Thoughts on DIYing plumbing

[Nickfromwales]

Nobody can really reply to this with any assumptions in the picture . 

Come back with exactly what your getting and we can then get some sensible feedback for you . 

[Triassic]

43 minutes ago, jamiehamy said:

(or in short,  1 WC,, 2shower rooms,  1 bathroom,  kitchen and utility) 

Over £12,000 for plumbing the above sounds a lot to me. I assume you got more than one quote?

[jamiehamy]

Just now, Triassic said:

Over £12,000 for plumbing the above sounds a lot to me. I assume you got more than one quote?

Other chap never got back,  despite telling me he was really keen for the work.  The chap that quoted was recommended - I don't like wasting people's time if I'm not likely to actually use them,  but if the price had been competitive I'd have gone for it right away. This has made me stop and probably do most myself (original idea but will take longer) .  I suppose I could try get another price but don't know any others so would be pot luck. 

Gut is saying just do it myself along with input on this thread.  

 

[Jeremy Harris]

It's prices like that that make me glad I decided to DIY the plumbing!

 

Including the Sunamp PV and the ASHP in the price, together with all the UFH stuff and the hot and cold water manifolds, instant water heater, pipe, fittings, taps (including the boiling water tap in the kitchen), shower mixer, wastes, waste pipe, traps etc I think we probably spent around £6k, excluding the bathroom and toilet furniture, toilets, basins etc.

 

The actual pipe work cost was pretty small, probably around £600 tops.  The big money items were the ASHP, Sunamp PV, boiling water tap, UFH manifold, pump, valves etc and the instant water heater, that together cost a bit over £4.5k.  

Edited February 1, 2017 by JSHarris

[jamiehamy]

4 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

It's prices like that that make me glad I decided to DIY the plumbing!

 

Including the Sunamp PV and the ASHP in the price, together with all the UFH stuff and the hot and cold water manifolds, instant water heater, pipe, fittings, taps (including the boiling water tap in the kitchen), shower mixer, wastes, waste pipe, traps etc I think we probably spent around £6k, excluding the bathroom and toilet furniture, toilets, basins etc.

 

The actual pipe work cost was pretty small, probably around £600 tops.  The big money items were the ASHP, Sunamp PV, boiling water tap, UFH manifold, pump, valves etc and the instant water heater, that together cost a bit over £4.5k.  

So it's not just me being tight then?! 

[Jeremy Harris]

4 minutes ago, jamiehamy said:

So it's not just me being tight then?! 

 

No, I think it just reflects that a lot of plumbers have a pretty high labour rate.  Around here, starting at the bottom, labourers are around £60 to £80/day, brickies around £140 to £150/day, electricians and joiners around £160 to £180/day and plumbers between £220 and £250/day.  I think it's just a supply and demand thing, there are far more of the other trades around down here, and if you find a plumber that's half decent you'll probably have to wait 3 to 4 months for him to fit you in.

[PeterW]

12 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

 

No, I think it just reflects that a lot of plumbers have a pretty high labour rate.  Around here, starting at the bottom, labourers are around £60 to £80/day, brickies around £140 to £150/day, electricians and joiners around £160 to £180/day and plumbers between £220 and £250/day.  I think it's just a supply and demand thing, there are far more of the other trades around down here, and if you find a plumber that's half decent you'll probably have to wait 3 to 4 months for him to fit you in.

 

Ok looking at that quote even if he is on £250 plus a labourer at £100 there is about 10 generous days of labour in the first fix if it's all Hep2O. 

 

Add into that £1500 for your megaflo (other brands of UVC are available ... hint) and materials at £2500 then £7500 is a real top end price but £12k..??!!

[Jeremy Harris]

2 minutes ago, PeterW said:

 

Ok looking at that quote even if he is on £250 plus a labourer at £100 there is about 10 generous days of labour in the first fix if it's all Hep2O. 

 

Add into that £1500 for your megaflo (other brands of UVC are available ... hint) and materials at £2500 then £7500 is a real top end price but £12k..??!!

 

And, although our house is smaller, I did all the first fix plumbing in no more than three days (I think it was less) on my own, with no labourer.  All that was plastic, and was just running all the pipes, including waste pipes, into the service spaces under the floor and in the walls before the plasterers came to start boarding the house out.

[ProDave]

1 hour ago, jamiehamy said:

(or in short,  1 WC,, 2shower rooms,  1 bathroom,  kitchen and utility)

So same as us. If it would cost over £10K for a plumber, I know who will be doing ours.....
 

[Nickfromwales]

10 hours ago, ProDave said:

So same as us. If it would cost over £10K for a plumber, I know who will be doing ours.....
 

