A woodland house

Hopefully it will be a nice dry August and your have some other jobs to keep you busy for the next month.

 

 

Our I-beam timber frame with OSB3 exterior racking was covered in Protect TF200 Thermo membrane and survived several months without coming to any harm.

That pipe will need to be a lot deeper or it'll freeze in winter. How long is the pipe? Looks like a lot of hand digging ??

@Conor it's about 300m and seriously hard going with the pick axe. The plan is to bury it enough to deal with most surface frosts and continually run water through it and the tank in cold periods. In the woodland the ground never seems to freeze as much as it does in the open although no doubt it would do in a prolonged cold spell. Where the pipe enters the burn its solid bedrock so no chance of burying it there anyway.

Is this a private supply or Scottish Water?

 

If SW, then beware of the Scottish Water pre connection "Track Inspection"  If they see the pipe that shallow, you won't get connected (at least not if you have the jobsworth we had)

32 minutes ago, jamieled said:

@Conor it's about 300m and seriously hard going with the pick axe. The plan is to bury it enough to deal with most surface frosts and continually run water through it and the tank in cold periods. In the woodland the ground never seems to freeze as much as it does in the open although no doubt it would do in a prolonged cold spell. Where the pipe enters the burn its solid bedrock so no chance of burying it there anyway.

That's brutal! 32mm pipe? I'd agree there's less chance of freezing under a heavy tree canopy, and the debris on the ground acts like an insulator, so wouldn't worry too much about those sections unless is seriously cold for several weeks. However, anywhere that is rocky is highly vulnerable to freezing, and you'll need to insulate and duct the pipe. MDPE pipes split badly and weaken through frost cycles.

Private supply for us. The water utilities take quite a precautionary approach to frost depth due to past experiences with freeze thaw events. There is a lot of pipe on their networks that would not meet current regs. In my opinion their idea of frost depth is overly precautionary in many places.

3 minutes ago, Conor said:

That's brutal! 32mm pipe? I'd agree there's less chance of freezing under a heavy tree canopy, and the debris on the ground acts like an insulator, so wouldn't worry too much about those sections unless is seriously cold for several weeks. However, anywhere that is rocky is highly vulnerable to freezing, and you'll need to insulate and duct the pipe. MDPE pipes split badly and weaken through frost cycles.

25mm from the burn to the tank then 32mm from there (from the tank to the house is  bit easier going so we can get to a decent depth there). Got quite a big tank which will give us a bit of a buffer if we do have some freezing.

 

I haven't figured out how I'll deal with the small section of pipe where it comes out of the burn - ducting and insulating will be a bit tricky. I was considering whether an alternative kind of pipe might be better for that section.

What you can do in cold periods is drain the pipe down to prevent freezing, then rely on your storage. I don't think any other type of pipe will help. At least duct the pipe inside a length of 63mm PE until you can get it properly underground.

 

What kind of drop in elevation do you have from the burn to your tank? 

Probably just under 10m drop over the 300m length to the tank. Then about 20m drop over 80m from tank to house.

It's difficult to get a route from the burn to tank with a continuous fall. Although it's not got any big bumps, I reckon we'll end up with the occasional airlock, so I've put in a bypass at the tank that I can connect a pump to if needed.