Hi, sorry for such a long time between updates. Any of you with young children will know it's hard to find time. I work a standard 9-5, by the time I get home, it's dinner time, bath time and bed time. And I can't really work on the house when my little one is asleep. So it's more or less weekends only, and then the time I do spend working on the house I feel guilty for not spending it with my family. So it's been really tough.
Where we were last time I was a couple of weeks away from my new water supply being fitted. Long story short, the council wouldn't grant the roadworks permission as of proximity to a school, so we had to wait until the next half term. Which was mid February.
Prepare yourself there's gonna be a lot of photos.
In the meantime I did some work inside:
Fitted some architrave and a door to the boiler cupboard
I knew after I did the bathroom flooring that I forgot something, didn't put any insulation... d'oh! The lounge is underneath and I want to reduce noise as much as possible. So I put in 100mm of Rockwool Sound Slab.
After that I started on the pipework to the boiler cupboard:
Flow on the left (next upright is the return), u bends in the joist gap to the right and goes into a little manifold, directly up to an aav. First drop down is hot water flow, next is bypass flow, and last is central heating flow. Gas pipe not run as I am not gas safe, will need someone registered to do that.
Here are the valves, two motorized valves and a bypass valve
Soldered up the bypass straight to the return
Felted up to stop creaks and rubbing
Here you can see what will be the main hot water coming off the cylinder, it travels down, goes into the wall to feed the new bathroom (alongside balanced cold supply). Then drops into the floor to feed the rest of the house.
Cylinder in
Boiler on the wall (just temporarily to show what it'll look like (it's cramped! but didn't want the bathroom being any smaller)
Flow to hot water cylinder done, had a double bend on that with an elbow.
Return from the cylinder just freshly soldered
, can also see some of the water pipework too (mains water is coming into here, then being softened, feeding the cylinder, then going back out to the rest of the house)
Pressure reducing valve (3 bar for megaflo cylinders) + Isolation valve for the softened cold supply. This will isolate the entire soft cold water to all of the house when it's all plumbed in.
So the 2 vertical pipes are. On the right is the softened water coming in straight from the softener. It then has an iso and a pressure reducing valve. It comes down, tees off to supply the bathroom, tees off to supply the cylinder (and drain off + iso), and then you can't see it well but it goes down into the floor to supply the rest of the house with soft cold balanced pressured water.
!!! I made a mistake here !!! didn't fit the Pressure Relief Valve for the cold supply in, so that will be rectified.
Just another snap of it all:
The water now. The pipe coming up on the right is cold mains in, it tees off in 15mm which will be the filling loop for the boiler. Then it goes up to a standard 'bypass' setup for a water softener.
Here is what it'll be like with the softener in situ:
Not sure why I took this photo. The 2 pipes closest to you are the flow and return out to the central heating system.
The two below in blue clips. The one that cuts across the joists is the balanced soft cold supply going out to the rest of the house. The other one is the water straight from the softener going to that big vertical pipe.
Here is what it looks like outside of the boiler room
You can see mains in, soft cold out, and soft hot out from cylinder.
The two 22mm pipes in the next joist space along with the plastic push fit caps on are the existing flow and return to the C/H system. so will connect on to that when the boiler is up and running.
As well you can see the mess of pipes that used to supply a sink in a bedroom and a toilet.
Removed the unnecessary pipework and now you can see things a bit better. Everything is right next to the existing pipework, so when I do 'the big switch over' it's all very close together.
Now the water supply has finally arrived!!!
I snuck out and hopped over the fenced off road works and had a peak... not often you get to see a water main and a tapping ferrule.
There's the old 4 inch supply in the road and my new connection in 32mm MDPE
I was bricking it turning the supply on as it was the first time my soldering would be put under pressure, all the soldering you've seen so far, none of it has been tested
. Luckily none of my soldered joints leaked, a few compression joints leaked but after tightening them, it was leak free. Success.
The only thing plumbed up to test the new supply was the outside tap. Turned it on and it absolutely blasted out!!! for about 5 seconds then reduced to a trickle. Rather confused, I realised there was probably some crap in the pipework being flushed out, and as it goes through a non-return valve to get to the outside tap, it might have blocked it.
Alas, I was right, can you see that little stone in there
Got quite a bit of grit out.
Afterwards, it blasted out again. Tested the new supply vs old by filling a 2l coke bottle. Old supply managed 10.5l/min, new one manages 21l/min. Great success!
Getting the NRV out, and fitting it back in was really hard, I had to cut the pipe. So had to reconnect it all and solder in a patch
Next was sorting out connecting the mains to the kitchen sink, which meant taking the dishwasher out and a lot of fiddly soldering. Also took the cupboard off the wall to see if the boxing in of the existing supplies to the kitchen were accessible... they weren't.
We're up to the present now becuase this is work I did yesterday. Took the cupboard back off the wall and opened up the boxing to see the pipes.
The plan is to do this:
And the reason why is because that boxing comes up in a 5-6cm gap between the joist and the external wall and it is a nightmare. The existing plumbing is a joke! And very hard to make neat. Sorry for some reason I didn't take a good before photo (this is just in the background of another photo) but here you can see where the pipework comes up through the floor and how much of a state it is.
ANyway, removed the old 15mm copper that dropped in supply mains (from the old supply) to the sink, so all that is there now is the soft water to the dishwasher, and hot water to sink
Next was cutting this hole to get the mains upstairs. It was an absolute pig, no room to get anything in there, as well there are live pipes behind so I had to be very careful. In the end I stitch drilled 6mm holes on my impact driver beacuse a drill won't fit in there, and then knocked the hole out with a hammer. Lots of swearing!
Dry fit 22mm mains going up:
Soldered in:
Removed all of that mess in that lo-res image, and ran 15mm
Here you can kind of see the finished product.
The 22mm with the plastic cap, is the new mains cold I just ran up. Next to it is the gas supply for the boiler (the other bit of capped 22mm is redundant and I will move it later. And the 2 15mm pipes are the soft cold + hot supplies. You can see in this photo that gap between the joist and the wall on the right, that's where the pipes came up before.... Wish I took a better before photo.
Dry fit:
Barely visible with the cupboard on. I did have to cut into the boxing lower than I hoped though... So some patching up to do.
There is still a lot more to do for the bathroom. But most of the fiddly stuff is done... Hooray! If you made it this far, thanks for reading.
As well one thing you may have noticed in the boiler cupboard is none of the waste pipes are done.
Temperature and pressure relief valve from cylinder + boiler need a way out, condensate from boiler needs a way out, the water softener drain and overflow need a way out. As well I need a hole for the boiler flue, as well as the gas pipe. All of this now I will get a gas safe engineer to do.