I'll need the fuel money though, ok Dave

[TerryE]

 @jamiehamy, from our likes, you've been tracking my thread, so you will know that my costs are comparable to Jeremy's.  The 2×SunAmp PV instead of the Megastore costs more, but doing this removes the G3 certified engineer requirement for installation and annual inspection. They have considerably smaller heat losses as well, so E7 tariff or E7 + PV is very affordable.  By far the most time consuming bit was all of the carpentry for the carcassing for the 5×Gerberits + wall hung basins + foulwater.  The plumbing itself has been very straight forward once the design is in place, a few day work for Jan and me.

 

OK we are retired so can afford the time and the learning curve (I plumbed my current house so have done copper / solder-work before), so avoiding £10K is a good idea for us.  I can see the need for paying £250 a day for the G3 certified stuff if you are going the UVC route, but surely that's only a day's work tops.  Another friend used a plumber with a bundled price and this does seem a very costly route to take.

 

We did decide to use a certified sparky, partly because of the regulation requirement, but also because he supplies labour only, and we've been busy doing other second fit stuff.  We've bought all of the electrical materials and fittings ourselves as we've the time to shop around for the best online prices and by doing it ourselves can reclaim all the VAT. 

 

Perhaps if you want to go the plumber route, then perhaps you should consider asking for an unbundled price where you supply all of the labour for the HEP2O to appliances and materials for everything and he only plumbs up the core copper-work in the service room where you have the UVC and manifolds?  Just a thought.

[Jeremy Harris]

4 hours ago, TerryE said:

We did decide to use a certified sparky, partly because of the regulation requirement, but also because he supplies labour only, and we've been busy doing other second fit stuff.  We've bought all of the electrical materials and fittings ourselves as we've the time to shop around for the best online prices and by doing it ourselves can reclaim all the VAT. 

 

 

I did the same.  One problem I did encounter was that some of electrical components I would have liked to buy (to be able get the VAT back) were only sold to electricians with the appropriate bit of paper.  This stopped me doing a couple of things the way I wanted to, as getting our (non-VAT registered) electricians (we used two, one for the external work, one a lot later for the house electrical installation) to buy this stuff would have added 20% to the price of what was already a reasonably pricey item.  Similarly, we found that the big name electrical merchants locally were selling stuff (even to those with a "trade account") at really silly prices.  We tried to stick to reasonable quality, UK made, stuff, avoided the Chinese made stuff that places like Screwfix sell under their own brand name, but bought on-line instead.  There was a massive saving by doing this.  I recall giving a list of all the stuff we wanted, right down to cable, clips, Wagos etc, to three local electrical merchants locally.  The prices from them all came back at around £4k or more.  We ended up buying the same brand name items online for less than £2k.  Even our second electrician was surprised at how much cheaper we'd bought stuff than he could on his account with one of the local people.

 

I've no doubt the same applies to plumbing parts, and that if you know what you want you can probably buy on line for a lot less than the local plumbers merchant charges.

 

Finally, some of the builders merchants are just a joke in terms of prices.  I signed up with the big names locally at first (Jewsons, Travis Perkins etc) but our smaller, independent, local merchant massively undercut them every time, and would even try and price-match online suppliers.  And the local merchant provided a very high level of customer service.  It's not an accident that they are the only builder's merchant with a link from our blog - they earned that by consistently giving good service, not something I can say about any of the big names.

[jamiehamy]

Thanks @TerryE - I got the 'broken down' quote through and there is nothing in it to justify the cost so have advised we won't be going ahead. I've started my materials listing from various online suppliers - JTM thus far are the best. Based on what you and @JSHarris are saying, it sounds like online is probably going to be the most price competitive place?

 

I do have two contacts who can connect and certify the UVC - they just don't have capacity to do the job as they are employees rather than self employed. 

 

I'll get all the runs done and the manifold which will let us sheet the walls, then worry about the soil pipe connections and wastes later - one step at a time I suppose!

 

One quick question - you said about 90 elbows for some connections. All our supplies will be coming down the stud walls - I take it I can't really avoid the 90 bends in that case?

 

Thanks, Jamie 

[PeterW]

@jamiehamy look at Telford cylinders through Cylinders2Go as they come with all the parts 

 

JTM are good - order a few extra elbows and also a few straight connectors as you will cut something too short ....

 

Decent pipe cutters are a must - Rothenberger are my weapon of choice as you can replace the blades. 

 

Elbows in walls are pretty much a given - try and put noggins/dwangs in behind them and pipe clips above the elbow to keep things straight. 

 

Don't forget your pipe stiffeners - you will need more than you think as they seem to hide .....!

 

If you are going Hep2O then buy the release keys (or order the demo pack of the Wavin site) and a few extra fittings and cut a few bits of pipe and practice ..! You will see how the stuff goes together and how to demount it without damaging the seals. 

 

And above all... Ask !! 

