Thoughts on DIYing plumbing

[jamiehamy]

Hi all, 

 

We have a spark booked for Feb to do the First Fix, and we'll give him 6 weeks notice when we need him back for Second. For plumbing, I've been in touch with two plumbers, both recommended - neither has come back with a price despite promising. 

 

I'm now minded to do most of it myself after the spark has been. We have 7 basins, 4 toilets, three showers, one bath and one fridge. 

 

I liked what @Nickfromwales (I think it was you) did on a job with a manifold system. My thinking is something similar with 10mm for basins, 15mm for toilets and showers and 22mm for bath. We are probably going with a 300L Megaflow - with immerser (no ASHP or other heat source). Would use plastic pipe in most places and going for unbroken runs from outlet area to manifold, and with valves at the manifolds. We get over 4bar at the 32mm incoming pipe. 

 

As I understand it, the part I need someone qualified is to plumb in the Megaflow and sign it off - I have someone who can do that - they just can't do the full job. 

 

But in terms of the rest of the job - do-able? I'm not against getting someone in, but I don't have the energy to chase people to ask them to take my money!

 

Would appreciate any thoughts?

 

Thanks, Jamie 

[joe90]

Frankly Jamie very do-able and I am doing mine as you propose above, although I think I will do our toilets also in 10mm. It's been recommended on here by some Welsh bloke ? To use hep2o and if seems good kit ( I got a sample sent). I will watch this thread as I want advise on manifolds and specific parts. Go for it, over to the professionals:-

[joe90]

Here is a good guide to the hep2o range and application.

 

http://www.sbsdownloads.co.uk/Supplier/Hep2o (Wavin)/Hep2O Installer Guide.pdf

[Jeremy Harris]

As above, it really is a very straightforward DIY job I found.  I know that some have reservations about plastic plumbing, in fact I did, and needed some convincing that it was OK.  But, having plumbed a house with a manifold system, pretty much all in plastic except for the heating and hot water stuff, then I'd have no hesitation in saying it's a very easy skill set to learn.

 

It was very quick too, because of the long pipe runs and the need for very few joints with plastic plumbing.  That not only made the job quick and easy, it also gave peace of mind, as we have no pipe joints anywhere than aren't easily accessible.  It's very reassuring knowing that long lengths of pipe buried in walls and ceilings have no joints that could fail at some future date.

[Barney12]

I've done two complete houses with HEP2O and its really very straightforward as others have said above. Get yourself a nice sharp plastic pipe cutter and your up and going!

 

In the house before last I employed a plumber to do the first fix and I was so horrified by the care free way she (yes female plumber) was hacking the pipe cuts and chucking pipe through voids etc I sacked her and did it myself.

 

One thing you really do need though; "an extra pair of hands" when dealing with coiled pipe, its a right PITA and is soooo much easier if there is two of you. Especially if your routing through posi-joists which have webs like razor blades (well certainly the last ones I used did!).

Edited January 26, 2017 by Barney12

[TerryE]

@jamiehamy, Have a look at the thread I've got running at the moment.  We are doing ours in HEP2O using a manifold system as well.  Deciding the runs and placing the manifolds is the bit that needs careful planning.  We did all of ours in 15mm because our layout means that nearly all of the runs to the manifold were pretty short so standardising on one bore simplified it all.  Though I admit using up a coil of 10mm for the low flow toilets and hand basins is something that we could have considered.  I would question the need to use 22mm to the bath in a pressurised system.  Unless you've a got ridiculously long run then 15mm will be fine, and avoid needing to use buried bends or joints.   

[Onoff]

It's a doddle.

 

Ref the long pipe runs: From my (traditional) cylinder to the bath is about 20m (is that a long run?) 12m in 22mm (2m up from the cylinder in the loft, 8m across the top of the dormer then 2m down). All the 22mm is copper with old style, grey Hep2O fittings. From there it goes to 15mm to the bath - all new that I've just done. Last joint before the taps is new style Hep2O.

 

Cold from the 25gal CWS tank follows pretty much the same route/ configuration save that tank is on top of the dormer. 

 

I was worried about the 15mm but @Nickfromwales said it'd be OK.....and it is! Excellent flow to the bath.

 

The ONLY Hep2O fitting I ever had leak was when I removed and refitted one side of an old, grey 22mm straight coupler. Tbh I might have got the internals mixed up with a newer style grey fitting so probably operator error!

[jamiehamy]

Okay - I think that's my mind made up then. Thanks folks! 

 

I've started planning out but will do the detail now. 

 

Hep2o vs JG Speed fit? Is Hep2o better? 

