its Saturday afternoon.... And you want to finish the job, get paid, and go home.

GOOD NEWS. I am going to show how to adapt the BFKMX so that ANY hole is possible with this kit. It truly is the all in one solution and with a bit of thinking can drill anything.

The tile above has been pre-drilled with the diamond hole saw sizes that come with the kit

You can see a Fischer basin fitting kit, a big 12mm rawl plug, a 50mm loo button, and a selection of 15mm pipe

First of all if you have a 12mm or 14mm hole to drill for a fischer kit its not a problem just cut out a plug in the tile with either the 16mm or 30mm hole. Above is the 30mm scenario and you can imagine the sink will butt up against the hole so not a problem it will be concealed. The advantage of the 30mm hole is that you can put the tile on the wall first and mark it out. Then diamond drill a big 30mm hole. Next use a hammer action drill inside the hole without fear of hitting the sides of the tile.

If you dont like the size of the 30mm then you can use the 16mm. As you can see above the fischer bolt fits perfectly inside this oversized tile plug. The hole is snug and so there is less room for drilling error when you drill through the tile into the masonry to fit that grey rawl plug. You might choose this slim 16mm size if there is a wooden baton behind and you only intend to screw the bolt in so there is less chance of you hitting the side of the hole in the tile with a hammer action drill.

In my experience its better to tile the wall first and then cut out your fixings hole for the sink rather than try to mark out the tile and fit it over a preexisting hole. If its not you doing first fix try to have a word with your plumber to tell him NOT to fit the bolt before you tile. The other little painful thing to note is that these bolts are at trouser pocket level and prone to prodding parts of your anatomy that you dont want prodding. If you are tiling over two days these things sticking out of the wall can get in the way of you and of course your application of a nice smooth adhesive run with your trowel. So best to retro fit it if you can.

Ive used small photos to get this page to load fast for you so here is a close-up of the bolt AND that 12mm rawl plug. The plugs can in fact be both at 12mm or 14mm. There is no problem popping the rawl plug above through the 16mm plug. Plenty of room. And of course even more on the 30mm hole.

OK on to the next thing. Here we see our client has opted for a 53mm or 2 inch press button flush for a loo pan. Good news is that we keep this size (we keep all sizes) in stock. But its Saturday afternoon and you want to finish your project and besides its only one hole so spending money on a single size is painful, a waste of time and money. Here's how to get round it. Drill a single 30mm hole into the tile. Then draw a circle round the part of the tile you haven't cut. Reposition the guide plate so that you see a half moon. And then start to open up the hole so that you cut sections out at a time.

Here is your oversized button press at 50mm. You can see that if you mark the tile right you can drill out a triangle hole and the fitting will slip into place.

The kits are supplied with guideplates to stop diamond core drills from slipping on expensive shiny porcelain tiles - but you can use the plate to guide a core drill to cut out moon shaped crescents over holes like the example below. Useful if you have made a mistake on a position or to open up holes for bigger sizes of fittings.

Example of a hole that has been extended with the moon crescents left on the tile to show cutouts

Here it is when you slip it into place flush to the tile.

I have tipped it so you can see no mistakes. No holes or gaps.

This is what it looks like from the back. Its not going to win an awards for symmetry but the point is you got the job done and fitted a much bigger size object (53mm) into a hole with only a 30mm core drill. Most items come with a capping plate to conceal irregular holes.

Another angle to see it prior to the cap going on.

Here is the back washer. And once that goes on then there is a really tight fit

There - you can see that the over sized item is fitted with zero fuss. And it has saved you having to buy loads of different size drill bits. And saved you time waiting for delivery. You will have one happy client ! And you get to go home and see your kids and wife (or husband).

Next we see above we have a combination of copper 15mm pipes, plastic etc etc I have done this to show that we can accommodate all plumbing disciplines. It doesn't matter if you use 15mm copper, polyplumb, plastic, grey or any other model of quickfit plumbing. The universal size fits. It might seem obvious to those in the know that the sizes will fit. But many people are worried so they buy a multiple size range of core drills they dont really need. Anyway its nice to see that we have made sure on your behalf that if you buy the bathroom fitters kit that you wont be left high and dry when using other fitting systems. It all fits!

As you can imagine the 15mm slips nicely into the 16mm hole ! And here we demonstrate it for you through the hole of a 16mm which is drilled out of a tile.

Here is a close up for you to show there is good room for movement, pipe expansion its not so tight to crack the tile if expanding and contracting through the tile. ! This is another concern for people using our holesaws and diamond tile drills. Will it be so tight that my tiles will crack or the pipe burst during contraction and expansion. The answer is a emphatic no.

Next what we are showing you above is that the 15mm copper pipe can come through a 30mm socket if you have used the polyplumb style of plastic fitting. As a final fitting if you kept it like that it looks perfect and made for the job. Another alternative thing to note is that pipes can often be "capped off" with white polyplumb plastic cap ends. These are a temporary fix to stop pipes leaking water and also to protect the pipe and are put on by the plumber during first fix. So the 30mm hole will let you slip a tile over both the cap and the 15mm copper pipe with its cap end still in place. No need to remove the cap and have Niagara Falls all over yourself.

Again we have put this photo up here in close up to show you the 30mm socket is perfect ! While I we are here at this photograph take a second look at that plastic pipe above running under the 40mm hole. Obviously its just there to support the 15mm copper pipe for photographic purposes. But can you imagine if that was a real pipe installed for example an underfloor pipe for heating. And imagine if you drilled through the tile using a pilot drill type of system. If you had used that sort of core drill then you will have burst the pipe. Our core drills have no pilot drill and so are much much safer to use than those with a pilot. Now dont get me wrong I am not saying that if you had drilled out your 40mm hole and saw that pipe you would be jumping for joy to see it. But the point is that you didn't cause further work for yourself draining the central heating system, digging up a concrete floor and relaying or repairing pipework.

While we have the camera out lets show you that the 16mm hole is universal and accepts grey plastic pipe. Yes I know you already knew that and accepted what we put above but then its nice to see...

And finally one more shot for you of the white pipe. Of course it accepts white polyplumb plastic pipe just as comfortably.

The end comments are really to shout out the message that if you cut PLUGS out of tiles then you can mostly bring any service pipe through. It just needs a bit of thinking about. Lots of white goods will hide anything you drill for example 240v cables, pipes, sockets, buttons, bendy electrical pipe, shower heads, body jets and the list goes on. I am sure you know of other sizes of hole and fittings.

You might be forgiven for asking why we stock 37 different sizes when the BFKMX does practically anything. Well the point is that if you are doing a whole hotel and you need a bespoke size, or something like LED lighting with very little clearance then the good news is we are the only supplier to have a comprehensive size range for you. And we can have it on site next day.

But the honest lesson is that once you have a BFKMX in your toolbox then you have a full drilling capability for very hard porcelain tiles. We have probably done ourselves out of a few sales of exotic sizes but I would rather that you bought what you need for the job, enjoy using our tools and then pass the word on to other tradesmen. By letting you have access to these tips and tricks we hope you remain a loyal long term customer.