Standpipes

[TerryE]

This was an occasional but recurring topic on eBuild, including a topic that Jan and I initiated.  Our water supplier (Anglian Water) has a strict policy to the effect that:

• the pipe into the house must be a min of 75cm deep and
• their surveyor must review the house installation for compliance before scheduling any connection works on the public highway.  (There is a waiver for approved installers but in practice these guys only deal with large installations.)

The standard way to get around this is to do this installation in 2 phases:

1. Install a standpipe and request connection to the standpipe.  This triggers digging up the road and connection to your property including the installation of a meter, stopcock and double check valve at or near the boundary.  This has a 6++ weeks lead time.
2. When the house and plumbing is "finished", then apply for approval to connect up the final supply to the house.  This has a 1-2 week lead time in our area.

So you can parallel up the external works and 1st / 2nd fit with the roadworks for the costs of a standpipe and the extra site visit, which is often worth doing even if you are never going to use the standpipe in anger.  What is crazy is that our water table near the boundary is about 150mm below the street level so IMO there is no way that A.W. will put their meter and stop cock at 750mm because it will be permanently covered in ½m water. 

I did suggest just making the standpipe available and fitting it at the same time as the digging, but no: there is an absolute rule: the Anglian survey engineer has to review the installed standpipe and standpipe tail for compliance with their guidelines before any groundwords can be scheduled.)   See attached photo where I've marked the position of the standpipe; there wil be a second coil of MDPE from the standpipe.  The black pipe is for the electricity supply.

You can buy made up standpipes such as this one: PL34 Standpipe which costs £235+VAT and is as per attached image, but I will buy the bits and make up my own for about £30.  One wrinkle is that A.W. insist that the bibcock must not have a hose connector -- so I can either spend ~£30 for one without a hose connector of use a £7.50 one and angle-grind off the hose connector.  Hey-ho!!

[RandAbuild]

Thanks Terry - very helpful.

We are waiting for AW to carry out their desktop survey for our supply, which we think is in the main road 50m from our plot. As you say, they take 6 weeks to even look at this and in the meantime we are reliant on a hose from a neighbour's garden tap. Like you, we'll have to have a standpipe as a temporary supply, but I was unaware of their very precise requirements. I'll start to put together a standpipe like the one as you've shown.

Interesting you say AW don't allow a hose connector - yet the one shown on the Edwards Standpipes' website has a bib tap with one!

[ToughButterCup]

EXACTLY what I need for a meeting next week Terry.

[ProDave]

2 hours ago, TerryE said:

You can buy made up standpipes such as this one: PL34 Standpipe which costs £235+VAT and is as per attached image, but I will buy the bits and make up my own for about £30.  One wrinkle is that A.W. insist that the bibcock must not have a hose connector -- so I can either spend ~£30 for one without a hose connector of use a £7.50 one and angle-grind off the hose connector.  Hey-ho!!

 

..... And change it back to one WITH a hose connector as soon as the idiot has left the site. What does he think the double check valve is for FFS?

I had this nonsense with Scottish Water. They would not make my connection initially because I didn't have the double check valve in line with the standpipe or the caravan. So I had to fit two of them and call him back.

Lessons learned. ONLY provide your stand pipe, NO OTHER connections.  Once your supply is on site SW don't require any other insperctions, building control see to all of that.

And this double check valve thing drove me nuts. There is a single check valve in SW's toby on the boundary. There is a single check valve in my own toby used for my water distribution network. There is a single check valve in the TAP.  But these three single check valves are not considered adequate, so as well as those 3, I had to install an in line double check valve. Talk about being paranoid.  Why don't they just fit a double check valve in the toby that THEY supply, then the whole site sould be covered?

[PeterW]

1 hour ago, RandAbuild said:

Thanks Terry - very helpful.

We are waiting for AW to carry out their desktop survey for our supply, which we think is in the main road 50m from our plot. As you say, they take 6 weeks to even look at this and in the meantime we are reliant on a hose from a neighbour's garden tap. Like you, we'll have to have a standpipe as a temporary supply, but I was unaware of their very precise requirements. I'll start to put together a standpipe like the one as you've shown.

Interesting you say AW don't allow a hose connector - yet the one shown on the Edwards Standpipes' website has a bib tap with one!

Anglia Water..?

From request to quote (and desk survey) was just over 2 weeks..! And I got a number to ring as we have options on either side of the gates

[TerryE]

Same as me Peter.  The 6-8 week delay is in scheduling the actual ground works.

[TerryE]

So I had my Anglian water inspector around.  He had absolutely no problems with my standpipe.  So my version made from ScrewFix bits at less than £30 has just as good as  the pre-assembled one at ~£300.  Note my WB don't allow a bibcock tap, but they're a lot cheaper so I've just filed off the thread.

 

The other wrinkle was that he said that we had to have a separate stop cock and double-check valve in our own boundary box within our site boundary, so we bought one at ~£120.  My builder then said: waste of money; the crew will refuse to install it.  So the groundworks crew came along and installed our water main this Sat and finished the re-tarmac'ing on Monday.  The crew boss said: that's a bloody waste of money; there's no point in having a stopcock when there's another a foot away in the pavement.  I refuse to install it; take it back and get your money back.  You builder will be putting in the house supply as soon as we're gone anyway.  

 

When they left and my builder came to site, he said ....

 

Anyone want a nice boundary box / MDPE 25mm stopcock / double check valve?

Edited August 9, 2016 by TerryE