[Onoff]

Hep2O

Edited January 26, 2017 by Onoff

[TerryE]

Nick swears by HEP2O.    As to the layout, the basic rule if you use a manifold system is no buried joins if at all possible, and one (H +) C to one appliance.  Our exceptions to this rule are:

• We have some elbows in the studding where the pipe is coming down the wall and needs to do a sharp 90° (e.g. the shower tails)
• We have the cold feed dishwasher T'ed off the kitchen sink cold.
• We have the cold feed washing machine T'ed off the utlity sink cold.

IMO, laying out the pipe approaches to the manifolds is a bit like laying out a circuit board: it can get busy and messy and you need to avoid getting pipework in knots.   Do your foulwater first because those are fat and difficult to route.  Then the plumbing, then the electrics.  I reserved the roof space in the GFL toilet adjacent to my manifolds for my "Clapham Junction" and actually did a full routing diagram for this before I laid a single pipe, and I had to go through three design iterations to get everything in the right order.  Jan though I was being totally anal and going overboard -- until we started pulling the pipes and then she did a volte-face and agreed that it was a bloody good idea.  Remember to space out the hot and cold manifolds to give yourself routing room.

 

I am using 2×SunAmp instead of a TS or UVC. They immediately below the hot manifold so my hot copper runs total about 2m of pipework.  That's it. 

 

Read through the various worked descriptions on the forum.

[Onoff]

Erm.....what's a manifold in this case? Anyone got a pic? Would it go with the UVC I'm planning to fit?

 

I'm only familiar with UFH manifolds and even then not very!

[Triassic]

The bit where all the pipes connect to is the manifold.

Edited January 26, 2017 by Triassic

[Onoff]

39 minutes ago, Triassic said:

The bit where all the pipes connect to is the manifold.

 

That's lovely and neat. I assume that's your UVC?

 

The three banks are what, hot, cold & mains?

 

What are the two fittings in the horizontal runs and the big bkack thing?

 

Is there a generic diagram shows this sort of set up?

 

Cheers 

 

 

[Nickfromwales]

[Dudda]

35 minutes ago, Onoff said:

 

That's lovely and neat. I assume that's your UVC?

 

The three banks are what, hot, cold & mains?

 

What are the two fittings in the horizontal runs and the big bkack thing?

 

Is there a generic diagram shows this sort of set up?

 

Cheers 

 

 

The 'two things in the horizontal runs' are thermostatic mixing valves. Not sure of the black thing.

 

Not generic but attached is a drawing I did recently of the system I'm proposing following review of Nick's image. It's for the cold only. I haven't finished the hot system.

 

If anyone has any comments or suggestions let me know as I'm not a plumber or mechanical engineer and new to this.

Water.pdf

Edited January 26, 2017 by Dudda

[jamiehamy]

I can see a whole bunch of us all having a near identical setup here!  No bad thing.   

[ToughButterCup]

I am looking at my HEP2o sample as I type this.

With online help available from @Nickfromwales, and wait for @TerryE to make and report a few mistakes, what's not to like?

 

We're using  electric underfloor heating. With a SunAmp for @MrsRA's nightly excursion to the paddling pool, that means we don't need to store any hot water, and almost no hot pipe runs anywhere. Local water heaters under each sink. Which means HEP2o will only need to deliver cold water, except for the hot water run (1000mm) from the SunAmp to Debbie's bath.

 

Yes, @JSHarris taught me a lot, and saved me a few  thousand pounds.

[Nickfromwales]

1 hour ago, Onoff said:

 

That's lovely and neat. I assume that's your UVC?

 

The three banks are what, hot, cold & mains?

 

What are the two fittings in the horizontal runs and the big bkack thing?

 

Is there a generic diagram shows this sort of set up?

 

Cheers 

 

 

It's one I did 

1st bank cold

2nd bank hot @ 51oC

3rd bank hot @ 46oC ( basins) 

4th 2-port out of view was 2 x hard water. One to kitchen sink & O/S tap ( back to back ) and the other to utility cold and boiler fill loop ( back to back ). 

2 x TMV's for each temp zone

Black thing is a 2 Ltr hot water expansion vessel. 

Blue cylinder is a 500 Ltr Telford TS with a 46kw 28mm DHW heat exchanger ( coil ). 

 ?

[Jeremy Harris]

Ours is a lot more modest, with just two, four way manifolds, a H+C to each bathroom take up two outlets, H+C to the kitchen another two, and as the utility room is adjacent to the downstairs WC, they share the last H+C outlets.

 

If you have the manifolds in an easy to access location (ours are mid way up the wall in the services room) then you have the big advantage of being able to turn a whole room off from an easy to get at place if there's a problem.  This saves crawling around trying to get at ballofix valves that are tucked neatly away out of sight, in our case almost always inside fitted furniture.

