Nickfromwales

~30 years of every gas fitter I’ve ever worked with telling me the same thing is good enough for me to go on. Gas “rules” seem hopelessly open to the interpretation of DIY’ers and over-confident self-appraising buffoons a-plenty. Just deem yourself ‘competent’ and crack the (expletive deleted) on. ?. I doubt you’ll find it, as I couldn’t even get definitive answers on this from the GSR themselves, ( when this came up here a while back and I found myself up against another brick wall …..) Do your own thing, if you live alone and nobody will ever come inside your property, ever. That’s ‘OK’ apparently, but if you cause the death or destruction of someone else, you’re liable. Why I struggle over conveying this is just utter disbelief. It would be less of a battle to move @pocster’s walk-on glazing onto a new owner.

I’ll get answers on all the above from my go-to guy at CVC Direct.

Every gas fitter I’ve worked alongside for nearly 30 years, including multiples of domestic and commercial installers, would all disagree. The likelihood of a fire, vs the robustness of soldered on gas is not a valid debate not walk away from soldered joints, afaic, but also, good luck to running a gas pipe right through a residential dwelling without having exposed compression joints.?. Every single fitter I’ve worked with has instructed me, implicitly, to seek out and cut out any such compression joints and replace with new soldered sections. No, no, and thrice……no.

Sometimes, I wonder why I bother.

I’ll be working on one on Tuesday. If you can hang on I’ll measure it for the minimum requirements?

Yup. I spent 2 days back and forth ( at my expense ) trying to get the curve right. Vaillants own tech guy just told me to ramp it up and walk away or I’d be there forever…… OK if it’s your own system and you can give up the time necessary. I still doubt it’ll make a hot of difference in a well insulated / high performing dwelling. Definitely a place for it in lesser energy efficient builds / commercial, but when a property loses 2oC over 24 hours then you have to ask why you bothered…..

Weather prediction vs compensation so to say. Interesting. My experiences of weather comp ( Vaillant ) was not great. Hopefully things have improved.

Every install I've ever done, ( immediately supervised and signed off by the GSR fitter I used to work with ) has had soldered joints. Oil is different, compression or leaded solder IIRC. Apparently the issue was with the more brittle / different composition with the unleaded solder, but I could be wrong about that ( been a while since I worked on an OFTEC registered job and legislation changes may overrule me on this.

With UFH pipes in a thick passive raft, and a cellulose-blown frame, do you really think WC’p will be effective given the likely very long thermal time constant you’ll end up with?

A couple of mm a second is plenty of pace, after all you don’t want to get 900mm down a 1000mm tile and then shell the edge in a rush. How do you find the last inch to nothing on the cuts? On the grade 5 stuff I really struggled with I also then had issues with the tile breaking away before the machine completed the cut. Some foul language came out of me on that job. I ended up cutting into the finish side an inch, then turning the tile around and then cutting right through to meet that starter cut. Just go slow and steady, it’s not a race! Cleaning up with the diamond cup afterwards is sadly the likely way forward if you want super-fine finishes.

It’s not the best pipe instal, but the compression joint ( and olive ) will have confirmed to grip and seal onto that without issue. I doubt you’ll have any problems tbh, but 2 mins with a pipe bender would have done this the world of good. I’m surprised at how many plumbers don’t own one, but some seem a bit scared of them. Either that or they simply cannot be bothered.

Always a tax to pay when convenience shopping though Good that they’re covering everything though, so a silver lining to any RHI clouds.

Then your RHI payments will buy a few rounds of drinks. They’re based on your heating ‘needs’ so payments will be in the gutter.

I was referring to the HSE arriving AFTER there has been an incident. ….or advise, offer reason why, and also give further advice on how to execute such work to make the best of a bad practice in light of “Although one chap did agree to certify my installation in the new year if I went ahead and installed” ?

What is your DEPC showing you’ll achieve?

Nor is there any attention to detail in the execution of the installation of things like sheet PIR insulation, as it's installed by site workers who get paid on volume, not detail. Their rates are screwed down too, so no incentive to go "above and beyond" as you often would get from a stand-alone builder / sub-contractor. The public get to buy these after it's too late to inspect the work, or they just don't care enough to ask to. One new build on a site is was on back in the day had the deposit-paid clients turn up mid build, and demand a full refund, as the workmanship was just horrific. The site was full of horror stories which ended up in the local paper. If covered up in time though, how would anyone know........

