What are these pipes for?

touch

touch

touch

Soldato
Joined
28 Oct 2006
Posts
12,457
Location
Sufferlandria
At the side of my house where the driveway is, I have these 3 pipes sticking out (roughly 3-4cm) low down:
rjBe7rX.jpg


This is what the access hatch to the subfloor looks like:
yGH8UHp.jpg

Mains water supply (with the stopcock on it) is coming in from top of photo. The 3 pipes going off to the left are the 3 ends which stick out the wall. One of these comes from the mains, as can be seen in the photo. One seems to be from the hot water tank and I've no idea what the third is.

Has anyone seen this setup before and have any idea what this might be for?

It looks like one of them (the one from the hot tank) is leaking under the floor upstream of where the valves on them are but there isn't enough space for me to get down the hatch and investigate so I'm thinking of removing these pipes to give more room.
 
Drain for hot water tank
And drain for radiators
Would be my guess
The one off the mains is more
Puzzling
Perhaps they used to shove a
Hose on it and use it as an outside
Tap?
But I am not a plumber so may
Be wrong of course lol

Edit
Didn't flip the photo around in my head
The one on mains feed is after
The stop not before it
So another drain
That's actually pretty nicely done /thought out
Most people have to stick a hose
Pipe on the lowest radiator
And out the door
Just to drain radiators
Never mind not having a hot and
Cold drain as well
 
Last edited:
They are to drain the pipes as other have said.

Probably one for the cold feed, hot feed and the radiators.

If you didn’t have those drains it could cause havoc if you needed to leave the house empty for a winter (frozen pipes = burst pipes). Likewise it makes life so much easier when it comes to maintenance, you need drains at the lowest point to get it all out.
 
Thanks guys!
That would make sense that they are for draining the systems. I don't have any plumbed radiators or central heating so i guess it must be 1 to drain hot tank, 1 to drain cold header tank and 1 to drain mains pipework.
Seems like a useful thing to have so I'll either need to squeeze myself down the small gap or just remove them temporarily to get down there and sort the leak.
 
touch said:
Thanks guys!
That would make sense that they are for draining the systems. I don't have any plumbed radiators or central heating so i guess it must be 1 to drain hot tank, 1 to drain cold header tank and 1 to drain mains pipework.
Seems like a useful thing to have so I'll either need to squeeze myself down the small gap or just remove them temporarily to get down there and sort the leak.
Click to expand...
Can you see where it is leaking by looking through the hatch?
If so cut another hatch over the leak? :)
 
Yes, I can see it by looking through the hatch. It's only 2 or 3 meters away so I could get to it easily if I could fit through the existing hatch.
My floors are chipboard sheets rather than floorboards with laminate flooring on top so I think it would be less effort to remove the pipes to give me access and replace them when done.

I'm going to leave it with the water main turned off until saturday afternoon or sunday morning to give the ground some time to dry out before I go crawling around under there though.
 
Yeah probably best to crawl along then,would spoil your floor if you made another hatch
TIP get a gopher/helper to get you things after you get into the crawlspace
 
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