Edited February 2, 2017 by PeterW
URL

[TerryE]

19 minutes ago, PeterW said:

@jamiehamy Elbows in walls are pretty much a given - try and put noggins/dwangs in behind them and pipe clips above the elbow to keep things straight.

 

Nick the master prefers copper tails with copper elbows and straight HEP2O connectors.  We just used HEP2O elbows, but as Peter says, noggins are a must.

19 minutes ago, PeterW said:

@jamiehamy If you are going Hep2O then buy the release keys (or order the demo pack of the Wavin site) and a few extra fittings and cut a few bits of pipe and practice ..! You will see how the stuff goes together and how to demount it without damaging the seals.

And the silicon spray which you'll need if you want to reuse connectors. 

[joe90]

Having done work at premises where many 90' bends have caused so much "resistance" as to reduce flow substantially I much prefer bending copper pipework if there is room or bending plastic as much as you can. If I have to use copper 90' bends I always use " swept" bends ( much greater radius) to stop creating high water resistance. It's a shame you cannot get plastic push fit "swept bends ( or can you?).

 

its the same with waste pipe, I hate very tight 90' bends and always ( if there is room) use swept bends.

[Gone West]

I've used these in the past.

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/15mm-barrier-pipe-cold-form-bend-supports-Joblot-of-20/332090348810?_trksid=p2047675.c100011.m1850&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20140107083358%26meid%3D153dd5e21d6d4f20a0868ee25c156d66%26pid%3D100011%26rk%3D4%26rkt%3D5%26sd%3D180500616800

 

 

[joe90]

Peter, not seen those before, looks just the ticket, well done.

 

it would still be good to get swept 90' push fit bends as then when coming out of stud work the tail can be copper.

Edited February 3, 2017 by joe90

[TerryE]

12 minutes ago, joe90 said:

Having done work at premises where many 90' bends have caused so much "resistance" as to reduce flow substantially I much prefer bending copper pipework if there is room or bending plastic as much as you can. If I have to use copper 90' bends I always use " swept" bends ( much greater radius) to stop creating high water resistance. It's a shame you cannot get plastic push fit "swept bends ( or can you?).

 

Three points in response to this:

• Manifold systems are radial so in our case the runs from the supply to the manifolds are an mix of wide bore (that is 22 and 28 mm copper), and the pipes from the manifolds to each appliance in 15mm (we just standardised on this). HEP2O is flexible and will take a bend up to 150mm radius (though at this tightness you should use a former/bend support to take the bend.  Tighter than 150mm then you need to use a bend fitting such as a 90° elbow (say where the pipe run in the service cavity turns to tails into the room), but the resistance is a pressure drop for a given flow rate and given that the manifold is at well over 2bar, a single 90° isn't a material issue.
• In term of high flow copper, then as you say swept bends are preferable to minimise pipe noise as well as pressure drop.
• Here is a good page on understanding and calculating pressure drops: John Heartfield: Water Flowing in Pipes - real systems (2).

[Jeremy Harris]

FWIW, I found that the combination of a 50mm deep service space behind the plasterboard, plus the space allowed behind units, the bath etc, was such that I could easily just sweep the plastic pipe around into a gentle bend to come out perpendicular to the wall by the time it needed to go through something like the back of a cabinet.  I then transitioned from plastic to copper using plastic push fit valves, that when in things like the cabinets that house the washbasins, sinks etc are pretty much flush with the back of the cabinet interior, so you don't see the plastic pipe.  It did mean having slots in the plasterboard behind units where the plastic pipes came out, but these are hidden from sight and the guys doing the plastering didn't have any problem just cutting slots to allow the pipes to poke out.  I'd left the plastic pipes too long, and taped over the ends with red or blue electrical tape, to keep the muck out and show which was hot and cold.

[Nickfromwales]

15 hours ago, JSHarris said:

FWIW, I found that the combination of a 50mm deep service space behind the plasterboard, plus the space allowed behind units, the bath etc, was such that I could easily just sweep the plastic pipe around into a gentle bend to come out perpendicular to the wall by the time it needed to go through something like the back of a cabinet.  I then transitioned from plastic to copper using plastic push fit valves, that when in things like the cabinets that house the washbasins, sinks etc are pretty much flush with the back of the cabinet interior, so you don't see the plastic pipe.  It did mean having slots in the plasterboard behind units where the plastic pipes came out, but these are hidden from sight and the guys doing the plastering didn't have any problem just cutting slots to allow the pipes to poke out.  I'd left the plastic pipes too long, and taped over the ends with red or blue electrical tape, to keep the muck out and show which was hot and cold.

A good time to add that Hepworth pipe is a LOT more flexible and 'user friendly' than JG SpeedFit and such others . Doing as @JSHarris said with the latter would be nigh on impossible.  