Under a run of base units would be what now? "Surface mounted" that's what.

I did........ Every letter. It stinks. DIY of a gas pipe, and then use of it until someone becomes available to tell you if its lethal or not is 1000% unacceptable practice unless you live alone and have the only key to the premises. Interpret how you like. You cannot do this, end of. Your OP is worryingly indicative of someone who intends to proceed with illegal / lethal works, and are asking how to go about it. Even more worrying is a GSR fitter condoning and playing along. I wonder where he would be if the HSE were on site after and incident? A million miles away would be my guess.......

Yup. Unless it's lengths of 60m or above its fodder. I chuck loads away, just the sane as a builder will chuck a load of PB waste away. %'s of waste is inevitable and costed in to all jobs.

I 100% stand by my previous; that anyone signing off a gas install they've not witnessed being put in, or they didn't just come and pull in themselves, is a danger. You just don't play with gas, end of.

Exposed is legal, sadly, just hugely frowned upon with every person I have ever undertaken gas work with over the last 25 years. Just never done it. If you can get a spanner in there, you can get a blowlamp in there too. If compression is to be used, then the pipe needs to be mechanically fixed very robustly, so there is never any stress on the fitting. Downstream rotational force needs to be considered also, eg tightening a fitting on a pipe up / down stream of one you've just done can loosen it if the pipe is inadvertently rotated when working on the next. A lot of things to consider but you'd only be aware of these potential issues if you have previous experience and are already "programmed" to mitigate. The law says you are fine to blow yourself up, but not any other 3rd party, such as wife / child / visitor etc. Folk can do what they wish, this is just my 2 cents Just seen a lot of dodgy pipework in my time, some lethal.

Or an idiot. Anyone who signs off a gas pipe, that they have not witnessed the integrity of for every inch of the pipe, is a danger to themselves and others. It would be different if it was a friend or fellow plumber who's work was known to them, but for a one-off for a self-builder it is just lunacy. The sleeve through the wall should be copper, or a rigid PVC and NOT flexible electrical conduit ( as it is weak as a kitten and very easy to puncture. The sleeve should be sealed into the wall at each end, and then the pipe passed through the sleeve. The pipe should then be sealed with a sealant on the internal side only, so if the pipe ever failed the build-up of gas could only ever discharge to outside, not fill the house. That's the minimum standard I observe when passing a gas pipe through a cavity wall. As for compression joints, there should be ZERO compression joints other than at the source and at the appliance. Surface mounted anywhere else is a huge bodge and would never get past me. Compression anywhere on continuous gas runs = NO, simply do NOT use them, there is no need. If this is to save money to DIY, go save money somewhere else, this is just a daft idea.

@Adsibob If the runs are from hot and cold manifolds, then with the locations / distances as you describe there would be no need for an HRC to any of the outlets other than the guest basin and kitchen sink, IMO. The bath is so close that your infinite bath top-ups would only have to expel around a half pint of "cold" water before you got premium temp hot water out of the bath tap. That feed would be a 15mm from manifold, with the manifold fed by 22mm from the HRC. ( If your UVC has a 28mm outlet I'd be surprised? ) The manifold + HRC setup is dead simple; 22mm hot feed to hot manifold via 22mm TMV ( to maintain the B.Reg for 46oC ( max ) at the bath tap ). 22mm cold feed to cold manifold fed from the balanced cold output from the UVC 'control group' ( supplied with the UVC ). 22mm connection, from the UVC dedicated HRC tapping, to the HRC manifold ( HRC pump and NRV inline between those two items as required ) job done. 15mm radial runs to all cold outlets for simplicity 15mm radial runs to baths / showers 10mm hot feeds to everything else 10mm HRC returns to the point the HRC serviced hot feeds terminate immediately at the outlet. I use a Hep2O 15x15x10mm "centre" tee and a 10mm spigot elbow to perform these junctions. Easier than when Christ fell off his bike.

I read all that but it doesn’t say anywhere about making the “water wetter” ?. Kind of thing I’d write tbh, but made me chuckle lol. ?