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Can anyone identify what this vent is for?


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My parents have moved into a newly built house and after the recent bad weather have found water has been leaking on the bathroom ceiling.  In the loft, roughly above the area of leak, is this black vent on the pitched roof with dangling and seemingly unconnected pipe.  The other insulated pipe is the bathroom extractor vent.  It seems both vent installations are a similar product with a broadly triangular part accepting a connecting pipe above a cut out in the roofing felt.  I've tried to google products but cannot find a match.

 

I have not been to the house to investigate the loft but based on the image I am guessing the dangling pipe ought to be connected to something.  I wondered if it might be a soil breather vent that has not been connected - you can just see a white pipe to the left of the image which I imagine is the soil pipe.  Can any experienced eyes concur, or could it be something else?  Whatever the purpose of the vent, should it have water ingress from rain in bad weather?

 

Thanks in advance!

Loft-air-vent.jpg

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An un used roof tile vent.

 

I bet the builders miss calculated how many and where the vents needed to go and fitted one too many.  That decision needs making early in the build as the roof goes on.  Then perhaps later there was a change in the plumbing, perhaps the soil stack did not need a vent but an AAV was sufficient.

 

In the short term I would create a little platform under that and put a bucket there to catch the drips.

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Traditionally most houses had one or more open stacks (soil pipe) that vents above the roof and possibly others fitted with Air Admittance Valves (AAV) in the house.

 

I think these days not every house on an estate is required to have an open stack so that might explain a mix up. That said some BCO still insist on one per house.

 

Either way no house should have an open vent _in_ the roof space. So if that white pipe is a soil vent I believe it should have an AAV on the top.

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You need to check out that other vent pipe [silver insulated flexi] as it may be the culprit.

 

We had similar [can't blame anyone but me as I fitted the flexi hose as I didn't have the right connector at the time] - 

 

Excuse the crudity of the sketch.

 

I had a soil stack vented to a tile vent, but at the time didn't have the extension to connect to the soil stack, so used a piece of insulated flexi hose with two large jubilee clips.  - as per left hand drawing.

 

In the recent -5 weather we noticed water stain in the cupboard below, I went up and found the joint to be dripping.  This was essentially The water vapour, from the waste,  condensating in the vent running down and getting through the minutia gap, due to the wire in the flexi hose not causing a seal.

 

Replaced with a proper connection and some proper fitting so that it would not leak - as per right hand side.

 

 

 

 

image.png

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1 hour ago, Temp said:

 

I think these days not every house on an estate is required to have an open stack so that might explain a mix up. That said some BCO still insist on one per house.

 

 

The world according to Polypipe:- 

 

POLYPIPE Air Admittance Valves and Anti-Syphon Units - Technical Guide.pdf (plumbingforless.co.uk)

 

1. For up to and including four dwellings, one, two or three storeys in height, additional drain venting is not required.

2. For five to 10 dwellings, a conventional vent stack should be provided at the head of the drain run.

3. For eleven to 20 dwellings, a conventional vent stack should be provided at the mid-point and head of the drain run.

4. For multi-storey domestic dwellings (other than those referred to above) and non domestic buildings, conventional drain venting should be provided if more than one such building, each equipped with the valves, is connected to either a common drain, itself not vented by means of a ventilation stack, or to a discharge stack not fitted with a valve.

 

Our architect recommended one as we were connecting to an existing drain.  

 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, SimonC said:

Thanks all for your responses.  The developer is sending an electrician around to check !?

 

 

Perhaps they have had problem with the bathroom fan installation leaking on other houses?

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