[jamiehamy]

Thank you. Think I've got my list ready,  will probably make a start next weekend with the pipe runs.  JTM have the HEP manifolds too. Now to practise my soldering before going live on the manifold part...!  

[Nickfromwales]

50 minutes ago, jamiehamy said:

Thank you. Think I've got my list ready,  will probably make a start next weekend with the pipe runs.  JTM have the HEP manifolds too. Now to practise my soldering before going live on the manifold part...!  

The secret is :-

 

1) Clean pipe. 

2) Mild NOT self cleaning flux ( dont use Laco / Powerflux etc ) I use Telux. 

3a) Not too much heat. When the flux fizzes and starts to evaporate away, that's when your near to overheating the copper. Also, I use a flux brush to coat the internal of the joint but also to lightly coat the solder so the fitting gets re-fluxed as your soldering. Makes for clean sound joints. 

Remember to allow the joint to cool naturally after soldering is complete. 

Leaded solder is more forgiving but lead free isn't at all, and if shocked during the early stages of cooling, it will fracture like honeycomb. 

3b) In support of 3a, buy a good torch with a 'volume' control so you can get the flame size according to what your doing. 

 

Oh, and as said, ask three times, measure twice, cut once   

 

[Jeremy Harris]

28 minutes ago, Nickfromwales said:

The secret is :-

 

1) Clean pipe. 

2) Mild NOT self cleaning flux ( dont use Laco / Powerflux etc ) I use Telux. 

3a) Not too much heat. When the flux fizzes and starts to evaporate away, that's when your near to overheating the copper. Also, I use a flux brush to coat the internal of the joint but also to lightly coat the solder so the fitting gets re-fluxed as your soldering. Makes for clean sound joints. 

Remember to allow the joint to cool naturally after soldering is complete. 

Leaded solder is more forgiving but lead free isn't at all, and if shocked during the early stages of cooling, it will fracture like honeycomb. 

3b) In support of 3a, buy a good torch with a 'volume' control so you can get the flame size according to what your doing. 

 

Oh, and as said, ask three times, measure twice, cut once   

 

 

This was the first time I'd used lead-free, because my old roll of 60/40 tin/lead plumbing solder ran out early on.  The stuff is horrible to use, really, really horrible.  It's non-syntactic, as you say, Nick, so the very slightest movement during cooling causes it to crystallise.  Same with cold shock, no more wiping a joint whilst hot with a bit of wet towel to clean the flux etc and make it look better, or you risk the same.

 

TBH, I understand why they've removed lead from solder, but realistically I don't think the people making the rules thought through how very little solder is exposed to water inside a pipe joint and did a proper risk analysis.  Given that we still have older houses with solid lead piping, and we know the risk from that is pretty small, unless you live in an area with water with a very low pH, I'm of the view that forcing the use of a type of solder that is many times more likely to cause joint failure is not wise.

 

I'll freely admit that I have never stopped using tin/lead solder for electrical work, because 99% of the bits of kit I've repaired in the past 5 or 6 years have been faults caused by broken solder joints, and it's always the lead-free stuff that's the cause.  Luckily I can still buy (imported) 60/40 solder for home use, and that is orders of magnitude more reliable and easy to use than the lead-free stuff.

Edited February 4, 2017 by JSHarris

[TerryE]

This has also struck me as a totally non-evidence-based piece of regulation.  I remember the joys of sweating a copper spigot onto the lead pipe water supply that came into our house in Croydon nearly 40 years ago.  Our current house is plumbed in copper with maybe 90% of the joints end-feed with 60/40 lead solder.  In our new house I am going to have maybe a dozen or so joints in the potable DCW and another dozen or so in the (potable for the regs) DHW.  The solder fills the joint by capillary action at the flow stops where the capillary action ends so the exposed ring of solder is maybe 1mm wide at most and ~60mm long per joint for 22mm pipe so a dozen joints will present ~0.0007m² of 60/40 surface to the DCW flow. 

 

My supply in Croyden was about 10m of ½" internal bore pure lead pipe from the road or just under ½m² of exposed pure lead surface, that's over 700 times as much.  More to the point the effective volume of lead available for leaching into the supply is going to be down another order of magnitude on this.  So my lead exposure from my living in Croydon for 4 years is going to be comparable to living in my new house for maybe 4,000 years and I've only got 30 or so to go at best.  The health risks from Diesel engines, wood fires and the farmers spraying the fields around us are many orders of magnitude greater (and another order or two greater again for obesity and diabetes in the general population).   If the government was that concerned about general public health there are a lot more sensible low-hanging fruit to pick.  (End of rant.)

 

Nonetheless I've just gone out and bought a 2m coil of the new solder which should be more than enough to do all of the joints that I need, and I will certainly have enough left over to show the BInsp if he asks.