 

We also had the unusual problem of not having drinkable water on site to test the plumbing after first fix, because of our borehole problems.   I didn't want to test it with water that may have been contaminated, so took the view that a leak in a length of pipe with no joins in it was a very rare possibility, and didn't test until second fix.  Like others, I had no leaks anywhere from any of the plastic stuff, the only leak I had in the whole house was a poorly sealed 1" brass iron thread fitting into a filter. 

 

There is one slight issue with plastic, and that is that it's very hard to get it to look neat when it's surface mounted and visible.  For this reason, I switched to short length of copper wherever a pipe could be seen, like in the cupboard under the sink, or the cupboards under the wash basins.  It may be just a personal thing, but opening a cupboard door and seeing a less than perfectly straight bit of plastic pipe offends my eye.  This is the cupboard under our kitchen sink, that shows where I switched to short lengths of copper:

 

 

 

[PeterW]

4 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

It may be just a personal thing, but opening a cupboard door and seeing a less than perfectly straight bit of plastic pipe offends my eye.

 

I'm glad it's not just me ..!!!

[Jeremy Harris]

1 minute ago, PeterW said:

 

I'm glad it's not just me ..!!!

 

And just for those really serious about levels, the apparent slopes in that photo are mainly the camera lens distortion, because of the wide angle.  The horizontal 15mm copper is dead level, the waste belo it has a 2 deg 'ish slope down to the left, the grey waste connecting the two sinks has a similar slope down to the right.

[Onoff]

Every day's a learning day! 

 

So I could have a TMV on each of the hots to the bath & basin (1st & 3rd from left) for different temperatures.....I never knew!

 

 

 

[Jeremy Harris]

Yes, and it's a good idea, for the relatively small additional cost and bother of adding another bit of pipe.  I did this for a friend, who's wife has MS, so that when she turned the lever-operated hot tap on the wash basin, the temperature was set to a safe and comfortable hand washing temperature. 

 

In my case, I've now got a higher main hot manifold temperature than I had originally (~50 deg C) and have TMVs on the bathroom and down stairs WC hot taps, fitted locally under the washbasins.  I only added this as we found it nice to have hotter water in the kitchen and utility room sinks, yet wanted to keep the ease of having comfortable and safe temperature water at the washbasins.  It works well, and TMVs can be had pretty cheaply.  It also saves a bit of hot water, as it stops very hot water being wasted as run-off.

[Bitpipe]

Our plumbing contractor (as used by Jack and HerbJ) did a more traditional radial layout for us with a hot return  - calculated all the flows and sized pipe accordingly, every bend allowed for -we reviewed his drawings before his guys started.

 

Their preferred material is copper but that does not work with pozi joists so they used straight runs of grey plastic (no idea what the proper name is) and we have connections in the walls & ceilings. Before completing 1st fix, they tested the system to 7 bar (we have an incoming PRV set to 3 bar) so some confidence that it will all stay good.

 

Copper tails where the pipes are visible and the whole boiler / heating / UVC plumbing in the plant room is in copper.

 

Across the whole job, it's interesting to see where the labour and experience was required.

 

Once the design was done and the run locations agreed, it was only a couple of days for two lads to carcass out the whole hot and cold network. As much effort was spent on the waste & soil pipes, getting the required fall in the space available (post MVHR install). Locating the Gebrit frames was also trickier than I expected, they need to be completely flush with the wall and have the necessary support. All the first fix work was very neat & tidy

 

Second fix (including shower trays) was a bit laborious, as much time drilling porcelain tiled walls to hang sinks and install showers as doing actual plumbing. Freestanding baths were a pain, both the sheer weight of them and the need to cut the tiled floor to make more space for the traps - this was an oversight on both our parts, I should have been more on the ball.

 

The final install of gas, boiler, UVC etc and commissioning of the whole system was a few consecutive days.

 

No major issues, aside from discovering that the tackers had put a screw through a cold cistern feed and a mix up between primary and secondary feed from Hansgrohe ibox - both were resolved quick enough and made good.

 

I guess most of the above can be accomplished through DIY but wondering what's the point where a professional must be involved? Will a plumber be happy to commission a system they have not been involved with and what happens if there are problems down the line?

 

 

 

[ToughButterCup]

 

1 hour ago, JSHarris said:

There is one slight issue with plastic, and that is that it's very hard to get it to look neat when it's surface mounted and visible.  For this reason, I switched to short length of copper wherever a pipe could be seen, like in the cupboard under the sink, or the cupboards under the wash basins.  It may be just a personal thing, but opening a cupboard door and seeing a less than perfectly straight bit of plastic pipe offends my eye.  This is the cupboard under our kitchen sink, that shows where I switched to short lengths of copper:

1 hour ago, PeterW said:

I'm glad it's not just me ..!!!

 

Shoes lined up in the morning, shirts all pressed to perfection, tooth brush colour-coded, neatly spaced ties in the tie rack, bread well-polished? 

I admire you both.