Brendan

No idea. I’m sure they would say they did all of this, and they might have done. They wouldn’t have any proof, I imagine. When I asked what preparation they had made in the stud walls for wall-hung basin/vanity units, they said they couldn’t remember. So I now have floor-standing units instead. The plumber was one of the main reasons we parted company, mainly because it became evident that the ASHP system had not been designed before installation and wasn’t correctly specified in several respects. They are probably technically competent at plumbing but I would have to learn all about plumbing to be certain (in the same way that I had to learn about central heating and ASHP system design to understand how badly they had approached this aspect of the work).

It is a completely new bathroom in a supposedly Enerphit standard retro fit renovation and extension. All of the bathrooms are in the new timber frame extension. The photo shows what is now behind the boxed in section.

Can you (or anyone else) tell me where to find this bit of the regs? I will happily get the builders (with whom I have now parted company for various reasons) to come back and sort it out at their expense and to my satisfaction if this is a mandatory requirement.

I have completed 2nd fix plumbing but now noticed there is a smell (soapy poo, like the smell from the local sewage treatment facility) in my downstairs wc/shower room. It is the same smell that came out of the waste pipes before they were connected up. The smell is very mild unless the toilet is flushed, thereafter it is a lot stronger. I have checked that all the traps (wc, shower, basin) contain water. There are no wet patches or other obvious signs of leaking waste pipes. The WC waste turns 90 degrees at the back of the toilet into a boxed-in section which contains an AAV. The easiest place for any smells to emerge from this cavity is behind the WC, which is where the smell is strongest. The boxed in section is tiled and would be very disruptive to remove, so I wouldn’t want to do this unless I was certain the AAV was stuck/faulty. Is there another likely cause of this smell and any easy things I can check first? I thought about buying a cheap gas detector, would this be any use?

I think I will probably clad this side with ply as well, then fix a handrail between the newel posts somehow.

It’s open on both sides. There will be vertical ply floor to ceiling on the ground floor that side, 100mm wide spaced at 25mm gaps.

I’ve just realised the handrail is also going to interfere with the landing in this setup. I’m going to have to think of something else, aren’t I?

My staircase has a 180 degree return onto the landing. This means that the string on which I want to mount the baserail is tight to the landing near the top. It is the same on both sides. Is it ok to trim down the baserail and balusters for this section, or do I need to come up with another solution? Cost is an issue, so I am hoping to use square profile pine for the staircase and landing.

Anyway, I think I might have got round the problem by swapping the showers between the en-suite and the main bathroom. The fitting for the other shower is not as tight around the pipe and I think that the end where the compression olive will sit is round so should seal properly. We shall see... (For info the very tight fitting was a Bristan shower fitting, the looser one from Mira).

My arse cheek, not my rectum.

The wall pipe for my basin to attach to is around 20cm to the right and 20cm down from the outlet from the sink hole waste fitting. I am therefore going to have to go back, right and down (not necessarily in that order, but definitely back first), from the bottle trap to reach this. Does it matter what order this happens in?

Unfortunately my arse met the unnecessarily long copper pipe protruding from the wall for the shower hot feed and bent it (probably about a 20 degree bend). So the pipe is now kinked. The bathroom is already tiled. If I'm lucky I might be able to pull the pipe out far enough to cut behind the kink and then solder on a new section - but the pipe is only meant to protrude by 21mm from the finished wall surface and needs to be narrow enough to go through the close-fitting valve that has a compression fitting to attach. Is there any chance I can un-kink this pipe, or is it likely to be removing the shower screen, taking out a tile and soldering a new bit of pipe on further back into the wall cavity?

The shower is already tiled, so in the end I have opened the wall from the other side. They had installed a sheet of OSB (probably 18mm) with some extra noggins. I’ve taken the opportunity to add another 18mm ply securely fixed behind the OSB. The specialist disability bathroom sites I found generally recommend 36mm to fix a seat into. I could have just bought a floor standing seat, but I wanted something discreet that would fold away when not needed.

It’s a shame they can’t confirm whether they’ve done any preparation for the shower seat that needs to support the weight of a person. Something that we talked about several times.

I’ve been sent this photo by the builder. Behind the Celotex is a layer of OSB, then the timber frame with further Celotex in between the studs. I assume these panels of OSB are fixed through the Celotex and into the next layer of OSB. I’m not convinced that’s a particularly sturdy mounting for a wall hung vanity unit. Any comments?